“So what was that?” He jerked his head toward the sofa. “You were all in there, Bailey.”
“Stupid me.” She rolled her eyes. “We do have this chemistry, you and I. And for one second, five minutes,” she amended sarcastically, “I was doing what I wanted. I wasn’t holding back.”
His heart stuttered. The urge to pick her up, walk into that bedroom and finish what they’d started made him shove his hands in his pockets. Because while he liked Bailey, might even be fond of her, despite the fact that he wanted to take her to bed more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life, he didn’t do the big V. Wasn’t capable of it. It would be like asking him to vote Republican. To suggest he leave a big messy pile in the middle of his impeccably clean desk.
Clean desk, clean mind, his Zen master had told him on that thirty-day search to find his soul. If he slept with Bailey, there might never be enough meditation for that.
He lifted his gaze to her rather glazed one, resolute despite his screaming body. “I just have one question for you.”
She gave him a wary look. “What?”
“Don’t you ever get…frustrated?”
Her eyes darkened. “Get out of my room, Jared.”
How were you supposed to greet the day when you’d just spent the night before getting down and dirty with your boss? It wasn’t a particular skill Bailey had arrived in France with, and the thought of facing him across a plate of croissants while she remembered him on his knees between her thighs, devouring her, wasn’t going to fly.
She yanked a pillow over her face and lay back in the big king-size bed. Her only saving grace was she hadn’t screamed out loud. But even that was tempered by the fact that her moans of approval had been loud and clear. And if he’d taken her to bed, she would have let him take her virginity. She would have let Jared Stone take her virginity. Because for a moment there, she’d thought she’d seen the real Jared. The man behind the manifesto. The man who thought enough of her that he was backing her when he shouldn’t be…
Who had called her the smartest marketing person he’d ever worked with.
I’ve never respected a woman more in my life. For who you are. For what you’ve done.
Ugh. She pressed the pillow harder against her face. Had he just been trying to get her into bed? Had he been intrigued by her past and wondering how hot she was? How skilled? But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t right. Jared was risking too much standing behind her to just be out for sex. His Achilles’ heel was his utter and complete inability to commit. This was right within character. A virgin must be an intensely scary, disconcerting phenomenon to him. What had she expected him to do?
She threw the pillow off, fury at herself coursing through her. He might respect her even after all she’d told him, but he was still Jared—a man no female should get anywhere near unless she was as shallow as he was when it came to the art of the casual hookup.
It made her wonder about the rest of the manifesto she hadn’t read…
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, padded into the lounge and woke up her computer. Gave the scattered sofa pillows a grimace. His manifesto now had five million views. She typed in the word virgin and pressed Find. And there it was. Bolded.
Never, ever take a virgin home with you unless you’re prepared to open up the homestead to her. Lock, stock and barrel. There is no “see how it goes” with a virgin. I’ve seen better men than me crash and burn. Hard.
Her vision misted over. What was wrong with her? When had she forgotten exactly who Jared was? About the same time he had kissed her brain into some sort of ancient and useless artifact. Because let’s face it. Some women would trade their self-respect for that skill in the bedroom.
If she’d kept her mouth shut last night, she would have.
She got to her feet with a jerky movement, strode into the bathroom and pushed her obviously cloudy head under the hot spray of the shower. She was going to pretend last night had never happened. Appreciate what Jared was doing for her because he was risking a great deal by keeping her in this pitch, she knew that. And she was going to win it for him. Then she was going to get far away from Jared Stone while she still had her wits about her.
Jared was eating breakfast on the terrace when she arrived downstairs, newspaper spread out in front of him, undoubtedly having already inhaled a couple of the croissants from the basket as he did every morning. He had the highest metabolism of anyone she’d ever encountered, which she had to admit was likely stoked by all the muscle on display for her this morning. Athletic shorts and a gray T-shirt left little of it to the imagination.