“Swing by.”
As she weaved her way toward his office, a normally friendly coworker turned away while another muttered hello, his cheeks turning bright red.That was weird.
She knocked on Jim Tate’s open door and her gaze jumped from him to the woman sitting across the desk from him. “You wanted to see me?”
“Come on in and shut the door.” He wasn’t smiling.
A chill crept across her shoulders. She closed the door and settled into the second guest chair as he turned his computer monitor toward her. Jim introduced the employee from Human Resources while Evangeline’s focus flitted between him and the paused video on the screen. “What’s that?”
Without answering her question, Jim tapped the “play” button and the video started. A few seconds into it, her brain stuttered to a stop. An older man and a younger woman—both wearing masks—were screwing in a dimly lit room. “Oh, my God.”
Jim fast-forwarded through a couple of minutes while the man screwed the woman from behind.
“Is that Uncle Charlie?” she asked, struggling to understand why she was being made to watch this.
Jim shook his head.
While the man grunted and groaned, the brunette made a series of high-pitched squeaky sounds, like a cheap porn star.
“Sit on me,” the man grunted out. “I want to suck your tits.”
Evangeline glanced at her boss and the woman from HR. Both looked as uncomfortable as she felt.
Once the couple had repositioned themselves, the woman removed the man’s mask. To Evangeline’s absolute horror, the man in the video was Birdie Caraway.
And the woman he was screwing was not his wife.
Birdie started with the dirty talk before he covered one of her nipples with his mouth and sucked. Evangeline’s guts hurt. Having seen more than enough, she turned away.
Jim stopped the tape and stared at her. “What the hell is that?”
“No idea. I’m not his keeper.”
“That’s you in the video, isn’t it?”
Evangeline’s pulse kicked up, but she refused to panic. Clearly, this was a terrible misunderstanding. “No, Jim. That’s not me.”
“It sure as hell looks like you.”
“It’s some brunette, but it’snotme.”
“Look at her face.” Jim started the video again. Several agonizing seconds passed while Evangeline stared at the masked stranger with long, dark hair.
“That’s not me, but whoever it is planted a camera in that room. That woman’s keeping her face hidden in the shadows. Plus, she’s wearing a mask.”
“Evangeline,” said the woman from HR. “You have a personal relationship with Mr. Caraway, correct?”
“He’s my sister’s dad.”
“And your former stepdad.”
Thinking about sex with him nauseated her. “Yeah, so?”
The woman cleared her throat before asking Jim to hop on Facebook. “That’s you at the Caraway holiday party last weekend. You and Birdie look like you’re having an intimate moment.”
Some woman Evangeline didn’t know had posted a gazillion photos from the party, including several of Evangeline and Birdie, his arm around her while the photographer snapped pictures for the magazine. The caption read: “Too cozy for comfort.”
Evangeline’s face heated. She wasn’t guilty of anything, but she was furious with herself for not being more aware of her surroundings.
