“Gehrig? I thought this was a one-horse race?”
“Not anymore. Apparently my manifesto has dropped our brand rating with female consumers.”
There was a long pause. Jared sighed. “Don’t say it, Sam.”
“You know I have to…the next time you get inspired to philosophize, Jared…don’t.”
His lips twisted. “I would heartily agree with you, but that horse is out of the gate. Now we have to win.”
“Yes, you do. You know I’m doing everything I can to shore things up for you until you get those products to market. But this will make a statement.”
The muscles in his head clenched like a vise, a deep throb radiating through his skull. “I’m ultra-clear on this, Sam. Mea culpa, my mess. We will win. Meanwhile, let me know if you’ve got anything on Gehrig. I have a week to pull them apart.”
“I’ll make some calls.”
“Thanks. Appreciate it.”
“Jared?”
“Mmm?”
“You created Stone Industries. You’re the only man who should be leading it. That’s all the focus you need.”
A smile curved his lips. “Thanks for having my back, Sam.”
He put the phone down. Wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t bumped into Sam at a start-up conference in the Valley and begun a lifelong friendship with the mentor who’d taken him under his wing when his father had gone AWOL. Who’d taught him that sometimes you could trust a person, that sometimes they were always there for you. And for a young, hotheaded Jared with an astronomically successful start-up on his hands, it had meant the difference between being a dot-com failure and the solid, profitable company Stone Industries was today.
An email brought his attention back to his computer screen. It was from his PI, Danny.
Bingo. Can I say, this one was my pleasure?
Why that made his insides twist, he didn’t know. He opened the report, printed it and threw it in a folder. He also didn’t know why he did that. Maybe he wanted to give Bailey a chance to tell him herself first. Maybe as he’d said from the beginning, trust was paramount to him. And maybe he knew what it was like to avoid the past because it only brought pain with it. And you couldn’t change it no matter how much you wanted to.
Maybe he liked Bailey St. John far more than he was willing to admit.
Bailey was bleary-eyed by the time she dragged herself away from her computer to join Jared for dinner on the intimate little seaside terrace of the villa that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. Smaller and cozier than Davide Gagnon’s showpiece of a home, it was luxurious but understated. The kind of place you could hide away forever in.
If only she could.
She pushed her hair away from her face and took a long sip of the full-bodied red Jared had unearthed from the cellar. You didn’t actually relax when your boss looked as if he wanted to toss you off the cliff you were sitting on into the glorious azure water below. When decisions you’d made in the past suddenly seemed questionable when at the time, they’d seemed like the only way out.
Jared topped up her glass and stood up. “We’re taking a break from work tonight. Both our brains are fried.”
True. She stifled a surge of relief as she surveyed him in jeans and a navy T-shirt. Then thought maybe it was a bad idea because work had meant there was no space in her brain to remember that kiss.
“I think I might try to get some sleep,” she demurred. “I haven’t been doing so much of that.”
He stared her down. “I built a fire in the pit. Sky’s perfect for star spotting.”
“And here I did not figure you for a Boy Scout.”
“The wood was there,” he said drily. “I piled it up. Come.”
He picked up his glass and a blue folder he’d left on the chair and started walking down the hill. Hadn’t he said no business? Maybe there was a detail he wanted to chew over, and that was good because then they wouldn’t be diverging into the personal and Jared wouldn’t be prying for information on Alexander Gagnon.
She stood up and followed him down to the fire pit with her wine. A series of big boulders with flat surfaces had been positioned around the pit to sit on. She lowered herself on one and watched as Jared lit the paper and coaxed the fire into a steady flame. “My father loved fires,” he said. “Used to see how big he could make them go.”
“How old were you when your father embezzled the money?”
He glanced at her, his profile hard and unyielding in the firelight. “More questions while you remain a mystery?”
She lifted a shoulder. “You brought him up.”
“I was in my second year of university.”