The Magnate's Manifesto(41)

Rosy color stained her delicate cheekbones. “We had to wear bottoms. We wore two, in fact. I’m not even sure why. It might have been more of a fashion statement.”

The thought of Bailey dressed like that, dancing on a guy’s lap, had him asking, “Didn’t it bother you, doing that?”

“Of course it bothered me,” she snapped. “It wasn’t Sunday school, Jared. It was a job—a very lucrative job where men paid me a lot of money to take off my clothes. And maybe if I hadn’t had to worry about money my entire life, hadn’t had to wear hand-me-downs every day to school, I would have chosen differently. But I didn’t have that luxury and I wanted to make a better life for myself.”

Point taken.

She looked out at the sea, the sun slanting over her alabaster skin. “Most of the men were fine. Most of them respected the line and didn’t cross it.”

“Except for the ones like Alexander.”

She looked back at him, the remnants of a memory in her eyes. “Do you know what he said to me that night in my dressing room?”

He was pretty sure he didn’t, but he nodded anyway.

“He said he would respect my hard limits.”

Jared’s hands clenched into fists by his sides. “You stay away from him in Paris,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you interacting with him.”

She nodded. “I will.”

He didn’t want Gagnon anywhere near her. He was also sure he never wanted a man to raise a hand to her again. Put a hand on her. Ever.

He raked a hand through his hair and blinked against the sunshine breaking through the clouds as they stepped down onto the beach. Absorbed the uneasy feeling in his gut as he worried he was seriously losing his edge. Protecting Bailey against Alexander Gagnon was a given. The rest of it—the urge to keep her for himself—that was something he could never, ever do. He wasn’t even sure where such a crazy thought had come from.





CHAPTER EIGHT

AN UTTERLY BRILLIANT, rock-solid presentation under their belt, Jared and Bailey landed in Paris on Sunday night after a quick hour-and-a-half flight north from Nice in the Stone Industries jet. A car picked them up from the terminal and whisked them into the city, lights sparkling from every vantage point as dusk fell.

Jared studied the play of color across the Seine as they neared their hotel in the Left Bank, thinking the City of Light was so much more appropriate a descriptor than the City of Love. For one thing, he thought, mouth twisting, love was a myth perpetuated by all the romantics of the world. Secondly, there was no city as gorgeous as Paris at night.

He watched Bailey once again play twenty questions with their driver, asking him about the city landmarks.

I don’t know what love is, she’d said. I’ve never had it so how would I? I’d settle for a man who respects me. A man who tells me the truth. One who wants me for who I am.

He pursed his lips and stared out at the elegant facades of the historic buildings that lined the river. Bailey was everything a man in his right mind would want in a woman. Intelligent, stunningly beautiful, interesting and desirable… How had one not snapped her up, pushed his way past that impenetrable facade? Tapped into that wistfulness she kept hidden so well? Had the life she’d led made her bury it that deep?

He put it out of his head as the car whipped around a corner and pulled to a halt in front of their elegant old hotel. It was exactly that vulnerability, the fact that she was untouched, that was going to keep him a hundred paces from her at all times if he knew what was good for him.

Their takeoff spot had been delayed in Nice, which meant they had less than an hour before they were due at the dinner that had been organized for them and their Gehrig counterparts. Enough time to check in to their hotel, change and go. Jared left Bailey to shower and dress in the suite that adjoined his and did the same.

He had showered and was pulling on his shirt when a knock came at the connecting door. He strode over and pulled it open, finding a fully dressed, toe-tapping Bailey on the other side. Her gaze moved over his chest, down over the muscles of his abdomen in a caught-off-guard perusal that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but total appreciation.

It made his vow to avoid anything that constituted lust between them snag in his throat.

“I just need a tie,” he muttered, turning around and putting distance between them.

Bailey walked in and strolled to the Juliet balcony to look out at the lights. “It’s so beautiful at night.”

Jared did the buttons of his shirt up. “One of my favorite cities in the world.”

“Which you will never enjoy on your honeymoon because you’re never getting married. How sad for you.”