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.

The deal was done as soon as Taylor saw the photographs the L.A. office emailed over. Just minutes from the beach, with a quaint little garden off the living room and cozy cream-and-brown Pottery Barn decor, the apartment was far better than anything else the legal assistant had shown her and easily worth the ten extra miles it would add to her daily downtown commute.

Unfortunately on this night, however, the apartment’s charm was lost on Taylor as she stepped into the kitchen and set the copy of People magazine down on the black-speckled granite countertop. She threw the bouquet of flowers next to the magazine, not noticing as Daniel’s card slipped into its pages.

She leaned against the far side of the counter and stared at the two dozen red roses with the same enthusiasm as if she were looking at a dead skunk.

How ironic that in the five years they had been together, Daniel had never figured out that she didn’t even really like flowers. They’re not practical, she had tried hinting on several occasions. Well, at least now she no longer had to humor him.

She opened up one of the kitchen drawers, searching for a pair of scissors, when she saw her blinking answering machine. It sat atop the wine chiller, one of the “top of the line kitchen appliances” the legal assistant had eagerly included in her description of the apartment. What the legal assistant hadn’t realized was that the far stronger selling point in Taylor’s mind was the Chinese restaurant down the street that delivered until 2 a.m.

Taylor reached across the counter and hit the play button on her answering machine. After the beep, she was relieved to hear Kate’s voice cheerfully greeting her.

“Hey, girl! It’s me, just calling to see how L.A.’s treating you. Val and I are already planning a visit. Miss you.”

Taylor couldn’t help but grin—in truth, Val and Kate had been planning their visit pretty much from the moment she had first announced that she’d be moving to L.A. for the summer. And starting about two weeks ago, Val had stepped it up a notch by emailing her with “suggested places to visit”—a list Taylor suspected was comprised primarily, if not entirely, of the restaurants and bars mentioned in that week’s Page Six columns or Us Weekly “VIP Scene” section.

Taylor glanced down when her answering machine beeped again, indicating that there was a second message. She held her breath, tensing in anticipation.

A familiar husky voice cut through the quiet of her kitchen.

“Taylor, it’s Daniel. I hope you got my flowers . . . I’d really like to talk. Please call me.”

She reached over and instantly deleted the message. How the hell Daniel had gotten her phone number and address in Los Angeles, she had no clue. Five years together meant too many mutual friends, she supposed. She leaned back against the counter and replayed his words in her head.

I’d really like to talk.

Really? Why? She couldn’t possibly think of one thing they had to say to each other.

With this in mind, Taylor walked over to the sink and began to run the water. She pulled a vase out of the cabinet below the sink—feeling obligated to at least put the flowers somewhere—and tested the water for its temperature. As she removed the paper wrapping from the bouquet, her mind drifted back to his card.

I’m sorry. And I love you.

How sweet. Daniel always had been such a charmer.

That is, until the day she walked into his office to discuss their wedding guest list and found him fucking his twenty-two-year-old teaching assistant on top of his desk.

Doggie-style, by the way.

With their backs to her, not noticing, so they just kept right on going. Evidently, they had not been expecting anyone to show up for what was supposed to be Daniel’s “office hour.”

Even now, whenever Taylor actually allowed herself to think of her ex-fiancé, the visual that always came to mind was that of him standing in front of his desk with his pants around his ankles, his hands feverishly holding on to the girl’s hips in ecstasy. Naked ass checks thrusting back and forth in all their glory.

Lovely.

“It’s how every girl dreams of seeing her fiancé,” she had said in sarcastic bitterness to Val and Kate as they sat on her living-room couch later that night, consoling her. They had a bottle of Grey Goose vodka standing by on ice. But with Taylor, there hadn’t been the expected breakdown and hysterics, nor even a single cry of “why me?” And there certainly had been no tears.

Because there’s no crying in baseball.

Taylor vowed that she would at least hold on to that last shred of dignity. She would get over Daniel and move on with her life. And she vowed to never, ever again go against her instincts when it came to a man.