The Billionaire's Baby Arrangement (Bad Boys and Babies 2)

Jackson gave her an annoyed look. “Yes.”

She evaluated him for a moment, her dark eyes looking him over. Once again, he was reminded of the way his grandmother used to look at him. The only difference was that Grandmother liked to hold a wooden spoon as a threat.

“I have a nuclear option,” she told him. “You aren’t going to like it. It’s something the board can’t know you planned, but if you do it, they will leave you alone. It will let you keep your company.”

Jackson sat down behind his desk. “Tell me.”

“You need a wife and a baby,” Jane told him.

Jackson couldn’t help but let out a quick laugh. “How in the world is a wife and a baby going to save my company?” he asked, leaning back in his big office chair. His kept his expression easy, despite the difficult nature of the discussion. He always appeared calm. It was how he successfully ran a business.

“You need to change your image,” Jane told him. The slender woman settled into the over-sized leather seat facing the desk and got comfortable. She crossed her legs at the ankle and once again smoothed her graying hair back into her bun.

“Isn’t that what you were supposed to be doing?” Jackson asked.

“It was, until you made headline news negating everything I’ve done,” Jane replied coolly. “There is no amount of photoshoots of you holding babies that can fix this.”

“I thought you said the baby ads were working,” Jackson countered. “That they upped sales.”

“They helped, but your competition is a loving mother and her two adorable kids,” Jane said. “She’s beating you in every demographic because she’s real. Your customers relate to her. They don’t relate to you.”

“But her prices are twice what mine are,” Jackson countered. “People prefer cheap.”

“True,” Jane acknowledged, bowing her head slightly. “However, her numbers are going up and yours are going down. Cheap isn’t winning anymore. You need people to want to buy what you represent. You need people to trust you. ”

“What’s not to trust?” Jackson asked, giving Jane a winning smile. His blue eyes sparkled.

“That.” She pointed to his grin and then his whole body. “You exude confidence and charm. You’re full of easy sex appeal.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” He asked her, still giving her the full Jackson Weathers’ smile. It had the effect of making women drop their panties and willingly give themselves to him on a regular basis.

“You want to know what’s wrong with that?” Jane didn’t seem affected by his smile. If anything, she seemed annoyed. “You sell diapers. No one wants to buy sexy diapers.”

Jackson let the megawatt smile fade. It wasn’t working on her anyway.

“You are known as a playboy. You have a different model or actress in your bed every other night. And that was fine until the Innocence Company started cashing in on the sweet nature of Jessica Balboa. She’s a mother that other mothers want to emulate.”

“And that’s not me,” Jackson agreed.

Jane stood up from the chair and put her hands on the front of the desk.

“You hired me, Mr. Weathers, to fix the fact that every single one of your products is down this year,” Jane told him. She was all confidence. “Your brand hasn’t changed. Your prices and suppliers are all the same. The only difference now is the competition. And that means that we have to beat the Innocence Company at their own game if you want to be king again. You need to be the face that mothers want to trust their babies with. Right now, I wouldn’t trust you with a houseplant.”

Jackson evaluated Jane for a moment before speaking. He hated that

she was making sense. The only change in the market was the addition of a new player. Jessica Balboa’s Innocence Company was doing something he wasn’t.

“So, you want me to get married and have a baby,” he repeated back. “What if that’s not what I want? I’m not exactly looking to change my ways. I rather like a different model or actress in my bed every other night.”

“And I’m not telling you that you can’t,” Jane replied, standing up straight. “Once you have this set up and people trust you again, you can go back to being the bad-boy billionaire. Until then, you have to be the epitome of fatherly love and trust. And that means no screwing up. I don’t care if it’s in a private setting or not. This is all or nothing. You can’t accidentally slip up with this.”

She pointedly looked at the newspaper. He would have to say goodbye to his fun for a while if he agreed to this. He could understand that. If he had a wife and child, there was no way he could even go to a party where women threw themselves at him.

It would be a difficult change. He wasn’t just reducing the sex he had with random beautiful women. He’d be giving it up.

“And if I don’t do this? If I hire someone else to fix the brand?”

Jane shrugged. “Your sales are down twenty percent this year and dropping. Last year, it was ten. Since the article ran, we’ve had two stores refuse to carry you. You can do the math on how long you have before the board kicks you out.”