Impossibly Tongue-Tied (21 page)

Well, from now on, he'd be singing a different tune.

“I've made a horrible mistake! Just horrible! But I'll make it up to you, I swear.”

“I'll say you will,” growled Lavinia Hannigan. “Or else we'll
bury you, along with that Kat.” She handed Nina a business card. “Call me in the morning Nina. Oh, and don't forget my beluga on Friday, okay?”

As she strolled off, Baxter Quinn murmured, “Something tells me Kat's going to have her hands full with that one. But that's nothing compared to what I'm going to do to her.” He smiled wickedly at Nina.

“I certainly appreciate the fact that you're going to give a retraction. But the damage has been done, hasn't it? I'm already being ostracized. Even people who know me would rather not be seen with me.”

“Nina, honey, the one thing I've learned in this town is that everyone loves you when you're a star, and no one loves you when you're down and out. Just watch how quickly Kat falls off that high horse she's on now, when her star loses some of its luster. And I'm just the guy to throw a little mud on it.” He winked knowingly. “Speaking of which, I think this sea bass is now officially inedible. How about some tiger prawns instead?”

As she scooped the prawns out of the seafood case, Baxter plotted his revenge. For Kat, a choice item in tomorrow's column would be only the beginning. For Riley, who broke out in hives followed by diarrhea whenever he ate shellfish, it would start tonight:

Baxter made one hell of a shrimp soufflé that came out of Riley almost as fast as the truth about Kat's little game.

Everyone was laughing at her.

She could tell from the moment she walked onto the set.

And Hugo,
that fucking bastard,
refused to close the set for her.

So Kat endured their snickers. She just put on a big, happy smile and pretended she couldn't hear them, or, if she caught them pointing at her, she looked them straight in the eye, as if daring them to do the same.

Of course, they wouldn't.

Then again, Nathan wouldn't look at her, either.

And that hurt the most.

He, too, had read Baxter's column. Then he cursed at her and slammed out of the house.

Kat stayed up all night, wondering if he'd gone home to Nina, but when she got to the studio, she found out that he'd slept in his dressing room instead, thank God.

She went to him, totally contrite: the perfect geisha, ready to do his bidding.

Not that he wanted her to bide anything for him at all, anytime soon. Or, as he put it: “I'm just not in the mood.”

So she broke down, right then and there. She sobbed endlessly over how sorry she was, how she'd do anything to make it up to him, to Jake, to Nina. She'd even fire Rain—who, she claimed falsely, had fed that perfectly
awful
lie to Baxter in the first place, thinking that she was doing them a favor, that imbecile! Why, Kat was just as upset about it as he was. Just
look
what it had done to her credibility with her public!

Not to mention her relationship with Nathan
.

No, they could not have any loose cannons in their lives, like that awful Rain.

Crawling on her knees to him, as the tears flowed down her
professionally sculpted cheekbones, she asked in a the softest baby-sweet whisper she could manage, “Darling, please, say you forgive me.
Please?
”

He fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

They made love (well,
she
made love to him; he was still so upset that he barely made the effort; in fact, he could barely get it up), then she made her way back to her trailer—

—and fired Rain, right there on the spot.

The poor kid didn't know what hit her.

After Rain left—totally in shock—Kat put in two phone calls. The first was to the security company that guarded her home: she wanted to be sure that someone took all of Rain's things and put them outside the house.
No way, no how
, was that weirdo allowed to go back inside!

Kat's second call was to Fiona. “Get me some do-gooder cause to front, pronto, before Baxter blows my brand to hell!” she screamed into the phone. Fiona said she'd see what she could do.

Later that week, Kat found herself on some major corporation's private jet on her way to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Summit, which was convening that week.

As the press put it:

The day Kat landed back in Los Angeles, Baxter's column ran the headline “The Bitch Is Back” and caustically derided
Kat's “sudden concern for canine couture” as a publicity stunt, to which he added, “And you thought only dogs could be bitches?”

Kat was reading the paper while hanging from her Pilates trapeze table when she came across Baxter's column. Tossing the paper on the floor to Nathan, who had just completed his 437th sit-up, she shrieked, “That bastard! Who the hell does he think he is? I froze my ass off shilling for those mutts! So Fiona picked the wrong relief charity. Hell, nobody's perfect! Not even that mealymouthed little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes you were married to!”

Kat's teary promise to make it up to him—or, for that matter, Jake and Nina—had come to naught, unless you could call a never-before-attempted tantric position and a couple of blowjobs fair compensation.

“Technically, hon, I'm
still
married to her,” Nathan growled. Then realizing her proximity to the barbells, he ducked, just in case. “And the fact of the matter is that Nina truly is a saint. Heck, she held down two jobs the whole time we were struggling.”

“Big effin' deal. She's a grocery clerk! What, does she moonlight at Walgreen's, too?”

“Hell, no, there's no money in that. She's also a phone sex operator.”

“A—a
what? Are you kidding?
”

It suddenly dawned on Nathan that, with a simple slip of the tongue, he had just ruined Nina's life.

A cold chill of shame ran through him. If there had been any way he could have taken it all back, he would, but it was too late. In no time at all, Kat unstrapped herself, dismounted
with a perfect back tuck, and speed-dialed Riley so that he could give Serenity the scoop of the year.

Those who were taking lunch meetings at their usual tables at the Ivy would always remember the ominous hush that came over that revered establishment on the day Nina was outed in Serenity's column.

Sam, who had not yet perused the gossip columns (the only papers he could stomach before lunch were
Variety
and
Hollywood Reporter
), knew something was amiss, but he hadn't yet heard what.

He was sitting at his usual table on the Ivy's back patio listening to a pitch by an up-and-coming screenwriter (who was enjoying his first lunch at the revered watering hole, and just assumed that everyone was speaking in fervent whispers because they were as awed as he was for being there), when his cell buzzed silently. Noting from the phone's caller ID that it was Hugo ringing him, Sam politely excused himself, stood up, and walked toward the restaurant's lobby.

He hadn't even made it out of the patio before Hugo's
outraged expletives could be heard pouring out of Sam's Motorola Q.

“Hugo, what—what is it? What's happened?” Sam had to calm the director down, not just because he was ruining everyone's lunch in the unusually morguelike Ivy, but because he was worried that Hugo might actually have a heart attack.

“What a little sneak! What a liar! Can you
believe
it?”

“Who, Kat?” Sam sighed wearily. “What did she do now?”

“No.
Not
Kat.” Hugo hissed. “
Nina
.”

Hearing his beloved's name, Sam went on full alert. “Did something happen to Nina? Is she hurt? Did Kat hurt her?”

“Hurt?
FUCK NO!
” Hugo's retort was so loud that Sam actually had to move the phone away from his ear. “She's been playing us, Sam. Do you get it? It's her!
She's O!
”

Sam walked out of the restaurant to see if his cell reception cleared up. If he wasn't mistaken, Hugo had said that Nina was O…

And heck, there was no way…

“What?
What did you say?
”

“You heard me. I said, NINA IS O. It's in Serenity's column! What a joke, huh? I feel—I feel so…
violated
. Shit, I feel like a
girl
…Hey, are you there?…Sam, can you hear me?…
HELLO?
”

It was easy to see why Hugo assumed the line was dead, what with Sam having quit breathing for two or three minutes.

At least.

Although it seemed like a lifetime.

The part of his life that Nina had entered flashed before his eyes, as if his mind was doing an instant replay while it searched for the clues he'd missed: the first time he saw her,
there behind the counter at Tommaso's; the look in her eyes when he promised to look at Nathan's DVD; her joy at Nathan's signing ceremony, and the gentle kiss she gave him afterward; all those stolen moments on those Tuesday evenings, when he was pretending to do his own shopping; that wonderful scent of hers, as she laid her head on his chest at the Casa del Mar; Nina, passed out and naked, stripped bare by Nathan's defection, both physically and emotionally…

And all those flirting, teasing, taunting conversations with O…

…In which he had told her how much he loved Nina.

Loved
her
.

Why, she knew she was talking to him all along.

Hell, she had certainly known who he was when she handed him Nathan's reel. That she had admitted, right then and there.

She had done it all for Nathan: sucked up to Sam, played him like a fiddle, then crushed him like a bug under that delicately arched foot of hers.

That bitch.
That cunt
.

Once again he had trusted a woman, only to have his heart ripped out of his chest and pounded into the ground.

He tossed a twenty at the valet along with his parking chit. The dude had his car there in no time flat.

The screenwriter had anticipated he'd have to pick up the check, but he hadn't anticipated that Sam would leave without hearing his pitch. Of course he'd be pissed when he found out.
Well, too bad
, thought Sam.
I'll catch the guy later
. Right now, it was payback time.

 

Because Jake was complaining of stomach cramps, Nina had kept him home from school that morning. She had no doubt that his tummy ache and the way he was sucking on his inhaler as if it were a pacifier were symptoms of his anxiety over the divorce, coupled with all the whispering that was now going around the little boy's school. With her cell phone turned off and far away from the tabloid headlines that stared out at her from Tommaso's newsstand (not to mention the stares from the store's clientele, who could not help but recognize her from her pictures in those same tabloids), she was blissfully ignorant of the latest tempest brewing around her.

It was only after Jake went down for his afternoon nap that Nina decided to flip on O's phone line. She rarely worked during the day, and she didn't expect any of her regulars to anticipate her availability, so she was pleasantly surprised to see Sam's telephone number pop up on her phone's caller ID. He had not called O since he'd confessed he loved Nina, and she was glad about that, because she would have felt horrible keeping up the charade, but now she longed to talk to him.

In fact, she knew that it was time to come clean with him. Just the thought of doing so gave her a sense of elation. She'd played the conversation over and over in her head so that she'd have the right words ready. It was important that he understand the serendipity of it all: how he and Nina met, his connection to Hugo, Hugo's connection to O, and the final, most fateful link of all:

O and Nina
.

And in knowing how he felt about her, she could now tell him how she felt about him, too.

That she wanted to love him as much as she loved Nathan.

But that was the problem:
She did still love Nathan.

If Sam could accept that—and accept her mandate that they take things slowly, learn about each other, and most importantly, never lie anymore to each other—
then it just might work.

“Hi, handsome,” O said breathlessly.

“Hi, yourself…
O
.”

Something was wrong. She could tell immediately, just in the way he'd spoken O's name.

O knew how to bring him back to her. “I'm so glad you called. I've missed you.
Terribly.
”

“I'll just bet. Hey, O, tell me: Is there anyone in that little black book of yours who
doesn't
get that line from you?”

She laughed uncertainly. “You've always been special to me, handsome. You know that.”

Silence.

She didn't know what he was fishing for.
Maybe he's having a bad day
, she thought.
Well, when I tell him, he'll feel better. Of course he would
…

She started with: “So, I've got a surprise for you—”

“
Really?
A surprise? Well, well.”

Why was he mocking her?

“Let me guess: Is it some new trick you've learned to do with your tongue? Will it make me hard? Will you promise we'll come together?”

“What?” She was surprised. He had never taunted her like that. “No, nothing like that…What's with you, Sam? Is everything okay?”

Silence again. Then: “I'll say, O. Everything's just fine and dandy. Now that I've gotten over
that bitch Nina.”

It was as if she'd been hit hard in the chest. It took her a few long moments to catch her breath, to be able to answer him without gasping. “What do you mean, Sam?”

“Well, O, I have to tell you. There I was at lunch, enjoying the peace and quiet of the day, when it suddenly dawned on me:
That Nina is a lying bitch.
She's just a piece of ass—albeit a very cute piece of ass—but nonetheless, she's just like every other woman who's ever stomped on my heart. Ever had that happen to you, O? You know, when someone just tears you up inside with their lies, one right on top of the other—”

“Sam, what are you saying—”

“I thought I was making myself very clear.” He spit the words into the phone. “I'm saying that she's just a piece of ass…just like you. You like it when I call you that, don't you?”

She didn't know what to say. Not that she could say anything while she choked back her tears.

“Talk dirty to me, O,” he dared her. “Make me come. For once, give me my money's worth. That's what this is about, anyway, isn't it? The money? Hey, that's okay, I get it…at least, I will on this call. You'll get me off this time, right? Because I'm getting tired of your little head games. If you can't get me off, then you're just like Nina:
a fake
.”

She was stung by his hurtful jibes. Moreover, she was angry. At him, for being cruel. At Nathan, to whom she'd been so loyal, and for whom she became O in the first place.

And at herself, thinking any man deserved her love.

Certainly Sam didn't deserve it
.

Not after what he was saying about her. Not after what he'd just asked her to do.

So instead, she gave him what he wanted. In a steady voice devoid of any sensuality, she recited every lusty come-on, every sad sexual cliché, every raw put-down she could think of: not just words that defiled the human anatomy, but unadulterated triple X–rated blather in which every orifice was described minutely, then objectified obscenely.

When she was done, she couldn't tell if he was still on the line.

I have to make him speak to me
, she thought,
to tell me what I've done to deserve his hatred. Damn it, I've already lost Nathan! I can't lose Sam, too
.

All of a sudden, she couldn't stop crying.

She didn't know how long she wept, only that she had never hung up the phone.

Apparently, neither had he.

When he finally spoke, she learned why he hated her:

“You need to look at a newspaper, Nina.”

Then he hung up.

 

So he knows.

And he hates me for it.

She ran to her computer and went online to see what he was talking about, scanning Ted's column in
E! Online
, then
Page Six
, Liz's column, Cindy's, Jeanette's, Baxter's, Lloyd's…and finally Serenity's…

There it was, in Serenity's column:

That Nina was O.

Serenity went on to call her two-faced, and shameless for the way she was apparently fluffing up half of Hollywood with her gutter mouth…

…To the horror of poor Nathan, who, Serenity declared, should now be forgiven for seeking solace in Kat's arm.

No wonder Sam hated her
.

From reading this, it was natural to assume that every word she'd ever said to him had been a conniving lie. But this
wasn't
her. She had to tell him that, to let him know what his friendship meant to her.
No way could she lose his friendship
. She needed Sam, now more than ever. She would go to him, and explain everything.

With a feeling of dread, she dialed Casey's cell. Had she read Serenity's column, too? And if so, was she still Nina's friend?

“Hell, girl, it's about time you called! Hey, uh, this one's on the house, right?”

Casey's teasing jibe almost made Nina laugh. “You've got quite a sense of humor this afternoon. Wish I could say the same.”

“All in good time. Is Serenity's crap why you kept Jake home today?”

“No! I didn't even know this was coming down…which is why I'm calling. Jake's got a stomachache, but he's not contagious, and I really need to go out and—and straighten out this mess—”

“Say no more. Bring him on by. He can go with me to pick up Ben.” Then Casey's voice got serious. “But Nina, I have to warn you: Not everyone is taking this in the right way. As Susannah so eloquently put it, you're a hot potato right now, particularly since Rolf is in discussions with Nathan about that indie he's trying to get off the ground.”

A tear fell down Nina's cheek. Not that she hadn't ex
pected this. In a town where your success was predicated on which stars you'd hitched your own career to, in her so-called friends' minds, Nathan was definitely a better bet for the long run.

“And Jill—well, Jill asked that I tell you not to call her anymore. She's also telling the school that Jamie isn't allowed to play with Jake.”

“She's taking it out
on Jake?
That's so unfair! I mean, I understand if she thinks what I did was—”

“I've already told her that I think so, too…only I don't think I put it as politely as you did just now. Look, it's how this town plays the game. A year from now she'll be hitting up some producer to play you in the biopic they'll be making on your life. And she'll use her friendship with you as the reason why she'd be perfect for the role.”

Ironically, Nina realized how right Casey was. “That's so disgusting. I'd just puke if that ever happened.”

“It won't. You know as well as I do that the role will go to someone like Natalie or Claire. If it's any consolation, even if Jill did get it, just imagine how washed out she'll look as a brunette.”

“When I said it was disgusting, that's not what I meant—”

“Duh. I
know
what you meant. Hey, see you in a few minutes.”

 

By the time Nina got to Sam's place, the late afternoon sun had already moved out to sea, and the long shadows emanating from the house only emphasized how feebly its warmth held up against the strong breezes blowing in from the beach.

She couldn't tell if Sam's car was in the garage, so she didn't
know if he was home or not. Of course, all she had to do was ring the bell.