Personal Trainer

by Mia Carson

  “How about the truth? You’re being paid to lie, aren’t you? Who’s paying you?”

  “I’m not!”

  “Very well. I’ll tell Mr. Ryder you are unable to clear up the discrepancies in your story and about this phantom friend of yours. A piece of advice. If he sends you a bill, pay it. If you keep jerking us around, you’re going to end up paying a lot more than just his bill.” I turned to go.

  “Wait!” she called. I paused and turned back. “I lied about Steve,” Vanesa said softly.

  “I know. You’re lying about the whole thing, aren’t you?”

  “No!”

  I rolled my eyes and turned to go again. “Have it your way. If you come clean with me now, I can probably get the bill reduced, maybe even eliminated. I think it’s clear there’s going to be no payday on this, but if the firm keeps spending money on your behalf, and Gibson’s team has proof you’re lying…” I shook my head in sympathy. “We don’t like to lose, Ms. Pierce, and if you insist on this course of action, it’s going to be costly.” I let the threat dangle. “Fine.” I turned my back to her and started for the door.

  “Wait!” I turned to face her one more time. “You can get the fees reduced?” she asked, her face a mix of panic and hope.

  “I can’t promise, but I’ll try. Our firm’s reputation is worth more than a few thousand dollars. If you come clean, since we haven’t filed suit yet, we can just drop it and you can crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of.”

  She swallowed hard. “I lied, okay? Some guy paid me five grand to say Neil Gibson groped me. That’s all I know!”

  “What man?”

  “I don’t know his name. I answered an open call on mycastingcall. I thought I was applying for a part in a television show. This guy contacted me and said he had a part, if I wanted it. He met with me and told me what he really wanted.”

  “So you decided to ruin a good man’s life?”

  “I don’t even know this Gibson guy! The guy who hired me said he was rich and would probably settle. I just had to tell the story. He said there were a lot of rumors going around about how he was sexually harassing all these women, so I figured maybe he was getting what he deserved.”

  “And he gave you five grand to say Neil Gibson groped you?” I asked, driving the point home for the camera.

  “Yes, and he said I could keep whatever I won.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. I didn’t want to do it, but I was desperate for the money. I was behind on my rent. I figured the worst that could happen was I made the five grand, and if I was lucky, maybe a little more. This Gibson guy, he sounds like a sleaze anyway with all the rumors flying around.”

  “So you thought, ‘What would it hurt?’ right? After all, he has plenty of money, and he must be guilty of something or there wouldn’t be any rumors, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s it exactly. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but I was desperate. Am I in trouble?”

  I smiled. “Not with me, but I’m sure Mr. Ryder will be in touch. Anything else you can tell me about this mystery man?”

  She shook her head. “No. I only met him that one time.”

  “Did you even go to the Neil Gibson Fitness Center?”

  “Sure. He told me to, so they’d remember my face. Plus, I can’t afford a gym membership myself, so I figured why not use it?”

  “But you never met Neil Gibson?”

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t even know what he looked like until I saw his picture on the news.”

  I nodded. I wanted to put a spinning back fist on this bitch, but if I did, I would ruin everything, so I settled for a nod and a smile. “Thank you for helping me.”

  “I’m really sorry. I was desperate.”

  “So you said.”

  “Is the interview still going to run?”

  “What interview?”

  “The one on Lunch with Diane today?”

  “Yeah. Too late to pull it now. Here’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you talking to anyone about this until you hear from Mr. Ryder, got it? This is a real mess you’ve created, so don’t make it worse.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t. But you’ll talk to Mr. Ryder about billing me?”

  I nodded. “Let me worry about that.”

  I turned and stomped out like I was annoyed, but it was hard to not run, screaming my elation to the world. I switched off my camera, sat down in the car, and dialed. I need to talk to Neil, pronto!

  Neil

  Tanya must have broken every traffic law on the books to get here as fast as she did. We had three minutes before Lunch with Diane started, and she had work to do. I opened the door and let her in. She was breathing slightly hard.

  “I ran from the guest parking lot! Why is it so far away?” She hurried in, threw herself into a chair, and opened her computer. “Come on!” she yelled as it started up.

  The moment the login screen came up she started typing, her foot bouncing as she waited on the machine. As she waited she removed the memory card from the camera, inserted it into the adapter, and plugged into the computer. I checked the television, which was showing a commercial for a feminine hygiene product.

  She’d laid the plan out for me as she drove. As soon as she got here, I was to call the station and try to get in touch with someone from the show. She wanted to be able to send the file while I was talking to them. While I worked my way through the bureaucracy, she was going to edit the video down to the juicy parts and email it to the station if they agreed to run it.

  The jaunty intro music for Lunch with Diane was just starting as I dialed. “KDLA, how may I direct your call?” a pleasant female voice said.

  “This is Neil Gibson. I’d like to speak with someone on the Lunch with Diane show, please. It’s critically important.”

  “That show is showing live at the moment. I’ll have someone return your call.”

  “No. You don’t understand. You’re running a segment today about me, Neil Gibson, and you’re about to embarrass yourselves. I’m trying to save you from that.”

  “I’ll have someone from the show call you back, Mr. Gibson.”

  “Let me speak to your supervisor.”

  There was a pause. “Hold please.”

  I covered the microphone on my phone. “How’s it coming?”

  “Loading the video now. I need five minutes to cut out all the extra stuff and save it.”

  “This is Paul Jenson, Station Manager. Who is this please?”

  “Mr. Jenson, this is Neil Gibson. You’re doing a hit piece on me today on the Lunch with Diane show. I have evidence that what Vanesa Pierce is accusing me of is completely false.”

  “I see, Mr. Gibson. What, exactly, is your evidence?”

  He was humoring me, and I imagined he was smiling. I was about to wipe that smile right off his face. “A video of Ms. Pierce admitting she was paid to set me up, that she doesn’t know me, and has never met me. Would you be interested in that?”

  There was a long pause, and this time I smiled. “You have a video of Ms. Pierce admitting that?”

  My smile grew. “I do.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to take this lying down did you? I did some checking and when an associate of mine confronted her, she admitted that it was an attempt to extort me for money.”

  “Can I get a copy of the video?”

  “Depends. What are you going to do with it?”

  “First I’ll have to validate that it’s authentic.”

  “Oh, now you’re concerned with journalistic integrity? It’s authentic. After that?”

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “If you run that hit piece from Vanesa, I want the video aired in the same program.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Fine. I’ll give it to one of your competitors and I’ll sue you for slander as I’m telling you now that I have incontrovertible proof that my accuser, Van
esa Pierce, is admitting in her own words that she lied, and you ran the interview anyway. I can positively prove harm from this event, and if you run her interview without running the video I’m offering you, when I’m done with you, I’ll own that damned station. Your call.”

  “The show is airing now. I don’t know if I can—”

  “You’ve got an hour to figure it out.”

  There was another long pause. “How soon can you get me the video?”

  I looked at Tanya with a questioning look. She held up one finger as a progress bar creeped across the screen. “I can email it to you right now.”

  “Send it to my personal email,” he said, giving me his email address. I scribbled it down and repeated it back. “If this is real, I’ll either pull the video or run yours directly behind it,” Paul said.

  “Watch your inbox. It’ll be there in a minute or two.” I paused. “I could have used this to embarrass you, but I’m giving you a chance to make it right. Do the right thing.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Gibson.”

  I hung up and handed Tanya the email address. She typed a moment, clicked send, then sat back with a sigh. “That’s cutting it close!”

  “You did it.”

  “Not yet I didn’t. Let’s see if they run the piece. I cut all the setup where I had to convince her to talk to me and just left in the part where she admitted it was all a scam.”

  “Can I see?”

  “Sure,” she replied. “You want to see the whole thing or just the part I sent them?”

  “Show me the whole thing. You can tell me where you started and stopped the video.”

  I turned the television down to a murmur and watched the video. Like the video of April, the quality wasn’t great, but it was good enough that anyone watching could clearly tell the woman was Vanesa, and both women’s voices were loud and clear. I watched it all the way through.

  “Harnette? Did you say Harnette and mycastingcall.com?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” I snarled, turning away in disgust. “That rat bastard!”

  “Who’s Harnette?”

  “Edward Harnette, assuming that’s who you mean, was my business partner.”

  “What? You have a business partner?”

  “Not anymore.”

  She stared at me. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “I didn’t—it’s on,” I said, picking up the remote and turning up the volume on the television.

  Tanya and I watched in silence as Vanesa spouted her bullshit in a prerecorded interview. I’d give Vanesa this, she was convincing. She had the tears and everything. The more she talked, the tighter I clenched my jaws. When the interview was over, the show cut back to Diane Beeler, the host, in the studio.

  That was an interview I conducted yesterday with Vanesa Pierce, the woman who accused fitness expert Neil Gibson of sexual harassment, Diane said. Since that interview, we have received shocking hidden camera footage that calls into question Ms. Pierce’s claims.

  The screen cut to Vanesa. I lied, okay! Some guy paid me five grand to say Neil Gibson groped me. That’s all I know! She went on explain how she’d answered the casting call, how she was desperate for the money, and ended with Tanya thanking her for her help.

  The camera cut back to Diane, sitting stiff and formal, looking like she’d just bit into something sour. We’ll be right back. I switched off the television as a commercial for a floor cleaner began. I’d give it an hour before my phone started ringing.

  “What?” I asked as Tanya glared at me.

  “You didn’t think telling me you had a business partner was a good idea?”

  “I didn’t think about it.” She rolled her eyes, silently accusing me of being an idiot. “What?”

  “I asked you if you knew of anyone with a grudge.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Business partner?”

  “Ex-business partner.”

  “Even more so!”

  “Why? I bought him out and we parted as friends. Or I thought we had.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, really. I wanted to expand into gyms and he wanted to focus on the website. We couldn’t agree, so I went to the bank, mortgaged everything I had, went into debt to my eyeballs, and bought him out. He got a good deal in the buyout. We had the company valued by an independent company, and I paid him twenty-five percent more than the book value for his half to account for future growth. My accountant said I over paid.”

  “When was this?”

  “Three, four years ago.”

  “So you two parted on good terms?”

  “Like I said, I thought we had. He was always interested in the website above everything else. I hired him as a contractor to run the site for a while until the company I hired to replace him could take it over. He took the money from the buyout and invested it in a new company. I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but I assumed he was doing okay. Last I heard he was running mycastingcall.com. It’s an online system for matching actors to movie and television roles.”

  She continued to glare at me for a moment, then softened. “Yeah, okay. You should have told me, but I guess I can see why you didn’t, if you really parted as friends.”

  “I thought we had, I swear to God. I have no idea why he might be doing this, but I’m going to find out,” I growled as I stood and picked up my phone from the table.

  She rose with me and placed her hand on mine. “Wait. Don’t do that. He’ll deny it, you know he will, and say the woman is setting him up. His name wasn’t mentioned in the video I sent to the station, so let’s not tip our hand. Maybe he won’t realize we’re onto him. Let me see if I can find some proof linking him to the rumors.”

  “You said that was a dead end.”

  “That was before I had a name.”

  I nodded. “Okay. This is your game, not mine. But let me say, you’re simply amazing. Four hours! From nothing to case closed in four hours!”

  “Not case closed. We still have to do something to discredit those rumors. That video is going to put a major dent in them, but she wasn’t the one spreading them so there’s still going to be questions. I want to burn this asshole to the ground.”

  “No argument from me. What’s the next step?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think.”

  “I know what I want to do,” I said as I pulled her into my arms.

  She held my gaze a moment but didn’t try to pull away. I took her lips in a long, slow kiss, our tongues dancing as I pulled her in tight, my passions spooling up.

  “We shouldn’t do this. You’re still my client,” she whispered as the kiss dissolved.

  My lips, only millimeters from hers, twitched into a teasing smile. “You’re fired.”

  “Oh, thank God!” she murmured before covering my mouth to hers.

  The kiss was electrifying in its intensity. I crouched slightly and picked her up, bringing her lips even with mine. She felt impossibly light and fragile, but as she surrounded me with her arms and legs, her embrace was strong. I left her lips, kissing along her jaw and down to her neck. She leaned back into my hands, holding my neck as her head tilted back to give me access. I continued lower, kissing down the opening in her blouse.

  “Oh, God, I want you,” she murmured as she drew herself up tight. I needed no more encouragement. I turned toward my bedroom. “Wait! Wait!” she cried, and I felt a crushing disappointment. “Phones! Turn off the fucking phones!”

  I stopped my nuzzling long enough to find my phone and silence the ringer before I tossed it on the couch. I started to put her down, but she tightened her grip with her legs and arms, so I bent, still holding her, my lips and tongue busy, as she franticly fished in her purse to find her phone. When she had it, I straightened, enjoying the feel of her head against mine, the tightness of her embrace as I tasted the valley of her breasts.

  When I heard her phone hit the couch, I started for my bedroom again. She seemed complet
ely confident, holding me in an almost loving embrace, one arm around my neck, the fingers of the other hand tangled in my hair as she rested her head against mine. I tried to remember the last time I wanted a woman as badly as I wanted her, and I couldn’t think of one.

  When I reached my bed, I knee-walked to the center of it and gently lowered her. She seemed as reluctant to let me go as I was to release her, so I settled lightly over her, kissing her lips again. It wasn’t even one in the afternoon, and I smiled at the thought of making love to her over and over again throughout the day, the evening, and long into the night.

  I pulled back from the kiss with a soft release of breath. I held her gaze as I swam in the infinite depths of her eyes. She had such lovely eyes, perhaps the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.

  “What?” she whispered.

  I smiled. I couldn’t stop it. “I was just thinking how beautiful you are.”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to keep trying to seduce me. You’re going to get some.”

  I brushed her lips, feather light, with my own. “I’m not trying to seduce you.” Her smile flickered as her face softened. I kissed her again, very gently. I was sure now. “You have the most beautiful eyes of any women I’ve ever met.”

  Her face softened further as her eyes became shiny. She looked into my eyes, and as her mouth opened slightly in invitation, I took her lips again. She seemed to love being in my arms, her intensity rising to match mine, then going beyond, before my own desire rose to match hers.

  “Fuck!” she hissed as I devoured her neck and throat, her fingers digging into my back.

  I needed to slow down. I wanted to draw this out, to enjoy her as long as possible, but I was awash in desire. I began unbuttoning her blouse as her fingers worked my belt. We rolled and tumbled as we undressed each other, taking longer than necessary as we couldn’t seem to pull our lips from each other for more than a few seconds at a time.

  The last of our coverings removed, she shoved me hard onto my back as she took my manhood into her mouth. She was surprisingly strong for her size, but she was no match for me. I hauled her around and lifted her hips over my face as my cock disappeared into her warm, wet mouth.