A California Christmas (Silver Springs #7) - Brenda Novak Page 0,9
he’d seen what he thought might be blood on her pink yoga pants. He didn’t want her to hurt herself any worse.
“Bring her over here, to the couch,” Aiyana told him.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
At the intrusion of another voice, Dallas glanced over to find that his two younger brothers had also reacted to the noise. They were standing on the stairs and were, like him, wearing only jeans. Their hair was sleep tousled, and Liam had the waffle imprint of his comforter on his cheek.
“Nothing. We’ve got it,” Aiyana said. “You can go back to bed. You have another hour or so before you have to get up for school.”
“Is Emery okay?” Bentley sounded concerned. At the same time, Liam said, “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Aiyana responded. “Let us deal with this, okay?”
They were tired enough that they accepted her response without any resistance and shuffled back up the stairs.
Aiyana got a cloth for Emery’s bleeding hand and Dallas guided her to the couch.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled to him when he finally let go of her and helped her to sit down.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “What happened?”
Tears continued to stream down her cheeks as she gestured at the TV. “That’s him,” she said dully, holding her stinging hand to her T-shirt to staunch the blood. “That’s Ethan Grimes. They’ve given him his job back.”
Dallas studied the guy who’d been so vindictive to her. He was thin and certainly not unhandsome, with brown eyes, thick slashes of eyebrows and equally dark hair that he wore slicked back off his forehead. But as far as Dallas was concerned, he was also filled with self-importance and came off sort of...smarmy. Dallas wanted to say, “You fell in love with that asshole?” but bit his tongue.
“Here. Let me see that cut,” Aiyana said.
Emery held out her hand.
“Fortunately, it doesn’t look too deep.” Aiyana peered even closer at it. “I can’t imagine it will require stitches. For now, just hold this cloth on it until the bleeding stops and I can see it more clearly. I’m going to make some tea. That should be warm and soothing.”
“How can they do that?” she asked Dallas, referring to the station, as Aiyana went into the kitchen. “After the Me Too movement and all that lip service about correcting sexism? He signed the same agreement I did. And he’s the one who pursued me. He also caused the scandal, made it public.”
“I don’t know.” Dallas sat down beside her in case she freaked out again. He was waiting for an opportunity to check the blood on her legs, but it was too soon. He was afraid if he drew her attention to the fact that she was hurt in more than one place, she might only get worked up again. “They must know he was the one who put up that video, right?”
She shook her head. “He lied about it. Said his roommate must’ve put up a camera and posted that video online.”
“Why would his roommate do something like that?”
“Ethan claims he must’ve got off on watching us. And he said Tommy posted the video online because he was being pressured to move out, and he wasn’t happy about it.”
Dallas dipped his head to catch her eye. “Could that be true? Could it have been this Tommy person?”
“No,” she replied immediately. “Tommy would never do anything like that. He’s a nice guy. Heidi and upper management are only pretending there’s some confusion about who did what, so they have an excuse to be able to continue their relationship with Ethan.”
“Did you tell them that?”
“I tried.”
“And what’d they say?”
“That Ethan would never post something that would embarrass him as much as it would me, but it didn’t embarrass him. He’s proud of it. And he was happy he had something with which he could totally destroy me, especially because I didn’t see it coming.”
Dallas clenched his jaw. It was hard not to confront Ethan—to make him pay for what he’d done so that he’d think twice about using revenge porn to hurt any other woman. But Dallas knew getting into a physical altercation with Ethan would be stupid. Ethan deserved an ass whipping, but giving him one wouldn’t solve anything. The video would still be out there, available for those who were looking for it. Dallas would just get himself into trouble, and he’d promised Aiyana—long ago—that he would avoid that sort of thing. “So are you going to proceed with the wrongful