Just the Sexiest Man Alive(10)
“And why do we have a television in here, anyway?” she demanded in an attempt to at least get the last word in. “This is a law office!”
Linda shrugged this off nonchalantly.
“This is L.A.”
Three
TAYLOR CHECKED THE clock on her desk for what had to be the tenth time that morning. 11:07. She tapped her pen impatiently.
He was late.
She should have been in court that very moment, arguing her motions to compel. As it turned out, Derek had nothing to worry about—if they lost on one single issue, she would hold Jason Andrews entirely responsible.
She glanced up hopefully when Linda stopped in the doorway.
“Any word?”
Linda sadly shook her head. A deep depression had begun to creep over the office at the actor’s failure to appear thus far. “None.”
They went through this routine for the rest of the morning, and then the afternoon, too. Assuming Jason Andrews would eventually show up at some point, and having cleared her schedule for the entire day, Taylor found it difficult to concentrate on any meaningful task. So when six o’clock rolled around, she began the futile task of filling in her daily time sheet with a whole lot of nothing.
Great, she thought—say hello to another Saturday in the office.
But then she was interrupted by a frantic knock at her office door. She looked up to see Linda, flushed with excitement and out of breath, as if she had run to Taylor’s office the moment she had received whatever news she was about to convey.
“His assistant just called. She said there was a mix-up, but that Mr. Andrews will be here first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow?” Taylor repeated. Then she frowned. “Perfect,” she muttered in annoyance. Say hello to Sunday in the office, too.
“Did his assistant at least apologize?” she asked.
Linda put a finger to her chin and paused, as if trying to remember. “Hmmm . . . now that would be a ‘no.’ ”
Taylor rolled her eyes. Now there’s a f**king surprise.
BUT BY THE next day, Taylor could definitively say that she had gotten over the issue of Jason Andrews’s lateness.
Because being late was no longer the problem.
The jerk had completely blown her off. No phone calls, no apologies, and no explanations.
So by late Friday afternoon, after a second day spent mumbling obscenities, pacing through the hallways, and generally huffing about, Taylor decided she was not going to waste one more minute of her life on Jason Andrews.
She shoved a stack of files into her briefcase, grabbed her suit coat off the back of her chair, and resolutely strode out into the hallway, past Linda’s desk.
“I’m going home. And I will be unavailable for the rest of the afternoon if, by some miracle, a certain person should happen to show up.” The haughty way she said this left Linda no doubt as to who the “certain person” might be. “For anyone else, I can of course be reached on my cell phone or at home.”
Linda panicked. She leaned over her desk and shouted frantically to Taylor, who was already halfway down the hall by that point. “But what am I supposed to say if Jason Andrews shows up?”
Ten responses inappropriate for the workplace came to Taylor’s mind.
Not bothering to stop, she called back a simple message for Linda to relay.
“Tell him I hope his movie bombs.”
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY thankfully passed by without further needless (and highly inconsiderate) delays. Taylor used the weekend hours to get back on track in terms of her pretrial schedule. Derek had informed her that the judge had continued one of their motions—the one most critical to their case—until Monday morning. Although neither mentioned it, both of them were quietly relieved that she would be able to cover the motion after all. Derek, a little on the shy side, had always been slightly uncomfortable with the subject matter.
Come Sunday afternoon, having billed almost fifteen hours over the weekend, Taylor decided to reward herself with some shopping at Fred Segal. As she left the mall a mere hour after getting there, she tried to figure out why she felt good about dropping almost $500 on one pair of jeans and a small black velvet clutch. Then it hit her: she had just had her first “L.A.” experience.
As Taylor cut across the parking lot, she reached into her purse for her cell phone. She knew Valerie would be proud of this moment.
“Guess where I am right now,” she said as soon as Val answered on the other end of the line. She didn’t bother with an introduction, as Val had carefully selected a different ring tone for each of her friends. For Taylor, she had chosen the Darth Vader theme music.
Val quickly threw out a few guesses. “Lying on the beach. Hiking in the mountains. Matt Damon’s bedroom.”
Taylor juggled her phone as she took her Chanel sunglasses out of her purse and slid them on. It had been warm and sunny every day since she’d come to Los Angeles. She’d have to concede the fact that the city certainly had the advantage of weather over Chicago, which could be a miserable fifty degrees and rainy even in June.
“If I was in Matt Damon’s bedroom, I’d hardly be taking a telephone break,” Taylor joked.
“I thought you said you liked him for his intellect.”
“I caught a few minutes of The Bourne Ultimatum on cable the other night. My feelings for Matt now extend far beyond his Harvard education. Like how he looks in a fitted T-shirt.”