Chapter 24
24
OLLIE
Ollie adored his Aunt Jacinta. She’d stepped in and taken care of him when his mum left, and she’d treated him like her own ever since. However, no one could ever accuse her of being shy and retiring. Humble and modest were a stretch too.
‘Cillian helped me get my case onto the luggage cart – it’s my Louis Vuitton one that you bought me for Christmas,’ she gestured to Ollie. ‘And then he helped me when I got all in a fluster and thought I’d lost my passport. Anyway, we’ve been having a lovely drink in the bar next door, but I told him he had to let me thank him by signing him in to the VIP lounge here. It’s the least I can do.’
Ollie noticed that neither Kara nor Drea countered the ‘VIP’ thing – this was just a standard airport airline lounge – and he didn’t speak up either, because they all knew that it was invariably easier to let Jacinta live in her own world, with her own interpretations. It was all part of her vivacious, over-the-top, utterly infectious charm. Although whenever he pointed that out to her daughters, Drea would comment that herpes was also infectious, and she didn’t want to be in close proximity to that either.
‘Cillian, this is my nephew, Ollie Chiles. He’s just flown in from Hollywood to travel with us to the wedding I was telling you about. He’s the TV star in the family. You might have seen him on The Clansman .’
Behind him, Ollie struggled to suppress a laugh and he heard Drea mumbling to Kara. ‘Golden boy gets first billing as usual. She’ll get to us eventually.’
It had always been a topic of much derision and teasing from Drea and Kara, that Jacinta was prouder of Ollie because he was famous. And much as he’d like to blush and say it wasn’t true, the reality was that they were absolutely on point. There wasn’t a person Jacinta encountered in her day who didn’t hear the boast about her famous TV star ‘nephew’. In fact, he could only remember her nose being out of joint once, and that was because she met Ryan Reynolds’ mother in the ladies’ at a Hollywood event, and realised that there was the potential for her to be out-boasted. It took her a couple of days to recover from that, and her equilibrium was only restored when he took her to the TV Choice Awards and she was sitting next to the mothers of two reality stars. Apparently, in the Boasting Hierarchy, trained actors beat reality TV.
‘And these are my daughters. Drea…’ she pointed to her elder offspring, ‘is the one who is getting married, and Kara is the one who was supposed to be getting married, but it’s all gone horribly wrong.’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Kara responded with a cheesy smile and a thumbs up.
As for Cillian, the poor guy looked like he’d just stumbled into the epicentre of a hurricane and was somehow still standing, so Ollie felt sorry for him as he reached out and shook his hand.
‘Pleased to meet you, Cillian. You’re very welcome to join us.’
Jacinta’s new very best friend shook his head. ‘Thank you,’ he said, in an unmistakable Irish accent. Ollie had done some work with a voice coach for a movie set in Dublin, and that was his first guess for the origin of Cillian’s brogue. ‘But I’m actually meeting my son, who’ll be joining me shortly, so if you don’t mind, I’ll sit over at the bar and wait for him there.’
Jacinta obviously took that as an implied invitation. ‘Ah well then, I’ll have one with you and we can leave these young ones to chat,’ she said, before turning back to them. ‘I’ll be back in a tick. Just don’t want to leave the poor man drinking alone.’
‘Good to meet you, Cillian,’ Ollie said again, while Drea and Kara smiled and added variations on the theme.
Only when they were out of earshot, did Kara deflate and put her head on the table. ‘I might have made this request on many occasions before, but kill me now,’ she groaned, making Ollie laugh.
He hadn’t forgotten the niggling emotions from a few moments ago though, and he just hoped that they hadn’t shown on his face. It was the strangest thing. When Drea had said that Kara had a secret, he’d felt… Jealous. And when he’d established it was about a guy who wasn’t Josh, the jealousy had ramped up a notch. What the hell was that about? Since when had he ever been jealous? Maybe if one of his mates landed a role he’d been after, then there would be a small and easily disguised tug of envy, but what he’d experienced just now was something different altogether. He made a mental note to give it some more thought later.
In the meantime, Drea took charge and steered them back to where they’d been before they were interrupted. ‘Right,’ she said, nodding to the departing figures of Jacinta and her new friend. ‘You’ve got until that poor guy’s ears start to bleed to tell us the story, so go.’
Kara blew out her cheeks, obviously deciding resistance was futile. Drea had been bossing them for a lifetime and she was a pro.
‘Okay, so rewind six years ago. Remember when I was coming over to LA for your wedding, and my flight got delayed and I had to come the next day instead…’
Ollie racked his brain, flicking back through his Kara Memory Book until he got to that one. ‘Yeah, you said that you went back home and then you got a flight the following morning.’ Another memory assailed him. ‘Actually, Sienna mentioned that on the phone earlier. I don’t think she ever got over the fact that I postponed our wedding so that you could be there. Anyway, I’m now sensing your story wasn’t entirely true?’
Kara shook her head dolefully. ‘Not exactly. Full disclosure, and I didn’t want to tell you this at the time, but Josh was mighty pissed off with me for coming to New York for three days for your wedding. So when the flight was cancelled, I was going to go home, but by that time I’d got talking to a really nice guy in the airport bar who was also supposed to be on the same flight… and I’m not really sure how it happened…’
He wasn’t sure that he’d ever seen Kara this embarrassed or flustered. Her face could melt the ice on the runway right now.
‘Anyway, we went to the hotel, and I swear we didn’t request this, but we ended up in adjoining rooms.’
‘Not the old “adjoining rooms” excuse,’ Drea cut in, chuckling and very obviously enjoying Kara’s shame.
Kara carried on, face still beaming. ‘We opened the middle door between the rooms, and then we watched ten episodes of Friends and worked our way through half the minibar. The Toblerone nearly took my teeth out.’
‘And…?’ Drea prompted. ‘Get to the good bit.’
Kara seemed confused. ‘That was the good bit. Well, apart from us both falling asleep on the same bed, fully clothed !’ she stressed. ‘And then waking up the next morning in a bit of a cuddle position.’
‘So you didn’t have sex? Or even lock lips?’ That came from Drea again. Ollie couldn’t seem to find the words.
‘No!’ Kara exclaimed. ‘I told him I had a boyfriend and made it clear at the outset that nothing would happen. He respected that. He was a really good guy, actually. Far nicer than fricking Josh, if I think about it now. I probably backed the wrong horse there.’
Drea still wasn’t letting her off the hook.
‘What was the big mistake then?’
Ollie was so glad she was here to ask the questions because his throat was suddenly dry.
Kara sighed. ‘The fact that I didn’t tell Josh about it. I said that I’d gone and stayed at Mum’s house. I knew he’d never ask her, because he avoided her as much as possible. And then I flew out the next day, and I never told a single soul what happened. I think I was just embarrassed. I don’t do stuff like that. I’m the boring one, remember?’
Drea shrugged. ‘I think you just lived up to that description. I was hoping for a mass orgy. Or maybe at least a bit of wild kinky sex.’
Ollie swallowed, a weird sensation in the pit of his stomach again. More jealousy? What was going on? And why were Drea’s words from earlier echoing in his head?
‘This is the first time you’ve both been single at the same time. Can you not just do us all a favour and get together?’
He took a sip of his beer, while CIA Agent Drea carried on the interrogation.
‘So that’s it? That’s the whole story. Over and done. And that’s the only time you met?’
‘Yeah,’ Kara insisted. ‘Definitely.’
He watched as Kara’s neck flushed just a little, the way it used to do in school whenever she had to lie to a teacher.
‘Really?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely…’ she nodded.
As far as he knew, she’d never lied to him before. It just wasn’t in her nature. So why did he have a feeling that his best friend in the world still wasn’t telling the whole truth?