“I wish you hadn’t dumped me—or at least not dumped me like you did—but Mrs. Scheinberg said you did it out of your integrity and I shouldn’t blame you.”
“Flash...here’s the thing,” he began. “The night we spent together was incredible.”
“Hell, yeah, it was.”
“So incredible that I was going to go talk to Dad and explain the situation—that I was romantically interested in someone who worked for the company, and I wanted to see how to handle it. You know, transfer to another job or something. But before I could go talk to him, something happened.”
Ian didn’t know how to say the next part. He didn’t want to. He hated to embarrass her but he had to tell her. She had to know.
“You remember a guy named John Haggerty?” Ian asked.
“Yeah, drywall guy. He asked me out like five times before I told him I was going to report him if he talked to me again.”
“When I came into work the morning after that night, Haggerty was sitting in front of my desk, waiting for me. He said he had something to tell me. He said it was about us.”
Flash’s eyes widened. He went on before she could ask.
“That night at the bar in Portland, we left together. You remember that?”
She nodded.
“And you remember I kissed you while we were leaving the bar?”
She nodded again.
“And you remember the bar was kind of dark by that time?”
She nodded once more.
“Haggerty was in the bar,” Ian said. “Not only did he see us alone together drinking and flirting. He saw us kissing. He saw us leave together. And he took pictures of it all.”
“Ah...” She closed her eyes and exhaled.
“Haggerty said he wanted a ten thousand dollar ‘bonus’ or he would tape those pictures inside every single locker at the company. He’d also send them to the news so they’d know that Oregon State Senator Dean Asher’s son likes to fuck his female employees, and all of this happens on my father’s watch and wouldn’t that make a great headline. Haggerty’s a piece of shit but he’s a smart piece of shit. He knew how much trouble he could cause with a potential sexual harassment scandal. He was so smug sitting there I wanted to smash his face in. I almost did it, too.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him I had to see how I could do this without Dad catching on. He said I had twenty-four hours before he told everyone about us and started pasting up pictures. Soon as he left the office, I called the company lawyer.”
“So you dumped me because you didn’t want your dad getting in trouble?”
“I broke it off with you because our lawyer said I needed to. He said you were a ticking time bomb, the only woman who worked on the construction crew, and I’d slept with you. If it made the news or you decided to sue or something...”
Flash made a sound like a bomb going off.
“Yeah,” Ian said. “Our lawyer was ready to kill me. Dad’s a state senator, he said like I didn’t know that already. Lawsuits. Cover-ups. Do not piss off the unions during an election year. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and on and on about how precarious the situation was. That’s the word he used—precarious.”
“Good word.”
“He said I had a choice—either I had to break it off with you completely and forever or I had to tell Dad and let Dad fire you.”
“Fire me?”
“You’d played a couple small pranks on coworkers and the lawyer said those constitute more than enough legal grounds to fire you.”
“We all play pranks on each other. Nobody ever gets hurt.”
“I know, I know.” Ian raised his hands in surrender. “That’s what I told Mac Brand, the company shark. He said I had to decide—either I dump you or fire you. It was so unfair to you in every single way but I didn’t see any other choice. I told our lawyer I’d break it off with you. He called the police and the next morning when Haggerty came into my office, I recorded our conversation, and got him arrested for blackmail. We agreed to drop the charges if he signed a legally binding nondisclosure agreement. And that was the end of it. And us.”