Page 51 of Handling the CEO

“Hey caveman,” she answers softly, then pulls back a bit, looking at me with those eyes of hers which melt me. My heart goes ‘thump’ as well at the sound of our names for each other. “Messed up yesterday. I am sorry for going without talking to you. I was a bit of an idiot.” She smiles shyly, and it’s a side of her I don’t see often, and I am grateful she can be vulnerable with me. That I get to prop her up when she needs me to, remembering that night in the car, after the reporter, when she needed to hold my hand to calm down.

“You were a bit of an idiot. But I also didn’t help matters by having a freak out over the phone. But as you did send your sister with food, I might forgive you.” I put my hands around her face and kiss her forehead, and the sigh of relief from her is all I needed to hear. She is home, and she is mine.

“Come on, let’s sit and you can tell me exactly what happened yesterday.” I pull her down on the sofa and arrange her legs over my thighs.

“Where do I even start?” she begins, but then looks at my pillow and blanket. “Why are you sleeping down here?”

“Well, if you must know, your sister basically drank me under the table. So, I sent her up to the bedroom.”

“Couldn’t get up the stairs?” she guesses correctly but I refuse to confirm or deny. “That will teach you. Laura used to work in bars. She can out-drink us all!”

“I can see that as more of a challenge for the future,” I comment, and the grin on DJ’s face is blinding.

“Future?” The grin transforms into her charming shy smile and all I can do is pull her in for a proper kiss. She seems to agree as she responds eagerly, gripping my arms and climbing in my lap.

“Yep, future. I said I will not let you go, and I meant it. But I may need to punch that ex-husband of yours soon, though,” I commit and her face lights up once more.

“You will have to get behind me on that! But first you must believe that I wasn’t cheating with him, I don’t know what pictures they showed you—also, who is ‘they’?—, he came to blackmail me with a video of you from a party about four years back. He weaselled his way inside after threatening to have the neighbors hear it, but that’s pretty much it. Oh, and he kept trying to touch me—the snake—and I kept having to bat his hand away. After our call, I checked my outside cameras and spotted a guy in a car recording the whole thing.”

“Shit—it means he was more prepared than we gave him credit for. He probably knew what he was doing, and they cut that film to exact times so they can just show me snips when it suited them!” I am mad now for being so gullible and even thinking that there was something there.

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up.” My girlfriend holds me tighter. “If they would have brought up pictures of you and an ex taken at your house from the same day we had a really sexy make-out session on a driveway, I wouldn’t have reacted very well myself. Speaking of…”

DJ gets up and goes to collect her bag. I didn’t even notice she dropped by the entrance. She pulls out her laptop, sitting back down next to me and starts to pull some folders up.

“I copied all these from Nathan’s hard drives he had at his house in Aspen. You are very lucky your friend keeps all his security tapes for five years.”

“Yeah, after he had a break in a while back, he holds on to everything—is that where this party was? At Nate’s? Four years ago? I think I remember bits of it. I was pretty much out of it.”

“It was exactly the point Richard was trying to make. He had a video of you not-so-charmingly drunk, and with Nathan complimenting your… lady catching skills.”

“Umm,” is the only answer that I could come up with.

“Settle down, I am aware you had girlfriends before me. You know that doesn’t faze me, more like I appreciate the experience you bring to the table.” She winks at me, and I shake my head at her making a joke when talking about this. “The problem is the recording also had you taking out something which resembled a joint, and saying something along the lines of you don’t do harder drugs ‘anymore’. I can’t remember the exact phrase and he didn’t send me the file, unfortunately.”

“What? I don’t recall any of that. You must know, I haven’t taken anything in years! Fuck, this is messed up! If they show that video at the meeting with the Lexingtons, they can bury me, and I’ll never see Tabitha again.”

“I know Jon, that’s why I called Nathan immediately after Richard left and asked him if he had any memories of the day and if he had any security footage of the party to see for myself exactly what happened. Then I went to the office and deleted all my software there—that’s what the blackmail was for, by the way—and got straight to the airport after that.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Well, I found something, two videos actually… There are only outside cameras at your friend’s house, so I can’t confirm if it’s the same person who recorded you, however.”

She puts on the first video.

It’s me and a girl, walking in Nate’s backyard and then sitting down on a bench by a fire pit, but still close enough to the dwelling so that the image is pretty clear. She lights up a cigarette shaped object and offers it to me, but I shake my head at her, take the bud from her and throw it in the flames, then get up on shaky legs, drag her over and give her a sloppy kiss, almost falling over. The images then show me leading her back inside.

“It gets even better. This is from earlier in the night,” my girlfriend puts on the second one.

I am outside on the front porch, sitting on the swing, holding a bottle of what I assume is whiskey, taking a swig and staring at the snow-covered hills around me. A blond guy comes over and shakes my hand, saying some muffled words to me, and then he pulls out something and offers it to me.

DJ increases the volume.

“Here you go Jon, you want to smoke a bit with me? When in Rome and all that…” he asks.

“Nah dude, I don’t do any of that shit anymore. Ever since my sister was born, I swore I’ll do good by her and stop with the dope, setting a positive example for her.”

“Ah, chill man, it’s not actually marijuana, it’s just a regular cig I rolled—saving money and all that!” He offers it to me again and I accept it but put it in my back pocket.

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