He came up behind her, rested his big hands on her shoulders. “You know I would never let anyone hurt you, right?”
“Yeah.” She turned off the water, set the glass down, not thirsty anyway. “It’s not what you think.”
Eric’s voice was soft, reassuring. “I know someone hurt you. I don’t know what he did, but I can tell it’s still with you.”
How could he tell that? How could he know?
She turned, almost in his arms, then pushed past him, walking to the sofa and sinking into the cushions. “God, I can’t even …”
He came to sit beside her, angling his body so that he faced her, his arm stretching across the back of the sofa behind her. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, but if you think telling me will help you, I’m here.”
What did it matter anyway? She was leaving on Sunday.
She steeled herself, drew a breath. “I met Stewart in a night club just before Halloween. I was there celebrating with a coworker who’d just gotten a promotion. Some guy started hitting on me and wouldn’t back off. Stewart came over and dragged the guy to the security desk. They threw the jerk out. I thought Stewart was a hero.
“I saw him again a couple of weeks later at a work mixer. We started talking. I thanked him for standing up to that idiot. He asked me out. He was good-looking and funny, and he’d protected me at the night club. So I said yes.”
She fought to control her emotions, not wanting Eric to see her fall apart, which she did every time she talked about this. She was surprised she wasn’t already in tears. Perhaps telling his mother just a few days ago was making it easier to tell him. “Our first few dates were incredibly romantic. He said all the right things, did all the right things. On our third date, we ended up at his house. The sex was really disappointing, but I figured it was just me. I’ve never had it as easy as Lexi.”
“As easy with what?” He looked confused.
God, was he going to make her spell it out? “You know … climaxing.”
One dark eyebrow arched, disbelief on his face. “Really?”
Heat flooded her cheeks when she realized what he must be remembering. “Well, with one exception, I guess.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to take you off on a tangent. So you had a few dates with this guy, had sex with him, and it wasn’t fireworks.”
Now she’d come to the hard part, the part that still hurt.
“We’d been together for a few weeks when I came home from work to find him in my bed with a tall blond woman. I hadn’t given him a key, but I was so shocked by seeing him having sex with her inmybed that it didn’t occur to me he shouldn’t even be there. The two of them didn’t stop. They kept going and laughed when they saw me.”
“How did the bastard get in?”
“The police say he’d duplicated my key while I was sleeping.”
But that wasn’t the worst thing he done—far from it.
* * *
Eric foughtto keep his temper in check. Victoria didn’t need his anger. What she needed was to be heard and understood. “What a son of a bitch!”
Okay, so he’d lost that battle already.
“He and hisloverfinished and walked out of my bedroom. The woman said, ‘Oh, look at her face! She thought the two of you had something real.’ She called me a stupid bitch and told me I’d never meant anything to Stewart.”
“Stewart turned on my television, and on the screen ...” Her words faded into silence, tears filling her eyes.
“It’s okay.” Eric wanted to hold her, but he wasn’t sure how she’d feel about that. “You’re safe here with me.”
She found her voice again, seeming to fight for every word. “He’d made a video … of the two of us having sex. He’d made it without my knowledge or consent. It showed …everything.”
“Jesus!” That was not what Eric had been expecting her to say.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “He told me the video was already online along with some photos and my contact information advertising my services as a call girl. If I wanted him to take it down, I needed to give him fifty thousand dollars. He told me that if I called the police and got him arrested, the tape and all my information would automatically go live on other sites around the world.”
And it all made sense—what that guy had said to her in Buena Vista, the conversation Eric had overheard when she was talking with his mother, how she’d responded when he’d told her she was beautiful.