Throughout the day, Kevin managed to keep me from napping and screwing up my body clock by thoroughly fucking me in every available space in the suite for hours and hours. I woke up deliciously sore and a little groggy, not sure if I was jet-lagged or just tired from a day of fucking. Room service arrived and I didn’t even venture out of bed to have breakfast. Sitting cross-legged, I inhaled a bowl of fruit before moving on to a plate of French toast. Kevin was at least being civilized and eating at the table in the corner of our room. He’d booked me the adjoining suite but I hadn’t even got to move my bags into it, let alone myself.
Kevin flicked through the paper that room service had brought along with the food, scanning the articles with the enthusiasm of a man reading merely to keep himself entertained during breakfast. I was keeping myself entertained by watching Kevin’s bare chest, occasionally getting distracted by his abs whenever he lifted his coffee cup to his lips.
“Fuck!” Kevin’s entire body stiffened and his eyes drew into angry slits. Reaching for his phone, he scanned through his contacts and dialled. I watched him as he waited for the longest time and with each second that passed, he seemed to grow more agitated. Finally, he smiled, but it was empty, an auto-pilot response that did absolutely nothing to disguise the underlying tension.
“Hey, did I wake you?” His smile quickly morphed back to the frown and I looked at the clock next to the bed, it wasn’t early by any means. Kevin looked apologetic. “Shit, I’m sorry. I forgot you had a concert last night. I guess you haven’t seen the news yet then?”
A prickly feeling tingled the back of my neck and without seeing the newspaper, I knew who Kevin was talking to and what he was talking about. I reached for my orange juice, the freshly squeezed juice making my jaw tighten but at least it helped with my suddenly Sahara dry mouth.
“I’ll get Savannah on it too. I’m sorry, Hayley. This…” Whatever he was about to say was cut off by Hayley on the other line and I suddenly felt like I was watching Kevin from behind thick glass, a voyeur peeking in on a private moment. I put the juice back on the tray and moved it to the side. Uncrossing my legs, I made to walk past Kevin and into the living area of the suite.
Kevin caught my hand and pulled me onto his lap, kissing the inside of my wrist as an apology flashed in his eyes. I looked down at the table to the newspaper and it was like déjà vu. Taking up half the page was a pic of me, arms and legs hooked around Kevin like a crazed Koala bear and a smile brighter than the northern lights spread across my face. The headline made me wish I’d gone easy on the French toast. “While Hayley’s away, Kevin will play?”
I could feel the colour drain from my face as I skimmed the first few paragraphs. Words such as “indecent displays of affection” and “grinding brazenly” were used to describe how I’d greeted Kevin at the airport. Kevin felt me tense and he pulled me tighter to him. “I’ve gotta go. Keep me updated, okay? I’ll do the same.” I didn’t hear any more of the conversation; I just heard the phone thump then slide on the table. Kevin took my face in his hands. “Talk to me, Claire.”
My hands shook as I tried to brush a strand of hair from my face, struggling to swallow. “They think you’re a cheater and I’m a skank. They’ll get the other pics and then…”
Kevin’s mouth drew into a thin line. “You are not a skank.” The words were clipped and spoken through clenched teeth.
“That’s not what the world thinks. It’s right there in black and white. And once they start digging, they’ll find the pics from the tracks. It’ll be everywhere. I’ll be everywhere.” I needed some air, some space. I struggled to move off Kevin’s lap but he held me tighter. “Kev, please, let me go.”
He released his hold on me and I stood and paced the room. “No one is going to put anything together. No one will know you’re the girl in the South African pics. If anything, they’ll just think I’m a man-whore.”
I appreciated his attempt at lightening the mood but I was too wired. When the pics from the track first hit the media, Kevin had been so mad he was nearly levitating. The whole relationship with Hayley had been orchestrated to protect me from the press and now the very thing he’d arranged to keep me safe from the tabloids was the very thing that had me splashed over the news in the worst possible way. I didn’t understand his change of direction.
When I stopped pacing, Kevin’s hands rested on my shoulders and he squeezed. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll release a statement and Hayley will too. We’ll even leak a selfie or two. We’ve taken a ton in the last couple of weeks. Once they see we’re still a happy “couple”—Kevin punctuated couple with air quotes, “They’ll move on.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Until I’d seen it with my own eyes, I never fully comprehended what Kevin’s life was like. To me he was just Kevin, my best friend, my person. The guy I’d grown up with, gone to school with, told my deepest secrets to, and later given myself so intimately to. Why people would mob us just to touch him seemed insane to me. It was like he wasn’t a person to them but an object, something to be owned if only for a minute. They idolized him, scrutinized him and invaded his space and privacy and would stop at nothing to have a piece of him. The reality of Kevin’s life hit me and if I was honest with myself, Kevin’s world was more than a little scary to me. Kevin’s reassurances weren’t doing much to ease my mind either.
Not when he still looked like he wanted to throttle someone.
Chapter Thirteen
The last couple of days had been spent hiding out in Kevin’s suite. We’d managed a short trip to do some shopping for the Oscars and the premiere of Kevin’s latest movie the day after I arrived and I was pleased to discover that Sebastian was not on duty twenty-four seven, especially when Kevin insisted on taking me lingerie shopping. I didn’t even miss him at lunch when an overzealous fan of Hayley’s told me what she thought of me in no uncertain terms. Let me tell you, Hayley had a fiercely loyal following and by the time I left, I was feeling like a real boyfriend-stealer despite the fact that Kevin and Hayley’s relationship was fake.
Kevin had tried to step in and defend me, but I’d shot him a look, and although he wasn’t pleased he’d backed off. After that, we decided to lay low for a few days and I’ll admit it wasn’t a hardship, since those days were spent naked in bed with Kevin. Today though, we’d ventured out to the studio, and it was refreshing being in a place where no one cared who Kevin was, and even more so who I was. I guess when you worked with actors all day the novelty wore off fast.
As we walked through the door to the makeup room, I saw a petite girl struggling with boxes piled to nearly face height. “Here let me help you with those.” Kevin took the boxes from the girl with the coolest hair I’d ever seen. Her blonde tresses reached to just below her shoulder blades but it looked like she’d dipped the strands into rainbow dye up to chin length—soft pale colours that blended into each other and looked like a unicorn tail framed her face. I’d never be able to pull of anything like that with my hair. Besides not being brave or funky enough, my line of work didn’t allow for it. Clients unfortunately wouldn’t take multi-coloured hair seriously.
Setting the boxes on the closest make-up station, Kevin put his arm around my shoulder. “Claire, this is Shelby. Shelby, this is Claire.”
“Hi.” I smiled.
Shelby ignored my outstretched hand and placed her hands on my cheeks. For a minute there I thought she was going to kiss me but then she moved my head from side to side and inspected me with a critical eye.
“Oh my God, your cheekbones are amazing, and your eyes, I’ve never seen eyes this colour. Well not ones that haven’t been photoshopped anyway. You have to let me make you up.” Her finger moved to my chin and she tilted my head up. “When Adrian sees you, he’s going to flip. Are you an actress? Tell me you’re an actress.”
“Shell?” Kevin interrupted her and her eyes widened and she clamped a hand over her mouth.
“Shit! I’m so sorry. I’m going on and on. I’m not
saying you need make-up. You’re pretty freaking amazing without a stitch of the stuff but having a canvas like this and not being able to…” She stopped talking and looked from me to Kevin. “I know you’re with Hayley but you two would make amazing babies. I’m talking babies that would make women’s ovaries explode.”
I blushed furiously and Kevin cleared his throat and we both did a terrible job of trying to look around the room casually. Finally, Shelby seemed to snap out of her crazy ramblings because she blinked a couple of times and then rubbed what I now noticed to be a rather large belly. “I’m sorry. It’s the hormones. Or at least it’s partly hormones.” She pointed to her mouth. “No filter. Anyway.” She waved her hand. “When I’m like this I want everyone to have babies, you know.” Her hand moved back to her belly and she outlined a figure eight over and over with her nails. “This is number four. I just look at Jamie and I’m pregnant. I swear, one of these days I’m going to have to ship him off to a different state so I can give my vagina a rest.”
Kevin barked out a laugh and leaned over to hug Shelby, her belly keeping him almost at arm’s length. “You make my day. Every single day.”
I smiled. I could see that. She had a glow about her. Whether it was the pregnancy or not I couldn’t say since I’d only been in her company for less than five minutes, but I’d bet just about anything that Shelby was pretty much like this all the time. She had an aura about her that made you want to soak up some of her awesomeness.
“We’ve gotta go but I’ll see you in a couple hours.” He kissed her cheek.
She tapped his in return. “Highlight of my day getting to make you up.” Shelby winked at me. “He’d be nothing without me turning this mug into a heartthrob.”
“That’s the truth. A rub for good luck?” Kevin asked.
She cocked a hip. Or what I assumed to be a hip because she was all belly. “What could you possibly need luck for?”
“I’m about to introduce Claire to Frank.”
With all I’d heard about Frank, I was not looking forward to this introduction at all. Why I needed to meet him at all was a mystery, but Kevin was being extremely tight lipped about what we were doing here today and for now I was trying to be patient.
“Ah,” she nodded her head and pushed out her belly, “rub away.”
Kevin’s gentle hand reached out and he rubbed Shelby’s belly. Her eyebrow quirked and Kevin’s grin just about wrapped around his face as she raised her hand for a high-five, which Kevin met.
“Every time.”
Shelby answered my questioning gaze. “She kicks every time he rubs my belly. Without fail.”
“That’s because she’s got great taste,” Kevin quipped.
“That’s because she can’t see you,” Shelby and I said in unison. We both burst out laughing and it was my turn to be high-fived.
Kevin raised his hands above his head and backed out the door. “I’m smart enough to know when I’m outnumbered.”
“Yeah, three to one,” Shelby retorted.
Kevin pointed his finger at us. “Hey, she’s on my side. Right, Little Bean?”
Shelby rubbed her belly again. “She’s hardly a bean anymore.”
“She’ll always be Little Bean to me.”
* * *
I was quiet as we walked across the massive building, which was about three times the size of a large warehouse. There was so much to take in and see but I was too distracted thinking about how tender Kevin was when he’d rubbed Shelby’s belly and the look of genuine affection on his face. I thought about telling him Kim had asked me to be her gestational surrogate. It would be so easy to offload on him, to be able to tell him what I was thinking and voice my fears but now was not the time. With his current film about to wrap-up production and the Oscar awards only days away, I didn’t want to steal his buzz.
If I couldn’t carry Kim’s baby a part of me would never forgive myself and I selfishly didn’t want Kevin to see me differently. The way he saw me made me want to be a better person and in this instance, I didn’t know if I could be that person.
A guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a headset walked over to us, interrupting my inner debate, or should I say my one-sided ramble. “Frank said to suit up. You’ve got an hour and then we’re back to shooting. He also said this makes you even.”
“Hardly,” Kevin scoffed. “But I’ll settle it with him.”
I looked sidelong at Kevin and raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like a story.”
“Believe me, Claire-Bear, you don’t want to know.”
We reached the change rooms and Kevin and I went into separate cubicles. I would have loved to explore the possibility of a quickie with Kevin, but other than the area being about as small as an aeroplane toilet, we were being very careful not to blow his relationship cover with Hayley, which unfortunately meant no public sex.
I changed into a black one-piece that made me look like I was a badass sci-fi chick and met Kevin outside. All I’d been told this morning was that I was going to need to change when we got here and that I was gonna love it. I was just about to ask Kevin again what he had planned when he cringed. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Well fuck me purple. If you’re not tapping that, please say I can.” A guy wider than the cubicle I’d just stepped out of, with bulging biceps and thighs that looked big enough to crack watermelons, barrelled down on us. Ginger hair and a matching ginger beard that reached mid-way down his chest clashed with his bright pink shirt. A tattoo of a bunny peeked out the neck, the fluffy brown tail like an unsightly mole.
“Frank, this is Claire. Claire, this is Frank, our set engineer.”
Frank held out a hand to me while he looked me up and down and I felt like boiling my skin in acid. I shook his calloused palm and resisted the urge to rub my hand against my suit once he released me.
We followed Frank to a set covered in green material. Even the padded wall was fitted in green fabric. “What’s going on?” It was hard for me to keep the wary tone out my voice.
“You’ll see soon enough.”
I narrowed my eyes at Kevin and pursed my lips. Kevin’s chuckle vibrated through me and made me feel things in my fun parts that I should not have been thinking about. I didn’t have much time to dwell on said fun feelings because lights came on and cameras were positioned, and Frank was heading towards me with a thick black rope and a salacious grin. Kevin stepped in front of me and reached for the rope.
“I’ll hook her up.”
Frank held onto the rope like a kid hanging onto his favourite toy.
“It’s not happening, Frank.” Kevin grabbed the rope.
“You’re no fucking fun, Kev.” Frank released his hold and stalked away to the rig hanging to the left of the stage. Kevin attached the snap hook to my suit and I was suddenly very grateful Frank hadn’t been this close to my intimate parts. After what he’d pulled with Lara, just thinking about it made me want to vomit a little in my mouth. Kevin repeated the process with his own suit and I really started to get nervous when the headset guy moved into position behind the camera.
“Why is there a cameraman?” I looked around to make sure no one was paying attention and then leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Kev, I swear if you don’t tell me what’s going on in the next six seconds, I’m returning that corset you insisted on buying and the only thing you’ll see me in from now on is sweats and fluffy socks.” I offered a silent prayer that he would take my threat seriously. My cleavage looked absolutely amazing in the corset, giving my modest-sized boobs a bit more oomph—well a lot more oomph if truth be told, and I was kind of looking forward to seeing Kevin’s face later this evening.
Kevin’s soft breath whispered over my ear. “I’ll take you any way I can get you, Claire-Bear, but I’ll give.” I blushed and he moved back, giving me his explanation in a normal voice. “Today, you get to play at being a stuntman. I’m going to show you a couple of tricks and you’re gonna get to try them out. Victor is going to film it so you g
et to see what you look like.”
I looked at Victor, who was busy fiddling with his camera, then back to Kevin, beaming at him. “Are you serious?”
He took my hand. “C’mon.”
I could barely contain my enthusiasm. Not only was I going to get to watch Kevin in action but I was also going to get to play along.
The rope attached to our suits kept us tethered to a pulley-like system running along the beams above our heads and moved as we walked. When we reached Frank, he gave us some brief instructions and told us what we’d be acting out. The basic idea was to run along the padded green screen so that the final result would look like a fancy stunt where we ran along an alley wall.
Since Kevin had performed this stunt just last week, he went first to show me what to do. He made a big production of stretching and flexing his muscles which made me laugh and distracted me from Frank’s ogling. At a signal from Victor, Kevin nodded his head, his gaze fixed on a spot in the distance and his face grew intense. He crouched down then took off at a sprint, the muscles in his biceps flexing underneath his suit. About mid-way across the room he was suddenly airborne, then he turned his body, running against the screen as he propelled forward. God help me, but I was so grateful I was wearing black because any other colour would have shown the wet spot.
When he landed with two feet on the ground, he beamed at me. “Your turn.”
I looked at Frank holding onto the rope that I now realised was used to lift Kevin in the air and chewed the inside of my lip, trying to figure out how this was going to work.
“C’mon, Claire-Bear. Just run as fast as you can and when you feel Frank tug on the rope, you’re going to turn your body and run against the wall. Don’t be a wuss,” he teased.
I was doubtful I’d come close to replicating what Kevin had just done but I wasn’t going to let him see me chicken out. I walked to the spot, fighting back the urge to crack my knuckles and pop my neck; it wouldn’t do to be over-confident.
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