by Julie James
Taylor cut off the whole charm routine ASAP. She had seen smiles like that before and was now decidedly immune from them.
“I obviously know who you are, Mr. Andrews. I also know that you were supposed to be at my office on two different days last week.”
Jason pulled back his hand, as if surprised by her curt tone.
Off to the side, Derek had been wholly forgotten in the fray. The junior associate stepped forward and cleared his throat to remind Taylor and Jason of his presence.
“Um, Taylor, I’m going to head back. Should I stop by your office tomorrow to talk about the pretrial order?” He glanced between the two of them.
Taylor eyed Jason coolly as she answered. “You can come by later today, Derek. I won’t be long with this.”
With one final glance between the two, Derek gathered the case files and hurried out of the courtroom. Leaving Taylor and Jason alone.
She folded her arms across her chest. “What exactly can I do for you, Mr. Andrews?”
She noticed that the corners of his mouth twitched almost into a grin, as if he found her formal use of his last name to be amusing. This only annoyed her even more.
“I see you’re a little upset about the appointments I missed last week,” he said in a teasing tone. A tone, Taylor noted, that was very similar to the one she herself used when deliberately attempting to infuriate her opponents.
How dare he.
“Unfortunately, I got tied up at the last minute,” Jason continued, with no attempt to conceal his air of condescension. “Surely you understand . . . I’m a very a busy man, Ms. Donovan .” He emphasized the last two words, letting her know that two could play the last-name game.
Then he brushed their differences aside with a wave. “But I’m here now, so let’s get down to business.” He clapped his hands together as if this settled the matter.
“But see, now I’m busy, Mr. Andrews.”
Jason smiled patiently at her reply, like a teacher to a wayward child. He took a step closer, and Taylor noticed that he towered over her. She thought all actors were supposed to be short in person. Of course, he would have to be the exception.
Because Taylor refused to budge an inch, they now stood quite close. Jason peered down at her, his eyes boring straight into hers.
“Ms. Donovan,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “No one is too busy for me.”
He paused to let his words sink in. Taylor’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Jason apparently took this as a sign of acknowledgment.
“Good, now that that’s settled . . .” He stepped away and gestured grandly to the courtroom as if issuing a command. “Why don’t you show me something . . . lawyerly?”
He looked around as if trying to get familiar with the environment. “The script has several scenes where I have to cross-examine witnesses. Start by showing me an example of that. But not the crap you see on TV—I want to look real.”
Taylor bit her lip and peered down at the floor to keep from laughing out loud. He was so ridiculously arrogant, it was almost amusing. Unable to conceal her smirk, she looked back up at him and folded her arms across her chest. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Jason turned around. “Why not?”
“For starters, I don’t have a witness.”
He pointed to himself. “What about me?”
And in that moment, Taylor was struck with sudden devious inspiration. She cocked her head in contemplation, then nodded agreeably for the first time since Jason had shown up.
“Okay, sure.” she gestured across the courtroom. “Why don’t you take a seat in the witness stand?”
Jason threw her an approving look—apparently glad to see she was back with the program—and did as she asked. She waited for him to get comfortable, then positioned herself directly in front of the witness stand.
Taylor launched into the first question of her “mock” cross-examination.
“Mr. Andrews—you are aware, are you not, that your assistant made arrangements for you to be at my office last Thursday?”
Jason smiled as if he found her challenge to be amusing. He eased back in the witness stand, getting comfortable. “Yes, I am aware of that, Ms. Donovan.”
“You did not show up for that appointment, did you?”
“That is correct.”
“And you are aware that after failing to show up for that first appointment, your assistant made subsequent arrangements for you to be at my office on Friday morning; is that correct?”
Jason stretched out and crossed one leg over the other, seemingly unconcerned with such a trifling line of questioning.
“That is also correct. As I indicated earlier, I got tied up unexpectedly with other matters. A film emergency.” As he said this, he casually turned his watch around his wrist.
Taylor raised an eyebrow incredulously. “A film emergency?”
“That’s right.”
She let this sit for a moment, and then walked over to the lawyer’s table and pulled her cell phone out of her briefcase.
“Let me show you what has been marked as Exhibit A.” She crossed back to Jason and held up the cell phone.
“Do you recognize Exhibit A, Mr. Andrews?”
Jason leaned forward and peered at the phone with mock uncertainty. “Well, now, I can’t be sure . . . but it appears to be a cell phone.”
“Do you own a cell phone, Mr. Andrews?”
“Three of them, actually.”
“And do you know how to operate your three cell phones?”
Jason humored her with a smile. “Of course.”
At this, Taylor eased back, sitting on the edge of the lawyer’s table.
It was time, she decided, to kick things up a notch.
JASON WATCHED AS Taylor casually crossed one high-heeled leg over the other. Unable to resist, his eyes flickered down to her legs for just the briefest second. Then he quickly glanced back up.
When his gaze met Taylor’s, he detected the faintest trace of a smug smile in her eyes. It was then he realized something.
She was toying with him.
She was toying with him.
Taylor paused until she appeared satisfied that Jason’s eyes were focused back on hers, then continued with her questions.
“By any chance, did you have any of your three cell phones with you last week in Las Vegas, Mr. Andrews?”
“Of course.”
“So you could’ve called my office to say you couldn’t make our meetings?”
Jason laughed as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Like I make any of those calls myself.”
Taylor eased off the table and strolled casually toward the witness stand.
“Well then, couldn’t you have asked one of your numerous assistants to call me? Or were things at the Bellagio hotel—oh, sorry—your ‘film emergency’ ”—she made mocking finger quotes—“so crazy that you couldn’t get around to it?”
She waited expectantly for Jason’s answer.
He deflected the question easily. He certainly hoped she had something better than that.
“So you got me, Ms. Donovan. I was in Las Vegas. That’s some impressive lawyering, considering I was only caught on television.”
“And the reason you didn’t have someone call my office?”
“It didn’t seem like a big deal,” he replied breezily. “I didn’t think I needed an excuse.”
“Well if that’s true,” Taylor asked pointedly, “then why did you first try to make up the story about a film emergency?”
Jason paused at this.
Oops.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, suddenly a bit tangled up in his “testimony.”
Taylor approached the witness stand, her eyes sparkling triumphantly. “What exactly was your plan here, Mr. Andrews? To just walk in and flash your little smile, no questions asked?”
Actually, that pretty much had been his plan.
Jason folded his arms across his chest and me
rely shrugged dismissively at her question.
Taylor seized upon his gesture, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Andrews, but your answers have to be audible for the court reporter. Was that a ‘yes’?”
Jason gazed at her evenly, annoyed by her tone. She returned the look.
“Yes, Ms. Donovan,” he finally replied. “That may have been my plan. To flash my little smile, no questions asked.”
She leaned against the witness stand. “How’s that plan working out for you, Mr. Andrews?”
His eyes locked with hers.
“Not so well.”
Taylor smiled confidently, as if to say her work there was finished.
“Good. I have no further questions.”
And with that, she strutted over to the lawyer’s table and threw her briefcase over her shoulder. Without so much as a second glance, she walked out of the courtroom with her head held high. The door swung, then shut firmly behind her.
Leaving Jason alone.
Sitting stupidly in the witness stand.
He looked around, waiting for the cameras and people to come pouring out, letting him in on the practical joke. Clooney loved to pull stunts like this.
So Jason waited. And waited some more.
But . . . nothing.
And it then began to occur to Jason that this was not a joke, that indeed Taylor Donovan had actually meant to insult him. Which then raised one very serious question.
What the hell kind of shit was that?
Jason quickly flashed back through every detail of his encounter with her. Each and every sassy, sarcastic word. He hadn’t been spoken to like that in years.
Jason glanced over at the door that Taylor had just stormed out of. And slowly, his face changed into a smile.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Five
“SO HOW DID the meeting with the lawyer go?”
Jason glanced over at the passenger seat, surprised that Jeremy remembered. He had mentioned the meeting in passing to his friend last Friday in Vegas, around four in the morning as they devoured burritos from some sketchy dive seven blocks off the Strip. (Jeremy had used the old “at least no one will recognize you here” trick.)
Of course, Jason hadn’t mentioned then that the meeting with the lawyer was supposed to have occurred earlier that very same day, right about the same moment when he and Jeremy had sidled up to the craps table in the Bellagio’s VIP room. If Jeremy had known that particular detail, he undoubtedly would’ve made some sarcastic remark that Jason—by Friday night being over $100,000 down from said craps table—was in no mood to hear.
It wasn’t the money, Jason repeatedly told Jeremy (who had quite unsympathetically pointed out that he made about ten times that amount in one day of filming)—it was the principle of the matter. He simply hated losing.
Jason turned his eyes back to the road as he considered how to answer his friend’s question. Driving like Mario Andretti on crack cocaine—he had learned a long time ago that it was the only way to avoid being followed by the paparazzi—he skillfully sped his black Aston Martin Vanquish to the off-ramp that would lead them to the Staples Center. He and Jeremy had tickets that evening to the Lakers/Knicks game. Courtside seats, of course. It was one of the few perks of Jason’s fame that Jeremy actually lowered himself to take advantage of.
Jason tried to think of the best way to describe his meeting with the illustrious Ms. Taylor Donovan, Esquire.
“The meeting with the lawyer was . . . enlightening,” he finally settled on.
Jeremy stopped gripping the black leather armrests of the passenger seat, relaxing now that Jason was pulling off the highway. “Was he any good?”
“She does one hell of a cross-examination, I can tell you that,” Jason said, smiling to himself.
Jeremy glanced over and studied him carefully. “What aren’t you telling me here?”
Somehow, Jeremy was the one guy who always seemed to know when he was hiding something. The two of them had come to Los Angeles almost sixteen years ago, with big dreams of making it in the film industry. When Jason’s acting career took off like a rocket, virtually every aspect of his life had changed. Their friendship was one of the few things that had not. Jeremy was the last remaining bridge to normality in Jason’s world—a fact Jeremy never missed a chance to remind him of.
“What makes you think I’m not telling you something?” Jason asked innocently.
“The last time you made that face was two months ago at the Four Seasons bar, after your interview with the reporter from Vanity Fair. When you asked me to come up in one hour and scream ‘Fire!’ outside your room.”
Jason laughed. Good times. “Hey—that worked. In the scramble to evacuate the building, I didn’t even have to promise to call her.”
“I’m sure the forty other people who had to run down twenty flights of stairs at one a.m. would be happy to know they saved you from another awkward postcoital moment.”
“Come on—it was the thrill of their lives. They all thought it was very magnanimous of me to offer to hold the fire door open for everyone.”
“Of course, you were the only one who knew there was actually no fire.”
Jason brushed this aside. “Details, details.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Just tell me about the lawyer.”
So many possible responses, Jason mused to himself. He could tell Jeremy how it really pissed him off that “Ms. Donovan” wasted a day of his time, when he had so few of them left to prepare before filming began; how it irked him beyond all measure that she was too stubborn to get off her high horse and let bygones be bygones (so he had missed a few appointments—that was hardly a crime); or, worst of all, how angry he was that she managed to get the better of him in her little cross-examination exercise.
Or maybe he could talk about the fact that he had literally stopped in his tracks when she first turned around and looked at him.
Because Taylor Donovan was stunning.
And he certainly hadn’t been expecting that.
Long, dark hair—a deep chestnut brown—that swept across one eye and tumbled well past her shoulders in wavy layers. Fair skin that blushed a little when she was angry (as he had definitely seen firsthand) and deep, expressive green eyes.
It was her eyes that made him stop. They had a lively sparkle—a little gleam—that said she was five steps ahead of you at all times and knew it.
Of course, it also could’ve been the legs, Jason conceded. She had smugly caught him checking those out and that pissed him off, too. But he couldn’t resist: in her pencil-thin knee-length skirt and Mary Jane high heels, she looked both classic and sexy at the same time, like the women in the black-and-white movies they used to watch in his film classes.
But no matter what Taylor Donovan looked like, Jason firmly concluded, the thought of her insulting him and storming out of the courtroom was absolutely ludicrous.
Or highly amusing. He still couldn’t decide.
Jason glanced over and saw that Jeremy was waiting for an answer.
“She was angry with me,” he finally said with a smile, thinking that was the best way to sum up their experience.
“Angry with you?” Jeremy paused, mulling this over. “And you haven’t even had sex with this one yet.” Then he considered the source. “Have you?”
Jason threw him a look. “This wasn’t angry like ‘But didn’t those three nights in London mean anything to you?’ angry.” He imitated a clingy woman’s voice.
“More problems with the supermodel?”
“Marty’s on it.”
Jason cocked his head in careful contemplation. “It was different with this lawyer. She was . . .” He trailed off, searching for the right word. It was somewhat of a surprise when it came to him. “Condescending.”
He glanced over at Jeremy for support. Just in time to catch his friend’s grin.
“Condescending?” Jeremy repeated, as if appalled. “To
Jason Andrews? Do I dare ask why?”
Jason shrugged as he pulled the Aston Martin in front of the VIP entrance of the Staples Center. “I may have blown off one or two meetings with her last week.”
He shut off the car and threw Jeremy an innocent look. “I didn’t think it would make a difference when I showed up this morning.”
Jeremy clutched his heart in feigned shock. “You mean she didn’t immediately fall on her knees in gratitude when you walked through the door?”
Jason grinned as he stepped out of the car.
“It’s fair to say that’s not exactly how she reacted.”
“AND MAKE SURE she gets the message immediately.”
Jason and Jeremy sat courtside at the Lakers game. They had just barely gotten to their seats when Jason whipped out his cell phone two minutes into the first quarter. He had made a decision during the car ride over.
This morning had not been the last he would see of Taylor Donovan.
Upon arriving at this conclusion, Jason had called his manager and asked him to personally convey the following message to her, word for word: “Mr. Andrews very much enjoyed the lesson he learned from Ms. Donovan and respectfully requests the opportunity of another meeting.”
He knew she’d be amused by the subtext. He grinned as he thought about her reaction: she’d smile coyly—perhaps even toy with a lock of that fabulous long, dark hair—as she contemplated an appropriately flirtatious reply.
After hanging up with his manager, Jason happily turned his attention to the game, his mind wandering only once or twice to speculate what Taylor Donovan would be wearing during their next meeting. He liked the whole smart, sexy lawyer thing she had going on that morning. Now if she would merely undo one or two more buttons of her shirt, one might even call her a naughty lawyer. Perhaps she had a pair of serious librarian-like glasses to finish the look. She could pull her hair up in some sort of no-nonsense, I’m-all-about-business twist, which of course would come tumbling down in a most unbusinesslike manner right as they—
Jason’s cell phone suddenly rang, interrupting his internal debate over the most comfortable position to have sex in a jury box. He liked the possibilities that little half wall presented.