She's a Star (a Hollywood Hotwife story) (13 page)

Liona smiled at me, knowing that in all of this, I was potentially the damaged party. She said, “It’s just the whole soap opera surrounding Hollywood, right? And Hayley’s close to being a major cast member.”

I shrugged. “Reporters always did make up a story if the truth wasn’t exciting enough, huh?”

“Right,” Jake nodded, and glanced at Liona again as though checking that their strategy for this meeting was on track. Then he said, “We did talk to some of the people from the studio this morning, and some of Aaron’s people, too….”

Liona jumped in, saying almost apologetically. “They’re kinda of the opinion that all the talk about an affair…well, it might actually help build interest in the movie.”

I looked over at Hayley, and she raised her eyebrows at me in a kind of “well, what d’you know?” expression.

“Okay….” Hayley said, “So what does it mean for us?”

Jake said, “They wanted us to sound you guys out…about maybe going along with it. You know—making people out there think it’s possible there really is some kind of affair going on.”

Hayley laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile myself. “You’re saying we fake an affair to help promote the movie?” she said.

“I don’t know…” Jake searched for words. “It’s the kind of thing where…you know…maybe you don’t necessarily fake an affair, but maybe you don’t do certain things that might definitively rule one out as possible.”

“Meaning?”

Jake gave an awkward laugh. “You know…maybe you avoid being pictured in a loving embrace with your husband for a little while.”

Hayley put her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. “Seriously?”

“I don’t see a problem,” I said. “It’s not like I’m particularly keen to be photographed anyway.”

The pretty blonde agent flashed me a supportive—and perhaps grateful—smile, then said, “Aaron’s team were wondering if he might meet you for lunch tomorrow, Hayley. You know, to talk about it all.”

Hayley looked at me, and I felt the faintest flicker of jealousy at the thought of her meeting her co-star with all this talk of an affair floating around the airwaves. “Alone?” she asked.

Liona said, “If that would be okay.”

“I’m guessing a few paparazzi would be quietly invited to witness it?” she said with a slight edge to her voice.

“That would be my guess, too,” the agent nodded.

Hayley looked at me. “It would probably be okay,” I said. “Just let them have their fun. We want a successful movie, right?”

“Right, but—”

I smiled. “It’s not going to affect us, is it? I know you love me, and not him, and you know it, too. So meet him for lunch.”

I felt a stirring in between my thighs—this argument was one of the arguments when considering the possibility of my fantasy, and it seemed to parallel this idea of a fake affair closely.

“We’d be meeting with a few photographers able to monitor what’s going on, right?” Hayley said. “So no doubt I’ll have to at least look as though I’m flirting with him, or it won’t fit with the narrative, huh?”

Jake nodded, but said, “It doesn’t have to be much. Just laugh at his jokes, smile at his compliments. The press will select the pictures that fit the story they want to tell—so if there’s a brief moment where you’re gazing longingly into his eyes, they’ll find it.”

“Right.”

“Just don’t look miserable through the whole meal,” Liona said. “That’s the only thing that would wreck it.”

My wife looked at me again.

“Why not?” I said.

Chapter Eleven

I was at work the day that the pseudo-affair started. It felt almost like a normal day, other than that little flutter in my heart every time I paused for breath, from knowing that my beautiful wife was meeting with Aaron Simpson, with the express purpose of making the world believe they were dating.

That afternoon, I found myself checking the web for any possible media mentions of the lunch meeting—I had no clue how fast it would take for the paparazzi to record the noonish rendezvous and get their pictures to some form of news organization.

Then, just before I headed home, I found a single article on the website of
Us Weekly
: “Has Aaron Simpson Found Love With His New Co-Star?”

There was nothing but a few paragraphs in the article itself, stating that “Hollywood Heartthrob” Aaron Simpson had been caught in an intimate embrace with “Gorgeous Redhead” Hayley Martin while enjoying a “secret” lunch meeting out in West Hollywood. But one thing I did read—that seemed to set fire to my insides as I read it—was that she’d removed her wedding ring during her lunch date.

“…And Hayley was seen without her wedding ring—a sure sign her marriage is heading for the rocks!” the article helpfully blurted out.

There was an image showing the front page of the
Us Weekly
print magazine—dated the following day—which was dominated by a picture of Aaron and Hayley together while they were at the movie premiere. A smaller picture inset on the page showed Hayley and Aaron at the restaurant where they were having lunch earlier that day, and sure enough they were holding each other and kissing fairly plainly for all to see.

The magazine’s cover line screamed out in bold yellow lettering: “Aaron Finds Love With Beautiful Co-Star!” and beneath it came the explanation: “Hollywood stud in steamy affair with his MARRIED co-star—and he just can’t get enough of her!”

There really were precious few details other than Hayley’s age, 29, and Aaron’s age, 41, the fact that they’d just starred in a “steamy” prison drama together that was about to hit the theaters—and the invitation to pick up a copy of the latest issue of
Us Weekly
magazine on the newsstands the following day.

I glanced around my desk to make sure no one was looking my way, and for a moment or two just gazed at the picture of my wife in the arms of another man. They did look good together—and it wasn’t just the fact that they were both very good-looking members of humanity. They really seemed to have chemistry.

It was fully believable in that picture that my wife was having an affair with her co-star.

I closed the article, but then set up a personal Google News alert to let me know when any more news stories about Hayley and Aaron came out online.

I was shaking a little as I left the office and drove up to the hotel. I couldn’t get that image out of my head, even though it was supposed to have been faked for the benefit of this new marketing campaign. Hayley really did look happy fooling around with her co-star. Like she’d now made it, and everyone would soon know how talented and how beautiful she was—and she was getting to hang out with a man she’d fantasized about since she was a teenager, a man who we knew probably wanted to embark on an actual affair with her.

In that photo, she was lapping up the adulation of her former pin-up, and secretly, the adoration of the world at large.

On the way home, my cell phone went a little crazy with all the emails coming in from Google News. I didn’t glance at any of the headlines until I was safely stopped and parked, but I knew what they were about. The “secret affair” had gone viral, and the world was lapping it up.

When I got to the hotel, there were photographers waiting outside the entrance. They took a few shots of my car as I drove down the ramp to the parking lot. Jesus.

My heart was thumping in the elevator up to our suite. Inside, there was Hayley, lounging on the massive bed in our suite, a smile plastered all over her face as she flicked through the gossip TV shows. They all seemed to be featuring that
Us Weekly
cover and the single paparazzi shot the magazine had so far released.

“Can you believe it?” she beamed as she saw me, and leapt up to greet me. “Everyone thinks I’m dating Aaron Simpson!”

“So how did it go?” I asked as she flung her arms around me and kissed me.

“Great—he’s such a sweetheart,” she said. I noticed that she was wearing her wedding ring, whatever had been the case during her lunch meeting. “I can’t believe someone like that really…well, wants me.”

“You know? I can believe it.”

“It’s all happening so fast.”

“So you guys had a nice lunch together?”

“Yeah. It’s a nice place. We mostly talked about how it was going to be, and he was telling me how to deal with, you know, the whole media circus.”

“That’s nice of him.”

She smiled. “He said we’d have to do a certain amount of stuff to maintain the whole charade, and I guess we do have to make it seem real.”

I looked her in the eye and said earnestly, “You do what you need to do with him, sweetie, as long as you come back to me afterward. You know that.”

She gave an appreciative nod. “I’m not going to sleep with him,” she insisted. “But I might have to do whatever it takes so we seem like a real couple.”

“You kissed him today. You enjoyed it?”

“It was just acting.”

“You can still enjoy it,” I insisted.

She gave me a guilty smile, hinting that she had enjoyed it, that there was nothing she could do to avoid enjoying it, whether it was acting or not.

“You just need to have some fun with him,” I suggested, and could feel my cock growing hard at the thought of allowing Hayley to play lovebirds with another man, even if she wasn’t going to take it all the way.

She kissed me, showing gratitude as well as affection. “He’s so down-to-earth, sweetie. You’d like him if you really got to know him.”

“I suppose that’s a little out of the question now that I’m playing the part of the spurned husband,” I joked. Still, my head was spinning from it all.

There was a bleep-bleep as Hayley received a text message. She pulled it out to show me that it was from none other than Aaron Simpson:

>You were absolutely adorable today. I can’t wait to spend more time with you. xx

I couldn’t deny that there was a little pang of jealousy to see the kisses he left at the end of his text message to her. But I could see how it made Hayley feel, and the whole sense that she was going on a wonderful thrill ride was somewhat intoxicating to me.

“You are okay with all this, aren’t you?” she said.

“Of course,” I replied. “This is all about your career now. You’ve got to go for it, I understand that.”

She gave me a glance that featured some trepidation, even pity. “The whole world’s going to think I don’t really love you, that I don’t really want you any more.”

I shrugged. “What does the world matter? We’ll get through this…you’ll have a little fun…the movie opens this weekend… and then we’ll move on to the next thing.”

*

Lying in bed that night, unable to sleep for everything that was going through my mind, I found myself thinking about how it had felt when Hayley and I had started dating in New York, back when she’d still been a college girl and I’d been a young law school graduate.

I remembered how long it had taken for us to get from the kind of dates that could have been enjoyed by fully platonic friends, to the first time we’d actually made love.

I’d gone along with her pace, never wanting to force her to go further than she was comfortable with going. And she didn’t ever make it seem like she was rejecting my advances, but somehow it took us a while to get to that first kiss. And from that first kiss, it was a couple of months before I first took off her bra, and saw those beautiful breasts of hers, before I kissed my way down her shapely stomach, and she reached down to pop the fly on her jeans.

I remembered how nervous and yet excited we both seemed as I’d first seen her in her panties, then removed them to kiss my way up her bare legs for my first taste of her womanhood.

The giddy feelings we’d both shared during those early explorations, the intense arousal as we’d taken each next step—it had all settled down as familiarity had crept in, as we both knew we could just quickly strip down and take each other every time we felt like it, sex still seeming enjoyable, but not that out-and-out incredible experience.

But now, I felt certain that my beautiful wife would get to experience those giddy feelings again, and this time with a stranger she’d been dreaming about since she dreamt about any men.

The night after I learned that the world was about to know of her adultery, I perceived that giddy energy about her again, the exhilaration from the start of a new relationship. Though I wasn’t experiencing that directly myself, the way it presented in Hayley made me feel as near enough to it as I could have, without cheating on my wife.

It hadn’t been long before she’d discovered how hard I was simply to perceive her like that, all flushed and smiley. She ended up taking me in her mouth as I watched the TV anchorwoman posing as many questions as she could about what was going on between Hayley Martin and Aaron Simpson.

And seeing that one image of Hayley in passionate embrace with another man, seeing that she looked exactly as I’d remembered her from the time we’d only been as far as the kissing stage, I found myself wondering how long my cute redhead of a wife would be able to hold out before all that kissing with Aaron would lead to her allowing him to fondle her breasts, and to pressing his hard cock against her body, and to pulling off her top and her bra. To going all the way.