Impossibly Tongue-Tied

by Josie Brown

  Poor Katerina begged me not to put any of this in the formal report. She said that Nathan would never forgive her for telling me the truth about Nina, but that, if she had kept her mouth shut, she would not have been able to live with herself, particularly if that woman had gotten custody—even partial custody—of little Jakey. Besides, if it was written up, it could become public knowledge, and that would mean more bad publicity for Nathan and poor little Jakey…although, I agree with her, that there can be no such thing as bad publicity for the likes of a Nina Harte!

  Not that I’d ever tell a soul…not even Serenity Lancaster, whom Kat talks very highly of. She asked me if I knew Serenity. (Ha! If only!) When I said no, she readily added that Serenity was such a nice person! In fact, she even intimated that I reminded her of Serenity, and perhaps we should all have tea together sometime…Now, wouldn’t that be unbelievable!!!

  Kat encouraged me to make a surprise visit to Jake’s mother as soon as possible. I promised her that I would go right after I left her house—unannounced, of course.

  Not that Nina Harte actually has a home. (Strike one!) For the time being, she is living in the cabana house of the star Jarred Cattrall. (It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her if he was one of her—ahem—“johns,” but then I thought better of that; I don’t want to come off as predisposed, as it were).

  Although Katerina had warned me, I was still shocked to find Nina drinking appletinis with a girlfriend in the middle of the day, while their little boys were playing in the pool! Nina Harte was so surprised to see me that, unbelievably, she asked me if I’d like a drink, too! Of course, I declined. I couldn’t get close enough to detect any alcohol on her breath, although I could only imagine it was there. By the look on the other woman’s face, I guess my disapproval was pretty obvious…at least, to someone who was sober!

  Still, I was determined to keep an open mind throughout the evaluation. Granted, this Nina person was very polite, and certainly very sweet throughout the interview, and I must admit, that little boy seemed so happy there with her, hugging and kissing her, and patting her hand constantly…

  But then again, as Kat so eloquently put it, “Things aren’t always as they seem…”

  In any event, the meeting has reinforced my decision to keep my promise to Kat. I won’t recommend unsupervised custody for Nina Harte. I’m justified in this decision because the facts bear this out: She is, after all, homeless. A second strike against her is her obvious drinking habit. And of course, strike three is her “occupation.” All of this certainly takes Nina Harte out of the parenting game!

  On a good note: That sweet Kat and Nat gave me their autographs! If only she’d won that Oscar! Wouldn’t that have been something?!? Well, there’s always next year…

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re avoiding me.”

  Sam’s mumbled accusation was something that Nina couldn’t deny. But she didn’t have the heart—or perhaps the guts—to tell him why:

  She didn’t know if she could trust him.

  They were sitting together in the conference room of Lavinia Hannigan’s law firm, where the attorney had been grilling Nina with the kind of questions she knew Howard Cross would be throwing Nina’s way. While Nina and Sam had talked on the phone two or three times a day since that night in his beach house, they’d both agreed that it was best not to see each other publicly until the custody hearing was over.

  Well, the custody hearing was tomorrow. After that, Nina knew she’d have to level with him about her distrust. She also planned on asking him to level with her about his role in the breakup of her marriage.

  To buy some time until then, Nina put her finger to her lips to indicate that she was too caught up with the task at hand to answer him. He raised an eyebrow in consternation. Still, he took the cue—for now. But she knew he’d expect an answer as soon as the mock deposition was over.

  Nina sighed. She hoped she’d be able to dodge his pointed questions as adeptly as she had been evading Lavinia’s. Then again, the accusations Lavinia was tossing her way were ones she could answer in her sleep:

  Had she become a phone sex operator because she loved the power she had over men? Of course not, Nina answered emphatically. I only did it to pay our bills—both mine and Nathan’s.

  Didn’t it disgust her to rant out all that filth, with her child playing in the next room?

  “My child never heard me talk that way,” Nina answered calmly. “I only took calls when he was asleep. I did so in a closed room. And if Nathan wasn’t home to look after him, I’d put on the BabyCam, so that I could monitor him while I worked.”

  “‘Work,’ huh? What a quaint euphemism for talking dirty at a buck a minute. Admit it,” Lavinia insisted, “You were turned on, too, dishing out all that verbal masturbation!”

  “No, never,” Nina countered in a firm, clear voice. “If you say those phrases enough times, soon they mean nothing to you. They’re just vacuous words. In fact, most times my mind was elsewhere. Usually I’d be making up a bed, or straightening a room while I was on the phone.”

  “Vacuous words?” Lavinia thundered. “Come now, Nina, admit it! You enjoy knowing that you are getting men off by saying all those disgusting, naughty things to them, knowing that with a well-chosen phrase, you can physically incapacitate them!”

  “Incapacitate them? Gee, Mr. Cross, I’m not a special ops navy SEAL, you know! Just a pretty good listener to a few lonely guys,” Nina replied with wide-eyed innocence.

  “It just goes to prove that you’re one helluva good actress,” Sam murmured appreciatively to Nina. “Jeez, I’m beginning to feel sorry for the poor saps who really fell for your lines—”

  Suddenly he remembered how turned on he’d been the first time he’d heard the CD Lucinda had made of O—Nina—and Hugo. At the time she was fluffing up his pal, she was probably folding laundry, or something else just as mundane! He blushed, thinking about how he’d almost driven off the road just listening to her voice!

  Lavinia agreed. “You’ll certainly hold your own against Howard, and that’s good, Nina, because he’s going to do every thing he can to break you down, tear you up, and spit you out in front of that judge—and, unfortunately, a peanut gallery of press and gawkers.”

  “You’re joking, right? You mean it isn’t going to be a private hearing?” Sam couldn’t believe his ears.

  “What, are you kidding? It’s an election year, remember? Judge Jessup is running for the State Supreme Court, and Nina—along with every other ‘unfit mother’—is going to be his election issue.”

  “So what you’re saying is that I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping Jake.” Tears welled up in Nina’s eyes.

  “Not necessarily. That depends on how well you can answer this question: Have you ever met any of your phone johns in person?”

  Nina hesitated just a moment, but it was enough to make Lavinia frown.

  “Yes,” Nina murmured. What she didn’t add was that it had been Sam. “But it was only after—”

  “Just answer the question, please, Ms. Harte! Did you have sex with him?”

  Nina glanced over at Sam. Slowly she nodded.

  “You just lost custody of Jake.” Lavinia took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose, a habit she had when things weren’t going well.

  Like now.

  Nina closed her eyes for a moment. When she reopened them, she smiled and said brightly, “Heavens, no! My client is eighty-seven if he’s a day! Even when we talked on the phone, it was only to commiserate about how poorly the Dodgers were doing. He thought of me as the Dodger-loving granddaughter he never had. In fact, he was upset when Jeff Weaver hit that pitching slump—”

  “Good save, as long as you make it clear that the client is old and not wealthy. Just lonely,” Lavinia said dryly. “So be careful. If Cross catches you off guard, you’re cooked, Nina.” She leaned across the table to make her point. “You’ve got to think of everything coming out of his
mouth as mud. Remember, he wants to throw as much of it as possible on you, with the hopes that it sticks in the mind of the judge, and for that matter, everyone in the courtroom.”

  “Don’t worry, Lavinia. I’ll remember,” Nina promised her meekly. “I can’t afford to forget.”

  The lawyer nodded. “Well, it’s already after nine. I guess we should call it a night. We’ve certainly got a big day in front of us.”

  Nina was silent as she and Sam rode the elevator the forty-two stories down to the parking garage in the bottom of Lavinia’s building. He, on the other hand, chattered away, about the difficulty he was having in rebuilding his client list (thirty-first floor), how good it felt to discover that his most valued clients were also his most loyal (nineteenth floor), and how relieved he would be when they both could put this behind them and get on with their lives…together…(eighth floor).

  And that’s when he leaned over to kiss her.

  His mouth fell on hers hungrily, greedy for the pleasures it had enjoyed once, and now so sorely missed.

  She didn’t have the heart to struggle. Nor did she participate, however.

  Realizing this, he pulled away.

  The elevator did a little jump before coming to a halt on the underground parking garage level. “Ah! Here we are!” Nina said brightly. She started out the door. She hadn’t taken three steps before he grabbed her by the hand, forcing her to face him.

  “Okay, out with it.”

  “What? I don’t know what you—”

  “Nina, tell me the truth: Why the cold shoulder?”

  “It’s—it’s just, you know, this hearing. That’s all—”

  “No, it’s not. It’s something else.” His eyes searched hers for any telltale sign. Not seeing anything, he glanced away, disappointed. “Have it your way. I’d hoped we were beyond all the game playing, but if we’re not, it’s good to know that now. You’re too good of a liar, I guess. Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow in court. Good night.” He headed off in the direction of his car.

  “What?” Suddenly Nina was angry. Her head was pounding from the anxiety she was feeling: over Lavinia’s interrogation, the obvious bias she’d felt the other day from the family court evaluator, her fear of losing Jake, and Nathan’s suspicions of Sam.

  And now, to have Sam accuse her of lying to him—

  Well, that was just too much!

  He’d already gotten into his car and started the engine. She ran up to the driver’s side window and tapped on it angrily. Surprised to see her standing there, he rolled it down.

  “Don’t—don’t walk away from me like that!” She could barely contain her hurt. “Okay, you really want to know what’s bothering me? I’ll tell you: I think you planned all of this!”

  “What? Are you crazy?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Whatever it was, though, he didn’t want to hear it in a parking lot. “Get in the car.”

  “No, I won’t!” Nina retorted. “I’m tired of being at everyone’s beck and call. If you want to talk to me, you can do so out—”

  “Nina, I’m not going to stand there while you yell at me in front of a bunch of security cameras, only to watch it on Extra tomorrow night. I said GET IN!”

  He had a point. Meekly, she did as ordered.

  He turned to face her. “Okay, now, in the calmest voice you have—and believe me, I know you have one, because I’ve heard it firsthand in many a phone conversation—tell me about this conspiracy theory of yours.”

  “It’s not my theory. It’s Nathan’s. He thinks that you planned—”

  “Whoa, whoa! Back up! How did Nathan get into this?”

  “He…he came over to the apartment.”

  “Oh. I see.” Sam closed his eyes, and shook his head.

  “No, you don’t see. Nothing happened between us.” The color rose in her cheeks. Nothing except the fact that we kissed. And I almost let him take me in the kitchen…

  “I take back what I said in the conference room. You’re not that good of a liar. At least you aren’t too convincing right now.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. The sound of his horn made them both jump.

  “Okay, let me get this straight: what you’re saying is that Nathan—brainiac that he is, and with not the least bit of a conscience for his role in any of this fiasco—has convinced you that none of this is his fault, and better yet, that it’s all mine. That I devised some evil master plot to break up Donald Duck’s marriage by introducing him to the horniest nympho in Hollywood. You know, someone who he’d be unable to resist, no matter how much he loved and cherished the wife who would do anything to help him, including stay up all night working as a phone sex operator, after working on her feet all day as a supermarket clerk.”

  Angrily, he turned back to look at her. His eyes were damp. “And I did this all because I fell in love with…I fell in love with the sweetest person I’ve ever run across in this town, whom I happened to meet, by sheer fate, at the checkout counter of a store I normally never go into. Yeah, okay, I’ll buy that. Maybe I can even sell it to Touchstone because it sure as hell would make a great chick flick. Hey, maybe we could get Scarlett, or Kate, or Clare to sign on to play you! Of course, they’d have to be open to going brunette—”

  She’d been a fool.

  He did love her. And while he might have been the catalyst for the series of events that wrecked her marriage, it wasn’t he who had walked out on her.

  That had been Nathan.

  In fact, Sam was doing everything to save her life, so that, eventually, they could share a life together. She could see that clearly now.

  To even think that Sam had anything to do with Kat’s desire for Nathan, or Nathan’s desire for Kat, or for that matter, that he’d done it to get back into Kat’s good graces was so ridiculous, so stupid—

  Gently, she placed a finger on his lips to silence him. Then she stroked his cheek. If she could have climbed over the gearshift, she would have done so, right then and there. Instead, she leaned in so that her lips could find his once again, hungrily, greedy for the pleasures it had enjoyed once, and now so sorely missed…

  But he didn’t kiss her back.

  Instead he muttered, “Frankly, I think your gut instinct is right. We should cool it some, until we’ve both had a chance to sort out our feelings.”

  She nodded mutely. She’d now given him reason to doubt her.

  All because she had listened to Nathan.

  “Nina, I do love you.” By the look in his eye, she had no doubt that was true. “But until you feel the same way about me, until you can say in your heart that Nathan means nothing to you anymore, I think we should let fate take its course.”

  He was right, of course.

  And they both knew that, at that very moment, Nathan was still entrenched deeply in her heart.

  Then again, after tomorrow, that might not be the case.

  Certainly they could wait one more day.

  Once more, with heavy hearts, they went their separate ways.

  Earlier that day, the very sexy, very tanned mailman whose route was the Century Park Plaza dropped two similar packages—both without return addresses—in East Building.

  The first one went to Exxxpose’s office, on the thirteenth floor. As always, Baxter was there to personally collect the mail himself. To hell with coffee breaks! He’d gladly forgo caffeine in favor of some of that sweet eye candy in U.S. Postal Service regulation shorts!

  While most of Baxter Quinn’s really hot tips on stars doing lots of naughty things came in via fervently whispered voice messages or quickly typed (and therefore typo-ridden) e-mails, every now and then Himbo the Mailman took Baxter’s fantasy one step further by playing Santa, too. Well, today was one of those days, and thank gawd for that, considering the horrible funk Baxter was in over Serenity Lancaster’s recent scoop on Nina’s lascivious night gig.

  After giving Himbo a come-hither wink and breathless thank you, Baxter went back to his office, closed the door, an
d opened the anonymous package.

  It was postmarked Ketchum, Idaho. Hmmm.

  It contained an unmarked DVD.

  Popping it into his computer, Baxter watched, fascinated, as the audition tape of Nathan Harte being flirtatiously teased, soulfully kissed, and seductively fluffed by that darned Kat played before his eyes.

  So that’s how the seduction began, thought Baxter. It certainly made the concept of Nat and his precious Kat as Jake’s legal custodians less palatable.

  “I’m only human…Just like the girl next door, right?” she breathily implored Nathan.

  As the DVD played on, Baxter wondered how many other girls next door knew some of those moves. At least one, it seemed. From Ketchum, Idaho.

  He’d be sure to describe the video, in detail, in tomorrow’s column. And, of course, uplink it on his website.

  The second package from Ketchum, which had been delivered to the palatial offices of Hannigan, Weiss, & Young on the Twenty-second floor, was opened very late that night, after Sam and Nina had gone, and Lavinia was left pulling out her hair over their lousy case. After reviewing the DVD, however, her whole take on their situation changed. Jubilantly she opened a jar of Tommaso’s Premium Beluga Caviar in celebration of what might have to be her trump card in Nina’s case—even if using it would mean breaking Nina’s heart.

  17

  The Trial

  HOO-HAH! Howard Cross was totally pumped.

  From the vibe he was channeling as he gazed on the jam-packed courtroom, he could just feel it: Victory was imminent.

  Extra was there, as were Entertainment Tonight, Celebrity Justice, Access Hollywood, and Inside Edition. And Nancy, Greta, and Catherine had sent correspondents, as had all the tabloids, which were sporting such headlines as “Sex Opera-trix Has Hollywood’s Number” and “Hollywood Dials O for Orgasm”…