"Liam, I hate to tell you, but we can't lie in bed like this."

Liam lifted his head with difficulty. For a man who prided himself on his aerobic fitness, even that small movement proved too taxing. He let it fall back on the pillow. "Is this when you tell me about your shotgun-toting husband, returning with your two adorable children from the state karate championships?" He didn't sound all that worried.

"No, this is when I tell you that I have a sharp pain along my ribcage, behind." She grimaced.

"Here, let me have a look." Liam turned her gingerly onto her side. "You don't think we did something?"

J.C. twisted her arm around to her back. "We did many things but not to this particular area." She stretched a little farther. "Bingo!"

She brought her hand out and held up a silver cylinder.

Liam leaned for a closer inspection. "Lipstick?" He looked at her face, inquiring. "Yours?"

"No, Phoebe's."

"You always sleep with Phoebe's lipstick?"

"No, but apparently Phoebe does." She swiveled her neck and saw the look on his face. "While I was sleeping on the floor, thank you very much."

"I never thought otherwise...Hey, ouch." His shoulder smarted where she'd just smacked it, and he rubbed the tender spot. "So what's next on the agenda? A brisk jog?" Okay, that wasn't his first choice.

J.C. shivered. "You go jogging. I'm having a shower and shampooing my hair, and hopefully figuring out how to undo Phoebe's handiwork." She pointed to the dreaded cornrow.

"Shower? Shampoo? I can deal with that." They certainly offered more possibilities than jogging. He threw back the sheet, and with a surge of energy that J.C. found startling, reached down and scooped her up in his arms.

J.C. recovered enough to put her arms around his shoulders and cuddle up against his warm chest. She found his bronze, flat nipples absolutely fascinating, especially the way they were placed so symmetrically amidst the blond hairs. "I'm sorry I hit you."

"No you're not." Liam kissed the top of her head, cornrow and all. He stumbled when his toe caught the corner of an old Atari video game system.

"You know, I can really walk if it's easier," J.C. suggested.

"Don't be ridiculous. This is New Jersey. Why walk when you can ride?" He stepped cautiously around the collection of Pound Puppies plush toys. "Besides, you're safe with me. I'll have you know I have very powerful arms and highly manipulative fingers."

As J.C. soon found out, he wasn't bragging.

And undoing the cornrow wasn't his only manipulative skill.

###

Liam was slipping on his jeans when he decided he had to ask her. About the drinking.

Not that he was inclined to proselytize about the evils of the demon rum, but he knew, given his family's and his own predilection for letting alcohol consumption get out of control, that he couldn't get in a relationship with someone who had a drinking problem. He wasn't sure if he was strong enough to take it.

Get in a relationship? Where had that come from? A relationship was the last thing on his mind. Besides, he'd known the lady for less than two days, her name for one, and her body in more ways than he could count.

While Liam was zipping up, he peered at J.C.'s back. More than her back. Clad only in a blue towel that exposed the points of her shoulder blades and the long length of her thighs, she was busy pulling out dresser drawers and, from the frantic looks of things, searching for the Holy Grail.

"You know, I meant to ask you..." His voice trailed off when she turned, giving him a glimpse of a tiny pair of cherry-red panties and matching bra dangling from her hand. The lady clearly had a thing for red.

"What was that?" J.C. asked, figuring Liam probably thought she was the most scatterbrained person possible, given that she'd spent the least three minutes searching for underwear. With the chore of doing laundry hanging over her head for more days than even she could count, she was down to a sports bra -- bought in a moment of pure disillusionment -- and graying cotton briefs with a disintegrating elastic waistband, or a matching set of Valentine's undies that Trina had bought her.

Theoretically, the latter should have done the trick, but unfortunately Trina had underestimated J.C.'s hip and bust measurements. J.C. just hoped that when she put them on, mounds of flesh wouldn't bulge conspicuously at the top of her thighs. On the plus side, the bra would give new meaning to the term push-up.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I was wondering, you don't have a problem do you?" Liam asked, watching her bend over. He decided that the bumps in a woman's spine could be a very sexy thing.

J.C. stopped. She had only managed to get one foot and an ankle through an opening in the underpants. Was the size issue that obvious? "Problem?"

Liam noticed that she avoided looking at him directly in the eye. "Yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon, when I found you at the farm property, I couldn't help noticing you had a bottle of scotch. Then, not that I want to jump to conclusions, but you appeared to be hung over this morning. Now I don't mean to be forward, but do you usually drink like this? I mean, I know it's the weekend, and I don't mean to pry..."

J.C. straightened up briskly, causing her breasts to bounce to attention, a sight that pleased Liam very much. The underpants rested around her ankles, the demi-cup bra, possibly large enough to cover two well-spaced mosquito bites if the allergic reaction wasn't too great, hung in her hand by her side.

"Oh that problem," she announced cheerfully. "Actually, it's more like a non-problem. Given my job situation, I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't be better off drinking. To answer your question, yesterday and last's night's escapades were deviations from a pretty dull norm. Besides, it's been my experience that excess alcohol tends to make people do foolish things." Such as agree to marry my ex, she could have added but didn't.

"Actually, it's funny you should bring up Friday -- actually, maybe it's not so funny given how weird it must have seemed," J.C. went on to explain.

Very cautiously, J.C. felt that at last there was someone she might be able to talk to without worrying that she might sound like a chronic whiner, or as in Phoebe's case sometimes, look like she had more important things to do, like get a facial.

"You see, I had one of these wacky days at work," J.C. said, going for a somewhat upbeat tone. "First, I was on cloud nine because I'd found out I'd gotten this great assignment, and then, bang, just when I thought life couldn't get any better, I get the news that some other clown had been called in instead. So you can imag-"

Whatever else she was going to say was cut off by the phone ringing. "I'll just get that," J.C. said, reaching for the portable phone next to the bed. "Hello? Phoebe? Could you give me a moment?" She put it down and hurriedly pulled up her panties. She decided to give the bra a miss, though, and dumping it on the bed along with her towel, grabbed a clean sweatshirt shirt from a nearby chair.

She pulled it on, sat down on the bed and, trying to ignore the loud sound of a ripping lace, picked up the phone. "Phoebe? I wasn't expecting you to call."

"Well neither did I." Phoebe didn't sound all that thrilled. "You know that baseball mitt you gave Trina?" Phoebe asked.

Liam chose that moment to sit on the bed next to her. He spread his fingers under her wet hair and moved it to the side.

"Oh, no, don't tell me it wasn't good in the field?" She tried to concentrate as he fingers worked into her scalp.

"No, it was great. She even caught a fly ball deep in left field. It was more in the on-deck circle that it didn't work."

"I'm confused." J.C.'s jaw opened when Liam nipped her earlobe. She cupped the phone closer. "Isn't the on-deck circle where you wait before you go to bat?"

"Under normal circumstances, yes. Unfortunately, this wasn't normal. Some kid hit a foul tip and it flew back and caromed off Trina's jaw."

"Oh, my God," J.C. responded, not so much to Phoebe, which she only half heard, as to Liam nuzzling her jaw. The coarse stubble of his beard -- besides forgoing underwear, Liam McDonald also appeared to be a stranger to his razor on the weekends -- felt absolutely fantastic, tickling her skin deliciously.

"Do you know what it's like to see your baby get hit?" Phoebe raised her voice.

The impact of Phoebe's words and decibel levels penetrated J.C.'s fog of desire. "Is Trina all right?" She was concerned, really she was, even as she began to sway as Liam nipped her chin and worked his way to the corner of her mouth. His hand also managed to work its way under her sweatshirt.

"Well, she's more upset about missing her turn at bat than the gash in her chin." There was a pause while Phoebe blew her nose loudly. "J.C., I'm at the emergency room with her now, waiting for a doctor to stitch her up. Can you come?"

J.C. caught her breath when Liam pinched a nipple. "Trina's afraid?"

J.C. could hear a gulp. "No, it's me. I never could stand the sight of blood, but I know you're a real pro at accidents and all.... I'm so sorry to ask you..."

J.C. nodded. "Okay, I'll be there. Give me twenty minutes." She clicked off the phone and reluctantly tapped Liam on the shoulder. Never would she have predicted that she would willfully stop Liam McDonald from necking with her.

He pulled his head away. "Problems?"

She forced a smile. "I gotta go. An emergency with Phoebe."

His hand stilled on her breast. "It can't wait?"

She shook her head.

Liam sighed, lifted her sweatshirt and planted a kiss where his fingers had just lingered. Then he let her shirt drop. "Okay, I understand."

J.C. gulped. "Well, I'm not completely sure I do."

"So, will I see you later?"

"Today?"

He nodded.

"I'm not sure."

"Why don't I give you my cell phone number and you can call me. I don't have it on me now, but I promise I'll carry it the rest of the weekend." He twisted around and picked up the lipstick from the end table. "You got a piece of paper I can write on?"

J.C. grabbed the lipstick and clutched it to her chest. "Are you kidding? Phoebe would kill both of us if she found out you'd used her Chanel lipstick that way. Anyway, just tell me the number. I'll remember it."

Liam bent down and playfully bit the side of her palm. "Oh, right. I forgot, you're the numbers guru."

"I wouldn't exactly say guru."

"Tell you what. You stick with the numbers. I'll do the words. And together we'll make a great team."

Then he kissed her, pressing his body up tightly against hers. When he finally broke contact, the lipstick momentarily stuck to her sweatshirt.

And J.C. wouldn't have been at all surprised to find it had melted inside the tube.

###

"Ms. Schubach, if you could come to my office." Archibald A. Armstrong's boomed over J.C.'s phone line first thing Monday morning was a little hard to take.

J.C. juggled a yellow legal pad and a cup of coffee in one hand and picked up a pencil in the other, and grumbled. Triple A's request could only mean one thing -- other than the fact that he wanted her to get him some coffee.

She was about to meet her nemesis, the patrician nail in her coffin, so to speak.

But that didn't explain by half the reason J.C. was in such a foul mood. In the words of that immortal Paul Newman movie, Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure of communication."

Failure, indeed. J.C. had sat in the waiting area of Grantham University Hospital's emergency room for what seemed like eons. The good news in the end was that Trina was fine, needing only five tiny stitches that wouldn't leave a scar. To get to that end, however, J.C. had passed the time bored out of her skull - the six-month-old issue of Good Housekeeping with an article about Kathy Lee Gifford's dieting tips could only hold her attention for so long.

Later, to compensate for the trauma -- of both mother and daughter -- J.C. had taken Phoebe and Trina on a shopping foray in quaint, overpriced Grantham. One bottle of Creed cologne (for Trina) and a Pucci print hat (for Phoebe), and strawberry blend-ins at the ice cream shop. During this substitute for dinner, J.C. listened patiently while her friend gradually wound down from her adrenaline high. This required a blow-by-blow account of the entire incident, culminating with a story of how she had exchanged business cards with a very nice woman whose baby daughter had consumed several of the buttons on her brother's cell phone but luckily with no serious side effects. The phone, on the other hand, had been a write off.

In all the commotion, she forgot to tell Phoebe about Liam, nor for that matter, had Phoebe thought to ask.

Perhaps it was all for the best? This way she could avoid having to listen to all sorts of advice from Phoebe, about what clothes to wear (as little as possible), where to go out to eat (as expensive as possible) and also, by the way, that this was a sure sign that J.C. should put the house on the market (as soon as possible).

When at last J.C. got home, she anxiously called Liam, only to be put into his voice mail. A couple more tries over the weekend -- okay, six tries, if anyone was counting -- yielded the same result.

She'd left a message twice, not wanting to sound completely desperate, but didn't hear back. Her reactions ran from one extreme to the other. First, she decided that Liam was in the shower. Next, she escalated to thinking he was out to dinner with Paris Hilton's smarter sister -- did Paris Hilton have a smarter sister?

Realizing she was behaving ridiculously, she worried that maybe Liam had been in a car crash and was probably lying by the side of the road, whispering her name as he passed into unconsciousness.

But with each lack of response, J.C. quickly dropped all pretense of charity and instead pictured him, in rapid succession, out to dinner with Paris Hilton herself, in a car crash with Paris Hilton herself, and finally, in the shower with Paris Hilton and her smarter sister.

Justifiably foul-tempered, she rounded the corner of the law firm's hallway, heading to Triple A's front corner office, when she ran into the old codger himself, in a posture she had never seen before. True, one foot being placed securely in front of the other was a rarity, but that was not what grabbed her attention.

What was supremely out of character was the sight of the despicable septuagenarian carrying a cup of coffee and saying out loud, "You said milk and no sugar, correct?" Apparently, Triple A could end a sentence with an upward inflection, as well as fetch and carry. It truly was a sign that Armageddon was nigh.

"Ah, you're on time," he said to J.C., somehow making it sound critical. "If you'd just follow me into my office."

"Would you like me to walk the appropriate three steps behind," J.C. mumbled under her breath, not worried that Triple A would hear since he was too vain to wear a hearing aid.

Triple A stopped just inside the threshold. "Here you go with the coffee. And as luck would have it--" now more than ever, J.C. didn't believe in luck "--we're also being joined by your assistant on the case."

J.C. bristled. She'd already been verbally demoted. Well, that might turn out to be the eventual situation, but in the meantime she'd establish her authority and credibility with the intruder in her midst. She attempted to jockey around Triple A, who was successfully blocking the entire doorway. The Eagles' defensive coordinator could seriously consider drafting him for next season's frontline.

Not that that stopped J.C. She felt no qualms about leading with her shoulder into his bony upper arm. After all, she had never been shy about muscling her way at the shoe sales at Nordstrom's. "Hello, I'm your fellow associate on this case," she announced, a quick establishment of equals.

She snaked her arm around Triple A, avoiding the slosh of coffee from the upraised cup. "My name's J.C. Schubach. I'm delighted to mee-"

J.C. stopped.

The new member of the legal team rose.

And J.C. finally figured out why she hadn't gotten any replies to her phone calls.