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He nodded. “My father was an investment banker, but his true love was playing with a car’s engine until the sun came down. I would go out to the garage and work alongside him until my mother made me come in.”
She frowned. “You said was. Did your father pass?”
“No.” He felt his defenses sliding into place like a cell door at Alcatraz, but opening up was a two-way street, and he needed to give, too. “He embezzled money from the bank, from his personal circle of friends, got himself in way too deep and tried to win it all back in a high-stakes game in Vegas.”
Her eyes widened. “And they chewed him up?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
His mouth twisted. “It’s not exactly in my bio. The bank did a good job of hushing it up, and only those close to it ever knew.”
Her gaze moved uncertainly over his. Wondering why he’d told her.
“Trust,” he said softly. “You shared with me. I need to share with you. I meant what I said, Bailey. This is the most important presentation of Stone Industries’ history. There are no second chances. We have to nail it. We have to trust each other completely walking into that room or we don’t do it at all.”
She chewed ferociously on her lower lip. He kept his gaze on hers. “You have to be all-in, Bailey.”
She nodded. “I’m in.”
His shoulders settled back into place, his relief palpable. “Good. Let’s try to streamline that second section so it sings…”
She leaned forward to grab her notebook. “Ouch.”
“What?”
She pressed her fingers to her neck. “I slept the wrong way last night. I’ve got the worst kind of kink.”
She’d been struggling with it throughout their rehearsals, he realized. He’d thought her funny faces had been grimaces about the material but instead, she’d been in pain.
“Come here.”
She looked blankly at him.
He held up his hands. “These are magic. Let me work it out so you can concentrate.”
She shook her head. “It’ll work itself out. Let’s just figure that p—”
He got to his feet and pointed at the chair. “We need to nail this and you obviously can’t concentrate. Five minutes.”
She came then, taking the chair he’d vacated, as if she knew further resistance was futile. “Here,” she told him, pointing to the spot. He sat down on the side of the chair, ran his fingers over her skin lightly, then with increasing pressure.
“Here?”
“Yes,” she groaned. “Be careful. It’s killing me.”
“Trust, remember?” He set about working the immobilized muscles, on the outer edges first, loosening them up so he could find his way to the source of the pain. He felt her relax, let him in. But only so much. And he wondered how often, if ever, this woman allowed herself to be vulnerable?
I like to be in control, just like you do, Jared. Always.
Kink worked fully, he brought his hands down to her shoulders and started to work out the knots from where she’d held herself stiff from the pain. He expected her to protest. Say that was fine. But she didn’t. And why the hell did he still have his hands on her?
The scent of her perfume filled his nostrils, light but heady. Like her… It made a fist coil tight in his chest. The air thickened around them, his hands slowing as he finished the job. She must have felt it too, this undeniable connection between them, because her breathing changed, quickened, a flush stained her alabaster skin, and she was completely pliable beneath his hands.
She wanted him.
Bailey St. John—queen of the brush-off—wanted him.
The vaguely shattering discovery took him to a place it wasn’t wise to go. The woman every man in Silicon Valley coveted was not impenetrable. No pun intended. She was far from asexual as some had suggested jokingly, and perhaps bitterly. And it struck him that maybe he’d been avoiding working with her, promoting her, because he’d been afraid of this. Because they’d have to work hand in hand. Because he’d wanted to unravel the mystery that was Bailey St. John from the first day she’d walked into his office.
Correction. From the night he’d hired her…
His body tightened with an almighty surge of testosterone. Not particularly admirable, but there it was. And how had he not realized it sooner? Hadn’t he learned this in grade school? You only fought with the girls you liked. And on a much more adult level, he realized he wanted Bailey in his bed. Under him as he peeled back layer upon layer.
He would not be the one to crash and burn…
“Bailey?”
“Mm?” Her husky, pleasure-soaked tone rocked him to the core.
“I think I’ve figured out our issue.”
“Our issue?”
“Mmm.” He slid his fingers to the racing pulse at the base of her neck. “This.”
CHAPTER THREE
BAILEY YANKED HERSELF out from under Jared’s hands so fast she pretty much redid all the damage he’d just undone. Her hazy brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders as she met her boss’s glittering blue gaze, focused and intent, containing the same heated sexual awareness that had been fueling her unspeakable fantasy.
Hot and uncensored, it had been outrageously good…
“We— I—” She started to talk. Anything to deny what was happening.
Jared held up a hand. “There’s only one thing that’s called, Bailey: pure, unadulterated sexual attraction.”
Her pulse racing, hectic color firing her cheeks, it was really pointless to deny it. But it would be insanity not to. “There goes your out-of-control ego again, Jared,” she taunted, raising her chin. “You antagonize me, you drive me crazy, but you do not attract me.”
His jaw hardened. The glitter in his eyes morphed into a spark of pure challenge as his I am man, chest-beating need to prove his masculinity roared to life. Her breath stopped in her lungs, her irrational desire to see what would happen if he did lose it mixing with her common sense to create a complete state of inertia. Then his dark lashes came down to shield his eyes, that superior control he exerted over himself sliding back into place. “I think,” he said softly, “this is a case of semantics. Antagonize… Attract… Whatever you want to call it—it’s an issue. And we need to figure it out if we’re going to make this presentation work. If we’re going to make this partnership work.”
She pulled in a silent breath, using the reprieve to steady herself. To regain her equilibrium. He was right. She needed to figure this antagonism/attraction thing out before she made a complete fool of herself. Before she destroyed this opportunity she’d been handed.
“How about,” she offered, with as cool a gaze as she could muster, “you try to be a little looser, go with the flow, and I’ll pay more attention to the script? I’m sure even we can meet somewhere in the middle.”
His mouth tilted up on one side. “It’s worth a shot.”
They dined on a delicious meal of filet mignon and salad, Bailey severely curtailing her consumption of the delicious wine so her head was clear. She’d made a serious mistake in ever thinking she could let her defenses down in front of Jared. In tipping her hand and revealing an attraction she hadn’t even fully admitted to herself. But she’d learned her lesson. And she wasn’t about to do it again.
Their final rehearsal wasn’t perfect, but it was a heck of a lot better than their earlier attempts. She toned it down, made a concerted effort to follow Jared’s lead, and they made it through in a fairly civilized way. Jared, being the generous soul that he was, gave her a couple of hours’ sleep before they landed in the sparkling, glittering South of France.
* * *
Just how luxurious their trip was going to be was apparent when upon their arrival in the Nice airport, they were not met by a car, but a shiny silver helicopter flown by Davide Gagnon’s personal pilot. He jumped down under the slowing, still-whirling helicopter blades, greeted them, stowed their luggage in the back of the aircraft, and took them on their way.
Their trip across the sun-kissed Côte d’Azur to the legendary Peninsula of Billionaires, in between Nice and Monaco, featured some of the most exclusive properties on the French Riviera. Bailey, who’d done the South of France on a budget in her backpacking days with Aria, was googly-eyed. Luxurious villas sat in secluded coves behind high cliffs that sheltered them from the wind. And the colors were glorious, brilliant fuchsia and purple-soaked gardens bordering the sparkling turquoise sea.
Jared gave her an amused look as she chatted with the pilot, extending her twenty-question strategy to him. It was presently a balmy twenty-one degrees Celsius, the pilot told them as he set the chopper down on the Gagnon property’s private landing pad, expected to get much hotter over the weekend, just in time for film festival season in the South of France.
They were met outside the low, cream-colored sprawling villa that sat directly on the bay by Davide Gagnon’s head housekeeper, who informed them their host was en route home from a business meeting and would greet them that night at the party. Until then, they were free to explore the grounds and beach and enjoy some lunch. Bailey forced some salad into her jet-lagged body, took one look at her oceanfront suite—situated directly beside Jared’s at one end of a wing—and elected for a face-plant into the three-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets and an afternoon nap.
