(cover by simonesaidwhat)

I am a professional, I reminded myself. I am a professional first and a person second.

I took a sip of my ice water, hoping to cool the hot, sticky rage bubbling inside of me. I set the glass back on the table and interlaced my fingers.

I am a professional.

It had been a long, terrible Monday and I was in a mood, and the client sitting across from me at this eerily quiet restaurant was only making it worse.

"Are you sure you don't want a cocktail?" Liam asked. "You seem like you need a cocktail. A martini perhaps?"

It was my drink of choice the night I took Liam home. He gave me a cheeky grin, probably recalling the same.

"I don't drink when I'm working," I said, my words as false as my smile.

I drank whenever I damn well pleased. In fact, I had downed some scotch before leaving the office in a vain attempt to take the edge off. The edge hadn't come off, and I knew I needed to get this meeting over with as soon as possible.

I cleared my throat and widened my warm, but still very fake, smile. "Liam, let's talk about the circumstances leading up to your Vegas wedding."

Liam leaned back in his chair and studied me.

"I don't think I'm ready," he said after a moment.

"Excuse me?"

"The dissolution of my marriage is a painful topic for me," he sighed, shaking his head in melancholy.

"Is it now?" I asked, my voice sharper than I intended. "You got married yesterday, Liam."

"Yes," he said, his blue eyes twinkling as he tried not to smile. "And the wounds are still fresh."

I fought the urge to reach across the table and throttle his neck. I reached for my water glass instead and took another long sip.

I am a professional.

"Why don't we talk about all that legal stuff after our meal?" Liam suggested. "I'll be an open book then. I can't think, much less talk, when I have low blood sugar."

"Fine."

I so badly wanted to massage my temple, which was now throbbing, but I refrained from showing any outward signs of weakness. I gestured to our waiter, not wanting to waste any more time. Liam was milking this impromptu work dinner for all it was worth, but I reminded myself that I'd be paid handsomely for my suffering – and not just monetarily.

Matt Tulsa was a major Hollywood power player and now he owed me a favor. Liam's disaster of a weekend had sent his whole team into a tailspin, and his publicist had actually cried when she heard of his latest scandal. Poor girl couldn't catch a break. Liam, however, was nonplussed about his P.R. nightmare/legal drama and refused to speak to anyone about it but me.

My entire day was booked, but Matt had begged me to fit Liam into my schedule somewhere, somehow, and so I ended up cancelling the date I had scheduled for tonight. I was nothing if not an opportunist, and I always put my professional life before my personal life no matter the circumstances.

After we placed our meal orders, I surveyed my surroundings. With its upscale industrial decor and authentic Mexican food, Cantina Sofia was one of the most popular restaurants in L.A. – but not tonight for some reason.

"Are we the only ones here?" I asked.

"Yes," Liam said with a wink. "You said you wanted privacy, and I always deliver."

I stared at him in a deadpan manner until the smug, lustful look on his face turned to embarrassment.

I'd handled a wide assortment of clients over the years, some more difficult than others. Compared to Jorie Baker, who had an aversion to telling the truth ("I didn't hit him – my hand slipped!"), Liam would be relatively easy to work so long as I kept his incessant advances in check.

I took a beat to gather myself. "So tell me more about your weekend," I said pleasantly. "I take it you had a good time."

Liam chuckled to himself. I assumed he was thinking back to all the drugs he consumed and the strippers he motorboated. "It wasn't my most triumphant Vegas trip, but it was definitely a memorable one," he admitted. "And as they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity."

That's not true at all.

"That is what they say," I said agreeably. He grinned as he leaned in closer towards me, and I could smell the faint traces of booze underneath his nautical cologne.

Liam didn't look as pretty as he normally did - weekend-long benders tended to do that to a person - but the less polished look suited him. His face was scruffy and his thick brown hair was barely styled, and his soft-looking black shirt molded to his muscular body. When my traitorous eyes flickered down to his chest, Liam crossed his arms with his elbows on the table, purposefully flexing his biceps for me.

He was relentless.

In order to establish rapport before diving into the more difficult questions, I asked Liam first about his acting career. Like all narcissists, he was more than happy to talk about himself, and it only took him three minutes to offend my sensibilities.

"You dropped out of USC to pursue modeling?" I asked, the scholar inside of me weeping.

Liam shrugged. "Once John Galliano took a liking to me, the offers started to pour in. I mean, I've never been that great of a student although I tested well, and designers were paying me to travel around the world and take pictures with beautiful women. It was a no brainer."

Emphasis on the no brainer.

I smiled and nodded, and Liam went on to tell me how acting, like modeling, basically fell into his lap. He had left quite the impression on the director of his Chanel cologne commercial, and a few days later, the same director asked Liam to audition for Confessions of a Hollywood Vampire.

"That's incredible," I said. "And you had no acting experience at all? You never did plays when you were a kid, never took an acting class at USC?"

"Nope, nothing," he said proudly.

Must be nice to never have to work hard for anything.

I brushed off my resentment and asked him questions about his silly vampire show, and by the time our meals came out – carne asada for him, ensalada de mango y pollo for me – I knew enough about CHV to hold a conversation with any teenybopper girl. Out of all my accomplishments, it was the one I was least proud of.

Liam was a decent conversationalist when he wasn't bragging about himself, and, much to my surprise, he was witty, too. He was going into all the gory details about Tony's short-lived stripping career (he was promptly booed off stage after a mishap with the stripper pole) when the waiter came back to clear our dinner plates. It was finally time for Liam to pay the piper.

"So, stripclub-hopping was Saturday night," I said.

"Right."

"And the wedding was Sunday?"

Liam cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Uh, yeah," was all he offered.

I waited for him to add more to that enlightening statement, but he didn't.

"Okay, so walk me through the events leading up to your marriage to Norah Vasquez," I said patiently. Although my voice was kind, it was still commanding. Try as he might, Liam couldn't avoid the topic of his marriage and soon-to-be divorce forever.

"So that's her last name," Liam muttered quietly to himself.

Un-fucking-believable.

"Actually, it's Norah Black now, isn't it?" I asked with a straight face.

His cheeks flushed pink, which gave me great joy.

Liam sighed in exasperation. "It was all Derek's fault. He took us to this brunch place with bottomless mimosas. We became a little rowdy, and they eventually cut us off, which in retrospect was totally understandable, but at the time we were pissed."

I nodded stoically. Internally, however, I was laughing at the absurd thought of three grown men throwing tantrums because they wanted more orange juice.

"The asshole manager came over to personally recommend that we stop drinking," Liam scoffed, "But of course that made us want to drink more."

"Of course."

"And so we did. After a few bars, we were so hammered that we accidentally got into the wrong Uber. Or was it on purpose?" Liam was quiet as he struggled to recall his drunken shenanigans. "Yeah, no, we definitely tried to steal someone's Uber and pay off the driver, but he wasn't having it – something about ruining his five-star rating. Anyway, he refused to drive off into the sunset, and the girls who ordered the Uber got into the car with us in it. Apparently, they were huge fans of CHV, as was indicated by their screaming and crying, so they didn't mind sharing at all."

"Uh-huh."

"Norah, the only cute one of the bunch, asked me to marry her," he continued, "And my dumbass friends thought it was the best idea they'd ever heard. The girls started screaming again, the guys were laughing and egging us on, and even I was drunk enough to find the whole thing hilarious, so our clown car of an Uber drove us to the nearest chapel."

"Jesus, Liam."

"I know, I know," he chuckled. "The bride wore hot pink, Elvis officiated, Tony was my best man... and that's how I got married." Liam took a big gulp of his mojito, even though, in my expert opinion, he should never touch alcohol again.

I tried to wrap my head around everything he had told me.

"So you didn't know Norah before yesterday?"

He shook his head no.

"None of this was planned?"

He shook his head again.

"When did you get your marriage license?" I asked.

Liam raised a questioning eyebrow. "Huh?"

Sweet baby Jesus.

"To be considered legally married, you and your wife needed to get a marriage license from the courthouse," I said slowly. "Did you do that?"

"Oh," he said. He cleared his throat. "No, we didn't."

I counted to three in my head, which was still painfully throbbing.

"Liam, you didn't actually get married."

"Huh. I thought you just had to have a wedding, and then you were officially married." He gave me a lopsided smile. "FYI, we didn't consummate our marriage, either."

I closed my eyes and squeezed the bridge of my nose to release some of the tension I was feeling. I had been conned into having dinner with this pretty boy B-lister, and I was not happy about it.

"Gemma?"

"Liam," I said evenly.

"Is everything okay?"

When I didn't respond right away, he began to fidget in his chair nervously.

"Liam," I said in a strained voice, "Why on earth did you get fake married in Las Vegas?"

He rubbed the back of his neck and gave me a sheepish look. "If I'm being honest, I guess on a subconscious level, I just... wanted an excuse to spend time with you," he said.

Un-fucking-believable.

"If you think about it, it's kind of flattering though, right?" The sheepishness was gone, and Liam was back to being his unrelenting, cocky self.

I couldn't take it anymore.

"No, Liam, I don't think it's flattering at all," I said, glaring at him. "In fact, it's pretty disrespectful to me, my time, and my career. I'm an attorney, not an escort. I offer legal services, not companionship."

I was so sick of these men taking advantage of my professionalism, and before I could unleash any more of my rage onto Liam, not all of which would be deserved, I stood up abruptly from the table and walked out of the restaurant.

* * * * * *

I was blasting music from my car stereos and rapping along with my boy, Nas, when the Bluetooth feature of my Mercedes Benz interrupted us.

"Call from Francisco Silva," the robotic voice announced. 

As soon as I heard the first syllable of his fucking name, I nearly ripped the steering wheel from my car as I swerved to the side of the road. The harsh sound of screeching tires and honking cars amplified the panic that was seizing my chest and closing my throat.

It was the third time Francisco had called today.

While I had blocked him on my personal phone and email, he must have finally realized that he could harass me through work avenues of communication.

I turned off the ignition and sat in the darkness of my car, tears forming in my eyes. I lifted my gaze to the sunroof and stared at the twinkling stars above me. They danced joyously in the night sky, mocking my misery. I blinked back my tears. It had been nearly five months since my ex-fiancé ripped my heart into paper shreds, and I didn't want to cry over him anymore.

* * * * * *

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