Shame washed over her, stained her skin like a brand. He had treated her like a power play with Alexander because that’s what she was to him—expendable.
“Now that you have me,” she lashed out, so hurt she couldn’t see straight, “why not enjoy the full benefits?” She reached down and yanked her shoe off and threw it at him, a silver missile he plucked out of the air with catlike reflexes. “I know you’re curious,” she continued. “You asked me about it in Nice…why not sit back and let me demonstrate?”
His gaze tracked her as she bent her leg and reached for the other shoe. “Bailey—”
Wham. The shoe smacked his outstretched palm and fell to the floor. He took a step forward and reached for her, but she backed away, flashing him a furious look. “Sit.”
He sat. Likely because he didn’t know what else to do with a crazy woman on the loose. Bailey’s fingers moved to the buttons of her shirt, stumbling as she undid them. “That was hot, right, on the sink in the washroom? I’ll make it hotter.”
He shook his head. “Stop it.”
“Oh, come on, you’ll love it.” She tore at the last button and yanked the shirt off. “Get in the spirit, Jared.”
“Bailey.” His eyes flashed a warning. “Put your shirt back on.”
“Why? All you want is this. You made that clear this morning.” She eased her skirt over her hips in a seductive, admittedly angry twist. “All men ever want is this.”
He shook his head. “I care about you. You know I do.”
She stalked toward him, sank her hands into his shoulders and straddled him. “You wanted to know how I danced for them? How I touched them?” She settled herself into his hard thighs. “Like this…”
He kept his hands stiffly by his sides, anger darkening his face. It made her furious. Made her push her breasts into his chest and rotate her hips against him in a much more intimate caress than she would ever have given a customer. A harsh breath left his lungs.
“You see,” she derided, “you can’t deny you like it.”
“Of course I like it.” He clamped his hands around her hips and held her still. “There isn’t a second I don’t want you. But you are worth more than this.”
She shook her head, tears burning the back of her eyes in a glittering prelude to total breakdown. “I saw your face when I told you what I was. You were horrified.”
“I was shocked.”
“Shocked, horrified…what’s the difference?”
He grimaced. “A big one.”
She swallowed hard. Dared herself to ask the question that might break her, because how much worse could she feel about herself?
“Could you ever imagine yourself with me, Jared? With all my flaws?”
His jaw hardened. “I’ve told you I care about you. Stop pushing me.”
The warning in his eyes scared her. The sudden, earth-shattering realization that she was undeniably, unmistakably in love with him was worse.
She reached for old habits, old powers as she pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Slid her palm across his thigh to where he lay stiff and thick beneath his trousers. He jerked against her hand and the triumph rocketed through her like a drug she’d been denied too long.
“No.”
He dumped her on the sofa so fast it made her head spin. Stepped back. The rebuke in his face made her heart shrivel. “We have a presentation to do tomorrow. We are going in there as a team, Bailey, and we are winning. We are doing what we came here to do. This,” he said, glaring at her, “is not happening.”
Her lips trembled. “You don’t want me.”
“You’re right,” he said harshly. “I want the Bailey I know. The woman who let me look into her soul last night. Not this.”
He turned on his heel and left, slamming the connecting door behind him. Bailey curled up in a ball on the sofa and cried. Cried for the girl she’d been. For what she wished she hadn’t had to do.
At Jared for being so cruel.
At herself for ruining everything.
CHAPTER TEN
BAILEY WOKE WITH the birds. At some point, after Jared had left, she’d stumbled into bed and slept. Given herself over to a seemingly endless series of dreams whose characters and content overlapped without rhyme or reason, which sent her spiraling into the past, then hurtling forward into the present again in a dizzying journey that ended only with the arrival of the first light of day.
And perhaps the appearance of the loud, squeaky garbage truck that parked outside her window. She winced at the piercing, grinding sound, thinking maybe it wasn’t as early as she’d thought, and levered herself into a sitting position. Somehow Paris seemed too elegant a city for garbage trucks…but apparently it too had its baggage it needed to get rid of.