The Magnate's Manifesto(48)

He set a palm to the small of her back, held her where he wanted her and chased his own blindingly good release. When it came, tightening his limbs, sweeping through him like the lazy aftershock of a powerful tremor, he knew he’d never experienced such pleasure.

Bailey tucked into his side, curved against his warm body as the filtered Paris moonlight carried them off to sleep, his denial grew weaker. It was useless to pretend even for a second that nothing had changed. Because everything had.





CHAPTER NINE

THE PEAL OF HIS cell phone in the adjoining room woke Jared at six the next morning. Blinking against the light filtering through the windows, he slid out of bed, grabbed his boxers from the floor and hightailed it into his room in the hopes of catching it before it woke Bailey.

A glance at the call display told him it was Danny, his PI. Kicking the connecting door closed, he took the call.

“Stone.”

“You sound half-asleep. Thought you’d be halfway down the Champs-Elysées by now, running your little heart out.”

“Eventful night last night.” Jared crossed to the French doors and squinted out at the empty Paris streets. “You have something for me or did you just call to pay me back?”

“It’s your father. I had my contact do the usual check-in this week. He said he wants to talk to you.”

His father wanted to talk to him? He pressed his palm against the elegantly carved mahogany casing of the door. It had been, what, a year and a half, two years, since he’d talked to Graham Stone in a short, curt conversation to sort out some legalities.

“What does he want? Is he okay?”

“He wouldn’t say. Says you need to come to him.”

His shoulders stiffened. Why should he go running when his father had shut him out for almost a decade?

Danny read the pause. “He doesn’t look great, Jared. Pretty haggard from what my guy says.”

His chest tightened. This was not what he needed right now. “I can’t go for a couple of weeks.”

“I’m just relaying the message. Oh and Jared?” His PI’s voice deepened to a satisfied purr. “That dirt you wanted on Michael Craig’s proclivity to abuse his expense accounts? I have it. It’s bigger and better than you could have imagined.”

A twist of satisfaction curled through him. “Send it through. All of it.”

He ended the call and tossed his cell phone on the desk. Michael Craig deserved what he had coming to him. What caused an ache to sit low in his chest, ever-present but more pronounced now, was how much he loved his father. Graham Stone had never been too busy, even with his insane hours as a banker, to spend time with his son. Whether it had been building a car or throwing a football around, he’d always been there, even if it wasn’t as much as Jared would have liked. Then slowly, in the later years, his father had begun to sink. The massive amounts of stress had finally gotten to him, sending him to a place his youthful son couldn’t understand or help him out of.

A fist squeezed his chest, growing larger with every breath. When his father had made his biggest mistake, had stolen that money, it had been too late, far too late to do anything to save his soul. There likely would never be a day on this earth when Jared wouldn’t wonder what else he could have done to prevent it. He’d just learned to live with the guilt.

Or had he? The slow burn consuming him didn’t make him think so. He’d always thought that walking away, distancing himself from the shame that had enveloped his family, was the right thing to do for his own survival. For his business, where reputation was everything. His father hadn’t wanted his help, so what choice had he had?

Light slanted across his face as the sun rose higher in the sky. He had a decision to make. Did he stop running and see what the man who had once been his hero wanted? Or did he wait until it was too late?

Rather than contemplate a question he wasn’t prepared to answer, he headed for the shower. It was too late to go back to bed and really, it was the last place he should be. Why he’d thought he could take Bailey to bed in a no-strings arrangement as she’d offered was the joke of the century.

He turned the shower on and stepped under a steaming hot spray. No strings. He might as well have handed Bailey the rope and asked her to tie him up in knots. Because if his Zen master had cornered him now and ordered self-awareness, he would have had to admit the only word for last night was…emotional. He struggled to get his mouth around the word because it was so foreign to his vocabulary. Emotion didn’t figure into his work or relationships. It was an unwise word that made people do stupid things. But he could not deny the truth. He had never felt so connected to another person in his life. And not just because Bailey had been a virgin. It’d been as if he was in her head and she’d been in his.