Money Shot (28 page)

When the movie clip came into view, Zaira almost chocked on her own breath. It was her! In the white dress giving Trent oral sex as he sat in his big leather chair. The angle wasn’t quite right, but sure enough her head bobbed up and down in his lap.

There was a chorus and gasps and guffaws across the conference room table.

Her eyes spread wide, nearly popping from the sockets. She was so stunned that she couldn’t even breathe. If she passed out from lack of oxygen, she’d be better off.

Obviously she was slipped something in her water, because she could not believe that this was a video of her and Trent exchanging sexual favors.

The images were fuzzy and cloudy as if the clip was taken from somewhere far away, but there was no mistaking that it was Trent’s office. The video advanced and switched to the next clip and she could be seen on top of Trent’s desk with her legs spread wide and his head between it. There was no audio on this one and for once she was glad she’d held her cries of pleasures.

Time stopped. She stopped breathing. She stopped moving. It was possible that she was dreaming, but no…

She was actually dying from embarrassment. What and who had done this to them? Did Trent film her without her knowledge?

Turning swiftly, her eyes met Trent’s equally horrified gaze. His face had gone deathly pale which was odd given his tanned complexion. It looked like he’d seen a rat the way his mouth was parted in shock. When she looked at him in question, he shook his head.

Ann gasped. “Ah….Mr. Wright…sir?” Ann looked just as embarrassed as Zaira felt. The IT head guy beside her even sported a beet red face with wide eyes.

“Stop it! Stop the clip.” Her dad rose from his chair with veins popping up on his face and neck.

The present hit Zaira like a freight train and she jumped up from her seat and rushed out of the conference room. The furthest she could make it before she burst into tears was the ladies room. Her breath came in pants as she heaved dry air. Resting her back against the bathroom stall, she clutched at her chest.

There was a mix of feelings burdening her heart. Pain. Embarrassment. Betrayal. Hate. Hurt.

She wanted to jump in the toilet, flush it down, and swim away.

“Zaira?” Patrice, the receptionist, walked into the restroom and called out to her. “Zaira, are you in here?”

“Patrice, not right now. I can’t.” Her voice was strained.

“I saw what happened. I know you want to get out of here. Let me walk you down to your car.”

Zaira slowly came out of the stall. “Who did this? Who taped us?”

Patrice shook her head. “I don’t know. The video must have gotten swapped somehow. Loyd said it was in his inbox when he arrived this morning. He’s called security to gain access to the door logs.”

When they exited the bathroom, Marcus was talking to Trent on the other side of the door. They turned their attention to Zaira and paused their talking.

Trent left Marcus’s side and fell in step beside Zaira and Patrice.

“I am so sorry. I will find out who taped us like that,” he said.

“Stay out of it, Trent. Please. I warned you about this.”

It was her fault. Why did she ever insist they have sex in his office?

“Zaira, stop, please…for once. I’m tired of acting like children.” Trent stopped in front of them.

At this point, Zaira was so confused, she would have done anything to hear Trent say that none of this had ever happened and that she’d never seen him and Eve at his condo and they could go on with their lives. One part of her understood that wasn’t going to happen, but another part still held onto hope.

She paused. “What is it, Trent? These past few days have been miserable for me.”

“I want to make it right for you.” He took her forearm gently. “That was our private moment together. No one should have encroached on that, but someone did. I’m not fucking embarrassed about it? You know why?”

She shook her head.

“I love you. I would make love to you and declare my love for you one million times over and over again in front of God and in front of the world. You are my woman. Do you understand?”

Trent looked both troubled and angry as he bit into his lips, but she understood fully well. She knew him enough to know that he wasn’t lying. His words were truth and she could see it in his eyes and in his demeanor.

Zaira met his gaze, her vision cloudy with tears. “Yes, I understand.”

Her eyes shifted behind him to her dad who stood off to the side. Loyd Wright looked as though he was waiting for his chance to argue. He was impatient. His arms were crossed over his chest.

“I will call you later, if that’s okay with you,” Trent said. “I have some business to take care of with your father.”

She nodded just as Patrice pressed her hand to the small of her back and urged her to an open elevator cab.

Only when Zaira was in the privacy of her car did she let go.

This wasn’t all about her. She’d contributed equally. No one told her to spread her leg in a public place for Trent—in his office of all places. Now she would have to face the consequences and so would he.

She had done what she told him she would never do: Come between him and his job at Svelte.

Chapter Sixteen

“You’re my best friend, Marcus. You tell me…what would you do?” Trent asked the next night. He rolled around a stress ball in the palm of his hand as he sat facing his long-time friend.

He and Marcus were seated in Marcus’s office at Svelte as Trent weighed his options.

“Loyd believes in you, Trent. He speaks highly of you.” Marcus jabbed at his notepad with a pen for emphasis. “He saw something you that he saw in no one else when he offered you that position.”

Trent shook his head. “I offered to resign so he could find my replacement and he said no. Then he had the nerve to suggest that Zaira and I were just a fling, just puppy love. Pfft.”

“You and Zaira did part ways for a long time. I can see how he figured you two weren’t really serious. Of course, he knows nothing about what’s going on between you two,” Marcus offered.

“Exactly. I need Zaira in my life and if he has a problem with a leader in his company dating his daughter, I would gladly resign to have her. It feels like maybe he thinks this white boy is good enough to run his company, but not good enough to date his daughter.”

“It’s not about race and you know that. It’s not about social status either. Loyd knows better than that,” Marcus replied.

Trent shrugged. “Well he about damn near called me stupid when we talked.”

“Come on, dude.” Marcus typed away on his laptop as he spoke. “You fucked a woman in your company supplied office on your company supplied desk. Might I add that you were fucking the owner’s daughter? Um….that’s pretty damn stupid, bro.”

Trent threw the stress ball at Marcus who chugged it back at him.

“Man, you are no help,” Trent protested.

“We do stupid things when we are in love. Trust me, I know. I’m not an angel, nor will I ever be. You feel me?”

“I feel ya.” Trent sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“Plus you answered the question,” Marcus added.

“What question?”

“If it were me and I was in love…I mean really, really in love, I’d follow my heart,” his most trusted friend offered. “It feels right being with the woman you love. Nothing and no one else matters, except for her.”

Trent nodded. “Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel.”

“You talk to Zaira any since this?”

Trent swallowed. “Yeah but not for very long. She still won’t let me inside to talk. It will take some time for her. You know how women are about their egos. She was really embarrassed about the whole thing. I could tell.”

“I bet she was.”

“Plus, we weren’t really on good terms when the whole thing went down either.”

“What happened with that?” Marcus flipped through a few pages on his desk and scribbled some notes across the top.

“My not so clean past caught up to me. She thought I was stepping out on her.” He sighed. “I need a new timeshare agent, by the way. Know any?”

“I thought you said Eve was the best one at the company and….oh…” Marcus nodded slowly, realization slowly forming in his facial expression. “…I get it. Were you fucking them at the same time?”

Trent sat straight up in his chair. “Hell no! I would never do that to Zaira.”

“Well, I’m glad that’s not true. You don’t need to fuck this up for yourself doing something like stepping out.”

Trent placed the stress ball back into its holder on Marcus’s desk.

Something crashed loudly on the other end of the hall. They both jumped up from their seats and dashed out of the door.

A black shadow vanished around the corner. Thinking someone might be in trouble, Trent ran in that direction. As soon as he turned the corner, the dark frame fled past the elevator doors and down the hall toward the fire escape. That’s when Trent realized that this was not a person in trouble. This was a person trying to prevent being caught.

Except for the red exit signs and a few strobe lights overhead, the stairwell was narrow and not well lit.

The person, who Trent now identified as a male, rushed down the stairs like the devil was after him. He dropped something on one of the steps, paused for one moment, and looked at Trent for one second with his black ski mask covering his face. He decided that the thing on the ground was less valuable than getting away. He high-tailed it again, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Hey!” Trent shouted out, but the man did not pause. As he reached the landing where the object was dropped, he picked it up. It was a folder of pictures taken of the various people who worked there. The individuals in the picture didn’t look like they were aware that someone was taking private shots of them as they went about their day. There were pictures of Trent and Zaira, of Marcus and Tanya, and even of Loyd Wright. Some were intimate, but most were pretty harmless.

“What the fuck,” Trent exclaimed. He rushed full force down the steps until he caught sight of the man once again.

Just as the man reached the last flight of stairs, he stumbled and hollered out loud.

Trent caught up with him at the bottom of the stairs, grabbed him up by the collar, and slammed him hard against the wall. “Who the fuck are you?”

The man struggled to break loose, hopping on one feet. Evidently, he’d either broken or sprained one of his legs in the fall.