“So,” she offered valiantly, “you must all love living in Paris. It’s so gorgeous.”
Davide nodded. “Although I intend on retiring to the house in the Cap. To me it’s le paradis sur terre. Heaven on earth.”
“Agreed,” Bailey nodded. “I love the climate. Perfectly temperate.”
“But you must like the extreme heat,” Alexander interjected. “Given that you lived in Las Vegas.”
The edge to his tone made Bailey set her wineglass down with a jerky movement. “I do,” she agreed evenly. “But I much prefer the more moderate Northern California climate.”
“Speaking of Vegas,” Alexander waved an elegant long-fingered hand at her, “I remembered last night where I met you. I usually have such an impeccable memory…it was driving me crazy.”
Bailey froze. Jared’s gaze flickered to Alexander, a warning glint in it. “Gagnon—
“It was the Red Room,” Alexander continued. “How I could have forgotten when you were so memorable I don’t know.”
John Gehrig’s mouth dropped open. The room began to spin.
“Do you know the Red Room?” Alexander turned to one of his marketing executives. The perfectly put together Frenchman shook his head. His boss sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “You must go the next time you’re there. They have the most drop-dead beautiful women on stage; my clients used to salivate. But there was one dancer,” he commented, looking over at Bailey, a dark glitter in his silver eyes, “who called herself Kate Delaney who held us all spellbound. We couldn’t take our eyes off her.”
A buzzing sound filled Bailey’s head. Davide gave his son a confused look. “What does this have to do with Bailey?”
“Kate Delaney was Bailey’s stage name.”
“Oh.” Davide ran a hand over his jaw and looked at Bailey. “So you were one of those…what do they call them? Burlesque dancers?”
“No,” Bailey corrected quietly, bile climbing her throat at an alarming rate. “The Red Room is a high-end strip club.”
Davide’s eyes widened. “A strip club?”
The couple of execs who’d had their heads buried in their smartphones the entire meal looked up, eyes fastening on her. Bailey swallowed hard, heat flooding every inch of her skin. “Yes. It was how I paid my way through school.”
A frown creased the elder Frenchman’s brow. “That must have been…”
“Lucrative.” Bailey dropped her gaze to the candle flickering in the center of the table and absorbed the total and complete silence. Wished she could disappear into the red-hot flame.
John Gehrig cleared his throat. “Well, I for one love the Red Room. The ladies are all just beautiful and I’m sure,” he said, shooting a red-faced look at Bailey, “you looked just…lovely.”
“There wasn’t an unaffected man in the room,” Alexander agreed. “Isn’t it great to see the American dream alive and well? From stripper to CMO…how inspiring.”
The bile in her throat threatened to make an immediate appearance. She pressed a hand to her mouth and swallowed hard. Jared made a sound and pressed his palms into the table. Bailey covered his hand with hers. “Don’t.”
He stared at her hand for a long, hard moment, then lowered himself back into his seat. Davide flicked his son a reprimanding look.
“If you were a gentleman you would pick another line of conversation, Alexander, but since your manners often escape you, I will.”
Davide started a discussion about foreign exchange rates. John Gehrig hurriedly joined in. Bailey drew in a breath, then another. Told herself walking away from the table right now wasn’t an option. But it was painful, physically uncomfortable to sit there with the young executives shooting speculative glances across the table at her. One of them was tapping away on his phone, then slid it discreetly toward his coworker. Photos of her as Kate Delaney no doubt. She’d tried to get the club to sell the promotional photos to her, to take them off the website, and they’d agreed, but nothing ever really disappeared from the internet. It just pretended to.
Jared laid his palm on her thigh. “Breathe.”
She pushed his hand away and stared sightlessly out the window at the glittering Eiffel Tower. Felt everything go gray around her as she retreated. She knew the routine. Knew this humiliation like a second skin. It was a familiar, hateful feeling she’d never wanted to feel again.
She drained her wineglass. Smiled tightly at the waiter as he appeared to refill it. Growing up in her house, it had been taboo to say the word alcoholic, even though her father had clearly been one and his booze-induced rages had been a monthly fixture. As if none of them said it, it didn’t exist.
Apparently she’d also decided to live her life in denial. If she didn’t acknowledge the past and the choices she’d made, it could never hurt her. She could go on pretending she was something she wasn’t.
But that was all over now. With those men looking at her like this, she felt like a Jenga puzzle someone had pulled the last piece out of.
“I need to go,” she muttered in a low, harsh voice to Jared as their dessert plates were cleared. “Tell them I have a headache, tell them I’m exhausted…tell them whatever you want.”
She stood up, grabbed her wrap and skirted her way through the tables to the exit. On the street, she flagged a cab. Jared caught up with her as she was about to slide in.
“Get in,” he said grimly, climbing in behind her when she did.
Neither of them spoke until they were in Bailey’s hotel suite. She tossed her bag on a chair and turned on him. “Why would he do it? Why would he humiliate me like that? What happened between the two of you?”
Jared sat down on the sofa near the windows. The guilty schoolboy look he wore as he raked his hands through his hair made her heart sink into the ground.
“Alexander saw me coming out of the washroom. He made some comments I couldn’t let pass. I figured it was time we had a chat.”
She felt the color drain from her face. “We weren’t going to do that.”
“I changed my mind. I said some things I shouldn’t have.”
“Like what?”
His mouth flattened. “When I made it clear you were with me, he said he didn’t care. He said I should take one for the deal. Give you to him for a night then put you in the shower afterward and forget it happened.” He pressed his fingers to his temples. “I lost my mind. I went too far.”
A wave of nausea flashed over her. “What else did you say?”
“I told him I wished I’d taken you right there under his nose so he would know what he could never have.”
Her breath left her. “You didn’t.”
“I did.”
Her hands curled by her sides. “You….”
He stood up. “Bailey—”
“No.” She hurled the word at him. “You do not get to be excused for this, Jared. You do not get to be excused for egging him on in some testosterone-fueled duel when you knew what he was capable of. You knew he would not hesitate to throw my past in my face.”
His face grayed. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“No—no, you weren’t. You were too busy bragging about being the one to get me into bed. Making it impossible for him to not retaliate…” She threw her hands up in the air. “My God, Jared, I’m falling for you. Falling for you. How could you do this?”
He covered the ground between them with swift steps. The fire in his eyes set her back on her heels. “I have put this deal, this must-win deal, on the line for you this entire time, Bailey, because of my feelings for you. So do not question my intentions. Yes, I made a mistake tonight…I let my temper get the best of me, and I’m sorry for that. But it’s done. And maybe it’s a good thing, because you need to move on, you need to stop letting the past hold you captive.”
Her eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right? You think it’s a good thing that the entire table of men I have to present to tomorrow will now be picturing me naked on a stage rather than listening to what I
have to say?”
He lifted a brow. “So what? Who cares what they think? You’re brilliant. Your ideas are brilliant. You want to defy the naysayers? Prove my manifesto is crap? Then get tougher, Bailey. Get a whole lot tougher than that.”
The fists she had clenched by her sides tightened. She thought she might hit him then, and he eyed her as if he would take it. Instead, she felt big, huge, fat tears burning the backs of her eyes and backed away from him before she gave in to them.
“You said earlier you wanted to talk. Let’s talk then. This is proving very illuminating.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think now is the right time.”
His eyes said more than his words, the grim look stretching his face making her chest go tight. He was second-guessing what he’d said earlier. Second-guessing his feelings for her after what had happened tonight. After he’d watched an entire table of men react to what she’d been just as he had the first time she’d told him. Shocked. Appalled. She could see it on his face.
Anger built inside her, a white-hot storm that was impossible to control. She clenched her hands by her sides. How was it that every man in her life eventually rejected her? Her father, who’d thrown her out? The man she’d liked in Vegas who’d wanted only one thing? Now Jared.
Shame washed over her, stained her skin like a brand. He had treated her like a power play with Alexander because that’s what she was to him—expendable.
“Now that you have me,” she lashed out, so hurt she couldn’t see straight, “why not enjoy the full benefits?” She reached down and yanked her shoe off and threw it at him, a silver missile he plucked out of the air with catlike reflexes. “I know you’re curious,” she continued. “You asked me about it in Nice…why not sit back and let me demonstrate?”
His gaze tracked her as she bent her leg and reached for the other shoe. “Bailey—”
Wham. The shoe smacked his outstretched palm and fell to the floor. He took a step forward and reached for her, but she backed away, flashing him a furious look. “Sit.”
He sat. Likely because he didn’t know what else to do with a crazy woman on the loose. Bailey’s fingers moved to the buttons of her shirt, stumbling as she undid them. “That was hot, right, on the sink in the washroom? I’ll make it hotter.”
He shook his head. “Stop it.”
“Oh, come on, you’ll love it.” She tore at the last button and yanked the shirt off. “Get in the spirit, Jared.”
“Bailey.” His eyes flashed a warning. “Put your shirt back on.”
“Why? All you want is this. You made that clear this morning.” She eased her skirt over her hips in a seductive, admittedly angry twist. “All men ever want is this.”
He shook his head. “I care about you. You know I do.”
She stalked toward him, sank her hands into his shoulders and straddled him. “You wanted to know how I danced for them? How I touched them?” She settled herself into his hard thighs. “Like this…”
He kept his hands stiffly by his sides, anger darkening his face. It made her furious. Made her push her breasts into his chest and rotate her hips against him in a much more intimate caress than she would ever have given a customer. A harsh breath left his lungs.
“You see,” she derided, “you can’t deny you like it.”
“Of course I like it.” He clamped his hands around her hips and held her still. “There isn’t a second I don’t want you. But you are worth more than this.”
She shook her head, tears burning the back of her eyes in a glittering prelude to total breakdown. “I saw your face when I told you what I was. You were horrified.”
“I was shocked.”
“Shocked, horrified…what’s the difference?”
He grimaced. “A big one.”
She swallowed hard. Dared herself to ask the question that might break her, because how much worse could she feel about herself?
“Could you ever imagine yourself with me, Jared? With all my flaws?”
His jaw hardened. “I’ve told you I care about you. Stop pushing me.”
The warning in his eyes scared her. The sudden, earth-shattering realization that she was undeniably, unmistakably in love with him was worse.
She reached for old habits, old powers as she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Slid her palm across his thigh to where he lay stiff and thick beneath his trousers. He jerked against her hand and the triumph rocketed through her like a drug she’d been denied too long.
“No.”
He dumped her on the sofa so fast it made her head spin. Stepped back. The rebuke in his face made her heart shrivel. “We have a presentation to do tomorrow. We are going in there as a team, Bailey, and we are winning. We are doing what we came here to do. This,” he said, glaring at her, “is not happening.”
Her lips trembled. “You don’t want me.”
“You’re right,” he said harshly. “I want the Bailey I know. The woman who let me look into her soul last night. Not this.”
He turned on his heel and left, slamming the connecting door behind him. Bailey curled up in a ball on the sofa and cried. Cried for the girl she’d been. For what she wished she hadn’t had to do.
At Jared for being so cruel.
At herself for ruining everything.
CHAPTER TEN
BAILEY WOKE WITH the birds. At some point, after Jared had left, she’d stumbled into bed and slept. Given herself over to a seemingly endless series of dreams whose characters and content overlapped without rhyme or reason, which sent her spiraling into the past, then hurtling forward into the present again in a dizzying journey that ended only with the arrival of the first light of day.
And perhaps the appearance of the loud, squeaky garbage truck that parked outside her window. She winced at the piercing, grinding sound, thinking maybe it wasn’t as early as she’d thought, and levered herself into a sitting position. Somehow Paris seemed too elegant a city for garbage trucks…but apparently it too had its baggage it needed to get rid of.
She slid her legs over the side of the bed and padded to the window in time to see the very inelegant green garbage truck move on to the next storefront, hogging most of the narrow street with its robust, squat girth. Watching it made her think. Was Jared right? Was her determination to distance herself from her past destroying her instead of saving her?
She opened the French doors, walked out onto the balcony and braced her palms on the railing. She was proud, extremely proud of what she’d accomplished. Of whom she’d become. If she’d hadn’t had the past she’d had, she wouldn’t be the person she was now. And maybe that was the way she needed to look at herself: accept the parts she didn’t like, the parts she was ashamed of, because they were part of the whole package like it or not.
The cold light of day was telling, exposing, and she shivered against the glare of it. Last night as the world had learned the truth of her, she’d felt as if she’d disintegrated into a million pieces. Funny how you could wake up the next morning and still be here. Could still hurt. Could still be angry.
Could discover that even though you thought the past had the power to destroy you, it really didn’t. Not unless you let it.
The graffiti-emblazoned garbage truck turned the corner to meander down the next street, leaving only Jared’s stark rejection of her in its wake. She’d spent her life being tougher than all the rest. Refusing to give in when the odds were stacked against her. Which explained why his words had hurt so much last night. She couldn’t stand to be a quitter. She couldn’t stand for him to think she was a quitter.
Couldn’t stand for him not to love her.
Her heart squeezed hard in her chest. She hadn’t even known she wanted to be loved. Hadn’t known she craved it, needed it, like some missing piece of the puzzle that was her until now. It was frightening, terrifying, and it had made her drive him away last night—perhaps for good.
She pressed her fingers to the pounding pulse at her temples. Jared wanted a woma
n she didn’t even know yet. It was a vulnerable, open version of herself he brought out. Not the old or the new Bailey, something else entirely. It occurred to her that maybe that’s who she needed to be. A product of her past but in command of her future.
Increased activity on the street told her it was time to go inside and dress. The pitch was today. And the only thing she was certain about this morning was that she had to win this for Jared. Support him as he’d supported her this entire time.
She was dressed in a conservative gray pantsuit when she stopped, high heels in hand. No way was she doing this. Downplaying her femininity just because those men now thought she was entertainment for hire.
That would be letting them win.
She shrugged out of the suit and reached for the new chic mauve one she’d purchased on a whim on the Champs-Elysées. The material was gorgeous and the skirt showed a lot of leg.
Jared knocked on the door just as she’d finished dressing. His mouth curved as he looked her over. “That your battle gear?”
“Something like that.”
He stepped closer and tucked a chunk of her hair behind her ear. “There isn’t another person I’d want by my side today.”
The dark glimmer of emotion in his eyes sent a flicker of hope through her. “Nor I.”
She led the way out of the room. Today wasn’t about emotion. Today was about getting the job done.
* * *
Jared spent the short ride from their hotel to the Maison offices finding his center. He’d spent the night sleepless and keyed up, not just because of what had happened with Bailey, but because this was it. One way or another his future would be determined today. He was done romancing the board, done proving himself when that’s all he’d done over the past ten years to make money for his shareholders. They had to climb aboard his vision, understand where the future was, or he was out.
The Magnate's Manifesto Page 14