Sliding Into Home (23 page)

I was ecstatic. The only downside to the trip was that Joe would be there, watching over me yet again. If he saw Hank so soon after seeing him in Cabo he would definitely know something was up.

Plus, Bridget was coming on the trip, too, so I knew I was going to get busted. My only option was to tell Bridget about Hank and
hope for the best. This was a good opportunity to test our friendship and see if she would rat me out. Also, I figured if I told her before she started asking Joe and me a bunch of questions like “Who is this guy?” and “Where is Kendra going?” just maybe it could work.

When we got to Atlantic City I sat her down in my hotel room and broke the news. “Listen,” I said, slightly fearful of her reaction. “I met someone.”

“You did,” she said in a less surprised voice than I expected.

“I’ve been seeing him for a while,” I told her. “And I love him.”

“Wow,” she said, sounding surprised now. “I had a feeling you maybe met someone, but ‘love’—that’s big.”

“I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a weird second or two of silence as Bridget collected her thoughts. Before she could say anything else, I told her a little bit about Hank and wrapped the conversation quickly so we could move on with our day. I was scared that she would run off and tell Hef, but I wasn’t going to ask her to lie for me. At that point I was willing to roll the dice and see what happened.

Hank came to our appearance that night, and then back at the hotel, when Joe was out of sight, we kissed and held hands. It felt good to be a real couple in front of Bridget, who was forced to see our PDA since she and I were sharing a hotel suite. She thought we were cute, and she really liked Hank. It was important to me that she saw how great we were together because I didn’t want her to think I was messing around just for fun. I was serious about this relationship and she picked up on that right away.

Joe picked up on it, too, but that didn’t stop us.

Hank lived only an hour or so away from Atlantic City, and he really wanted me to see his apartment. After all that time I had never seen his place—and you can learn a lot about a guy by seeing his home. I really wanted to go.

We snuck out of the hotel in the middle of the night and drove to Philadelphia. Since he was a football player, I didn’t expect the apartment to be very homey. I thought he’d have a big over-the-top place with a huge TV and not much else, but he actually had a comfortable and classy apartment. I could tell he was a very down-to-earth guy. He was also very organized; everything was in its place, and his bed was made. He’d probably only made it because he knew I was coming, but I still thought it said a lot about him. The best part was that I found out he had a bunch of
Star Wars
toys, and Transformers—he was a big kid. I thought that was so attractive.

Hank and I slept there that night and drove back to Atlantic City at the crack of dawn so we could be in our separate rooms before everyone woke up. Again, waking up and knowing we had to say good-bye was tough. Again, I cried. We hugged for hours this time, but I still didn’t want to let go. And just in case, I left a pair of my underwear in his apartment to mark my territory.

When I got back to the Mansion, Mary, Hef’s assistant, called me into her office. Joe had figured everything out and had told her about Hank. He was worried that between Cabo and Atlantic City we might have been photographed together. We could play the “family friend” card the first time, but if photos turned up from both weekends, Hef and
Playboy
would come off looking bad.

Mary sat me down and asked me what was going on. She was like a mom to all of us girls, and I loved her to death. There was no way I
could lie to her. So I told her the truth—sort of. I said that I had met a guy and that I thought I wanted him to be my boyfriend. That was close enough to the truth—and just enough to get me kicked out of the Mansion.

Mary was sweet, and deep down she probably knew it was only a matter of time before this happened. She wasn’t mad at me, but she did tell me that I had to tell Hef. I walked up to Hef’s room with my head held high, but I was nervous about his reaction. I never wanted to disrespect Hef. He had done so much for me, and I owed it to him to make sure I never made him look bad.

I knocked on his door and he invited me in. He was sitting on his bed looking through photos for the centerfold, and I hopped up next to him.

“I have something I need to tell you,” I said, pushing some of the photos out of the way so he could focus.

“What’s up, doll?” he replied.

“I met someone and I think I like him,” I said, my voice cracking ever so slightly. “He’s a really good guy. I think I want to start dating him.”

“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want, then that’s what we’ll do.”

He didn’t have much else to say, but it seemed like he understood. In fact, he didn’t act surprised at all. Maybe this happens all the time for him. Maybe there is a shelf life for all of his girlfriends. It was hard telling him, but in the end he was really cool about it.

We decided that I would keep things quiet for the remainder of the season, wrap
The Girls Next Door
, and then move out of the Mansion and on with my life.

It was such a relief that Hef knew. There was always this fear inside
me that he’d find out and be mad—or worse, disappointed—so getting it off my chest was a huge relief. Plus, Hef let me fly out to see some of Hank’s games and host events in Philly. There was no more sneaking into separate hotel rooms in the middle of the night or hiding in bathrooms. It was such a nice feeling to have some freedom.

When I was alone with Hank I wanted to prove I was wifey material. I’d dust his apartment, light candles, and have a sandwich waiting for him when he got home from practice. I turned his place into our place. I even made him get rid of all of his old furniture because I didn’t want to sit on a couch or lie in a bed that some other girl had been on.

In public, we still had to keep our relationship a secret. But after months of sneaking around and hiding things from Joe and the rest of the
Playboy
staff, Hank and I were pros.

On one hand, it was great that Hef finally knew what was going on, but on the other, I had just made a huge change in my life and there was no turning back. It all hit me one day and I freaked out.

Was I doing the right thing? I loved Hank, but I had just given up living in the Playboy Mansion and having a hit television show for him. Hef wasn’t going to let me have both, and without a ring on my finger, I had just blindly chosen Hank. It was a huge risk, and I started worrying about it. A lot.

“You’re not promised to me,” I’d say to Hank. “What am I doing?”

“Don’t worry,” he’d reply calmly. “Everything will be okay. I love you, and it’s all going to work out.”

I knew I was ready to leave the Mansion, but I felt like I was leaving just for Hank. I didn’t have a backup plan. I was putting all my eggs in one basket (or Baskett, in this case), and that scared the hell
out of me. If Hank left me or cheated on me, I was totally screwed. I’d have nothing.

“Everything will work out,” he’d say.

That wasn’t enough for me. I needed to know where this was going.

He wanted me to just follow my heart and trust him, but that was not an easy thing for me to do. I brought up my fears over our future a lot and Hank got frustrated, especially when we could only talk about them over the phone; not being able to talk face-to-face because our relationship was still under wraps only made it more frustrating.

I was scared. I loved Hank with all my heart, and when we were sneaking around I’d dreamed about a day when we would be a happy couple out in the open. But now that that opportunity was close to becoming a reality, all I could think was,
What have I done?

CHAPTER 19
 

On My Own Now

As it turned out, while I was busy bugging out about my decision to leave a hit TV show and life in paradise, Holly was also making some major changes in her life. Just as Hank and I had been sneaking around, Holly was secretly dating magician Criss Angel.

I was so wrapped up in my own world that I hadn’t even taken the time to look around and see what the other girls were up to, and when she told me that she was moving on, too, I had mixed feelings.

On one hand, I thought it was cool that we were both going through the same thing at the same time, and I was thrilled that she considered me a good enough friend to confide in me. I had been worried that
I
would somehow ruin the show for everyone, but with Holly also on the move, it became more of a group decision. That made it a lot less stressful.

Her new romance was also good because it brought Holly and me even closer together. I felt like we were on the same page, and
we were in a position to go out and have some fun together as actual friends.

When she was with Hef she was very by-the-book. Everything she did was so carefully thought out, and she always followed every rule. You can’t live your life like that. Some rules are meant to be broken; it’s the only way to stay sane. But she was always Hef’s number one, and she wanted to make sure everyone knew it, so she always did whatever she had to to live up to that status. She was like the First Lady. I don’t know why it was so important to her to uphold that position, but she genuinely loved Hef and I think she needed people to know that, so she acted like a model girlfriend.

Once she met Criss, she did a complete one-eighty, and I think she changed in a very good way. She was more outgoing, acted more her age, and stopped caring what people thought of her.

The downside was that at one point Holly really thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with Hef, and he loved her, too, so it was a tough breakup for both of them.

When Hef didn’t give her the relationship she wanted, she got really depressed. She was devoted to Hef and she cared a lot about
Playboy
as a whole. She was a total go-getter in life, especially with Hef. She had his heart; she knew what she wanted from him, and she usually got it.

But in the end it became apparent that it wasn’t going to last, so she moved on.

Once word got out that she was seeing Criss, she sort of stopped trying to hide it, and it was hard to watch Hef go through that. She was hurt because he didn’t give her the exclusive relationship she really wanted, so she went out and showed the world she was moving on.

By then everything about my relationship with Hank was out in the open and I saw Hef as a friend. We talked about everything and I could see that he was upset at the way everything was unfolding, but Holly was done. She’d checked out emotionally. She had spent years being a real girlfriend to Hef, taking care of him, making sure the magazine was classy, and doing everything perfectly, and once it was over it was over.

I admired her strength, but I still felt bad about the situation and made sure I was there for Hef as a friend until the day I left.

About my departure . . . I knew my time was almost up at the Mansion, but I didn’t really have much of a plan for moving forward. I had a few meetings with networks about starring in my own show and I thought that could be a great opportunity, but nothing was definite yet and I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to happen.

Plus, my old agent had once talked me into going into the top executives’ offices at E!, demanding my own show. He showed up at the meeting dressed like a mobster and looked and acted like a fool, and they laughed in our faces. It was so embarrassing. After I fired him, I went in and apologized to the people at E! I shouldn’t have listened to that guy, but it was my fault for following his lead. Luckily, after my apology we were back on good terms, and they were the obvious first choice for any new show I might do.

Every idea that was tossed around, though, was for some wild party-girl show or a dating show where I’d be out on the town looking for guys. Then the idea shifted to me living in a party house with a bunch of girls. Nothing seemed to synch with the new Kendra I was becoming. Word had started to spread about Hank and me dating, but no one realized how serious we were. Everyone assumed he
was disposable, so every idea for a show was essentially all about sex.

I didn’t know what to do. I ran the idea of pretending to be single just for a show by Hank, and as the words were coming out of my mouth I knew it was wrong. None of those shows were going to work for me. I realized I’d rather not be on television at all than pretend that I didn’t love Hank.

But I needed to work, so I went to Kevin Burns, the executive producer of
The Girls Next Door
, who was working with me on coming up with a new show.

“Look, I have a boyfriend,” I said. “Can he be involved in the show?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “Who is this guy?”

“He’s important to me.”

“Nobody wants to see you with a boyfriend. It’s going to be a hard sell.”

“What if the show is based around me being on my own and starting a life with him?”