by Josie Brown
But all that mattered now was that Nathan—her husband of six years, the father of her child—didn’t love her, even if Sam did.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Nina. You know that.” The dark rims under his deep-set blue eyes made him look older than his thirty-three years. “The bottom line is that Nathan is leaving you. He told me so himself, just a half hour ago.”
“He told you first? Why would he do that? Why didn’t he tell me?”
But she already knew the answer to that:
Because Sam was Nathan’s agent. On the other hand, Nina was just Nathan’s wife.
There was, after all, a pecking order in Hollywood.
Nina didn’t remember doing so, but she sat down. Unfortunately, the faux wrought-iron chair under her held a puddle of droplets that had fallen off the well-watered bougainvillea cradling the arbor above. Reflexively she jumped up—much too quickly for Sam, who had bent down to steady her.
They smacked heads. He reeled backward in pain.
“Omigod! Are you okay?” Nina ran over to him. The top of her head was throbbing, but she knew that his eye had taken the brunt of the collision. Tenderly, she moved his hand away and examined it carefully. He didn’t flinch when she laid her fingers gently on his temple. In fact, he moved into it, as though he were craving her touch.
She noticed that a bruise was already forming.
He noticed that, when she was sad, her eyes turned the color of amber.
It suddenly dawned on her that he wasn’t half as concerned about his own pain as he was about hers over Nathan.
If he thought she’d let him, he would have kissed her, right then and there.
And she would have, too, if only he’d asked.
It would be so easy for me to do it, she thought. And afterward, to know I’d have someone I could trust, someone to run to, to help me forget what Nathan has done to me…to us…
But that was just it: us was she and Nathan…and, of course, Jake. To take advantage of Sam’s adoration now, before she even knew if she could return it, would not be fair to either of them.
She backed away from him, ashamed that she had even been tempted to take advantage of him that way.
Or, for that matter, to consider betraying Nathan.
Without thinking, she murmured the first thought that came to her mind: “‘Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.’”
“What did you say?” Saddened by the sudden look of remorse she gave him, he closed his eyes and tried to recall where he’d heard that before, but he couldn’t.
“Nothing. Just…something I’d heard once.” She shrugged. “I’d better get back inside. Got to make the dough to pay the attorney’s fees, right?” She looked behind her, at the wet spot that now covered the seat of her pants. “I hope I don’t have to chase down any heirloom tomatoes for some lazy Beverly Hills housewife. I hate the thought of people thinking I’m incontinent or some—”
“Look, Nina, whatever happens—”
“Don’t worry Sam. I’ll be okay. I’ll survive.” She smiled feebly. Then, with her head held high, she walked back inside.
He got back into his car and headed back to his office. He wanted to call Fiona immediately and tell her to initiate the damage control plan they’d discussed.
By the time he hit Wilshire, it dawned on him where he’d heard that remark: from O.
Gee, I finally found something that the two of them have in common, he thought wryly. It was the first good laugh he’d had all day.
She needed to get out of there, and fast.
She needed to go home, to be there when Nathan came home, to confront him for doing this to her, to Jake, to the life they were making together.
Without a word to Tori, who was taking care of the business Nina should have been doing—ironically, explaining to some woman the differences between one heirloom tomato and another—Nina slipped into the employee lounge, grabbed her purse, and headed out the back door by way of the stockroom, where she swiped the most expensive bottle of wine she could find: a 2000 Chateau Haut Brion Graves.
In her opinion, misery deserved the company of a great Bordeaux.
Surprise, surprise: Nathan had already been there and gone. For good.
He did, however, leave a note for Nina:
Hi, Babe,
By the time you read this, I guess you’ll know the truth: that I’m a bastard.
Yes, I’m that all right, but I’m also feeling very lost and confused at the moment. Of course I still love you, and deep in my heart I know I always will. But right now I also know that I’m just not “in love” with you. If what we have is going to last a lifetime, I should be able to say I am in love and really mean it, right? Quite frankly, can you say that you’re still in love with me, too?
I’m guessing no. At least, you haven’t been acting as if you are.
In the long run, you’ll realize that it was better this way for both of us. And for the little guy, though it may not seem that way at first.
I’ll call him later to tell him I love him. Don’t hate me too much, okay?
Love always (seriously, I mean that!)
Nathan
Bullshit. All of it was bullshit.
With each gulp of the Haut Brion Graves, she dissected every word and phrase for its crap factor:
Wholeheartedly, she agreed that he was a bastard. No argument there.
Crap #1: “Lost and confused”? Try star-struck and horny!
Crap #2: She could not accept that he “wasn’t in love” with her. What, and now all of a sudden he was in love with that collagen-choked bleached blond whore? No, he was in lust with the bitch, and that was all. End of story.
But that wasn’t the end. It was only the beginning. She and Jake would have to start over again, scrounging even harder for what they wanted in life, because the life she had planned to share with Nathan, he’d now be sharing with Kat.
It just wasn’t fair.
As for his contention that their marriage had failed because she, too, had fallen out of love, well now that was the biggest turd of them all!
Or was it?
Maybe he had noticed the change in her since O’s conversation with Sam, and if so, it might have spurred his own decision to move on.
The thought that she might have unwittingly pushed Nathan into Kat’s arms made her physically ill.
Then again, it could have been that half bottle of wine on an empty stomach. In either case, the result was the same: She fell onto her bed, curled up into a ball, and cried herself to sleep.
His encounter with Nina stayed on Sam’s mind for the rest of the afternoon. Because he couldn’t stand the thought of her sitting there alone, grieving the loss of her marriage, he canceled the dinner meeting he had scheduled with the up-and-coming teen queen who was angsting over whether she should take the featured role that was offered her in Wes Anderson’s next project, or hold out for the girlfriend role in Warner’s next big comic book adaptation, which was sure to be an ongoing franchise (and multimillion-dollar paycheck for years to come) but would certainly tie her up from doing the complex indie award-winning roles she lusted for.
The truth, Sam knew, was that she was going to take the advice of her Indian guru over his anyway, so why waste the time? He rescheduled her for lunch at the Ivy, then headed over to the address Riley gave him for Nathan and Nina’s apartment.
He got there just in time to see Ylva, Plum’s nanny, shoving Jake through the front door. The little boy ran in and out of view.
“Hi,” he said cautiously, as she gave him an appraising once-over. “Is Nina home?”
The Swedish bombshell shrugged and tossed her long white mane coquettishly, then murmured, “Don’t know. It vas her day for pick-up. She pulled a—how do you say?—a ‘no show.’ So I leave my manicure and go get the brats. See?”
She held up a hand on which three of her five fingers were painted blood red.
How apropos, Sam th
ought.
“I now get Ploom back to her vickett vitch mother, or she vill jell at me for making her late to Kabbalah mixer. Vorry not, the boy vill be okay. This Yake, he is a smart one.”
Without further ado, she promenaded down the staircase, the click-clack of her Kate Spades counting down each sultry step she took. She didn’t have to glance back to see if Sam was watching her. Why, of course he was. And, hell ja, that was perfectly fine with her. In her mind, men who drove Ferraris could do no wrong.
Au pairs who left kids unattended weren’t appealing to Sam, however. He knocked on the open door. Jake peeked out from the hallway. “Hi, Jake, it’s Sam. Remember me?”
The little boy nodded slowly. One Saturday morning, when Mommy had to work at the store, Daddy had taken him to the nice man’s big office, where Daddy had to sign a bunch of papers. Afterward, he and Daddy had gone to a movie. Some skinny blond lady with fat balloony lips had sat with them—well, with Daddy, anyway. Practically in Daddy’s lap, in fact. Even with that big mouth of hers, she never really smiled at Jake, not even once. That was okay. He didn’t like her, either, because she’d never once taken her hand out of Daddy’s lap. Ewwwyuck!
“I’m looking for your mom. Do you know where she went?”
“She’s asleep and she won’t wake up. And I’m hungry.” The boy’s lower lip trembled as he talked, a clear indication to Sam that Jake was scared, even if he didn’t say so out loud. For that matter, Sam was suddenly worried, too. Had she been dumb enough to take a bunch of sleeping pills?
Glancing around the small apartment, Sam noticed the half-empty wine bottle sitting on the dining area table. By following the trail of clothes Nina had strewn on her way to her bedroom, Sam rightly deduced the direction he’d find her…
…And the condition.
She was sprawled out on the bed, naked. Beautifully and gloriously so. He stared for a moment, smiled gratefully, and then gently covered her with one of the rumpled sheets that lay at the foot of the bed. Feeling the sheet come up around her, Nina, still groggy, frowned, moaned tantalizingly—
—and kicked it off again.
Well, she may be a bit tipsy, but she’s certainly alive, he thought. Happily he resigned himself to accept her subconscious desire to shed all her inhibitions along with her clothes. Still he took another long and appreciative glance before closing the door.
“She’s just taking a nap. Must have worked pretty hard today.” Jake nodded, visibly relieved. “Say, feel like getting a burger at Mel’s Diner? We’ll leave a note for your mom. We can bring a burger home for her, too.”
Almost instantly, the tears vanished from Jake’s round face. “Yeah, that’d be great!”
Sam grabbed a scratch pad and pen off the kitchen bar. As he began writing the note to Nina, Jake ran his Transformers G1 Smokescreen down Sam’s arm as if it were a racetrack, making the task more difficult for Sam than he’d anticipated.
Suddenly Jake asked, “Hey, shouldn’t we bring home a burger for Daddy?”
“At this point, I’d say that your dad prefers having his cake and eating it, too,” muttered Sam.
“Yummy! Cake! If I eat all my hamburger, can I have some, too?”
“Yeah sure, kid, maybe when you’re older, if that’s how you want to play the game.”
Hopefully, thought Sam, time would prove that the kid wasn’t a chip off the old block. At least, not in that regard.
They returned with the extra burger to find Nina up and about (and modestly covered up in a chenille robe) albeit a bit shaky, and certainly in no mood to down a grease-laden hunk of choice grade A chuck.
However, she did take Sam up on his offer to scramble up a couple of eggs for her while she tucked Jake into bed.
By the time Nina came back, the eggs were on the table, along with toast and coffee…black.
She gave him a smile that was both grateful and teary at the same time. “You must think I’m the most awful mother in the whole world, passing out like that.”
“No, no way. It’s perfectly understandable. I don’t know a woman in this town who wouldn’t, after her idiot husband had thrown her over for the town’s numero uno slut diva. He’s just lucky you didn’t grab a gun and shoot off his balls instead. Although, from what I’ve seen, the jury is still out on whether he has any in the first place.”
That made her laugh and bawl at the same time.
“I—I really didn’t expect to find you here. How can I ever thank you for…for…well, for everything?”
This time her eyes did not waver from his. Right then and there, she wanted to tell him everything. How hurt she was that Nathan had dumped her. How touched she was that Sam was there for her. That she knew he had feelings for her that went deeper than either of them would admit. And that, yes, she, too, was attracted to him, but knew that, in her vulnerable state, acting on them wouldn’t be fair to either of them…
Most of all, though, she wanted to come clean with him over the fact that she was O.
But she didn’t.
Because it was all too much, too soon, and happening way too fast.
Instead, she sat there tearfully, recalling every memory she had about Nathan and her in Los Angeles: their dreams, their struggles, their fears, their hopes…
And Sam let her babble on while he sat there silently: listening, nodding, laughing, brushing away the strands of hair that fell across her face, and lending his shoulder as she bowed her head under the weight of all those precious memories.
Afterward, when she’d fallen asleep exhausted from crying, Sam carried her into her bedroom and tucked her in.
He wished he, too, could just fall sleep, but he couldn’t. There was too much he wanted to say.
When he got home, he called O.
The phone rang for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, she answered. Her voice, husky with sleep, lacked its usual playful cadence. Instead, it was sweet and tender when she said his name.
He was glad for this, because he was in no mood to play games. Instead, he ranted, mostly about all the things he should have said to Nina, right then and there, when he’d had the chance: about how he’d always loved her from the moment he first saw her, how deeply he felt her pain, and how he’d always be there to love and protect her.
By the time the sun came up, he had no more to say.
The fact that O said nothing at all during his long-winded soliloquy spoke volumes. She’s hurt that I’m in love with someone else, he thought.
When she finally did speak, all she said was, “She’s a very lucky girl…Good-bye, Sam.”
They both knew he’d never call back again.
12
The Tabloid War
KAT ’N’ NAT: IT’S OFFICIAL!!!
For all of you with insatiable appetites for Kat-nip, feast on this juicy tidbit: Our fave buxom babe has done it again! Yep, it’s official! She’s snagged yet another up-and-coming Hollywood hunk. Whattaya think: Does Kat ’n’ Nat’ have a cute ring to it? Those in the know insist this is THE REAL THING—and he’d better be, coz Kat’s Nat has dumped a missus and a mini-me in order to play with this naughty kitty!
Baxter Quinn’s Hollywood Exxxposé, 3/10
Nathan, Katerina, Hugo, and Fiona attended the powwow Sam had in his office the next day, concerning damage control related to the breakup. Riley was also there, since he was needed to take notes that were supposed to keep the others on task, as opposed to on top of each other—which, by the way she pawed Nathan the whole time, was all Kat seemed to want to do.
“The most important thing we have to keep in mind is that we must, at all costs, protect the images of both Katerina and Nathan,” Sam said sternly, “and the integrity of Hugo’s movie as well. This can’t—I repeat, can’t—become a tabloid free-for-all. Are we all in agreement on that?”
No one said a word. Not because they agreed with him, but because they didn’t.
Hugo kept his mouth shut because, in his mind, any publicity—good or bad—helped
his picture. Besides, what did it matter if Nathan’s marriage was becoming an early casualty of his own success? Hell, in this town, when a star was on an upward trajectory, it was bound to happen sooner or later anyway. The fact that it was occurring now, and with Kat, was great for everyone: him, Nathan, Kat…even the ever-insatiable public, which ate up Hollywood romances as if they were prime rib platters at Sizzler’s.
As for Kat, public empathy for the two lovebirds assured her that Nathan was hers for keeps. He’d be too caught up in the media frenzy to contemplate any second thoughts about the divorce—which was why her game plan was to ramp up the controversy, and the sooner, the better…
As a publicist, Fiona agreed with Kat’s logic: a very public liaison between the two stars could only increase their box office standing—and their future fees, which was why Fiona couldn’t understand Sam’s sudden empathy with the soon-to-be ex. And she knew Kat well enough to realize that the star would ignore Sam’s directive, and order her to do the same—which meant that Fiona’s ability to answer to two masters was going to be sorely tested that week…another reason, when all the brouhaha was over, to book that long-overdue getaway to the Bacara Resort’s spa.
Riley readily anticipated all their various agendas, which complemented his own: to force-feed gossip on the lovebirds to both Baxter and Serenity. Doing so would only endear him to the columnists and Kat. At the same time, it would undermine Sam—particularly if Sam kept stepping on Kat’s stiletto-encased toes, as he had a tendency to do lately.
Only Nathan, who had the most to lose both personally and professionally, shared Sam’s opinion: “I don’t want it said that I raked Nina over the coals.”
“My sentiments exactly,” said Sam, maybe a bit too quickly. Suddenly all eyes were on him. He put on his best poker face. “We wouldn’t want Katerina coming off as a home-wrecker, now would we?”