Suspiciously Obedient

And over.



Why would they have filmed her and Matt? No cameras were in the Bournham Industries offices. Stairwells, sure. Maybe elevators. But in Matt's office?



“Bournham contracted with producers for the reality television series, to spend six weeks pretending to be a middle-management office worker. According to producer Jonah Moore…”



The television cut to a film clip of a pinched Hollywood type who flashed a tight grin and said, “Mike told us he wanted to increase his exposure and, well—America got way more than it bargained for. Watch Meet the Hidden Boss for the extra-special footage.”



“Joan, do we know who this mystery woman is?” the Botoxed blonde host asked the Botoxed brunette host.



Click. Grandma shut the box off, flinging the remote onto a recliner and grunting with disgust.



Disgust.



Now she knew why Krysta wanted her to avoid the computer.



Oh, holy shit. He wasn’t Matt Jones. Michael Bournham? He was Michael fucking Bournham?



She had slept with one of the hottest men in—well, ever? Lydia hadn't just slept with her boss.



She’d fucked her boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s boss.



The front door nearly crashed into the living room from the force of an alarmingly sudden, fierce pounding. “Lydia! Lydia!” Krysta shouted.



“Nice try, kid,” Madge muttered, placing a sympathetic palm on Lydia's shoulder for a second before going to the door to open it. Her friend came flying in, barely dressed in yoga pants, a t-shirt, flip-flops, and no bra, everything flapping and jiggling as she crossed the room—and then stopped when she saw Lydia's face.



“Fuck. I’m too late,” she said flatly.



“Come on in, Krysta,” Madge croaked. “You’re welcome here as long as you don't have a hidden camera.”



It looked like something Diane would do. The thought struck Jeremy as he watched the video for the thousandth time, his eyes wandering over Lydia’s body, cataloging the way her elbow curved, how one hip jutted up. The way her hair glided as she sighed, her body moving with such grace, even through a hitch. A gasp. A moan. It was like something Diane would do.



Not Lydia’s elegance or her passion, or even her lusty, incredible sensuality. But the video element. Diane was so maniacally ambitious about being known, about being seen, about surfaces and appearances and the shell of legitimacy in her socialite world. A sex tape would round out her resume in that niche of pseudo-celebrity life.



After his run with Mike yesterday, Jeremy had mulled over the situation. Maybe he could help. Certainly, watching the video was crucial, right? As a service to his friend, of course. Of course. He was that kind of guy, always sacrificing for others.



A few calls to some hacker friends who could easily be bribed with Bitcoin and he had the video at an hour when the rest of the east coast was sleeping. Mike didn't know Jeremy had the video. Soon everyone in the world would have it, though, so why not beat them all to the punch?



Narrowing his eyes, he watched carefully, finished the video, and watched it again. At no point during the video did Mike say Lydia’s name. He watched it again. At no point did her face directly look into the camera. And he viewed it once more, confirming that there was no way to know— specifically—that this was in fact Lydia Charles. And that’s when a fully-fledged plan poured into Jeremy’s mind, as if inserted by divine intervention. For all her faults, Diane’s disgustingly shallow personality was about to become exceptionally helpful.



It wouldn’t be hard reaching her; the woman had her own glitzy, flash-enabled website as if she were among the elite. Plenty of people he knew had their own websites—but it was because they had accomplished something. Scientists. Engineers. Inventors. Authors. Musicians. Diane had one because she just…was. She had shellacked an assemblage of pictures and sightings and fashion statements into this conjured image of a famous self. It even had a “Donate Now” button. Donate for what? Her next anal bleaching? Botox treatment? Hymenectomy?



Sure enough, there was a Contact Us button on her site and he clicked it. Was this really the right way to go? Or should he text her? Oh—not even an issue. It turned out she gave her cell phone number online. Nodding, he closed his eyes and shook his head and then nodded again. Diane, you make it so easy.



His phone at the ready, he typed one sentence, hit send, and waited. The video had just hit the news twenty minutes ago. If she were as cravenly, coldly, cynically ambitious as he—



Bzzz! Aha! He read her response. Indeed, she was. This was going to be even easier than he thought.



Meet me at S&S in an hour, her text read.



S&S? That breakfast place in Cambridge? he wondered. That wasn’t a fancy place where she’d be seen—oh, that’s right. He wasn’t worth being seen with. Well, he could handle the implied insult. He wasn’t exactly eager to be seen with her either. What he had in mind involved a careful calibration of motivations that, if it all worked—and the right people kept their mouths shut, and the right people opened them wide—would save Lydia from global humiliation.



An hour later, he sat in a quiet, dark corner shoveling down the best smoked salmon and Havarti omelet he'd ever had when Diane walked in. She had just come from a yoga class, her hair pulled back with a headband, her ass so tight that Jeremy probably could not only bounce a quarter off of it, he could bounce a human being off of it. He had to admit that Mike had reasonably decent taste in bodies—if not personalities.



Then there was her face.



It was so tight, frozen into some kind of permasmile that created a cognitive dissonance when you looked into her eyes, which were shrewdly calculating, if not a bit angry.



“What does any of this have to do with me?” she asked. “Mike’s been ignoring my texts and calls and emails for”—she gestured with a wave of her hand—“for I don’t even know how long. So, why would you want me to do something with him that involves reality TV?”



He waved to the server. Diane ordered some egg whites-only abomination and a fruit cup as he made attempts at idle chit-chat.



She glared at him and finally she said, “Are you just wasting my time, Jeremy?”



“How would you like to be famous?”



Her eyes perked up to the extent that the frozen facial muscles were capable of perking. “How so?”



He laid out the plan. “What if someone we know were recently caught in a sex-tape scandal?”



She rolled her eyes and took a sip of her water. “This is about what Mike’s really been up to, huh?” she said cynically. Jesus, she was fast. He assumed she'd been doing downward-facing dog but she already knew about the tape?



“It is. Who is the woman in that video?” he asked, peering intently at her.



She cocked an eyebrow—or at least, he thought she did. The result made her look constipated. “It’s one hell of a scandal, isn’t it?” he said.



“Yeah, lucky girl.” She smiled, the effect more a grimace than an expression of happiness or sarcasm or bitterness.



“That could be you, you know?” he said, taking a big gulp of his orange juice, buying time.



She frowned and said nothing.



“Well, sort of.”



“Jeremy, just spit it out. I don't have time for this. You're playing some sort of a game and I don’t play games.”



His turn to frown. “You are like the D&D dungeon master of games, Diane.”



“Oh, great. Nerdspeak. Just what I need.” She stood. “We’re done here.”



She turned on her heel and started to march away when he said, softly, “You could claim that’s you and then you’d be the one with your name in all the headlines, everywhere.”



She froze in place, shoulders straight back, perfectly Pilates-ed into an absolutely gorgeous curve that made him want to bend her over a table and fuck her right here. And then, she ruined that brief blip of a fantasy by facing him and making him look into her Medusa face.



“I could what?”



He waved her back. She sat down. The server delivered her breakfast. Diane grabbed a fork and began eating in delicate bites, like a contestant on The Biggest Loser trying to make a stick of gum last three days. After a few bites smaller than her conscience, she rested her elbows on the table, leaned in, and said, “What are you planning?”



“I took a good, careful look at that video, Diane, and from behind, you could be the twin of that woman.”



She put a hand over her heart as if offended and gasped, the sound so loud the server turned and looked. “I am not that fat!” she declared.



He held his hands, palms out, in a gesture of supplication, realizing that in her world it was more offensive to be considered fat than to have fucked someone on camera and have it viewed by a billion people within twenty-four hours. “Oh, no. No, no, no. I’m not implying that you are. You”—and here his expression was genuine—“are anything but fat.”



“Then why do you think I look like her?”



“Your hair style is similar from behind—similar color hair. Your voice has just enough of the same smoky quality. She has curves, more cur—more, more curves than you,” he said as she began to protest. “But the camera adds twenty pounds, right?”



“The camera would have to add fifty or sixty, Jeremy, for me to look like that.”



“Fair enough. But, who is all over the headlines right now? ‘Mystery woman’ caught on tape with Michael Bournham,” he said, putting his hand out like a Hollywood announcer. “Who's that girl? says Perez Hilton. Caught on tape—sex, lies, and video.”



He was weaving a web that he hoped she would voluntarily jump into and get ensnared in. If this could take the heat off Lydia, then there was some hope—he wasn’t sure what kind of hope, just…hope. Plus, he genuinely liked Lydia. And he really, really didn’t like Diane. As weird as the situation was, this was one way that he could actually help both women while helping him and Mike.



She swallowed hard and cracked her neck on both sides. Then, she reached for her water. “Why would I do that?” she asked, taking a sip.



He shrugged, trying to be as casual as possible. “Because plenty of famous women, especially women with reality TV shows, have been caught on tape in compromising positions. Paris Hilton, for instance.”



She pulled back. “Paris Hilton?”



“Yeah. Think of the sex tape nowadays as like…almost an audition tape when you try to get your own TV show,” he said, grasping at straws, hoping he didn’t sound like the ass that he felt he sounded like.



“Ooh…I like that.” Not an ass in her eyes. “You’re right, lots of people—but how would I? But could I?” She interrupted herself repeatedly. He didn’t have to do anything, just keep his mouth shut. She took a deep breath, her body flowing like a muscled wall of curves. Again, he found himself responding to her, everything, the whole package, except her actual soul. And that face. He just couldn’t get past that face, which now turned to him as she licked lips the size of pork chops and said, “So, how do I claim that’s me? Mike will just deny it, right?”