CHAPTER 3

 

Cate snuck back into the house early the next morning. She’d got the first flight from L.A. back to Seattle. She unzipped her hooded sweatshirt a little and tugged it up over her head but the sharp teeth of the zipper snagged on her forehead.

“Ow,” she winced, reaching up to rub the skin on her forehead which felt tight and sore. She took a couple of steps forward and “umph!” Suddenly she was lurching forward with the ground coming up to meet her at an alarmingly fast speed.

“Cate?” Kian asked, bleary-eyed. He’d heard a noise and come downstairs to investigate only to find his wife sprawled face-down on the wooden floor by the front door. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“Peachy,” Cate scowled, lifting herself up on to her knees. When she turned around, she saw that she’d tripped over Kian’s most recent bag of fan mail. It must have been delivered while she was in L.A. and of course nobody had moved it from right by the front door down the hallway to his home office. She’d taken responsibility for answering his fan mail when they’d first got married; it had felt like something a good, little footballer’s wife should do.

Kian tried to suppress a smirk as he helped her up the rest of the way off the floor. “I thought you weren’t flying back until later. The children and I were going to meet you at the airport.”

“I missed you too much,” Cate said, giving the sack of fan mail a little kick. Of course, there was something hard in there and she hurt her big toe as well.

 

Kian had a morning training session and then a meeting with his new agent, Jeff so he didn’t get home until later that evening.

After lunch, while her eldest daughter, Lola was playing football with their next-door neighbour, Luke and her two youngest children, Mats and Sierra were having their naps; Cate had sat at the kitchen table with their nanny, Nate to go over their schedules for the next few weeks while she was training for Stepping Out. After factoring in her commitments to her charity, 33 Rocks and pesky little things like eating and getting at least a couple of hours sleep every night, her diary was bursting at the seams.

Kian’s bag of fan mail had been taunting her all day from where she’d left it by the front door. She knew if she didn’t make a start on it tonight who knew when she’d get the chance again and she didn’t want his fans to have to wait too long for a reply from him.

Lola, who was definitely the front-runner for her favourite child that day, went to bed early with her book but Mateo and Sierra showed no signs at all of wanting to go to sleep so Cate figured she’d multi-task, grabbed the sack of fan mail and took it with them into the playroom.

When Kian came home, Mateo was happily playing with his toy boats and Sierra was wriggling about on the mat by Cate’s feet. “What happened to your forehead?” he asked, kissing the top of Cate’s head. She had a painful looking welt running down the centre.

“I got it caught in my zipper this morning,” she explained.

“What’s all this?” Kian looked at the piles of envelopes in front of her on the squashy, dark-green sofa.

“I thought I’d make a start on your mail,” Cate shrugged. She pointed to the first pile, “those are requests for autographs so if you could get me the stack of signed photos from your office, I can put them in the post tomorrow.” She gestured to the second pile, “those are charity and personal appearance requests for you to look through.”

“What are those?” Kian asked, gesturing to the third and final pile which was in danger of toppling over.

“Those,” Cate winced, “are the things your wife really doesn’t want to see.” Even though, unlike at the start of their marriage, everybody knew that Kian had a wife and children now, he still got sent lingerie and nude photos.

“Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it, you know.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiled. She felt the sofa move a little and when she turned around, Sierra had knocked over the pile of “things your wife doesn’t really want to see.” One of the padded envelopes had opened and a hot-pink thong had fallen out. Sierra was just about to grab it; her eyes lit up when she saw anything pink.

“No,” Cate almost threw herself off the sofa, she was so determined to get the thong before her daughter could touch it. Hopefully it would be clean but with Kian’s crazy female fans, who knew?

Denied a potential new toy, Sierra’s little face crumpled. She was milliseconds away from having a tantrum. Mats looked across at them; his little eyebrows raised in concern.

Cate shoved the horrible thong back in the envelope and was about to reach for Sierra but Kian had beaten her to it. “Hey, what’s that pouty lip for, little one?” he cooed.

She made grabby hands at the sack where Cate was stuffing the envelopes back inside.

After the children had finally gone to sleep, Cate followed Kian into the bedroom. “I can’t believe Sierra nearly touched that thong,” she shivered. “She’s still got that habit of putting things in her mouth. Imagine if she’d… oh my goodness, I think I might be sick.”

“But she didn’t,” Kian smirked, “maybe we should keep those particular envelopes in my office under lock and key in future.”

“Still,” Cate pulled back the covers, “why would somebody do that? Do they really think that you’re going to look at the Victoria’s Secret thong and think wow, I can tell just from looking at this miniscule piece of hot-pink lace that the woman who sent this is actually the love of my life and I’m going to leave my wife and children for her. It’s a thong for goodness sake, it’s not Cinderella’s glass freaking slipper.”

“If it really bugs you so much,” Kian climbed into bed, “I’ll get one of Jeff’s assistants to handle them in future.”

“I like answering your fan mail, it’s just the panties and nude photos I could definitely do without. I guess I don’t get it. I can’t think of anybody I’d be obsessed with enough to actually send them my underwear. It’s just gross.”

Kian thought she’d finished her rant but she continued, “I really thought as twenty-first century women that we’d evolved beyond that but then I open up an envelope and another naked photo drops on my lap and it’s like the world is spinning in reverse. Why would you take a photo of yourself with no clothes on and send it to a complete stranger, like why would you even think that’s a sensible idea? They don’t know for certain that you open your own fan mail, anybody could see that photo. Is this what the world’s coming to now? Am I really going to have to explain this to Lola and Sierra?”

“That’s it,” Kian lifted up his arm so she could snuggle against him, “I’m revoking your fan mail answering privileges from now on.”

“Kian, I’m being serious,” Cate scowled.

“I know you are,” Kian said softly, “but I don’t have the answers any more than you do. I don’t know why random women send me their underwear or naked photos, I certainly don’t ask them to do it. When I do get them, I make sure the photos are shredded so they don’t fall into the wrong hands and I put the underwear in the trash. My guess is that they don’t want me per se, they want the idea of me, Kian Warner the professional footballer. They probably send panties and the same photos to countless other players; hoping one of them will be gullible or more likely horny enough to fall for it. They want to be famous, angel.”