“We need to issue an apology,” Julie said. “Position it as a private joke that was in bad taste. Say that it has nothing to do with your real view of women, which is actually one of the utmost respect.”
“I do respect women,” he interjected. “I just don’t think they’re always honest with their feelings.”
Julie gave him a long look. “When’s the last time you put a woman on the executive committee?”
Never. He raked a hand through his hair. “Give me a woman who belongs on it and I’ll put her there.”
“What about Bailey St. John?” Sam lifted his bushy brows. “You seem to be the only one who thinks she hasn’t earned her spot as a VP.”
Jared scowled. “Bailey St. John is a special case. She isn’t ready. She thinks she was born ready, but she isn’t.”
“You need to make a gesture,” Sam underscored, his tone taking on a steely edge. “You are on thin ice right now, Jared.” In all aspects, his mentor’s deeply lined face seemed to suggest. “Give her the job. Get her ready.”
“It’s not the right choice,” Jared rejected harshly. “She still needs to mature. She’s only twenty-nine, for God’s sake. Making her a VP would be like setting a firecracker loose.”
Sam lifted his brows again as if to remind him how sparse his support on the board was right now. As if he needed reminding that his control of the company he’d built from a tiny start-up into a world player was in jeopardy. His company.
“Give her the job, Jared.” Sam gave him an even look. “Smooth out her raw edges. Do not blow ten years of hard work on your penchant for self-ignition.”
Antagonism burned through him, singeing the tips of his ears. He’d stolen Bailey from a competitor three years ago for her incredibly sharp brain. For the potential he knew she had. And she hadn’t disappointed him. He had no doubt he’d one day make her into a VP, but right now, she was the rainbow-colored cookie in the pack. You never knew what you were going to bite into when she walked into a room. And he couldn’t have that around him. Not now.
Sam gave him a hard look. “Fine,” Jared rasped. He’d figure out a way to work the Bailey equation. “What else?”
“Cultural sensitivity training,” his head of legal interjected. “HR is going to set it up.”
“That,” Jared dismissed in a low voice, “is not happening. Next.”
Julie outlined her plan to rescue his reputation. It was solid, what he paid her for, and he agreed with it all, except for the cultural sensitivity training, and ended the meeting.
He had way bigger fish to fry. A board’s support to solidify. His own job to save.
He paced to the window as the door closed behind the group, attempting to digest how his perfect morning had turned into the day from hell. At the root of it all, the abrupt end to his “relationship” with his trustworthy 10:00 p.m. of late, Kimberly MacKenna. A logical accountant by trade, she’d sworn to him she wasn’t looking for anything permanent. So he’d let his guard down, let her in. Then last Saturday night, she’d plopped herself down on his sofa, declared he was breaking her heart and turned those baby blues on him in a look he’d have sworn he’d never see.
Get serious, Jared, they’d said. He had. By 10:00 a.m. on Monday she’d had his trademark diamond tennis bracelet on her arm and another one had bitten the dust.
He’d been sad and maybe a touch lonely when he’d written that manifesto. But those were the rules. No commitment. His mouth twisted as he pressed his palm against the glass. Maybe he should have given his PR team the official line on his parents’ marriage. How his mother had bled his father dry… How she’d turned him into half a man. It would have made him much more sympathetic.