Role of a Lifetime (9 page)

Chapter 21

"What did you think?" Kelly asked Holly as the limo pulled away from the curve.

He really wanted to know what she thought.  He had tried to pack a lot of emotion into the film, but he wasn't sure how it had played against the sheer immensity of the scenes.

"I thought you were amazing, that scene with Zeus and Cronos at the end, how did you do that?  You acted so angry, but hurt at the same time."

"Thank you," Kelly said, "That's what we were going for."

"The whole story is kind of sad, isn't it," Holly said, "I mean, parents are supposed to love their children."

"Well prophecies kind of mess it up sometimes, I guess."

They spent the ride to the party talking about the movie, except for Carl, who never looked up from his phone.  By the time the limo stopped Kelly was tempted to let Carl out and tell the driver to keep going.  He didn't really care about the party anymore, he had been to way too many of them over the years anyway.  He just wanted to take Holly away, somewhere quiet, where they could talk more and he could hold her and they could see what happened next.

"You should get out first Kel, no?" Carl asked, and Kelly gave Holly a quick squeeze before pulling away from her.  Then he turned back, "Wait in the lobby for me okay?" he said and Holly and Carl nodded.

Kelly got out of the car, hoping they would listen to him.  He had some idea what was planned inside the party and he really wanted to see Holly's face when she took it all in for the first time.  He got a glimpse of Holly and Carl scooting behind him but he didn't turn around to watch them enter the building.

He wanted to, she looked amazing tonight, and it was fun for a change.  Overall though, he thought he probably preferred her hair loose like she usually wore it.  It was always falling in her eyes and she was always brushing it back.  The piles of makeup didn't really suit her anyway.  It screamed sophistication but somehow masked her sweetness.  He was still glad that he had got her the package at the spa though.  If the press somehow found out they were there together, they wouldn't be kind regardless, but especially not to someone who didn't go all out for a blockbuster movie premiere.  He'd protect her from all of that as long as he could.

Kelly stood outside answering questions for what seemed like hours but in reality was probably ten to fifteen minutes.  The last question was about how the movie was going to do at the box office and, after spewing the standard lines about how they were all hoping for a big first week, Kelly excused himself and headed inside.

As he searched the lobby for Holly and Carl, Kelly wondered himself how the movie would do at the box office.  He had a stake, a pretty large one, in the movie's financial success.  These days he generally took the minimum payment up front, which was usually still a million dollar minimum, in exchange for a chunk of the revenue at the end.  The better the movie did, the more Kelly stood to make.

Kelly spotted Holly and Carl on the opposite end of the room and headed over to them.  Thinking about the money made Kelly think about those who didn't have enough.  Holly still hadn't done anything about expanding the animal therapy group and though he wished she would, he decided not to bring it up tonight.  It seemed to stress her out and he really didn't want that.

"You ready?" he asked as he came up to her and Carl.

He couldn't wait to see her reaction, the party was going to blow her mind.  Carl looked at Kelly quizzically and when Kelly nodded, took off.

They walked into the party hand in hand and then Holly stopped abruptly.  Kelly watched her, amused as the astonishment took over her face.

The ice sculptures were immense, each over ten feet high.

"Wow, it really looks like you,"  Holly said, staring at it, "I mean, look at the face."

Then she pulled him along to check out the other ones, chattering about the detail and the process and about how long each one must have taken.  The one thing she didn't mention, though Kelly heard more than a couple of people in the room, talking about it, was what they must have cost.  Maybe that was because she was an artist herself, he surmised.

"What's that?" she said.

There was a stage on the far side of the room and a bunch of acrobats were climbing onto each other, forming an asymmetrical human pyramid.  Kelly and Holly made their way over to the stage and joined the crowd watching.  As they got closer they watched a man climbing the tower of people.  When the man was almost at the top he wobbled and steadied himself.

"Oh my god!" said Holly.

Kelly looked at her.

"It's okay, he's fine," he said, trying to reassure her, "Besides, I almost think they do that on purpose for a dramatic effect."

Holly didn't look at him, she just kept her eyes on the performers.

"Look how high they are, if he falls he could get hurt, really hurt."

Kelly started to tell her they didn't have to watch it but then changed his mind.

"Look, let's get a drink, okay, find some of my friends," he said, gently pulling her back away from the stage.

At the bar Holly asked what they had for white wine and the bartender replied, "All of them."

Obviously flustered, she asked for a Riesling.  Kelly ordered his favorite scotch.  As the man stepped back to get their drinks she apologized.

"They don't usually have everything, where I'm from," she said, "You know, just a couple of choices."

"It's fine, you worry too much," Kelly said.  "Oh look, there's Bill and Tracy again, remember?"

"Oh yes," Holly said, brightening considerably.

During their brief meeting at the theater Tracy had told Holly that her oldest child was a junior in high school.  Kelly watched Holly, smiling, as she and Tracy began talking about college selection and applications in earnest, as if there hadn't been a nearly three hour break in the conversation.

Two hours later the party was still in full swing but Kelly was more than ready to leave.  As he glanced out the window he noticed the full, bright moon and that gave him an idea.  He found Holly and pulled her away from Tracy and the other wives and girlfriends.

"I have a crazy idea," he said, "Do you like tacos?"

"What?"

"Tacos?"

She looked at him like he was nuts, which, considering the sizable buffet at the other end of the room, which was loaded with just about every extravagant food imaginable, wasn't an unreasonable assumption.  Kelly watched her think about what to say next and decided not to wait for her answer.  He knew what he wanted and, for starters, that was to get out of the party.

"Come on," he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her across the room, "Just trust me, okay, this is my town, I know what I'm doing."

She said okay and went along but stopped as they exited the building.

"What?" Kelly said.

"It's just, what about Carl, how's he's going to get home?"

Kelly laughed and he wanted to kiss her right then but you never knew when there was a photographer lurking in the bushes so he told himself to wait for the limo.

"Carl will be fine, I promise," he said, "Now come on."

Chapter 22

Holly looked up and down the moonlit beach.  The crashing of the waves intermittently drowned out the voices of the surfers.  She turned back to Kelly.

"What do you want?" he asked her, motioning to the menu.

She looked at the counter first but the man running the stand was back in the kitchen area.  She started scanning the huge menu posted to the side, but had barely started reading it when the man came back up to the window with a tray of food, yelled a name out the window, peeled off the food service gloves and stepped in front of the register.

"Kelly, hi," the guy said and Kelly said hi back.  Then, "What do you want?"

"Go ahead," Kelly told Holly.

She looked up at him and caught a glimpse of the people standing behind them waiting to order out of her peripheral vision.  The man was waiting at the register patiently, but how long would that last?

"You order," she told Kelly, "Your...taco stand, you know what's good."

"Okay," he said and as he started rattling off food Holly stepped aside, out of the bright light of the stand.

In a minute he was done ordering and paying.  He pulled Holly over to one of the picnic tables in front of the stand.

"Hey Ernie, how is it?" he said to the guy sitting at the table shoveling food in.

"Awesome, what's up Kel, you gonna surf in your tux tonight?"

"No I don't even have my board," Kelly said.  "This is Holly."

Ernie held out his hand, then looked at it, realized it was covered with food, and retracted it.

"Sorry, just trying to eat as fast as possible and get back out there."  With that he stuffed the last of his taco in his mouth and jumped up from the table.  Ernie chewed as he ran over to the garbage can to throw out his paper basket.

"Okay, well, nice to meet you, see you Kelly," he said as he ran back down to the water.

The stand owner yelled for Kelly and Kelly told Holly to stay put while he got the food.

"Wow this is really good," she said, after the first bite.

"Yeah, even better when you're starving from riding for a couple of hours," Kelly paused to take another bite, "Do you want to try it tomorrow?"

"Me?  Surfing?"

"Yes, we'd have to go rent you some stuff, I mean, I have an old wet suit, couple of them actually, but they'd be way too big for you."

Holly looked out to the ocean.  The moon was bright enough to see the surfers.  It looked like they were having fun.  It looked like a lot of fun, actually.  It also looked like something she would never, ever be able to do.   She didn't answer and they continued to eat in silence until Kelly spoke again.

"You're not leaving till Sunday, right, so we could go tomorrow, ummm, today, no tomorrow, eleven forty-five now, still Friday."

She looked at Kelly and he looked positively thrilled at the idea of teaching her to surf.  She was pretty positive it would be a complete disaster.

"Maybe," she said, and then she shivered.

The breeze coming in off the ocean was cool.  It was nowhere as cool as back home was getting, there the nights were approaching freezing.  But on the beach in just a evening dress, Holly was cold.

"Here," Kelly said, and he whipped off his jacket and wrapped it around her.

She thought of refusing it but she didn't want to.  And not just because she was cold and the jacket was warm.  It was warm from his body and it smelled like him and it felt good.  Then he kissed her.

This time when he kissed her Holly didn't worry about the things she usually worried about when he was kissing her.  Like what would happen if it turned into more than kissing.  His hands moved under the jacket onto her, touching her and she was didn't want him to stop.  They kept at it until somebody walking by yelled at them to get a room.

"You have a room actually," Kelly said quietly, "A pretty nice one."

"Yes," she said.

She was saying yes to more than the fact that she had a nice room available to her, to them, and luckily, Kelly got the message.

"Let's go then," he said and they hurriedly packed up their trash and all but ran back to the limo.

In the limo his hands were all over her while he kissed her, his tongue deep in her mouth.  He paused when he slipped his hand up under her dress, between her legs.

"If you want me to stop, just tell me, I'll stop, promise."

"I don't want you to stop," Holly said, his hand warm on her inner thigh.

"Well if you change your mind," he said, and then he kissed her again and his fingers inched higher.

Back at the room he pulled his jacket off her and tossed it on top of the dresser.  Then he kissed her again.  Eventually his hands made their way to the back of the dress and found the zipper.

"God I want you," he told as he slowly inched the zipper downward.

"I want you too," she told him carefully directing her attention to undoing the buttons on his shirt.  Then she stopped, "Oh, no."

"What?"

"I don't have," Holly didn't want to finish the sentence.

"I do, I thought, well I was hoping, sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

He pushed the dress off her slowly, taking her panties along with it when he reached her hips.  She undid the last button on the bottom of his shirt.

"You are so beautiful," he said as he kissed her neck and moved downward.

Her breast was in his mouth and her hands were in his hair so she only barely noticed him taking off his shirt.  Then he picked her up and started over to the bed, then stopped.

"Wait," he said, adjusting his grip on her.

He held her with one arm and started groping for his jacket with another.  She wrapped her legs around his waist tightly.

"Don't worry I got you," he said, as he pulled a condom out of his jacket's inner pocket.

"Not worried," she said but it turned into a moan as he grabbed her tightly with both arms again and flicked her nipple with his tongue as he walked towards the bed.

He laid her down and she stretched out, pushing herself back from the edge to give them more room.  She watched as he took off his pants and underwear and put the condom on.  Then he climbed on top of her.  Feeling his bare skin on hers, all the way down the length of her body, made her moan again.  She wanted him so much and she pushed her legs out and around him.

He kissed her as he started pushing inside her, so when she cried out she thought the sound was too muffled for him to hear, but he stopped.

"Am I hurting you?"

"No," she said, "It feels good."

It did feel good, really good.  She had forgotten it could feel like that.  She was clinging to his shoulders, his massive shoulders, but she wanted to slide her hands all the way down his back and grab him, force him all the way into her.

She didn't.  She waited and he took his time, easing into her a little bit more with each powerful but gentle thrust.  It wasn't until it was his turn, after he had slipped his hand between them and driven her crazy, until she couldn't take it anymore and allowed herself to let go, that he lost control.  She was still shaking and moaning from her own orgasm as he pounded into her hard and fast.  He cried out her name as he came and then collapsed on top of her.  She was almost out of breath when he came to his senses and lifted his weight off her.

"You okay?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said, but it wasn't the truth.

She was better than okay.  So much better.