BILLIONAIRE PLAYBOY IGNITES INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT WITH HIS MANIFESTO ON WOMEN
Jared Stone: Visionary, rebel, the tech world’s golden boy…and now the most hated man on the planet!
Bailey St. James: Survivor, powerful female executive, the only woman who refuses to bow down to Jared Stone…and the only woman who can save him?
When Jared’s manifesto makes him public enemy #1 the only way out is to make Bailey an offer she can’t refuse—a very public promotion to VP! Now, with a major deal on the line and tensions rising, can it be long before Jared and Bailey move from spreadsheets to bed sheets?
Bailey wanted to say no. She desperately wanted to throw the offer back in his face and walk out of there, dignity intact.
But two things stopped her. Jared Stone was offering her the one thing she’d sworn she’d never stop working for until she got it. And despite everything that he was—impossible, arrogant and full of himself—he was brilliant. And everyone knew it. If she worked alongside him as his equal, she could write her ticket. Ensure she never went back to the life she’d vowed to leave behind forever.
Survival was stronger than her pride. It always had been. And men having all the power in her world wasn’t anything unusual. She knew how to play them. How to beat them. And she could beat Jared Stone, too. She knew it.
She stared at him. At the haughty tilt of his chin. It was almost irresistible to show him how wrong he was. About her. About all women. This would be her gift to the female race….
“All right. On two conditions.”
His gaze narrowed.
“Double my salary and give me the title of CMO.”
“We don’t have a chief marketing officer.”
“Now we do.”
“Fine.” His curt agreement made her eyes widen, brought her swinging back around. “You can have both.”
She knew then that Jared Stone was in a great deal of trouble. And she was in the driver’s seat. But her euphoria didn’t last long. There was no doubt she’d just made a deal with the devil. And when you did that, you paid for it.
CHAPTER ONE
THE DAY THAT Jared Stone’s manifesto sparked an incident of international female outrage happened to be, unfortunately for Stone, a slow news day. By 5:00 a.m. on Thursday, when the sexy Silicon Valley billionaire was reputed to be running the trails of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, as he did every morning in his connected-free beginning to the day, his manifesto was dinner conversation in Moscow. In London, as chicly dressed female office workers escaped brick and steel buildings to chase down lunch, his outrageous state of the union on twenty-first-century women was on the tip of every tongue, spoken in hushed, disbelieving tones on elevator trips down to ground level.
And in America, where the outrage was about to hit hardest, women who had spent their entire careers seeking out the C-suite only to find themselves blocked by a glass ceiling that seemed impossible to penetrate stared in disbelief at their smartphones. Maybe it was a joke, some said. Someone must have hacked into Stone’s email, said others. Doesn’t surprise me at all, interjected a final contingent, many of whom had dated Stone in an elusive quest to pin down the world’s most sought-after bachelor. He’s a cold bastard. I’m only surprised his true stripes didn’t appear sooner.
At her desk at 7:00 a.m. at the Stone Industries building in San Jose, Bailey St. John was oblivious to the firestorm her boss was creating. Intent on hacking her way through her own glass ceiling and armed with a steaming Americano with which to do so, she slid into her chair with as much grace as her pencil skirt would allow, harnessed a morning dose of optimism that today would be different, and flicked on her PC.
She stared sleepily at the screen as her computer booted up. Took a sip of the strong, acrid brew that inevitably kicked her brain into working order as she clicked on her mail program. Her girlfriend Aria’s email, titled “OMG,” made her lift a recently plucked and perfected brow.
She clicked it open. The hot sip of coffee she’d just taken lodged somewhere in her windpipe. Billionaire Playboy Ignites International Incident With His Manifesto on Women, blared the headline of the variety news site everyone in Silicon Valley frequented. Leaked Tongue-in-Cheek Manifesto to His Fellow Mates Makes Stone’s Views on Women in the Boardroom and Bedroom Blatantly Clear.