His mother pulled a tub of mayonnaise from one of the bags and opened the fridge again. “You don’t watch much TV, do you?”
“Not in the months I’m climbing.” He put some potato chips in the pantry. “You don’t understand what it’s like. I live out of my van for a week or more at a time.” And this year, his climbing season had lasted longer than in previous years. He’d finally found a sponsor, a sponsor who was paying handsomely just to have him endorse their brand of climbing apparel. He’d never had so much money.
“Well, if you don’t already know what happened, I probably shouldn’t tell you.” She reached into another sack. “The more word of it spreads, the worse things will get for her.”
“What are you talking about?” He folded the sacks they’d emptied. “And how could telling me make it any worse?”
With a sigh, she dragged him farther from the room where Bentley and Liam were playing, and the stairs where Emery had gone. “After college, she became a news anchor on a popular morning show in Los Angeles. She loved her job, was doing very well at it and had high hopes of eventually moving to New York and taking over a show like Good Morning America.”
“But then...” He scowled at her. “Why are you making me drag this out of you?”
She hesitated.
“Mom? This is me you’re talking to.”
“I realize that, but...” She seemed torn. “Okay. She broke up with her coanchor, and he retaliated by posting a video of the two of them online that humiliated her and caused her to lose her job.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What kind of video?”
She cast him an exasperated look. “What kind do you think?”
“No...” he said, stepping back.
“Yes! They were having s-e-x,” she whispered.
He might’ve laughed that she’d felt the need to spell it when his brothers were plenty old enough to understand, but he was too shocked. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I were,” she said with a frown. “She refuses to show her face in Los Angeles. That video went viral. Everyone’s seen it. It even made the national news.”
Dallas could only imagine how mortified Emery must’ve been. As attractive as she was, every male viewer had probably raced onto the internet to have a look. “What about her family? They were always supportive. Why wouldn’t she go to them?”
“They don’t live in the area anymore. They moved to Boston two years ago, and her parents are in the middle of a nasty divorce, something she doesn’t need to be involved in when she’s going through so much herself. Her father is already living with another woman. And her mother is trying to care for Emery’s grandmother, who has dementia. That’s the reason they moved to Boston in the first place.”
“What about siblings?”
“She’s an only child.”
“Wow.” He sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “I didn’t realize you knew Emery well enough to take her in.”
“I didn’t until her mother began volunteering here at the school. A year or so after you graduated, Connie started teaching the boys how to ride. She even donated a couple of the horses. We still have one of them. Anyway, we became close, and that’s how I got to know Emery. Whenever Emery came home from college, even after she earned her degree, her mother would bring her over, and she’d help, too. So when the scandal broke, and I saw it on the news, I called to see how she was doing. The poor child wouldn’t even pick up the phone. I had to leave several messages before I could get her to call me back. Her mother said she was hiding out in her apartment.”
“And when you did get hold of her, you insisted she come here?”
“I had to. I couldn’t leave her in that situation.”
No wonder Emery had apologized when he’d caught her in her underwear this morning. Someone who’d just been through what she’d been through would be extra sensitive to that sort of encounter, even though it was completely accidental. “Wait. So she got fired for sleeping with a coworker? Can that even happen these days?”
“Yes. She signed an agreement when she started at the station saying she wouldn’t get romantically involved with anyone in the workplace. But she’s considering a wrongful firing suit. This was revenge on his part, pure and simple. He was out to get her when he posted their personal video all over the internet, and their producer—a Heidi Coventry—piled on. Emery thinks it’s because Heidi has had her eye on Ethan Grimes herself and was angry when he chose Emery over her.”
Dallas didn’t know Emery that well. He didn’t know Ethan Grimes at all. And yet he felt no small degree of outrage. “Sexism has been such a hot topic, all over the news, and yet this Heidi person, who works for a news station, no less, is only making it worse?”
“I know. I thought in California we’d come further than that.”
“The station had better have fired him, too.”
“They did, but Emery told me yesterday that she’s pretty sure they’ve hired him back.”
“She needs to proceed with that wrongful firing suit.”
Aiyana made a skeptical sound. “Even if she does, I’m not sure she’ll win.”
“How much will it cost to get an attorney?”
“That isn’t the problem. She can get an attorney who’s willing to do the work for a portion of the settlement. It’s the upset and the negativity she’ll have to contend with, for months, that she’s not convinced she can endure. Not with how hurt and vulnerable she is right now. What’s happened to her is beyond embarrassing, and the more attention she draws to it, the more people
