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Me: None. I’m not wearing any underwear.
Kai: OHH. Commando. I’m dumb. But that’s really fucking hot.
He chuckled to himself, and I casually put my phone away while Sandra walked to the front of the conference room by the big TV screen. Across the table, Michael was still looking at me and Kai.
That’s strange, I thought.It’s almost like he knows something…
“Okay, let’s get started!” Sandra said happily. She was in a good mood today, more so than I had ever seen her before. “I know we’re only halfway through November, but I called this meeting to discuss next year’s donations. Thank you all for humoring me.” She gestured. “And thank you to Ms. Hanover here for being such a wonderful help lately. It’s such a relief knowing I have someone in my corner who is willing to get down and dirty to make sure my grant requests go through in a timely manner. She truly is an asset to your foundation.”
I smiled politely at the compliments. Thank goodness I hadn’t made an enemy of her.
“Ms. Hanover is incredibly talented,” she went on. “Truly, her set of skills is unmatched. I’ve only been familiar with her work for a short time, but she’sswallowedevery task given to her.”
Next to me, Kai stiffened. “Uh oh,” he said under his breath.
“She’s a realteamplayer,” Sandra said while smiling broadly. “An enthusiastic missionary for the foundation, doggedly taking every single grant package, no matter the size.”
“Thank you,” I said uneasily. Why was she talking about me so much? It was too much. Something was wrong. Kai turned toward me and tried to mouth something, but Sandra was holding my gaze too intently for me to look away. And across the table, Michael looked alarmed, too.
“In fact, Ms. Hanover has recently taken on such ahuge packageof grants that I think she deserves special recognition. This package was especiallythicc. Thicc with two c’s, as the kids say these days. I have a video of exactly that performance.”
Thicc.
Package.
Missionary.
And suddenly, in a flash of insight, I realized that she knew.
Sandra Trout hit the spacebar on her laptop, and a video began playing on the conference room screen.
50
Kai
Being around Ginny in another context was exhilarating. I was reminded that the two of us saw each other in a very narrow context once a week. Yet when I saw her at the office, going through her work routine and dressing professionally? It completed the full picture of who she was as a person.
It made me like her even more.
I wondered what her boss thought about her. He was watching us pretty intently, though he tried hiding it.
All of this distracted me from the way Sandra was acting. I had worked with her too long not to recognize when she was about to spring a trap. And when Ididrealize that she was pulling a fast one, it was too late.
The video played on the screen at the front of the conference room. It showed Ginny’s bedroom, the same as I had seen it a hundred times, in person and in video. She was by herself, dancing around and teasing herself with a toy.
I felt a flash of shock at the sudden anachronism of two parts of my life clashing together. Then relief washed over me when I realized it wasn’t one of our joint videos—Ginny was by herself.
Then I felt guilty for being relieved. Because although I wasn’t in the video,shewas. Her face was blurred by the filter, but that wasn’t going to matter when Sandra told everyone who it was.
I leaped forward to stop the video. Sandra must have been ready for this, because she whirled toward me and jabbed a threatening finger at my chest.
“Sit. Down.” She might as well have been giving commands to a dog. “Or I’llreallymake you regret it.” Her eyes promised to make my life a living hell.
She knows about me. She knows what I’ve been doing. If she had this video, she surely had the others.
I was paralyzed with indecision. Do I help the woman I’m falling for? Or protect myself?
I never actually made a decision. My mind was too numb to decide things right then. I slowly sat back down and wallowed in my shame.
