So, what, was he into BDSM or something? Was she a sub? His sub?
I didn’t realize my hands were shaking until I struggled to focus the cursor on the seventh thumbnail. I finally brought up the picture, blinking in surprise to see that the setting had changed. It showed Dane walking toward a large, black building. His suit was once again different.
My nose wrinkled. I didn’t recognize the place, and it wasn’t surrounded by other buildings, so I couldn’t even guess at the area.
I clicked on the eighth photograph, hoping it would give me some clues, but it only showed him disappearing into the same building. Biting my lip, I enlarged the final picture; it was an image of him exiting the place, his tie dangling from his hand, and his shirt open at the collar.
Not whatsoever understanding why anyone would think to send me the latter three photos, I took a better look at the building. There was a sign above the door on which something was written in red and gold lettering. I zoomed in on the image. Club Euphoria.
I’d never heard of it.
I brought up an online search engine on my cell and typed in the name of the club. I scanned the list of results that then came up, finding a club of that name based in Redwater City. A sex club. It was a fucking sex club.
The urge to send the computer crashing to the floor was so strong I had to back away from the desk. Breathing hard, I rubbed at my aching chest. Really, I could be getting wound up over nothing, couldn’t I? These could easily be old photos.
Grasping that thought hard, I checked the meta data of each picture. Allegedly, they were taken in the last month. But that info could be faked, right? Maybe. I didn’t know enough about meta data to be sure.
When would he have a chance to sneak around with other women anyway? He was busy all the time, going to meeting after meeting.
And, up until a week ago, spending many of his evenings alone at o-Verve. And then there were those external dinner meetings that had run late.
My blood ran cold. What if he hadn’t truly spent so many evenings at o-Verve, and what if those meetings hadn’t truly run so late? What if he’d been going to see her? The brunette. Or what if he’d been indulging himself at the club?
Grabbing the planner, I checked the dates on the photos alongside the dates on his schedule. My stomach sank. He had indeed had external dinner meetings on the evenings he’d—if the photos were to be believed—been visiting the brunette.
There’d been no scheduled meeting on the evening he was supposedly at the sex club, though. Closing my eyes, I thought back to that day; remembered how Dane had curtly turned down my offer to share a pizza with him; remembered how he’d claimed he needed to return to o-Verve and would eat there. And if the photos were dated correctly, he’d fucking lied.
Even as it hurt to do it, I flipped through the pictures again, as if I might somehow see something that would convince me I was being played by whoever was holding the camera. They might have put the flash drive in a jewelry box as if the info was a gift to me, but they’d done it with the intent of hurting me enough to make me walk away from Dane.
I took a closer look at each of the images, trying to read the expressions on his face. No matter how close he stood to the brunette, he never looked turned-on or like a man who was anticipating sex. But he was touching her.
It was possible that these pictures were taken before I began “dating” Dane; that the meta data had somehow been tampered with.
My instincts were pricking at me, telling me I was missing something. Something small and obvious—
The tie. The tie he was wearing on the first three photos was new. The personal shopper brought it to his house on the very same day she brought me a bunch of new clothes to replace the ones that had been stolen. Which meant that the first three pictures couldn’t be old, and so the others probably weren’t either.
God, I was going to be sick.
The bastard. The lying, deceitful, horrible bastard.
We weren’t a true couple, so he hadn’t exactly cheated on me. But it felt like a betrayal. Emotional betrayal,