“You know my theory on that,” he returned patiently. “I spend the first couple hours of my day finding my center. Seven-thirty is soon enough to discover what craziness has befallen the world.”
“Right,” she muttered. “Well, you might want to leave your Buddhist sojourn by the wayside and plug in quickly before Sam Walters arrives. He’ll be here at eleven.”
Jared brought his brows together at the mention of the chairman of the Stone Industries board. “I have nothing scheduled with him.”
“You do now,” she said. “Jared—I—” She set down her pen and gave him a direct look. “Your document, your manifesto, was leaked on the internet last night.”
He felt the blood drain from his face. He’d only ever written two manifestos in his life. One when he’d started Stone Industries and put down his vision for the company, and the second, the private joke he’d shared with his closest friends last night after a particularly amusing guys’ night out on the town.
It had not been intended for public consumption.
From the look on Mary’s face, she was not talking about the Stone Industries manifesto.
“What do you mean leaked?” he asked slowly.
She cleared her throat. “The document…the whole document is all over the Net. My mother emailed it to me this morning. She asked what I was doing working for you.”
The thought crossed his mind that this was all impossible because his buddies would never do that to him. Not over a joke intended for their eyes only…. Had someone hacked into his email?
He looked down at the wad of messages in his hand, his chest tightening. “How bad is it?”
Her lips pursed. “It’s everywhere.”
Thinking he might finally have taken his penchant for stirring things up too far, he knew it for the truth when his mentor and adviser Sam Walters walked into his office three hours later, Jared’s legal and PR teams behind him. The sixty-five-year-old financial genius did not look amused.
Jared waved them into chairs and attempted a preemptive strike. “Sam, this is all a huge misunderstanding. We’ll put out a statement that it was a joke and it’ll be gone by tomorrow.”
His vice president of PR, Julie Walcott, lifted a brow. “We’re at two million hits and climbing, Jared. Women are threatening to boycott our products. This is not going away.”
He leaned back against his desk, the abdomen he’d worked to the breaking point this morning contracting at his appalling lack of judgment in ever putting those words on paper. But one thing he never did was show weakness. Particularly not now when the world wanted to eat him alive. “What do you suggest I do?” he drawled, with his usual swagger. “Beg women for their forgiveness? Get down on my knees and swear I didn’t mean it?”
“Yes.”
He gave her a disbelieving look. “It was a joke between friends. Addressing it gives it credence.”
“It’s now a joke between you and the entire planet,” Julie said matter-of-factly. “Addressing it is the only thing that’s going to save you right about now.”
The sick feeling in his stomach intensified. Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “This has legal implications, Jared. Human rights implications… And furthermore, as I don’t need to remind you, Davide Gagnon’s daughter is a charter member of a woman’s organization. She will not be amused.”
Jared’s hands tightened around the wooden lip of his desk. He was well aware of Micheline Gagnon’s board memberships. The daughter of the CEO of Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailer, Maison Electronique—with whom Stone Industries was pursuing a groundbreaking five-year deal to expand its global presence—was an active social commentator. She would not be amused. But really…it had been a joke.
He let out a long breath. “Tell me what we need to do.”