Chapter Eighteen

Brandy

“My legs are still shaking,” I said, trying to catch my breath.

“I know,” he laughed below me.

His hands were still wrapped around me, one over my chest, grasping my breast, the other around my waist. I felt like I couldn’t control my body. Nothing was responding to any command I gave it other than to breathe, and even that was touch and go.

“Just… wow,” I said. “Wow.”

“I second that,” he said. “You are incredible.”

“Are you serious? You broke me. I can’t move. My legs are jelly, and they won’t stop shaking. You short-circuited me.”

He laughed in his deep, velvety voice, and I swore, if I had control over myself, I’d have tried to get him going again for round two.

“We should probably get you back before Basil comes looking,” he said. “Not that I particularly want this moment to end anytime this century.”

“Me either,” I said. “But you’re right. We should get dressed at least.”

“This won’t be the last time I see you naked, will it?” he asked as I stood up and looked back over my shoulder at him. His eyes were roaming up my backside to my own, and I turned slowly, basking in his attention as he appreciated the view.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

I leaned down and kissed him, closing my eyes and sinking into the moment. When I opened them again, just before pulling away from him, something flashed in the corner and caught my eye. I stopped, staring in that direction until I saw it flash again. It was red. A red light flashing from under a shelf.

“What?” he asked.

“There’s a weird light,” I said, grabbing my shirt and pulling it on, not bothering with my bra. “It’s… it’s under a shelf. I wouldn’t normally see it unless I was right here, looking that way, which I never do.”

Grabbing my pants, I slipped those on as well and made my way toward the light. I figured it had to be some kind of fire thing or a bug light that Basil had plugged in and didn’t tell me about. But the closer I got to it, the more my anxiety raised and the fear of what it could be clutched my throat.

It couldn’t be.

It couldn’t.

It was.

“Oh my God,” I said, my voice trembling. “Oh my God, Collin, put on your clothes and come here.”

“Put on my—” he began.

“Put your clothes on first. Then come here!”

He put on his jeans, grabbing his shirt and carrying it with him as he approached. He bent low so he could see what I was seeing, and immediately he grunted angrily.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

Reaching out, he grabbed the small black box with the red blinking light off the wall and pulled it toward him. Peering at it in the light, we could both see the thing I feared most. A tiny lens.

“It’s a camera. Oh my God, it’s a camera!”

“Who the hell would put a camera in your office?” he asked.

“I know who! I know exactly who!”

I pulled out my phone and searched through the contacts until I found Phil’s name, smashing the button and calling him.

“Hello?”

“Phil, I need you here at the store right now. Right now!”

“Wait, what? I’m not in town. I’m in Odess…”

“I don’t care, Phil! Get here now! I found your camera!”

“What? Did one of our guys leave a camera behind?”

“No, Phil. Your camera. The one in my office.”

The line went silent for a minute, and just as I was about to start screaming into the phone, he spoke.

“I’ll be there in about a half hour. Just let me come explain.”

Frustrated, I hung up.

“He’s on his way,” I said, and Collin must have seen something in my expression.

He walked toward me, arms out, and I collapsed into them, sobbing in anger and humiliation.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s going to be okay,” he said.

“He has it recorded! I bet he does! He recorded us, Collin. Us!”

“I don’t think he could see anything,” Collin said. “Look. Look. Look at where the camera was. See where it was pointing?”

“The door,” I said, wiping tears off my cheek.

“Right, and we were over here, by the desk, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And this box, right here on the shelf, this box would block out anything probably about… here.”

He drew a line in the air with his hand, coming down right at the edge of the desk.

“So,” he continued, “I don’t know if it would have seen anything, except maybe that there was movement.”

“He still had a spy camera in my room,” I said.

“Yes, and you have every reason to be angry. I’m angry too. That is a serious breach of trust. I am positive at no time you would have agreed to have a hidden camera in your office.”

“I most certainly did not,” I said.

“So he is going to have some explaining to do. Perhaps his lawyer will as well.”

He held me for a while, trying to console me as I bounced between being furious and being terrified. I didn’t want images like that to get out, and I knew how things leaked on the Internet. All it would take is one person to post them one time with any identifying information, and then everyone would see it. It would be everywhere, and I’d never be able to hide from it.

Collin too, for that matter, though I supposed it wouldn’t be as big a problem for him. The shame was always on the woman.

When headlights flooded the lobby, I ran out and unlocked the door, then stepped back, waiting for Phil to come inside. When he did, he was alone, and his face was stern. He didn’t look apologetic. He looked upset that he’d been caught.

“Brandy,” he began. “First let me say that there was never any intention of catching anything lascivious or anything that could be used to damage your reputation in any way.”

“So you watched it,” I said. “You know what’s on it.”

He sighed and hung his head.

“When you called, I checked the footage, yes. Look, there is very little there. I see the two of you come in in your underwear. I see you kiss and move out of frame. Then, I occasionally see an arm or your hair come into frame, but nothing else.”

“But it’s obvious what is going on, isn’t it?” Collin asked.

“Yes,” he said. “With the sound, yes.”

I felt my stomach do a flip. I wanted to throw up.

“It has sound ?”

“Of course,” he said as if that was a silly question. “Why else would I use it?”

“Why did you use it?” I hissed. “Because I don’t remember ever saying it was okay to use hidden cameras!”

“Well, technically, it wasn’t hidden. It was obstructed, but it was in plain sight.”

“If you looked under a shelf where no one would ever look!”

“It also blinked red,” he said, as if it were some sort of gotcha.

“Which no one would see in the light, so it would only be visible when some or all of the lights were off,” Collin said. I could hear the anger in his voice. It was something I hadn’t heard before, and it flew in the face of the image he put out of being this gentle, quiet man. It belied the ability to get very, very loud, and very, very violent.

“I suppose that would be accurate,” Phil said.

“This is a breach of contract,” I said. “And I will take you to court over it. I will sue you until you have nothing. Do you understand? Now get out of here.”

“Look, I didn’t put the camera there,” he said. “I just found out about it.”

“Then how did you have the footage?” I asked.

“That’s how I found out about it,” he said. “It showed up in the cloud. Only me and the editor have access to that, and the editor hasn’t been assigned yet by the studio. So it’s just me. But all of a sudden, there was a folder I didn’t recognize, and there was office footage in it. I thought we must have agreed to one of those cameras, because we do use them occasionally. Or maybe someone put one up and didn’t know we weren’t using them. I thought if we got some good stuff, I could show you, and you would approve it anyway.”

“Well, that was a huge fucking mistake,” I said. “Because I am done. Do you understand me? I am done. I want to see you delete the footage, right now.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t delete footage. Only the editor can do that. It’s a failsafe so the editor doesn’t have things deleted by other people.”

“Then get me an editor and get rid of it,” Collin growled. “Meanwhile, get the hell out of here. And don’t come back!”

“I’ll have a studio rep call,” he said, but Collin was already gathering up cables that had been lined against the walls and taped down to the floor. He wrapped them in large loops and opened the door, tossing them outside unceremoniously. “Hey, leave our stuff alone!”

“All your stuff can go to hell,” I said. “I’m done with this show!”

Collin continued throwing out cords but stopped short of tossing anything else. Instead, he spent a moment trying to figure out how to break down the tripods, the backdrops and the other various stands and things that were left inside the shop, and then placed them outside gently.

When he was done, he locked the door, and we watched as Phil bitterly put it all in the back of a van and then drove away.

It was almost four in the morning when he was finally gone and the two of us were curled up in a booth together. It was the second time now that we had moved further into a potential relationship and ended the night with a fight that involved someone else.

“I’m sorry I got us started on the wrong foot,” I said.

“You didn’t,” he said. “Two separate instances, they just happened to be on the same day. But I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Why don’t we make this day a much, much better one? Why don’t you come back to the ranch with me, and we can go ride horses and hang out with animals?”

“Really?”

“Sure,” he said. “It’s going to be morning soon. I can put you in my bed, and you can nap while I do my morning chores, and then when you get up, we’ll get some breakfast and go on a ride. What do you say?”

“I think that sounds amazing,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Forty-five minutes later, we snuck into his room, and I stripped down to my bra and panties. I could tell he wanted to join me, but the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon, so he tucked me in, kissed me deeply, and then left the room, shutting the door until it latched.

I reveled in the smell of him surrounding me in the shockingly cozy bed, and after only a few moments of letting my mind relive the better parts of the evening, I fell into a deep sleep.