by Virna DePaul
“He might never know. Most likely someone on the shoot kept the footage. Now that he’s news, what with buying your company and, um, swaggering around like Wall Street moguls do, someone dug it up and digitized it and got it out there.”
“The same someone?”
“How should I know, Cara?”
“Realistically, how much money can someone make off an old sex tape or screen test?”
Iris seemed surprised by the question. “Are you kidding me? A lot. But it depends on how hot the tape is, of course. And how famous the former nobody is now.”
Cara tried to focus on reality again, wishing she was shameless enough to tap a key and make the laptop come back to life. The screen stayed black. If she wanted to feast her eyes on him again when Iris was gone, she would have to download the clip herself, viruses be damned, maybe even purchase the whole tape for private viewing. If only he had been filmed solo.
“How come you know so much about sex tapes?”
“Because they’re click bait for gossip blogs if celebs are involved. Branden Duke isn’t A-list in terms of name recognition, but he could be if there are more undiscovered tapes out there with famous females sampling his, um, charms.”
“Never mind them.” Cara flung herself against the back of the sofa and covered her face with her hands, letting out a muffled groan. “If word gets around and anyone thinks that anonymous female is me, my financial career is toast. I’ll fight the good fight, of course I will, but I don’t want to. And even if I do, what if it doesn’t make a difference. What if I lose everything, Iris?”
Iris put a comforting hand on her arm. “HotnSaucey is mostly for freaks. You work with normal people, right?”
Cara let her hands drop into her lap. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”
“Well, who knows what will happen. At least you won’t be blindsided.”
“None of my distinguished colleagues are going to analyze it like you just did.” Cara thought of Greg Johnson, who might still be nursing his injured pride. “They’ll just scorch the servers forwarding it over and over.”
“They have to find it first. Right now it’s just a sidebar on a sleazy site. Of course, if HotnSaucey gets lots of hits on it, they’ll bump it up to a feature.”
After sharing that information, Iris polished off the rest of the sandwich.
“Would you mind if I looked at the clip again?” Cara asked.
“Be my guest.”
Cara tapped. The HotnSaucey website loaded slowly in fits and starts. She saw no sign of the clip. “Hey. It’s gone.”
Iris sat up straight, wiping her fingers on the napkin. “Scroll down.”
“I did.”
Iris peered at the screen. “Huh. Maybe the site was paid—or threatened—to take it down in a hurry.”
Cara gave her a puzzled look. “Isn’t that, like, blackmail?”
“Kind of.” Iris sighed. “I guess Branden can afford whatever they were asking. Who else would want it gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“The blonde, maybe.”
“No. Him. You’re right.”
Now that the mind-numbing sensation of seeing him mostly naked was beginning to wear off, she could think a little more clearly—for one thing, about the bio she’d struggled to piece together for him online. No wonder she’d found gaps. He had unlimited money to edit his private life if necessary and the inclination to cover his tracks fast. That explained his self-contained attitude, too. You sure can pick ’em, Cara told herself. The thought was infinitely depressing.
“Well, show’s over. At least you got to see it. Otherwise you’d tell me I was crazy.”
“Never. You’re my bestest friend in the whole wide world.”
“I’m your only friend. You need to open up more. Call me tomorrow,” Iris said, shutting down the laptop. “And don’t take any questions from the office busybodies.”
“Like I would,” Cara muttered.
Iris got up and put the laptop on the small table near the apartment door. Then she returned to take her plate to the kitchen sink, calling to Cara from there. “Before I forget to ask, how’s the knitted thing for Socks coming along?”
It was astute of Iris to guess that Cara was nervous and tactful of her to offer a distraction.
“What thing?” Then Cara remembered. Right. Socks, the pregnant laundry-room cat, needed nesting materials. “Oh, that. Um, I need to finish off the row I’m on. I’ll bring it by on the weekend.”
“I’ll tell Socks to hold off on the kittens.”
—
“Is it done?” Branden was talking to one of his PR guys, an expert when it came to information online. He could make things appear and disappear. He’d worked his magic with the photograph of Cara outside the mansion, and now he’d damn well do the same thing to that video.
After being assured that the video was as good as gone, Branden hung up the phone then slammed his laptop shut. Going outside and throwing it off the penthouse terrace was not an option, but it was a thought. He’d watched the clip several times, then downloaded it just in case his lawyers would want to have a look. Let them decide what to do. There’d be follow-up snark, but he wasn’t anticipating much of that.
It was him and it had happened, despite his protests to the contrary to Deena. He hadn’t instantly remembered doing it, but then he’d never seen the tape of the jeans-ad audition back in college. Nothing came of it. A check and a handshake, then thanks for your time, we’ll call you, next. Over and done with and forgotten long ago.
No telling who owned the rights to the footage by this time. He dimly remembered signing a release after it was all over. Someone had stumbled across the tape somehow and, by his guess, was looking to cash in, but how much could they make? He wasn’t that well known outside of New York, and as far as blackmail, forget it. There was no actual sex.
The sight of himself at that age, in that situation, took him back. He’d been young and hungry, that was for damn sure. He hadn’t modeled for long, never took it seriously, just did it on occasion for the money. Before the jeans ad, he’d landed a few squeaky-clean catalog shoots. He’d stood under hot lights in a striped polo and khakis, holding a brand-new football and smiling until his face hurt.
The jeans ad had been a bigger deal, part of a national campaign. They’d auditioned a slew of guys and eventually chosen a Swedish exchange student who’d been splashed all over Times Square billboards looking like he had a giant herring behind his denim fly.
HotnSaucey.com had nerve offering a full-length version of the brief audition. Didn’t exist. The featured clip was all there was, just over a minute, probably. But when Branden had purchased the entire video for sale, he’d discovered an erotic sex scene with two figures in a darkened room, their features blurry. The fact that the man bore a faint resemblance to him and the blonde bore a faint resemblance to Cara wouldn’t stand up to detailed scrutiny, but it could be enough to prolong any speculation that it was the two of them having sex.
Whether the dredged-up post was linked in any way to the Gawker headline was impossible to say. Neither seemed worth an all-out investigative effort…but for Cara. He got the feeling she was a deeply private person who had been through some tough times. There was nothing in her personnel file, which was all he had to go on for the moment, to give him a clue as to her past.
Branden got up and moved around the coffee table to the high windows that comprised an entire wall, taking in the panoramic view of lower Manhattan, enjoying the display, which changed by the hour. Night had fallen, brightened by patterns of man-made light on the newer skyscrapers and a few of the older buildings. Some were not illuminated at all, black shapes in the overall darkness outside. He went outside, resting his hands on the railing of the wraparound terrace.
Cara’s place was only two buildings down, but even from this lofty height, he couldn’t see more than a sliver of it. Just knowing she was nearby made him want her all over again. Here, with
him. High above the city and the never-ending hustle of the Street, lost in each other’s arms and the enfolding night. He wanted her in his bed most of all.
He normally didn’t worry or care about the press. They were hungry little vultures that would be picking bones long after he was gone. But he’d seen how upset Cara was over the photo, and now there was a video to contend with. It was one they both knew never happened, but he had a feeling if she’d seen it, she would be beside herself.
Branden looked at the time—it was almost 9 p.m. He was worried about Cara, and he wondered if he should risk going by her place and checking on her. Since he didn’t know who was lurking around taking photos and splicing together videos, it was probably a bad idea.
He really didn’t want to alert her to the video if she didn’t know about it. But if she did know, he didn’t want her to spend a sleepless night worrying about it, either.
He decided to call, and if she didn’t seem to know about the video, he would ask her something about one of the reports she’d given him. He looked at the copy of the video he had saved one more time. He felt a stirring in his pants just at the thought of having Cara in any one of the positions the mysterious blonde had assumed in the lurid scene.
He went to his bookshelf, took out an album one of his stepsisters—probably Rachel, she was always playing Suzy Homemaker—had put together for him years ago, and sat down on the couch, placing the album next to his laptop on the little table in front of him. He linked to the network that took him directly into the computer systems of all of the companies he owned and then into HR at Dubois & Mellan. Pulling up Cara’s mobile number, he entered it into his phone and hit send…
Three rings and then a tentative, “Hello?”
“Cara, it’s Branden.”
“So you’ve seen it?”
That answered the question. “I was hoping you hadn’t.”
“I have. Part of it anyway. I’m not sure what’s going on, but you and I both know that isn’t us.”
“Yes, well it’s not you anyway. I’m going to send you a snapshot. Tell me what you notice about it.” He snapped a picture of a photo from the portfolio and texted her.
After several seconds she said, “Those are the same jeans…the same pose even. What is this from?”
“I did some modeling in college for extra cash. They took stills as well as a filmed audition for a jeans commercial. That’s all it was. Not a sex tape. Just a stupid ad. I was supposed to act sexy. You know, pump the pecs, tighten the abs, thumbs in the belt loops, push the jeans down—”
“I get the idea. So who was the girl?”
“I don’t remember her name and I never saw her again. I think she was a production assistant. She agreed to, you know, liven things up.”
“I see.”
“And they didn’t show any of us what they’d taped. Obviously, someone got hold of it, used it, then used different models in bad light to act out a steamy sex scene.”
“A steamy sex scene?”
He winced. “You didn’t get that far?”
“How—how explicit was it?”
His silence was his answer.
“Oh, God. Why? Who?”
“I wish I knew. I have someone working on it. It should be gone soon if it isn’t already.”
“I think it is. But that doesn’t tell us who’s already seen it, who copied it and already posted it to another site, or why anyone would want to do this…”
“You’re right. I’ll do my best to find out for your peace of mind,” he told her.
“What about your own peace of mind? You’re not bothered by this at all?”
Two things about it bothered him. The seeming connection the photo and video had to his takeover of Dubois & Mellan, and the fact it bothered Cara so badly. He had to wonder if someone knew his true reason for purchasing the company, and if they did, how they’d found out. There was also something about Cara that brought out every protective fiber in his body, and her feeling bad had suddenly become equivalent to him having bad feelings of his own. That was a little disconcerting to him, since his sisters were the only women he’d ever really felt that protective pull toward.
“I don’t really care what people think of me, Cara,” he told her at last.
“You can afford not to. I can’t. I don’t have millions to fall back on. My reputation is all I have.”
“This won’t affect your job, I promise,” he said.
“Maybe I won’t lose it because of this, but if it gets out that first photo was me and everyone assumes that the video is me…it will definitely affect my credibility. Women already walk a tightrope on the Street, you know that. I didn’t intend to remain a financial analyst at D&M forever. This could definitely get in the way of my moving up in my career.”
“I’m going to protect you on this, Cara. Trust me, okay?”
She didn’t say okay, she just thanked him weakly and ended the call.
He hung up with an overwhelming desire to go to her, put his arms around her, and chase all her fears away. He was smart enough to know that would probably only make things worse, so he stayed put, racking his brains over who would want to damage his reputation and harm Cara’s at the same time.
Chapter Nine
Cara sat down and tried to deal with her ridiculous-looking, poorly knitted scarf. Of course, all she could do was replay the phone call with Branden.
He’d seemed so confident that the video wouldn’t be a big deal, but she still had her doubts. He owned five major trading companies. His reputation already spoke for itself in the business world, and the way society worked, a sex tape or two might only increase his popularity.
Cara, on the other hand, was still trying to make her mark, albeit quietly. People loved to talk, they loved scandal, and rather than viewing that video as an act of passion between two adult single people, Cara would be viewed as a whore, sleeping with the boss to climb the ladder. She could probably kiss her bonus good-bye even if she did end up staying to complete the fourth year of her program. Sure, Branden said he’d protect her now, but things could change in a flash. And really, what did she know about him?
Why did she have any reason to trust him?
She didn’t.
Her head was pounding, and she was getting nowhere going over and over it tonight. She tucked her awful knitting away, took several aspirin, and went to bed, where she tossed and turned for hours before finally falling asleep just about an hour before the alarm screamed to life and expected her to do the same.
Cara was reluctant to get out of bed, and for the first time in her three years of working at D&M she was tempted to call in sick and take a mental health day. She could work remotely—log in to the D&M system and do her job from her home office; they did allow that. She even had the words all planned out in her head as she reached for the phone. She held it in her hand and rehearsed the words before putting the phone back down and telling herself that she couldn’t do it.
What would she do all day if she did? She knew herself well; if she didn’t go to work she would just sit in the small apartment and let the events of the past several days run rampant through her thoughts. She needed the structure of being in her office. At least at D&M, she could distract herself with beautiful stable numbers. Numbers never let you down. One plus one never said, “I think I’ll equal five today.”
At the sound of the banging racket of construction equipment, Cara groaned and forced herself out of bed. She showered fast but didn’t wash her hair, swaddling herself in a towel before she picked out her most conservative suit, adding a gray blouse with an attached bow that tied at the neck.
Dressing in haste, she tugged and zipped and buttoned up, then looked in the mirror with a frown. What an awful combination. She should have added the blouse to a Salvation Army donation bag long ago, but maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t. It definitely lent her a prim and proper air. She dragged her hair back into an approximation of a chignon and stuck hairpins in it to
hold it there. It took a little more cover-up than usual to hide the dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise she was presentable.
She was ready. Physically, anyway. Emotionally, not.
Cara steeled herself to leave her apartment. She did know the drill.
She’d had to run a gauntlet in school, when the whispered campaign against her family began and escalated to nasty comments scratched on her locker. She hadn’t told her guidance counselor about the harassment, or anyone else, for that matter. There would have been no point in painting over the anonymous words, which were barely visible—by her guess they’d been etched with a metal nail file. Girls could be much more malicious than boys. She’d held her head high and clutched her books to her chest like a shield. Walk away if you can’t walk tall had been her motto. She could do it again. It was funny what life trained you for.
Wearing a coat and scarf and dark glasses on the street, she still felt strangely exposed. Like everyone who passed had seen her naked and either disapproved of what she’d supposedly done or were turned on by it. Ugh. She flipped up her coat collar and used it to cover her mouth. Avoiding eye contact was the norm in New York, anyway. And maybe it would help to practice before she got to work. An attractive older man gave her a curious look. Maybe it was concern. She ignored him and stepped into the street to avoid brushing by him. It wasn’t difficult to dodge the slow-moving traffic, but the blaring horns made her jump.
Her exhaustion was getting to her. That, and paranoia. The predominantly male crowd jostled her once she was back on the sidewalk. It certainly wasn’t true that anyone she saw could be a possible suspect, but she couldn’t help thinking so. Cara jammed her hands into her pockets, grateful for the concealing lenses that hid her eyes from the occasional masculine glance.
As she walked into the elegant Manhattan office building, it looked the same as it always did, guys in stylish suits glued to their phones or their tablets, rushing here and there, talking loudly, giving no thought whatsoever to the world outside the glass-and-brass doors. No one seemed to notice her. No one pointed or whispered. Malcolm and Gene, two men with offices on her floor, barely said hello as they got in line behind her to go through security, instead remaining deeply immersed in their conversation about the New York Mets, through the security unit, and during the elevator ride. She took comfort in the fact that no one had brought up the photo or video.
