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 merely 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.

“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.