by Louise Hall
“We need to talk to Ruby and Nico and find out what they want to do first.”
CHAPTER 16
“Let me get this straight,” Cate planted her hands on her hips. “It’s all over the internet that Kian and I have allegedly made a sex tape and you want me to go on national TV on Saturday night and dance to “Sex Bomb” by Tom Jones. Are you seriously out of your freaking mind?”
Cate hadn’t spoken to Ruby since she’d found out that it was her and Nico on the tape. When Nico had called back, he’d said that Ruby was too upset to come to the phone.
She couldn’t believe that Declan, the producers or whoever had picked that song thought that it was a joke? It didn’t matter if it was Cate or Ruby on that tape. They weren’t fame-hungry starlets who’d knowingly filmed themselves having sex and then oops, accidentally released it hoping to get more publicity. Somebody had secretly filmed Ruby at her most intimate and was now threatening to reveal the footage to everybody who had an internet connection. How would they feel if it was their wives, their sisters, their daughters who had been violated like that?
Cate slung her dance bag over her shoulder. “Wait! Where are you going?” Declan asked.
“I will quit the competition,” Cate hissed, “before I dance to that song. You can either give me a call when you’ve got a different song or…” She looked around at the studio, “I guess this is goodbye.”
“I think I’ve just quit Stepping Out,” Cate said to Kian as she drove home from the gym.
When she got home, Sierra was having a nap and Nate was just about to feed Mateo his lunch. “I can do that,” Cate insisted. “Why don’t you take the afternoon off? I know you’ve got that big competition coming up.”
“Hey, little man,” Cate put the plate down in front of her son. “What have you been doing today?”
Mateo looked behind Cate, “where’s Daddy?”
“He’s at work, sweetheart.” She tried to engage Mateo in conversation while he finished his lunch but he was definitely punishing her for being away so much with Stepping Out.
Mateo had finished his lunch and Cate was loading up the dishwasher when Sierra woke up from her nap. “Come on,” she reached for Mateo’s hand, “let’s go and see your sister.”
“Mama, can I have a brother next?” Mateo asked as they walked up the stairs.
Cate side-stepped his question; she wasn’t ready to explain to her young son that he wouldn’t be having any more brothers or sisters. She hadn’t fully accepted it herself. “Sisters are fun too.”
At least Sierra was happy to see Cate; she giggled and excitedly waved her arms and legs. “Oh dear,” Cate sniffed as she picked her up. “Somebody needs their nappy changed.”
“Mats, can you go and fetch your shoes and coat. I thought we could go for a walk before we pick Lola up from school.” She hoped that she could score some much-needed points with her young son by taking him down to the front to watch the ferryboats.
“Mama,” Mateo tugged Cate towards the metal railings. “What’s that?”
Large strands of dark red, orange and purple with bulb-shaped ends and orange “hair” had washed up on the shores. Cate knelt down next to her young son and pulled out her phone. “I think it’s something called bull kelp, sweetheart. It’s the fastest growing seaweed species on Earth and can grow up to two hundred feet in length.” Mateo’s eyes widened. “When there’s lots of bull kelp together, it provides shelter for birds, otters, fish and lots of other animals in the sound. It can also help to stop the beach from being washed away.”
“Can we take a photo of them?” Mateo asked.
“Of course,” Cate laughed. She took several photos and then showed them to her son, “what do you think about those? Are they OK?”
“If you like the water, young man,” an older man with a coarse black beard stopped behind them. “We could always use more volunteers on our marine clean-up team.”
He explained that litter and things like plastic and Styrofoam hurt thousands of animals every year. “Isn’t he a little young?” Cate asked. She didn’t want to get her little boy’s hopes up.
“As long as he has an adult with him, he’ll be fine. Our clean-ups are open to everyone. We provide everything you’ll need – trash bags, grabbers and gloves and we’ll help you get rid of the litter when you’ve finished.”
“When’s your next clean-up?” Cate asked. She was excited that it was something she and Mateo could do together. The man must have suddenly recognised her from Stepping Out because he frowned, “there is one requirement though; you have to be willing to get dirty. It’s not a place for fancy clothes and false nails.”
Cate faked a smile. She very much looked forward to proving the condescending jerk wrong. “That sounds perfect. We’ll be there.”
As they walked back home, Mateo asked, “will Daddy or Uncle Nate come with me to clean up the beach?”
“I thought I could come with you,” Cate said. “If that’s OK? It sounds really fun.”
In the afternoon, Lola had a soccer match after school so Cate, Mateo and Sierra cheered her on from the bleachers. “Offside,” one of the other parents several rows in front of them shouted.
“Mama,” Mateo tugged on Cate’s sleeve, “what’s offside?”
“Good luck explaining that,” one of the dads a little further along the bleachers chuckled.
Cate rolled her eyes. She’d been married to a professional footballer for nearly ten years. She lifted Mateo up on to her knee. “You see that little girl with the red shirt and the braids in her hair?” Mateo nodded. “She was offside because she was closer to the goal than both the ball and the second last opponent, which was the little girl in the blue shirt with the blonde ponytail.”
“Ah, the offside rule,” Kian put his hand on Cate’s shoulder. “Hey, angel.”
“Hi,” Cate grinned. “I didn’t know you were coming to the game today?”
Kian shrugged, “I try and get to as many of Lola’s matches as I can. Traffic was a nightmare.”
After the match – Lola’s team won 4-1 – Kian suggested they go to the Taco Shack to celebrate. As they walked across the playing field to where their cars were parked, a man jumped out in front of them and started taking photos. Cate quickly looked around; the other parents had stopped and were staring at them. “Kian?”
“Keep walking,” Kian gritted his teeth. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the pushchair so the bright flashes wouldn’t frighten Sierra.
“Mum, I don’t like it,” Lola whimpered.
“It’s OK, sweetheart,” Cate murmured, tucking her daughter into her side. “We’re almost at the car, we’ll be safe there.”
Kian’s Range Rover had blacked-out windows so Cate urged the children to go with their dad. She would meet them back at the house.
“Drive safe,” she mouthed to Kian before she climbed into her own empty car.
It was the first time they’d had press intrusion like that since they’d moved to Seattle when Cate was five months pregnant with Sierra. It was one of the things she loved most about Seattle; that they could finally be just like any other normal family. Had the “alleged” sex tape put all of that in jeopardy?
When she got back to the house which was fortunately in a gated community and so free from paparazzi, Kian and the children were waiting for her by the front door. “Why aren’t you inside?”
“We’re going to the Taco Shack?” Mateo clapped his hands excitedly.
Cate looked at Kian, “we can’t. What about the paparazzi?”
Kian frowned. “I’m not going to let them dictate our lives, angel. I promised the children that we could go to the Taco Shack tonight so that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Cate still didn’t look convinced. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll talk to Heidi. She’ll make sure that nobody disturbs us.” Heidi was the manager of the Taco Shack and one of their friends.
Heidi gave them a private booth towards
the back of the Shack and Cate felt like she could relax a little. “Do you want your usual, little man?” Heidi ruffled Mateo’s hair.
“He’ll have the veggie tacos,” Kian said.
Cate raised her eyebrows, “but he always has the fish?”
Lola rolled her eyes at her brother, “yeah until last week when he suddenly realised where the fish in his tacos actually come from.”
As they walked back along the front, Cate sighed, “I can’t remember the last time we did something as simple as went out for dinner as a family. It’s so nice to be out of the Stepping Out bubble.”
“Have you heard from Declan at all?” Kian asked.
Cate shook her head. “I assume I’ll get a call from the producers at some point. I’m sure they’ll be furious with me for quitting. Have you heard from Nico?”
Kian nodded, “they want us to put out a statement saying that it isn’t us on the tape.”
Cate shook her head, “I’m not going to throw my sister under a bus, Kian. This could destroy her whole career. She’s worked too hard.”
“It’s what Ruby wants; Nico was very definite about that.” He gestured to Lola and Mateo who were walking a couple of steps ahead of them. “We’ve got a lot to protect too. Once whoever’s got the tape realises that it isn’t professional footballer Kian Warner and his wife, Stepping Out contestant Cate Warner on that tape, they might just hand it over?”
CHAPTER 17
When all of the children were finally asleep, Kian tugged Cate into the bedroom. “Fuck,” he grunted in a low voice. He pressed her back against the locked door. “I’ve been dying to do this all day.”
Holding her wrists firm, he pinned them to the door at the sides of her head. His cock burrowed into the sweet crevice between her parted thighs. Her pulse skyrocketed as his lips burned a slow, languorous trail up her goose bump riddled skin. “Kian,” a soft whimper fell from her parted lips.
“I’m right here, angel,” his chest rubbed up against the thin cotton of her t-shirt.
Kian tugged her wrists higher above her head; Cate arched her back, pushing her soft breasts towards him. They were straining against the front of her t-shirt. Kian gripped the hem of her t-shirt and pulled it up, the backs of his fingers inflaming her already heated skin. In the dim light, her bare breasts looked magnificent. Even without his touch, her pink nipples unfurled for him. He danced his fingers across her flesh, feeling her breath hitch in her throat. Her hips writhed desperately against his jutting cock.
Kian tugged on her nipple, dragging a guttural cry from her throat.
He bent his head and sucked her swollen flesh into the wet heat of his mouth, torturing her over and over again with lashes of his velvet tongue.
Kian slid his free hand slowly down her flat stomach to the waistband of her shorts. He needed to feel how greedy she was for him. The scent of her sweet, feminine arousal already tinged the cool air of their bedroom. Kian slid his hand further down, his lips curving up into a smile around her breast as he felt the first dark whorls of damp hair brush against his fingertips.
He traced his thumb down her creamy slit; she was practically dripping with want. “Fuck,” Kian let her nipple pop out of his mouth.
“Stop,” Cate cried, her wrists struggling against his firm grip.
As much as he didn’t want to, Kian stilled his hand between her legs. He looked up at Cate.
“I can’t do this,” Cate sobbed a little. As soon as he let go of her wrists, she tugged her t-shirt down over her swollen breasts and readjusted her shorts.
Kian couldn’t hide his shock, “don’t lie to me, angel. I could feel exactly how much you wanted this dripping down your thighs.”
“You don’t have to be so crude,” Cate reached up to slap his face but he was quicker, catching her wrist again.
He wrapped an arm across her back, tugging her against him. “Let me go,” Cate struggled. “I’ve got a headache.” Kian could tell that she was lying to him but he didn’t understand why.
“I’ll get you some paracetamol.”
“You don’t understand, do you?” Cate cried. “I don’t want to have sex with you tonight.”
“You might want to let your tits know that since I can still see them poking through your t-shirt?”
“There’s supposed to be more to our relationship than just sex!” Cate yelled.
Kian snorted with anger, “I fucking know that, Cate.”
He stormed into the bathroom before he said something else he would later regret, slamming the door loudly behind him. Fists clenched, he was so fucking angry. He slammed on the shower; his cock was so fucking hard it barely moved against his stomach. The rage and arousal were one-upping each other until he felt like he was going to fucking burst. He needed his wife but right now, he didn’t trust himself to be around her. He stripped off his clothes, leaving them crumpled up on the floor in a fuck-you to Cate, who was a neat-freak and stepped inside.
He and Cate had always been so connected – she was his first half – it messed with his head, the one on top of his neck and shoulders, when there was something wrong with them and he couldn’t figure out what it was. He wasn’t pissed off that she didn’t want to have sex tonight – for fuck’s sake, even he wasn’t that much of a Neanderthal, it was more how she’d looked at him. It was like she was disappointed with him somehow.
He watched his dick droop pathetically between his legs and then turned off the water.
When he walked back into the bedroom, Cate was curled up in bed with her back to him.
“I’m not going to lie and say that sex isn’t important to me, angel.” He could feel her stiffen as if she thought he was going to make another move on her. Kian flopped on to his back and rested his hands underneath his head, staring up at the ceiling. “Sex is how we fight, it’s how we make-up. It’s how I show you that you are the most important person to me in the whole fucking world. When I’m buried so deep inside you that I don’t know where I end and you begin… it’s heaven, Cate.”
Cate lay there in silence. How could she explain to Kian that she felt the same way? There was no greater ecstasy than feeling him so deep between her legs that it bordered on painful. There was no greater taste than his sweat-soaked skin. How could she tell him that she wanted him so badly and not at all, that she craved and feared his touch all at the same time? Sex felt like the most addictive, destructive drug. She could still feel the emptiness in her womb where her baby should have been. She could still see the blood-splattered toilet bowl.
The final sperm count test might have been zero but Cate had seen those odds before. What were the odds of getting pregnant the very first time you had sex? But that’s what happened with Lola. The contraceptive pill was supposed to be ninety nine percent effective if used perfectly. Cate felt like the remaining one percent was just for her since she’d conceived both Mateo and Sierra while she’d been taking it.
It wasn’t just the miscarriage though. The ordeal with the “alleged” sex tape had transformed something that was supposed to be sacred and intimate with her husband into cheap, tawdry thrills to be exploited by unscrupulous websites and their grubby customers. It didn’t matter anymore that it wasn’t her and Kian on that tape. It still felt like something dirty and to be ashamed of. The line between what she and Kian did in the privacy of their bedroom and online pornography had become so blurred.
CHAPTER 18
Kian had already left for training when Cate woke up the next morning. As she stumbled bleary-eyed into the bathroom, her cell phone rang. It was Declan.
“Will you meet me at the studio? I’ve got a new song.”
With her and Kian being in a fight, the very last thing she wanted to do was learn how to jive.
Cate thought about 33 Rocks and all the good they could do with another week’s payment. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“What’s the song?” Cate asked as she walked into the studio. Declan was there on his own.
He h
anded Cate one of the earbuds from his iPod. It was “Shake it Off” by Taylor Swift.
“What do you reckon?” Declan grinned, his foot already tapping along to the beat.
Cate’s lips twitched into a smile, “it’s one of my favourite songs.”
“Come on then,” Declan said, “we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
As the sky turned navy-blue, Cate lay back on the cold floor of the studio. “I don’t know if I can get through the whole routine. I’m exhausted.”
Declan flopped down next to her, “I can make it easier for you if you want.”
It probably wasn’t very sensible to try and do such a high-octane jive just two weeks after she’d had a miscarriage. “No,” Cate sat up and rubbed her aching calf muscles. She didn’t feel like being sensible. She thought about Annie and Michel’s jive on Saturday night’s show. Annie had looked like she was having so much fun out there on that dance floor. With everything that had happened, with the miscarriage and the sex tape, Cate wanted that feeling too even if it was only for ninety seconds. “Let’s try it again.”
When Cate got home, the children were already asleep. Kian passed her in the hallway, his arms full with a couple of pillows and a duvet. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to sleep in the guest bedroom tonight.” Cate heard him mutter under his breath, “so I don’t accidentally grope you in the middle of the night.”
“Kian,” Cate lowered her voice so she wouldn’t wake up the children. “Please don’t be like that. We need to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk,” Kian grunted. “I just want to go to sleep.”
Cate desperately fought the urge to follow him into the guest bedroom. She ached with how much she wanted him but what if she freaked out again?
Instead, she walked into the empty bedroom and changed into her favourite plaid pyjamas. They used to be Kian’s but she’d co-opted them when she was pregnant with Lola. Kian liked to sleep naked anyway. They were lovely and soft from having been washed so many times.