by Julie James
“Do you really think Frank’s going to keep putting them on the stand?” Derek asked on the other end of the line. “They’re all doing so horribly.”
Glancing up at the road ahead, Taylor spotted the exit she was supposed to take. Thank god. She guided her car toward the off ramp, still holding her cell phone with one hand.
“You and I may see that,” she answered Derek, “but Frank seems to be living in crazy—”
Suddenly, she was cut off as another car shot out of nowhere into her lane, trying to make the exit ramp. With barely any time to react, she yanked the steering wheel to the right, trying to get out of the car’s way, swerving into the next lane and—
—felt the jolt of an impact as another car hit her.
Everything happened in a lightning-quick blur: the wheels of the PT Cruiser spun out as Taylor’s head struck the driver’s side window and everything spun around and around and around and then—
The car suddenly lurched to a stop in a ditch on the side of the road.
Taylor’s airbag exploded.
Well, at least the stupid PT Cruiser had those.
WITH A GROAN, Taylor pulled her head away from the inflated airbag. She gingerly touched the side of her head where she had cracked it against the window. While it felt quite painful, she didn’t feel anything warm, icky, or gushing, which she took as a positive sign. She then began mentally running through a checklist: fingers moving, toes moving, all teeth appeared to be intact.
After what felt like only seconds, Taylor heard a frantic knock to her left. In her daze, she turned in the direction of the sound and saw a middle-aged man wearing a light blue suit and a Mickey Mouse tie at the driver’s side window. The man yanked open her car door.
Taylor’s first thought was that she, Taylor Donovan, was about to be rescued by a man in a blue leisure suit and Mickey Mouse tie.
Her second thought was that she, Taylor Donovan, didn’t need to be rescued by anyone.
Her third thought was that she was oddly thinking of herself in the third person, and that couldn’t be a good sign.
The Mickey Mouse guy stuck his head into the car. “Miss! Are you okay? Are you all right?”
Taylor smiled reassuringly. No worries, man. After all, she was Taylor Donovan. Confident that, through her customary humor and wit, she could show just how unfazed and confident a person Taylor Donovan was, she held up her cell phone for the Mouse man to see.
“Could I be more of a cliché?” she asked jokingly.
And that was the last thing Taylor Donovan said before passing out cold.
“I’M TELLING YOU, I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about. I feel great.”
The doctor scribbled something in his chart, ignoring Taylor’s assurances. She sat on the edge of the examination table, thinking that the Los Angeles emergency room certainly must have had more important things to worry about than the little bump on her head. Wasn’t there some Lindsay Lohan “heat exhaustion” crisis to tend to?
Taylor had already called the courthouse and, luckily, the judge had been very understanding. He had agreed to recess the trial until Monday and told her to take care of herself for the weekend. Now if she could just get out of this darn hospital.
The doctor finally finished his scribbling and snapped his file shut.
“Well, you have a concussion, Taylor. And that means I can’t release you for the next twenty-four hours unless you’re under the care of another adult.”
“No, but look—I’m fine,” Taylor insisted. “See?” She wiggled her fingers and toes for the doctor’s benefit, although being fully dressed in her suit and high heels meant the toe part of the demonstration wasn’t particularly impressive.
“I’m sorry, but that’s hospital policy. Blame it on you lawyers for making us so careful.” He grinned at the joke.
Taylor groaned, not because of the lame attack on her profession, and not even because her head felt worse than it did when she was seven years old and her brother Patrick had dropped her on the sidewalk in a chicken fight against the O’Malley brothers gone awry, but because she really, really hated hospitals—possibly even more than airplanes. They had a funny smell.
The doctor looked at Taylor sympathetically. “Isn’t there anyone you can call to come pick you up?”
Taylor silently debated the ethics of asking one’s secretary to babysit one’s concussed self on a Friday night. Then her cell phone rang.
She sheepishly gestured to her ringing purse, which sat on the chair in the corner of the examination room. “Sorry,” she apologized to the doctor. “I forgot to turn it off.”
The doctor was wholly nonplussed. “This is L.A., Taylor. I’ve seen women deliver babies while on their cell phones.”
Taylor jumped off the table and pulled the phone out of her purse. She saw it was Scott calling and answered with surprise.
“Hello?”
“Hey! Gorgeous!” Scott’s voice rang out cheerfully. “I was just calling to see what time I should pick you up tomorrow.”
Shit—she had forgotten all about their date. Again.
“Um . . . Scott, hi . . . there’s a slight problem.” Taylor moved to the corner of the room and lowered her voice, not wanting the doctor to overhear.
“I was kind of in a car accident,” she whispered into the phone. “Nothing serious—but I guess I have a concussion or something. They say they won’t release me today unless someone comes to pick me up. I guess it’s hospital policy.”
Taylor paused, debating whether to continue. She decided to go for broke, driven on by dreaded thoughts of staying in the hospital overnight.
“So I don’t suppose you have any interest in changing our date to tonight, do you?” she asked Scott, laughing lightly to cover how stupid she felt. “You’d just have to make sure I don’t vomit after eating or anything. Although I suppose in Los Angeles, that’s more a sign of peer pressure than a concussion, right?”
Instead of a reciprocal (or even polite) laugh, there was a long, silent pause on the other end of the line.
Okay, so that hadn’t been her finest one-liner, Taylor thought. She had a concussion, after all. Cut her a little friggin’ slack.
Finally, Scott answered, sounding even more uncomfortable than her. “Shit, Taylor, you know . . . normally I would love to help you out, but see—we’re in the middle of filming right now, and I can’t leave the set. Plus I don’t know how long the director wants to go tonight. You understand, don’t you, gorgeous?”
Taylor nodded. What had she expected, anyway? She’d had one date with the guy. “Sure, no problem,” she said lightly, hoping to cover her supreme lameness. “Why don’t I call you later, when things settle down?” She hurriedly said good-bye and hung up.
Taylor turned around and saw the doctor watching her. Clearly, he had heard every word.
“It’s not like jail,” he said with a kind smile. “You can make more than one phone call. I know you’re new in town, but you must know someone else.”
Of course, Taylor’s mind did indeed turn right then to the one “someone else” in Los Angeles she knew.
Oh sure, like that was a possibility.
Maybe, in Valerie’s fantasy world, Taylor would call up Jason Andrews, the (alleged) Sexiest Man Alive, and he would ride up to the hospital like a knight in shining armor and whisk her off to his magnificent palace far, far away.
But this was the real world. And Taylor happened to know for a fact that Jason was tied up at that very moment, filming. She certainly wasn’t about to ask another man for help, only to again be rejected. Especially this particular man.
So Taylor took her seat on the examination table. She shook her head definitively.
“No—I can’t think of anyone else to call,” she told the doctor. “At least, no one any less busy.”
“Not even a colleague from work?” the doctor asked insistently. “I’d really hate to keep you overnight.”
Taylor shrugged. “I guess I don’
t have any choice, do I?”
The doctor nodded reluctantly. He sighed and opened his mouth to say something when—
“She’ll stay with me.”
The voice came from the doorway. Taylor turned around to look—
And saw Jason standing there.
Ignoring the surprised look on the doctor’s face, he stepped into the room.
“You’ll stay with me, Taylor,” he said firmly.
She stared at him in shock. “What are you doing here?”
Jason shrugged her question off with a grin. “I heard you were here,” he said, looking a little embarrassed.
And when his eyes met hers, Taylor—who as a matter of pride never, ever, let people see her rattled—suddenly found that she had absolutely no idea what to say.
Jason waited for some kind of reaction from her. When she remained silent, he turned to the doctor worriedly.
“I thought they said she was fine. She’s too quiet.”
The doctor shrugged. “Ms. Donovan seemed perfectly fine until you showed up, Mr. Andrews.”
“Oh. Yes, well, that’s generally how it works with us.” Jason rubbed his hands together. “So what do I have to do to spring her out of here?”
“If you agree to have Taylor released in your care, you’ll need to watch her closely for the next twenty-four hours,” the doctor said. “Most important, when she’s sleeping, you need to wake her every four hours and ask her a few questions to make sure she’s conscious.”
The doctor peered over. “As for you, Taylor, I want you to promise to take it easy these next couple of days. If you do, you should be okay to go back to work on Monday.”
But Taylor could not stop staring at Jason. “How did you know?”
“How did I know what?”
“That I was in the hospital.”
“I called your office looking for you. Linda told me you were here.”
The doctor interrupted, turning their attention back to the important matters at hand. “So, as I said, Mr. Andrews, you’ll need to ask Taylor a few quick questions when you wake her up. Something like this.” He turned to her to demonstrate. “Do you remember my name?”
Taylor gave the doctor a look. Of course she remembered his name, she was fine. Didn’t he remember the wiggling fingers and toes? “Dr. Singer,” she told him.
“What did you have for breakfast this morning?”
“I don’t eat breakfast. Wait—does a grande skim latte with two Splendas count?”
The doctor gave her a look. No, indeed it did not.
“What’s your mother’s maiden name?” he asked.
“Jennings.”
Bored with the interrogation—this was really basic stuff—Taylor turned her attention back to Jason. “What were you calling me about?”
Distracted, Jason had to think. “I had a question about the courtroom scene we were filming.”
“You were filming?” she asked incredulously. “And you just . . . left? To come here? For me?”
At this, Jason turned back to the doctor and spoke to him in a low whisper. “Are you sure she’s really okay? Because it’s been at least three minutes and I haven’t been insulted yet.”
But for once, Taylor was not in a teasing mood. She put her hand on Jason’s arm. “I’m being serious, Jason. You left in the middle of filming to come here?”
Jason looked down at her. Suddenly, he, too, turned serious.
“They said you were in the hospital, Taylor. Of course I left.”
It was the matter-of-fact way he said it. And the way he looked at her right then. Taylor suddenly felt as though she was back in the PT Cruiser, spinning and spinning and spinning.
Jason Andrews.
Her knight in shining armor.
Well, if she believed in such things.
She looked down at the floor so that Jason couldn’t see her smile. A moment later, she felt his hand on her chin, bringing her gaze up to his. His eyes searched hers worriedly.
“Are you sure you’re okay, Taylor? Say something . . . normal.” He gently tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, being careful to avoid the bump on her head.
Taylor stared up into Jason’s amazing blue eyes. He really was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen.
With great effort, she pulled herself out of the dreamy depths of the Sexiest Eyes Alive and somehow managed a casual smile. She knew she should at least thank him for coming for her.
But then she noticed something she had somehow missed earlier. She peered more closely at Jason. “Wait a second—are you wearing makeup?”
Oh yes, there it was—a little trace of powder dusted across his face. And was that a smudge of eyeliner along his bottom lid . . . ?
This was too precious.
Taylor raised an eyebrow teasingly. “Gee, Jason, it’s just a hospital—you really didn’t need to get all gussied up.”
And with that, Jason smiled. He turned to the doctor, finally satisfied.
“Okay. She’s fine.”
Twenty-five
AT JASON’S INSISTENCE, being like-minded with the doctor in thinking that a grande skim latte definitely did not constitute an adequate breakfast, he and Taylor stopped for lunch after leaving the hospital. Given her weakened condition, Taylor decided it was only fair that she got to pick the restaurant. Back when she was younger, any time one of the Donovan children got hurt (which with three boys and Taylor was quite often), her father treated the whole family to Mc-Donald’s cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate shakes. Feeling nostalgic, she told Jason she wanted to honor that tradition.
To which he promptly responded that Aston Martins did not do McDonald’s drive-thrus.
But then he went anyway.
They brought the food back to Taylor’s apartment so she could pack an overnight bag. While they were eating their cheeseburgers in her kitchen, Taylor jokingly pretended to pass out cold on the table while handing her pickle over to Jason.
Oh boy, did that little ruse cause quite a bit of panic and mayhem.
Come on, she laughingly apologized to Jason, she’d only been kidding around. She stood out on her driveway, where he had locked himself in his car refusing to speak to her until she swore to never do that again.
But a little while later, as the adrenaline rush of the car accident wore off, Taylor began to feel in earnest the effects of the concussion. She was already yawning as they pulled into Jason’s driveway. As the metal security gates parted grandly before them, she stared in awe at the house that would be her home for the next twenty-four hours. She suddenly felt one of her “realizations” coming on, so she made a quick joke inquiring about the whereabouts of the servants. When Jason replied that he had given them the weekend off, Taylor realized that she had no clue whether he was being sarcastic or serious. What she did realize, however, was that she and Jason would be completely alone for the next twenty-four hours.
Thank god she had just gotten a bikini wax.
Hey—only in case she wanted to go swimming in Jason’s pool.
Of course.
TAYLOR FOLLOWED JASON up the grand three-story staircase that led to the upstairs bedrooms. Halfway up, she stopped to rest on the landing. The doctor had warned her that, in the next twenty-four hours, she might experience drowsiness, confusion, fuzzy thoughts, and even potential changes in her personality. Taylor’s symptoms could possibly be more extreme, he had said, considering that she had been so sleep-deprived prior to the accident.
“What, doesn’t everybody get by on four hours of sleep nowadays?” she had innocently inquired. The doctor had given her another one of his looks. No, indeed they did not.
By now a few steps ahead of her on the staircase, Jason looked back when he realized Taylor had stopped.
“Why are there so many stairs in this place?” she pouted, leaning against the wall for support. She suddenly felt so tired. At least she wasn’t experegiging any fuggy thofts.
In two bounds, Jason crossed the steps between them. “
Look at me.” With a firm grip on her chin, he peered intently into Taylor’s eyes.
“What are you doing?” She tried swatting his hand away.
Jason’s gaze fixated first on her right eye, then her left. “Checking to make sure your pupils are even.” He pulled back. “How do you feel?”
“I’m tired,” she complained. “Can’t you just get me to a bed?”
Damn. Even through her fuggy thofts, Taylor knew how that sounded.
Never one to miss an opportunity, Jason grinned. “Well, Ms. Donovan . . . all you had to do was ask.”
Taylor rolled her eyes. She sure had set herself up for that one all right.
Stupic conprussion.
JASON OPENED THE door to the guest suite, carefully watching Taylor to make sure she didn’t stumble or anything as she stepped in. He’d tried to help her up the stairs, but after several cranky “I got it, I got its,” he figured it was best to simply leave her be. Not that he didn’t find the whole thing pretty darn amusing, seeing her acting so un-Taylor-like.
Jason walked through the room, making sure everything had been properly set up for her arrival. He had designed his guest suite to have the feel of a luxury hotel. Lush cream damask silk bedding adorned the king-size four-poster bed. The adjoining sitting room boasted a chaise lounge that stretched before a crackling fireplace. He realized that the fireplace was a little unnecessary and flashy, but then again, so were a lot of things in Beverly Hills.
One look at the sitting room was apparently all Taylor needed.
“Ooh . . . a fire,” she said, wide-eyed.
Jason carried her suitcase into the bedroom, keeping an eye out to make sure she didn’t trip headfirst into said fire. Thankfully, she settled safely onto the chaise and leaned back against its pillows.
“Oh, excuse me? Mr. Andrews?”
She called out to him through sleepy eyes. Tired though she was, she still managed to have that devious little grin of hers.
“What time is the turndown service at this establishment?”