Just the Sexiest Man Alive(15)

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?”