Even to the likely detriment of their motions.

And the possible harm that would then befall their client.

Not to mention what she personally wanted.

Not that she had any opinions on the matter. Really.

But for the rest of the afternoon, Taylor had other, far more important things to worry about. And so, between the seventeen class member deposition transcripts she needed to review, and the eleven telephone arguments with opposing counsel over jury instructions, it was not until late that night, as she exhaustedly made her way to her front door, that she remembered the envelope Linda had handed her before leaving for the day.

Research, her secretary had called it. She had smiled in amusement, thoroughly enjoying the new project.

Given Linda’s mischievous grin, it was with dread that Taylor pulled the envelope out of her briefcase as she walked up the bricked path to her apartment. She slid out the envelope’s contents, and found herself staring at that week’s edition of People magazine.

Taylor rolled her eyes. Oh, for heaven’s sake—like she had time to read this.

But tabloids have a sneaky way of grabbing the attention of even the most resolute of scoffers, and Taylor was not immune. It was the cover story that caught her eye.

“The Women of Jason Andrews!”

The image below the headline consisted of three side-by-side photos of the film star with a different starlet/model/bimbo hanging all over him.

Taylor shook her head disdainfully at the pictures. Typical. There was something about the sight of this particular man, the way he so deliberately flaunted his parade of conquests, that rubbed her feminist sensibilities the wrong way.

Or maybe it was something more personal.

Right, like she would ever admit that.

She opened the magazine, and a multiple-page foldout of Jason Andrews and his various dalliances fell out.

And spilled all the way to the ground.

For a moment, Taylor could only stare at the pages and pages and pages of “The Women of Jason Andrews!”

With a scornful snort, she bent over to pick up the foldout. The last photo in the series happened to catch her eye: the actor with a classically beautiful blonde in her midtwenties, who Taylor immediately recognized. She may not have been particularly interested in “the industry,” but even the four times a year she crawled out from under her rock to see a movie was enough to know who Naomi Cross was. She saw that written in big, bold letters above the waiflike actress was the urgent question, “Jason’s Next Conquest?”

Deciding that she could somehow manage to go on living without getting an answer to that question, Taylor tucked the Jason-plus-starlet/model/bimbo pages back into the magazine and headed up the walkway to her front door. It was then that she stumbled upon something sitting on her front stoop.

A large bouquet of flowers.

As all women do when first receiving flowers, Taylor silently scrolled through the list of potential senders. Coming up with no pleasant suspects, she eyed the flowers with suspicion. She scooped them up and sifted through the bouquet until she found the card. She instantly regretted bothering to look.

I’m sorry. And I love you. Daniel.

DANIEL LAWRY.

The biggest mistake of Taylor’s life.

Ridiculously big. Gargantuan.

They had met in law school, when she was a third-year student and Daniel had just joined the Northwestern faculty as their new evidence professor. He was young for a professor, only twenty-nine, but his Harvard Law degree and four-year stint at the New York U.S. Attorney’s Office had been too attractive for the law school to ignore.

“Too attractive to ignore” was also the general consensus among the law school’s female student body. With icy blue eyes and streaks of golden blond in his light brown hair, he looked more like a Ralph Lauren model than a law school professor.

The first time Daniel had asked Taylor out was at her law school graduation. She, of course, had said no, having heard rumors from a classmate of hers who lived in the downtown high-rise across the street from Daniel that he frequently was seen around the area with women but much less frequently seen with the same woman.

Six months went by before he asked her out again. The second time was a Saturday morning, when Taylor found him waiting on the steps of her three-flat condo on her walk home from the gym.

He came bearing Starbucks, he said to her with an easy smile, and he had her order exactly right: a grande skim latte with two Splendas. Apparently, he had called her secretary earlier in the week for the info.

It took five Saturday mornings of waiting, and five grande skim lattes with two Splendas, until Taylor finally agreed to meet Daniel for coffee somewhere other than her front steps. Coffee led to drinks, which led to dinner and then dating, which eventually led to Daniel saying all the right things about Taylor being “the one.” She finally agreed to move in with him and a year after that, they were engaged.

It by no means had been a whirlwind affair. She had been cautious and careful throughout the first couple of years of their relationship, but eventually, Daniel’s charm and constant affection had brought down her guard.

She believed he had changed his womanizing ways.

But now here she was in Los Angeles, living alone. And without the two-and-a-half-carat Tiffany ring that used to sit on the fourth finger of her left hand.

Taylor stepped into her apartment. With that now-ringless left hand, she tossed her keys onto the console table by the front door and headed into the kitchen.

She had gotten lucky in terms of the apartment the firm had found for her. Since her case easily would last at least four months (after the inevitable posttrial motions were taken into account), putting her up in a hotel for the duration had not been either her or the firm’s first choice. So one of the legal assistants for the Chicago litigation group had been assigned the task of searching for apartments Taylor could rent. The paralegal was only a few days into her quest when one of her counterparts in the Los Angeles office contacted her with a suggestion: the daughter of one of the partners would be studying abroad in Rome for the fall semester. She wanted to backpack through Europe and Asia for the summer before her classes began, and they were looking for someone to sublet her furnished Santa Monica apartment.