Impossibly Tongue-Tied

Begin Reading

Two Months Earlier…

1

The Backstory

2

The Ultimatum

3

The Angel

4

The After-Party

5

The Proposition

6

The Seduction

7

The Affair

8

The Betrayal

9

The Beginning of the End

10

The Oscars

11

The Breakup

12

The Tabloid War

13

The Slap

14

The Truth Comes Out

15

The Backlash

16

The Doubts

17

The Trial

18

The Wedding

One Year Later…

19

The Second Proposition

About the Author

Other Books by Josie Brown

Copyright

About the Publisher

Just when you were ready to believe that the Hollywood rags-to-riches storybook ending can in fact come true, another show-biz couple unties the knot.

Actor Nathan Harte, Hollywood's newest heartthrob, who is set to star in his very first feature film—Hugo Schmitt's upcoming release,
Forever and Again
—filed for divorce yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Harte, 24, and his wife, Nina Sue Wilder Harte, also 24, were high school sweethearts from the small town of Joyous, Missouri. They have one child, a four-year-old son, Jake.

The announcement has been issued through the actor's publicist, Fiona Truman. “The decision is mutual and amicable. The couple is recently separated. They hope that the press will respect their privacy during this difficult time.”

Truman denied the rumors that the marital rift was caused by Harte's “very close and deepening friendship” with his
Forever and Again
costar, the Academy Award–nominated actress Katerina McPherson, whom Harte is now “rooming with until the trauma from his divorce is mitigated somewhat. You know, the institution of marriage is sacred to Mr. Harte, which is why he feels lucky to have found an understanding friend with whom he can share his pain.”

Serenity's Scandal Sheet, 3/10

As in high school, in Hollywood's film industry there is a pecking order. It goes something like this:

 

A-list star.

Studio mogul.

Film producer with ready cash and a strong track record for winners.

A-list director.

Agent with an A-list roster.

Other agents.

Other (struggling) actors.

Other (anxious) studio suits.

Screenwriters (A-list, struggling, anxious, and otherwise).

Those who serve all of the above.

Those who dream of being any of the above.

And, finally, those who are spouses of any of the above.

 

It wasn't hard to guess where Nina Harte—cashier-slash-head concierge at Beverly Hills' favorite “epicurean emporium,” the Tommaso's on Doheny—and her husband, Nathan—a.k.a. the Disneyland Main Street Parade's Donald Duck (during the second shift on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and alternating Sundays)—stood in that pecking order.

Unfortunately, this very same hierarchy existed in the carpool lane at Sage Oak Academy, where Jake, Nina and Nathan's precocious four-year-old, went to school with the coddled offspring of those on Hollywood's upper rungs.

In fact, those doting SOA parents (at least, those parents who actually showed up periodically to drop off their children, as opposed to having their nannies do it) never waited in the carpool line at all. Instead they were discreetly invited to pull into the “headmaster's parking lot” to join the man himself, Bradley K. Pickering, in his private library for a nice hot cup of oolong tea and a slice of organic fruit torte or chocolate raspberry cake from Topozio's while waiting for their precious progeny to be ushered forth.

It was the school's version of a VIP lounge.

Needless to say, au pairs—and for that matter, parents who were Disney parade characters, and their spouses—were not on that VIP list.

So Nina took her turn in the carpool lane with the au pairs.

She could live with that…

For now.

Because both she and Nathan knew that his true destiny lay far beyond the cobblestoned Main Street of Disney's Magic Kingdom. The fact that he was only one voucher away from securing his SAG card was certainly proof of that. They hoped
it was also evident in his acting reel, which was made up of several tasty snippets from his starring roles in the six USC and eight UCLA student films he'd done, along with a few choice scenes from those three low-budget indie films he'd been featured in (none of which, sadly, had ever received a distribution deal).

The truth of the matter was that Nathan stood, both figuratively and literally, head and shoulders above any of the other extras in the numerous feature movie crowd shots in which he'd appeared. But until others realized this too, Disney's Main Street and Tommaso's concierge desk would have to do for the Hartes—and immediately, for Nina was already late for her shift.

Unfortunately, while attempting to disentangle Jake, his carpool partner Plum Silver, and their respective backpacks from her very cluttered eleven-year-old Honda Civic, Nina was waylaid by Brad Pickering who, upon seeing her car pull up to the curb, excused himself from a Pilates-toned mommy who was upset with his decision to suspend her five-year-old daughter over a belly button piercing. (This concern was expressed via Pilates mom's agitated body language, since her decade-long regimen of Botox injections had obliterated any ability she might have once had to actually frown in discontent.)

Whenever possible, Nina dodged Mr. Pickering because it was so obvious that he resented that the Hartes were at Sage Oak in the first place. This was something Nina had instinctively understood since the first time she'd stepped into his office to inquire whether the school had scholarships for students living below Los Angeles County's qualification for low income, which was set at approximately $25,575 per year.
He had warily conceded that, yes, the school did have one such scholarship, and that had recently come available.

Whereas the Hartes' taxable earnings the year before certainly qualified them as “low income,” it was Nina's proud proclamation that Nathan was an actor that raised Mr. Pickering's consternation. Not that entertainers weren't welcomed at Sage Oak per se—at least, not since the 1980s, when SOA's board of trustees had finally done away with its unspoken policy of banning the children of actors, producers, musicians, directors, and their ilk. To the surprise of Pickering and his board, that decision had paid off even more handsomely with renewed interest in the school from L.A.'s old moneyed families as well. For every Ireland, Ella Corrine, Coco, Lily-Rose, Fifi-Trixiebelle, Jake Paris, or Homer James Jigme who roamed SOA's stately hallowed halls, the institution picked up another Getty, Kennedy (or Shriver, Lawton, Smith, Schwarzenegger, or whatever), Morgan, Rockefeller, Davidson, Ahmanson, or Taper.

Like Nathan, several of the other thespian parents had also worked with the Disney organization at one time or another. However, none had donned a costume while doing so. In that way, Nathan was unique.

And somewhat less than desirable.

What had tipped things in the Hartes' favor was the letter of recommendation Nina had brought with her, from Herbert Fitzroy Cahill, the patriarch of the oldest and most revered alumni family within the school.

Cahill money was old money.
Truly
ancient.

Which was why Brad Pickering was stumped as to how, when, and why Herbert Cahill gave a damn about a cashier from Tommaso's.

And so every time he saw Nina, he sucked up—
big
time—and dropped a casual query about Mr. Cahill in the hopes that she'd let loose with those obsessively desired facts, because Pickering just
loved
having the goods on all SOA's board members. For that matter, he valued highly whatever he could find out about every SOA parent. It was his contention that you never knew when such tidbits might come in handy…especially when it came time to fill the coffers for the Headmaster's Annual Fund Drive.

“Ah, Mrs. Harte, how are we this morning?” Because that comely little backside of hers was toward him as she unbuckled her Jake and little Plum from their car seats, Pickering missed the involuntary grimace she gave at the sound of his voice.

But the ever-watchful Plum saw her wince. And between that and the endearment Pickering had proffered Jake's very pretty very sweet mummy, Plum was moved to sing the one love song she knew by heart, albeit with some appropriate improvisation: “Nina and Mr. Prick Ring, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—”

“Now, now Plum—” Pickering, flustered at the child's ditty (not to mention her innocent albeit embarrassing pronunciation of his surname) turned as red as a Rahart's Jumbo Red heirloom tomato in season. “I was just inquiring after Mrs. Harte's demeanor—”

“My mommy
ain't
meaner than the other mommies!” Jake cried out belligerently, a clear indication that the caste system practiced by SOA's chief administrator was less than subtle.

“Of
course
she isn't!” Pickering panicked. He was making a muddle of his reconnaissance mission. “No one thinks that at
all, Jake. Least of all
me
. Why, I was saying to Mr. Herbert Cahill just the other day that your mother was—was one of the—
nicest
mothers of all the mothers in the school.” He nodded knowingly.

Nina turned to face him. “So you talked to Mr. Cahill—about
me?
” Her smile was serene, but her eyes flashed dangerously.

Rarely are grown men as perceptive as little children, and Pickering was no exception to that rule. Plum leaned over to Jake and whispered in a voice loud enough for even the adults to hear: “Is your mommy going to spank Mr. Prick Ring?”

The way the headmaster's coloring went from bright red to deep violet reminded Nina of Tommaso's heirloom Cherokee Purples when they were a little too far gone.

“No, no, sweetheart, of course not!” Nina's laugh might have been all sunshine and sweetness, but her words pricked like tiny daggers.
“He'd probably like it too much.”

As Pickering blanched and the children ran inside, Nina strapped herself back into the front seat and waved good-bye. “I'll be sure to give your regards to Mr. Cahill when I speak to him next.”

With that, she squealed away from the curb in a very un-SOA manner.

How
dare
she!

In the subtlest of ways, this—this
mere cashier
had taken the mighty headmaster down a notch!

Thank God any parent who counted was already inside the confines of Pickering's private library having tea, and not out there on the curb. And thank God Cahill hadn't been there to see any of it, either. Still, Cahill would hear about it.
Through
Nina.
And perhaps call the headmaster in front of the school's board—which the old man ruled with an iron fist—to ask
what in tarnation
was Pickering doing butting into his personal business!

With cheeks still flaming, he stared out after Nina Harte's ancient Civic as it headed toward West Sunset Boulevard, and, thankfully, out of his life…for now.

Some way, although he didn't know how yet, he'd put that impudent girl in her place.

Besides
, he wondered,
how did she guess I'm a bottom?

 

That snot-nosed Brad Pickering was an ass.

Nina knew it. And of course Herbert Cahill knew it, too, because phrases like “suck-up turd” and “sniveling coward” had cropped up periodically whenever Pickering was mentioned (as he invariably was) in their conversations.

Not that Herbert—or Herbie, as he liked Nina to call him—was the chatty type to begin with. Like most of her clients, he preferred that
she
do most of the talking.

About erections, nipples, orgasms—that is, anything and everything even
remotely
sexual in nature.

Of course, none of these conversations happened inside Tommaso's, although Herbie
did
come into the store every now and then. She knew this because he had a file in the store's VIP database. Once she had asked her shift manager, Tony—oops, make that
Tori
, now that the sex change operation was considered a success—to point Herbie out to her, discreetly of course, because it was always so
cool
when she was able to put the name with a face, and then put that face with the voice—

—a true rarity indeed, if you were a phone sex operator.

As, in this case, Nina was.

In that regard, Nina considered herself lucky in that her day job at the oh-so-tony Tommaso's and her nighttime gig as the sultry, seductive “O” actually had some client crossover now and then.

It was true that many of her male customers at Tommaso's greatly appreciated her opinion as to which root vegetables were healthier (not sunchokes, but Asian turnips), which wine had a more subtle flavor (not the French Pouilly-Fuisse, but the German Gewerztraminer) and which cheeses were the firmest (Double Glouster as opposed to Buttercase). Many of these same fine gentlemen also unknowingly spoke to her as O; they hung on her every word as to what turned her on the most about him (the gargantuan size of his member, or the staying power she insisted he had?), what she'd like him to do to her first on these little fantasy dates (that depended on whether he was a breast man or an admirer of well-toned backsides), and which vibrator she found the most pleasurable (the Hitachi Magic Wand; then again the Fukuoko 9000 had its charms…)

In Herbie's case, as a Los Angeles blue blood who had spent a lifetime doling out cold-blooded directives to minions who jumped and scurried at his beck and call, he needed O for absolution. To that end, they always started with a little role playing (invariably O was asked to take on the role of Herb's former German nanny, Fraulein Von Berens), followed by some truly wicked verbal humiliation. (“Shame on you! You are a
very, very
naughty boy! Perhaps it's time that you
lecken meine strumpfbänder, ja
?”)

Then afterward, because he was such a gentleman, Herbie
would wrap up the call with a little polite chitchat: about current events, or baseball (he was a devoted Dodgers fan, so she was sure to be up on the latest scores and plays prior to his thrice-weekly calls—Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday evenings at one-thirty promptly, thank you very much). The old sweetie always asked after Jake, too. Nina couldn't tell him enough how much she appreciated him putting in a good word for them, but he'd hear nothing of it. Pshaw, he'd say in that old-fashioned way of his, he'd been happy to help them get accepted into SOA, since, as he explained with a chuckle, “I look upon you as the naughty second cousin twice removed from the wrong side of the tracks who I was never allowed to have…”).

And finally they'd gossip about people they knew in common…like that jellyfish Pickering…

Well, the next time she talked to Herbie, Nina would take the opportunity to let him know that Brad Pickering had
the gall
to ask her about their relationship! Of course, Herbie would then ruminate out loud on the many ways he could make Pickering's life miserable. Or he'd venture: “What would
you
suggest I say to that buffoon?”

That would allow Nina to point out that Pickering had
never once
invited her to join his private parent tea parties.

And in no time at all, the Hartes' place in the Sage Oak Academy's pecking order would be vastly improved.

 

To Nina, phone sex wasn't lurid—or, for that matter, erotic.

It was just a job.