“All right, everyone, we're live in three, two, one!”
“Rolling!”
Kelly turned toward the cameras, giving her viewers her classic grin. She was a pretty girl, no doubt. Half the reason the viewers watched her was because she reminded them of who they wanted to be. Young. Successful. Sexy.
“All right, everyone, we're here on The Latest, bringing you the best in entertainment interviews and gossip. And tonight, we have a very special guest for you: Christian Wall!” There was clapping from the studio audience, and even though I hated interviews like this, I forced a charming smile on my face. Time to put on my best façade and give them what they wanted. Sounded like the cadence of my life story.
The thing was, even though I wasn't the sole owner of Sunrise Real Estate, I was the face of the company. I loved working press conferences, and I loved going out and talking to people who were looking to buy houses and helping them find their dream homes. I'd had the chance to be on a number of reality TV shows where I helped sell homes to couples looking in various cities that we operated in, and that was always worth all the fuss.
But the entertainment ones were always a bit trickier. I'd have to be careful not to let Kelly trip me up. I knew the kinds of things that had been in the news about me lately, things that were making everyone, even Paul, a bit frustrated.
“So, Christian, as you probably know, the main reason that I've asked you here today is that you have recently been named the hottest bachelor in the United States. Can we just start with a talk about that title?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other people in the world were walking around, faking happiness.
I laughed a little, shaking my head. “Well, it's of course very flattering,” I said. “I've heard about guys getting named the hottest bachelor in their city or things like that, but I thought Mr. USA had to be a model!”
Kelly gave me a smirking once-over and looked out toward the audience. “I don't know about the rest of you, but if Christian here isn't fit to be a model, then I don't know who is! In fact, I'd say it's only a matter of time before they have you up on underwear ads around the city.”
“You wish, maybe!” I said, even though I was inwardly rolling my eyes. Sure, I was hot enough to be up on those sorts of ads, and what I did with my personal life had always been, I held, no one's business except for my own. However, she did have to realize that for all the other things that had made it into the news, I did have some professional reputation that I needed to uphold. Not many young husbands would feel comfortable buying a house from someone they knew their wives were wanking to. It was disturbing, and yet a little hot.
“From what I hear in the news lately, there are other ways to get the great Christian Wall down to his underwear,” Kelly said, a gleam in her eyes, and of course that was where she had been heading with that remark. I might have seen that one coming.
I cut her off with my canned response before she could mention the whole underwear incident. It had been a stupid bet with one of my friends, fueled by way too much alcohol. We'd been out at this bar, and girls had been stripping their shirts off so that guys would do body shots off them. Originally, I'd ended up on the table with just my shirt off, but then one thing had led to another, and there had been these two sexy Swedish girls practically fucking me right there on the floor, their hands trailing everywhere.
Someone had gotten a shot of me stripped down to my black boxer briefs and laid out on a table for them to do body shots off of me. That photo had proceeded to be picked up by seemingly every entertainment source in the world. It wasn’t my finest moment by far, but one that everyone seemed to cling to as if they had nothing better to do. It was one of the incidences that had made Paul a bit exasperated. Or maybe more than a bit.
But, obviously, I couldn't just tell Kelly to fuck off.
Instead, I smiled at her. “If you're suggesting that we go out to dinner on Friday night, I'm afraid I'm already taken,” I told her. “I've recently started seeing someone. It's nothing too serious now, but I'm not sure how much longer I'll be the hottest bachelor in the U.S., unfortunately!”
“Oh, really?” Kelly asked, arching an eyebrow at me.
It was total bullshit unless you counted this thing that I had going on with this girl Megan, but that was more of a 2 a.m. drunken thing than anything else. I wasn't about to quit being a bachelor anytime soon.
“But the parties aren't going to stop, are they?” Kelly pressed. “It seems like you've been at all the red-carpet events lately; it seems like you and Jamie Michaels are getting pretty chummy, hmm?”
“Jamie's a great guy,” I told her. “I was lucky enough to meet him on a ski trip last winter in the Alps; we started out at Meribel, but at the end of the week, neither of us were ready to go back to the grind.” I laughed a little. “Fortunately, I could get some work done remotely, and off we headed to Italy for a second week in Cortina. He's an amazing skier and a great guy.”
“Some people might say that you have a little too much fun sometimes,” Kelly said. “Tell us what you think about that? Is life just supposed to be fun and games for some and toil and work for others?”
I shrugged and smiled disarmingly at her. “I’m not too sure about what life is supposed to be about, or if you could put it into one or two words.” I shrugged. “But as far as my crazy life, you know what they say. Boys will be boys. And especially for Jamie and I, who have access to some of the best toys in the world, from snowmobiles to dirt bikes and more, yeah, we're going to have a ton of fun. Of course, we're always safe with them, and we haven't dropped off the globe like we did during the ski tour. For me, things have been busy around the office as people book their last-minute summer vacation homes and start looking ahead to next winter. And Jamie's working on shooting his latest movie.”
“Any details you can share about that?” She wagged her eyebrows.
I laughed. “Jamie's totally close-mouthed about it,” I told her, and that one wasn't a lie. “You probably know more about it than I do!”
“We wish!” She glanced toward the cameras as if including the audience in her ‘we.' “Christian, one more question before we let you go: any details you can give us about this mystery woman who has captured your interest?”
I mimed zipping my lips and throwing away the key, laughing at the noises of protest from many of the female audience members. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” I said, holding up my hands. “Anyway, I believe in true love and all of that. I'd hate to think that I jinxed things by getting too far ahead of myself.”
“Aw, that's sweet,” Kelly said. She looked back out at the audience and began to introduce the next segment of the show; I gave a little sigh of relief, keeping the smile plastered on my face, and tuning her out.
Despite all the talk about this woman who I was supposedly seeing, I didn't even have to try to take her home that night, really. She would entertain me for the night, or a bit of it, for sure. The way she subtly eye-fucked me before the interview gave me full assurance. I was fucking her within an inch of her life later.
I walked off stage with various members of her crew patting me on the back and shouting words of encouragement. I needed a shower, and then I was headed to find her again.
Funny enough, I ran into her as I was finally coming out of my long shower. I'd done my best to scrub off the excessive makeup they'd covered me with prior to the interview, highlights and eyeliner and all sorts of silly things that combined to make me look better under the harsh lighting of the studio. Finally, I felt human again. Like a man.
“Oh! I didn't realize you were still here,” Kelly said as her eyes went a little wide. The soft smile playing at the side of her lips let me know that even though she might be a little surprised, she was happy about it.