The Magnate's Manifesto

“Don’t.”

Her hand froze midway to her face. “Sorry?”

“Don’t reapply that war paint. You look perfect the way you are.”

Heat spread through her, confusing in its intensity. He’d probably used that line on a million women. Why it made her drop the lipstick back into her purse and reach for her lip balm instead was unclear to her.

Jared sat back in his chair, tumbler balanced on his knee, hand sliding over his dark-shadowed jaw. “There’s never a hair out of place, Bailey. Never a cuff that isn’t perfectly turned or posture that isn’t ramrod straight even after four hours of rehearsing.” He angled an inquisitive brow at her. “Why the facade? What are you afraid people might find out if you relax?”

She angled her chin at him. “I work in the male-dominated, testosterone-driven world of Silicon Valley. Men will walk all over me if I show weakness. You of all people should know that.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “Is that why you turn them all down? Let them crash and burn for all to see?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “That would be their stupidity if I wasn’t showing interest. And this would be my personal life. Which doesn’t have any part in this conversation.”

“Oh, but it does,” he said softly, his gaze holding hers. “We need to go into this presentation like a well-oiled machine. Know each other inside out, anticipate each other’s needs, move together seamlessly until we are a well-orchestrated symphony. Trust each other implicitly so no matter what they throw at us we’ve got it. But right now, we’re a disjointed mess. The trust is lacking, and I don’t feel like I know the first thing about you.”

A chill stole through her. No one knew her. Except perhaps Aria. They knew Bailey St. John, the composed, successful woman she’d created by sheer force of will. A female version of the Terminator…and not even bulldog Jared was going to uncover the real her.

Which necessitated an act. And a good one. She cradled her wineglass against her chest, leaned back in her seat and slid into the interview persona she’d perfected over the years. “Ask away, then. What do you want to know?”

* * *

Jared leaned back in his seat and took in Bailey’s deceptively relaxed pose. He had no doubt from her evasive answers that she was going to give him only half the story. But something was more than nothing, and their disastrous rehearsals necessitated some kind of synergy. They weren’t connecting on any level except to strike sparks off each other. Which might be fine, desirable even, in the bedroom, but it wasn’t helping here with the board breathing down his neck, the press all over him like a second skin and the most important presentation of his life looming.

If he and Bailey walked into that room right now and did the presentation, they would go down like the Titanic. Slowly and painfully. Davide Gagnon might have handpicked them as partner, but it didn’t mean they could afford to miss one detail about why he should work with them.

He took a long sip of his whiskey, considered her while it burned a comforting trail down his throat, then rested the glass on his thigh. “I was reviewing your résumé. Why the University of Nevada-Las Vegas for your undergrad? It seems an odd choice given your East Coast upbringing. Florida, right?”

She nodded.

“Did you win a scholarship?”

The closed-off look he’d watched her perfect over the years made a spectacular reappearance. “I’m from a small city outside Tampa called Lakeland. Population less than a hundred thousand. I wanted to go away to school, and UNLV had a good business program.”

“So you chose Sin City?”

“Seemed as good a place as any.”

“Did it have something to do with the fact that you aren’t close to your family?”

“Why would you say that?”

“You never go home for the holidays and you never talk about them. So I’m assuming that’s the case.”

Her cool-as-ice blue eyes glittered. “I’m not particularly close to them, no.”

Definitely a sore point. “After UNLV,” he continued, “you did your MBA at Stanford, my alma mater, then went straight to a start-up. Did you always want to work in the Valley?”

She nodded. “I loved technology. I would have been an engineer if I hadn’t gone into business.”

“They’re in high demand,” he acknowledged. “Where did the interest come from? A parent? School?”

She smiled. “School. Science was my favorite class. My teachers encouraged me in that direction.”

“And your parents,” he probed. “What do they do?”

If he hadn’t been watching her, studying her like a hawk, he would have missed the slight flinch that pulled her shoulders back. She lifted her chin. “My father is a traveling salesman and my mother is a hairdresser.”

His eyes widened. Her less-than-illustrious background didn’t faze him. The complete incompatibility with the woman in front of him did. He would have pegged her as an aristocrat. As coming from money. Because everything about Bailey was perfect. Classy. From the top of her glamorous platinum-haired head, to her finely boned striking features, to her long, lean thoroughbred limbs, she was all sophistication and impeccable taste.

“So no man, no family,” he recounted. “Who do you spend your time with when you’re not at work? Which is always…” he qualified.

“You should be happy I do that. It’s why your sales numbers are so impressive.”

“I like my employees to have a life,” he countered drily. “Maybe you have a man tucked away none of us know about?”

“I have friends,” she said stiffly.

“Pastimes? Hobbies?”

Silence. He watched her mind work, coming up with a suitable answer, not the real one. “I like to read.”

“Ah yes,” he nodded. “So home on a Friday night with a book in your hand? That sounds awfully dull.”

“Maybe I import my men,” she offered caustically. “Ship them in for a hot night, then send them home.”

His mouth twisted. “Lucky guys.”

“Jared…” She exhaled heavily. “Are you ever politically correct?”

“Hopefully this weekend, yes.”

She smiled at that. “Is that enough information so we can move on to your fascinating backstory?”

“It’ll do for now.” He poured her another glass of wine, intent on loosening her up.

She shifted, tucked her legs underneath her. He kept his eyes off her outstanding calves with difficulty. “Is it true,” she asked, running a finger around the rim of her glass, “that you got your love of electronics tinkering in the garage with your father?”

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.

When she woke, the brilliant afternoon sun had faded into early evening, and a sensual pink-orange sunset was streaking its way across the sky. She yawned, padded to her terrace and watched as it deepened into a hot-pink fire laced with smoky gray-blue. She would have done just about anything to be able to sit there and enjoy the magnificent view with a glass of the wine on ice in her suite, but it was already close to six. She needed to shower, dress and face the jeweled, exquisitely coutured guests of Davide Gagnon in a half hour. And hope she had learned enough over the years to fake it so her lowbrow, uncouth roots didn’t show through like an ugly weed in a sea of mimosa and lavender.

Put her in a boardroom matched against the world’s nastiest deal-maker, and she was rock solid. Put her in a social situation like tonight, and she needed all her acting skills to survive. Etiquette training had only taught her which fork to use. Which wine to drink with what. It didn’t make her one of them. And it never would.

She gazed out at the explosion of color in the sky and reminded herself parties like this were about working a room. If there was anything she’d learned as a dancer, it was that. How to get what she wanted out of the men who’d come to watch her so she could make a different life for herself. And tonight was no different. She needed to focus on the prize, Davide Gagnon. Use what she’d learned about him, what she knew of men like him, to convince him a Stone Industries partnership was his ticket to European sales domination.

Show Jared he’d been overlooking a valuable asset for a very long time.

Once she got over her nerves…

She reluctantly abandoned the gorgeous view and stepped inside. She might not be able to enjoy the sunset, but she could indulge in a glass of wine to ease the tension. Pouring herself a glass, she took it into the stunning marble bathroom, stepped under a hot shower, and systematically washed away the old Bailey and installed the new one in her place.

Wrapping herself in the thick, soft robe that hung on the door, she padded into the dressing area and ran her fingers over the whisper-soft silks and taffetas she’d hung in the wardrobe. But there was never any question as to which she’d pick. She pulled the just-above-the knee beaded champagne-colored cocktail dress from the hanger and slipped it on. The dress was the softest silk, hugging every curve with just the right amount of propriety. Sexy but conservative at the same time.

She surveyed herself in the floor-length mirror. There was nothing cheap about the woman who looked back at her. This was not the twenty-dollar designer knockoff dress that had once been the only thing she could afford. And it showed.

Working her hair into a smooth, shimmering mass of curls with a round brush and a dryer, she topped it with minimal eye makeup and gloss. Enough to highlight her features. She had just added a dash of perfume to her pulse points when a knock sounded at the connecting door. Jared.

She moved across the room, undid the bolt and opened the door. The sight of her boss in an exquisitely tailored black tux might have been more intimidating than the prospect of the evening ahead. From the tip of his slicked-back dark hair to his freshly shaven jaw and long-limbed masculinity, he was devastating.

* * *

Jared followed Bailey into her suite, her barefoot, wine-in-her-hand invitation to come in doing something strange to his insides. Her dress—what would you call it, champagne-colored?—hugged every curve as if it had been sewn onto her. Curves that could burn themselves into your memory if you let them. Her hair fell in smooth gold waves to her shoulders, one side pushed back with a diamond butterfly clasp. Her exquisite face held only the faintest trace of war paint. But she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever stepped foot into a room with. That he knew.

He attempted to divert his wayward thoughts with a thoughtful look down at the floor tapestry, and instead treated himself to a perfect view of her long golden legs, ruby-tipped toes sinking into the carpet. And felt himself lose the plot completely. If she’d been a woman he was dating, he would have skipped the cocktails entirely. Insisted she share her wine while they watched the sunset together, taken the dress off her with his teeth and made her come at least twice before they joined the others.

And that didn’t take into account what he would have done to her after the night was over.

He would have had her until sunrise.

“Jared?”

He coughed and lifted his gaze to hers. “Sorry?”

A pink stain stole over her cheeks. “The gold or champagne shoes?”

He looked at the two pairs of sky-high heels dangling by her fingertips and decided either of them would make every man in the room tonight want to bed her.

“Gold,” he muttered. “It’ll contrast with the dress.”

“Right.” She tossed the other pair on the carpet, braced her hand against the wall and slipped the stilettos on. As his hormone-clouded brain cleared, he noticed the tight set of her face. The way her ramrod straight posture seemed to have pulled up another centimeter. How she picked up the glass of wine and downed the remainder with a jerky movement reminiscent of his father on the nights he’d had to attend the bank functions he’d never been comfortable with, except his drink had been scotch.

The chink in her armor confounded him. “Are you nervous? You know the plan. We find out Maison’s strategy when it comes to the environment and we’re all set. It’s the last missing piece.”

A stillness slipped across her fine-boned face. Indecipherable. “I’ve got the plan down, Jared. I’m fine.”

He didn’t buy it for a second. Her revelations on the plane had illuminated one thing about Bailey. She hadn’t been born into this lifestyle. She did a good job making it look as though she had, but she hadn’t.

He stepped closer, something about her vulnerability touching him deep down inside. “Don’t you know?” he said softly, looking down at her. “You’re always the most beautiful woman in the room, Bailey. And the smartest.”

A small smile twisted her lips before she wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ll bet that line works wonders for you.”

“You have no idea.” His answering grin was self-effacing. “But I’ve never meant it more than I do now. So be yourself tonight, and you’ll knock them dead.”

She studied him for a moment. Nodded. “We should go.”

For what reason he didn’t know, he braved her prickly exterior and wrapped his fingers around her delicate hand instead of offering his arm.

“Ready?” he asked roughly.

“Ready.”

* * *

They emerged on the buzzing wraparound terrace of the villa, ablaze with light and laughter on the warm Mediterranean night, where perhaps close to fifty people had already gathered, cocktails in hand. As Jared cased the crowd, he noticed an Academy Award-winning producer to his left, a high-profile A-list Hollywood couple to his right, and wasn’t that Roberto Something-or-other, the Italian film director known for his sprawling epics, straight ahead? The big personalities had, apparently, all made it into town.

He grabbed a couple of glasses of champagne from a passing waiter’s tray and handed one to Bailey. Gagnon had spared no expense: a quartet playing in a corner of the large, floodlit deck, black-jacketed staff circulating like an efficient swarm of bees, and from what he’d heard, a well-known French singer slated to play later in the evening, purportedly a mistress to one of the French cabinet ministers. But Jared had only one goal in mind. To corner Davide Gagnon and get the information he needed to develop that final, crucial piece of strategy.

He did not miss the attention every man at the party paid to the woman by his side as he picked out Gagnon, placed a palm to Bailey’s back and led her through the crowd. There were a lot of beautiful, stunning even, women at the party. Bailey outshone them all, glittering like a glamorous Hollywood icon brought forward to the present, outclassing even the real Hollywood A-listers in attendance if you were to ask his opinion. But in true Bailey style, she ignored them all and focused on their target.