Page 84 of Hired Help

His jaw hardens. “It’s not a stumble. It’s not getting drunk and hugging someone too long when she said goodbye. She fucked a member of her household staff on camera. Maybe I’m wildly off base, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d do the first time, so it’s not even a one-off.”

“Perhaps she wanted to see if she was doing something wrong.”

“Shewasdoing something wrong. She was cheating.”

The facts are hard to deny but taking the losing side of an argument is second nature. “She was worried about her inability to orgasm.”

I hope Brooke never knows I divulged her private secrets like this. He might be my son, but he’s her ex—though that label no longer seems to apply. Either way, I promised to protect her privacy. I promised to keep any details she told me to myself.

“Yeah. That problem lasts until about three minutes into the show.”

I slide the second to last pancake onto his plate, frowning as I work through his statement. “Can I see?”

My phone beeps a second later. “Knock yourself out.”

He takes the spatula from my hand, impatience making him turn up the element, though it’ll just cause the last one to burn rather than cook. I move back against the refrigerator, clicking onto the link, reminding myself whatever’s on here isn’t anything to do with me. That we didn’t know each other at the time. The only person with a grievance here is Harrison.

And my stomach immediately lurches when I see Brooke filling out the image. See her laughing, moving around on the bed, responding to the man’s touches.

“Could you turn the sound off?” my son asks in a strangled voice, and I immediately comply, grateful for the suggestion. The images are bad enough, sound would undo me.

Then I see the point that apparently sticks in Harrison’s craw. Not the setup, not the camera, but the way she comes with barely any prompting.

And the utter certainty flows into my mind. It looks like her. Pieces sound like her. But there’s no way the woman on the screen is the same girl I’ve spent time with, grown accustomed to, fallen in love with.

“Brooke wouldn’t cheat.”

* * *

HARRISON

He hasn’t changed. All the old arrogance is there. The complete self-assurance that even if he doesn’t know all, he knows best. Overriding my decisions, my conclusions. Just like he used to do with my mum.

Why can’t Brooke see through this act? She must know he would leave her at the drop of a hat. The same way he abandoned my mother. The way he rejected me when I needed him most.

“Maybe you don’t understand the concept,” I fire at him, wanting to wipe the smirk off his face. I hate that five minutes after watching that clip my life had turned upside-down but here he is, taking it all in his stride.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I turn, folding my arms. “Since you regularly shagged other women when you were engaged to Mum, perhaps you see nothing wrong with Brooke fucking someone else. After all, he was there, and she wanted it. That’s all the reason you ever needed, isn’t it?”

“I never slept around on your mum.”

“You were fucking other people every day, what do—”

“Forwork.Not sneaking around behind her back.”

“Oh, for work,” I say with a snigger. “Like Brooke’sfor work.”

“Brooke’s different.”

“How? How is this any different from what you were doing?”

But he weasels into another question instead of answering mine. “Is that what Gwyn told you? That I was cheating on her.”

I want to hurl another round of invectives into his face but there’s something in his expression that stops me. Hints of sadness lurk in his eyes. He appears genuinelyhurt.

Before I can answer, he says, “You know, the sole reason I went into stripping was because it was the only thing where I could earn enough money. I was eighteen. I didn’t have any qualifications.”

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