Note: Okay so I know that I said True Love Waits was next on the update list, and it is my top priority right now, but this chapter was already written, and well I love this one too much not to post it. It was a pure joy to write, so I really hope you enjoy this...! And I'm a review whore so please leave your comments at the end once you're done!

Chapter 3: The Nest

"This is it," the cabdriver informed Taylor as he pulled up on a driveway and pulled the car to a halt.

The rain was smashing so heavily against the windows that Taylor couldn't see anything of the outside view, but she trusted the driver to know the route and to have taken her to the right place. Considering the size of the town, he'd probably driven here a million times and would know the roads like the palm of his hand.

"Okay, thanks," Taylor said, grabbing a few bills and handing them to the driver along with the few coins she had in her purse.

Naturally, she hadn't thought to bring an umbrella to L.A., and therefore as soon as she stepped outside the car, she was soaked right through. She quickly spotted a fading red neon sign that blinkingly read "Motel" 15 yards away, and rushed in the direction of it, as quickly as her Chanel heels would carry her.

Throwing the motel door open, she was horrified at the sight that met her once inside. Right by the threshold was a mirror, and after catching her reflection in it, she almost had a stroke. Her mascara and eyeliner were now on her cheeks instead of around her eyes, her hair hung in wet chunks around her face, and her once tight bun was dripping down onto her now see-through white designer blouse, revealing a pink bra underneath. Quickly, she brushed the make-up stains away with the back of her hand and simply decided that the rest of it would have to do.

Then she turned her attention towards the room, and nearly had a second stroke. Yellowing wall-paper, an orange velvet couch and gray drapes covering the windows, were just a few of the horrendous things that caught her eyes. For someone who'd taken a few interior design classes alongside her Literature major in college, it was appalling and for a few seconds all she could do was stare in horror. The she caught sight of another neon sign, this one green and spelling out the name of the motel.

"They seriously named their motel The Nest?! What kind of people would do that?"

That was when Ryan noticed her. She'd seemed to be talking to herself, but Ryan would've noticed that high-pitched, slightly crazy voice anywhere, and even though she looked a lot more like a drenched puppy than the put-together business woman from before, it was unmistakably the angry and annoying woman from the airport.

"I mean, that is just… utterly repugnant," she finished.

Ryan raised an eyebrow at her choice of words, and she seemed to notice for the first time that he was standing right next to her. The way she was eyeing him up and down indicated that she recognized him too, or maybe she was just wondering how he was completely dry while she looked like she'd tried to drown herself in a lake.

"I'm a book editor, okay? I have a large vocabulary and therefore I like to vary my choice of words not only in writing, but also while talking," she explained in a very fast pace. "But naming a motel The Nest…it's still gross."

She hesitated at the door for a second, as if the thought of sleeping at a motel named The Nest was too much for her to handle, and for a brief moment, Ryan was positive that she would turn her heel and walk out into the rain. But then she took a deep breath and walked up to the receptionist desk with determined steps.

"Yes, hi, I'd like a room, please," she informed the man behind the counter.

"Me too," Ryan hurried to say as he took a quick glance through the door window and saw several cabs pull up outside the entrance. He definitely needed to sleep, and the place didn't seem large enough to hold all the coming cab passengers.

The man behind the counter whom had seemed to be semi-sleeping just a few seconds ago opened his eyes slowly and his mouth flew wide-open in a yawn that flashed several severely damaged and coffee stained teeth. The woman standing next to Ryan had obviously never seen such poor dental care before and Ryan could see her lips twitching in a discreetly repulsed grimace. "Name?" the man asked as he shuffled through some papers and stifled another yawn.

Both Ryan and the woman spoke at the same time, but their words were drowned by a sudden bolt of thunder right outside. Before either of them could repeat their names, a sharp flash of lightening just outside the window lit up the room for a few seconds, only to cause the lamps in the room to flicker and finally die with a faint pop.

"Oh great," she muttered under her breath.

"It's probably just a broken plug, if I just replace it, the lights will be up and running again in no time," the man assured her in a bored matter, but she obviously wasn't convinced and pursed her lips sourly.

"How about our rooms?" Ryan pressed on, noticing how the woman's initiative niceness began to fade.

"Oh, you're not together?" he asked obliviously.

"NO!" they yelled simultaneously, and quickly eyed each other up and down with obvious repulsion.

"I'd never seen him before today. So he's not… we're not… I'm married," she finished quickly, as if that explained everything. "And we'd like separate rooms."

"Definitely," Ryan agreed. The way she seemed to think that she was superior to him, and her obvious tendency to ramble on in that nervous, high-pitched tone was already getting on his nerves.

"I'm afraid that that'll be a problem," the man informed them, not sounding sorry at all. "We only have one room left. And it only has one bed."

"I was here first!" the woman exclaimed quickly.

"Yeah, you were first at the desk, but I was first through the door," Ryan put in. She scowled at him, so he scowled back. If she was going to play that game, he certainly wasn't backing out. He wanted that room, he needed that room, and if she was going to use child's logic to get ahead in the situation, then… he would just have to stoop to her level.

"Look, I didn't see who got here first, so I don't know who to give the room to. Fight amongst yourselves." With those words, he leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes again.

"That room belongs to me," she threatened, her scowl still obvious in the dark.

"Oh yeah? I say it's mine," he said giving her a sarcastic smile.

"Look, I have a huge presentation tomorrow; I'm negotiating a potentially giant book deal and I need to get some sleep to be in my A-game by then and seal that deal or my boss might fire me," she negotiated.

"My son's birthday's tomorrow, and I promised him that we'd play catch as soon as I got home. If I don't get some sleep tonight I'll fall asleep halfway through the game and break my promise. How would that make you feel, knowing that the memory my son will have from his tenth birthday, will be that his dad failed his promise, all because of you?" He knew he wasn't playing fair, but he didn't care. He didn't have time to argue with her, he needed his sleep and his words were as true as any.

Another loud crash sounded from outside just as he'd finished his pleading, and even in the dark Ryan could see her forehead crease as she seemed to consider this.

"I'm not gonna fall for the poor-child's-unfulfilled-birthday-wish trick," she finally decided. "I'll fight for this room with everything I have in me. Hands, nails, claws- whatever, I'll do it."

"I used to be a cage fighter. I could snap you like a twig."

His words made her swallow hard once before she spoke. "Well, you might be bigger and probably much, much stronger than me, but I have a brown belt in Tae Kwan Do, and skill always trumps strength."

He snapped his fingers once. "Snap. Just like that."

Just then, they're scowling and threats were interrupted by the creaking sound of the front door opening.

"Look, if you guys don't make up your minds right now, I'll give the room to them," the man stated, nodding in direction of the soaked middle-aged couple that just crossed the threshold.

"We could flip a coin," she suggested, panicking.

"Sure," he sighed, surrendering. It was clear that they would never agree. He opened his wallet, but came up empty-handed. "I only have bills. Do you have one on you?"

She quickly rummaged the content of her purse. "Shoot! I gave all my change to the cabdriver. I only have some Ben Franklin's and credit cards."

"Well that's just great," he said, irritated. "Why even suggest it if you don't have any coins?"

"Well I didn't remember that!" she yelled under her breath so that the couple that was quickly approaching the desk wouldn't overhear their argument. "And obviously, you didn't think of it either!"

"Last chance, or I'm giving it to them," the man warned them, the couple now at the desk.

"We'll take it!" they cried alarmed in chorus and tossed a few bills on his desk.

"Room number 3," he said, stretching the room key towards Ryan, but she snatched it from his hand.

"So I guess we'll have to share," Ryan stated as she lead the way towards the room. He didn't have any energy left to fight with her and they'd both paid the same amount of money for the room, so he had every right to be there as much as she did.

She stopped outside the door marked with a golden "3" and heaved a deep sigh before turning towards him. This time she didn't scowl at him, but offered him an exhausted, yet rather sociable smile. "I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot. I'm sure you're a decent enough person, and I'm usually quite a bit nicer than this myself. And if we're gonna share a room together, even if it's just for one night, it's probably a whole lot easier if we're not at each other's throats the entire time. I'm Taylor by the way."

Ryan was a little surprised by her sudden friendly gesture, he'd figured she was just a plain, evil ice queen, but if anyone should know better than to judge a book by it's cover, it was him. And he certainly wasn't one to dismiss an attempt of truce so he reached forward to shake her stretched out hand. "Ryan."

She nodded, as if to memorize his name, and then opened the door to the room that they were to spend the night in. "This is it?! Seriously?!"

Still standing on the threshold and blocking Ryan's view of the room, Taylor's first thought was that it reminded her of a shoebox in size. The walls were draped in a heavy floral 70s pattern that matched the seemingly green carpet that covered the entire floor. Up against one wall was a cheap coffee table balancing a lamp, and right next to it stood the only chair in the room, from which some of the stuffing stuck out in odd angles. A dusty mirror and a few frames hung on the wall, and from where Taylor stood, she could barely make out any details, but they seemed to be holding outdated local newspaper clippings. A squared window about ten inches wide was the only link to the outside world, and Taylor was sure that she could spot cobweb hanging in one of the corners of the ceiling and shuddered at the thought.

Ryan rolled his eyes at her drama queen-moment; as if she'd expected a Hilton only to find a prison cell, but when she stepped aside enough for him to actually see the room, his reaction mirrored hers. "We paid 150 dollars for this?!"

Ryan, as an architect, was appalled by the design of the room to begin with. What kind of sane person would construct a perfectly square, claustrophobically small room with only a microscopic window to match? he wondered quietly. He then eyed the outdated interior without giving it a second glance, but that was when he caught sight of what immediately became his biggest concern: the bed. Up against the right wall was possibly the smallest bed he had ever seen, probably constructed for dwarfs or tiny children to sleep in, and only so wide that a person would most likely have to lie on the side to not fall out of it. The thought of trying to get some sleep in the tiny, tiny bed while at the same time sharing it with another person, and a very annoying and high-pitched person at that, was enough to make his head spin. "Juvie was better than this," he muttered under his breath.

Taylor seemed unaware of his comment as she closed the door behind them and her hand reached for the light switch, which failed to fulfill it's purpose of lightening the room. "Naturally," she mumbled, having expected nothing less from this place. The owner had probably gone back to sleep again instead of changing the plugs.

Her eyes turned to the three foot wide bed and she was unable to hide her distaste at the thought of sleeping on the lumpy mattress that laid upon it, never mind the fact that she would have to share the very cramped space with a 160 lbs stranger unless they could agree on a reasonable solution. She squirmed at the thought.

"So, um…how are the two of us going to sleep on that?" Ryan asked the question that had been on her mind.

"Well… since we're out of coins, rock-paper-scissors?" she suggested and held out a fist, and he nodded, somehow buying into her childish logic.

"1, 2, 3," they counted in chorus.

"Paper trumps rocks," Taylor explained quickly, as if he didn't know the rules since childhood.

"Best out of three?" Ryan bargained, knowing it was a lost cause.

"Haha, nice try, but I won. Yay!"

"Guess I'll take the floor then," Ryan said and grabbed one of the pillows on the bed and tossed it on the floor right next to the bed. Thankfully, the air in the room wasn't cold, and the carpet that covered the floorboards was probably comfortable enough for him to be able to get a decent night's sleep, even if it wasn't in a bed.

He felt exhausted as he took a seat of the side of the bed to untie his shoelaces and removed his socks.

Somehow, unintentionally, Taylor's eyes got stuck watching him as he undressed. It certainly wasn't in her normal behavior to watch strangers undress, but then again, nothing about this trip was normal, and for some inexplicable reason Taylor just found it impossible to pry her eyes away from what she was seeing. It was like watching a train wreck in a way; she knew it was wrong, but she just couldn't help herself. A very, very sexy train wreck, she thought to herself as extremely inappropriate thoughts entered her mind.

Not even taking notice of her presence, Ryan unbuttoned his shirt to reveal masculine, well-defined abs that even in the dark unmistakably took the shape of a six-pack. With a yawn he rummaged through the dark duffel bag carrying his personal belongings and threw on a white wife beater, and Taylor couldn't help but to stare at his masculine, well-trained biceps and upper arms, making her toy with impossible thoughts of lying in those strong, secure arms. When Ryan finally got the point of removing his dark jeans, Taylor forced herself to look away to be able to control herself, only catching sight of the letters that spelled out "Calvin Klein" on his dark boxers.

Finished and completely unaware of the fact that a second ago Taylor had been staring at him undressing, Ryan noticed her dithering in the room, still wearing the exact same outfit and looking nowhere ready to go to bed.

"Are you planning to sleep in that?" he asked her, emphasizing the last word in distaste as he gazed upon her drenched outfit. The 5 inch heels, the white, sheer lace blouse and the light gray pencil skirt that she sported really wasn't his idea of comfortable sleeping wear.

His sharp tone awoke her from her daydreaming, and suddenly she was annoyed. Who was he to give her thoughts like this when she had a husband at home? Tom was a very nice man, a stable, trustworthy, loyal companion, and this stranger had been nothing but rude to her since the very first time she'd laid eyes on him. He might have an attractive outside, but his impoliteness and unbearable attitude proved that his inside was anything but attractive. And he certainly had no right to judge her just because she hadn't brought any clothes to change since she was supposed to have made just a quick business trip, have one meeting and then go straight back to New York.

"Why, yes, Ryan, that was my plan," Taylor said in an overly sarcastic voice as she scowled at him. "That was exactly my plan when I went from LAX today; that a freakin' thunderstorm would sweep across the sky, forcing my plane back to New York to land in this godforsaken town, and literally canceling all air-traffic, making it impossible for me to get back on a plan tonight, leaving me no other choice but to share a microscopically small single-bedded motel room in a place called The Nest with an arrogant, obnoxious stranger!"

"I…," Ryan began hesitantly after her little outburst, trying to figure out the best words to say to tackle her obvious side of craziness. Words like insane, neurotic, self-centered, snobby and stuck-up were the first that came to mind, but for some reason, picking another fight with her didn't seem like the best idea. "I just figured that it didn't look very comfortable, and since your clothes are soaked through you'll probably get cold, so I thought I'd offer you to borrow one of my t-shirts."

Taylor just stared at him, completely startled by his sudden niceness, so much that it left her mouth gaping slightly open from the surprise.

Ryan wasn't fully sure that he was out of the woods yet, as her shocked expression gave away very few clues of what crazy neurotic thoughts were bouncing around in her head, so he decided to smooth things over further. "I mean, it's not sweaty or anything," he assured her. "I washed it just before I got on the plane."

It took her a moment to compose herself, but then she started talking as if nothing had happened. "That would be… that would be nice. Thanks."

He rumbled through the belongings of his suitcase and threw a washed out band T-shirt at her.

Catching it with one hand, she put the other hand on the door handle.

"What are you doing?" he asked her in surprise.

"I'm gonna change," she offered, this time in a friendly tone. "The only bathroom in this place is down the hall, so…"

"Oh, yeah, sure," he said as she stepped outside the door.

A few seconds later she was back though, still wearing her preppy business suit. "The bathroom was occupied," she explained with a grimace on her face. "It sounded as if the couple from before decided to take their business elsewhere and were getting… frisky in there, so they're probably gonna be there a while. So I guess I can't change after all."

"Taylor, don't be ridiculous, you can't sleep in that. It will get all wrinkly and probably ruined. Just change here. I promise I won't look," he assured her. He brought his hands to cover his eyes for demonstration.

"Okay," she agreed a little hesitantly. She definitely wasn't used to undressing in front of strangers. She usually didn't even undress in front of her husband! But the situation called for it, so she quickly unbuttoned her blouse and zipped down her skirt and then threw on the rather large t-shirt, which barely made it halfway down to her knees. She sighed, cursing the cellulites on her thighs, and then wondered to herself why the heck that mattered.

This is just a stranger. Perhaps a very attractive stranger, but still just an unfamiliar face that you'll forget as soon as you step onto that plane tomorrow and get back to your husband, she reminded herself as she folded her clothes to hang neatly over the back of the only chair in the room. Then she removed the rubber band that held her tight bun together so that her hair would dry. It fell down in messy, damp waves that she immediately tried to smooth out by running her fingers through them. "Okay, you can look now."

Ryan removed his hands only to be met by a completely different sight, one he was sure to be imagining at first. No longer did the up-tight, neurotic A-type business suit- wearing woman with her hair in a bun stand before him, but she'd been replaced by someone entirely different, someone who could only be described as beautiful. With her dark gold hair cascading in soft waves all the way down to her waist and her hazel eyes glittering in the dim light of the room, her face looked absolutely alluring, and because his washed-out t-shirt barely covered her thighs, it was impossible not to notice her impressive figure. Ryan blinked a few times, unable to comprehend just how gorgeous she really was.

"Journey, huh?" Taylor asked, for the first time noticing the name printed across the t-shirt she was wearing, remaining oblivious to the way Ryan was still staring at her.

"Uh-huh," Ryan nodded, finding it difficult to tear his eyes away from the image in front of him and actually forming a coherent sentence. "Best band ever."

"I guess they're alright," Taylor admitted casually. "If you're into the whole 80s rock power-ballads thing. Personally, I'm more into soulful stuff like Fiona Apple and Joni Mitchell, but that's just me."

"Okay," Ryan replied without looking at her. If he didn't look at her, he convinced himself that he was going to be able to block out the image of her being a very, very sexy someone, and simply imagine her as the up-tight hair-in-a-bun woman she'd been when he'd first laid eyes on him.

"Okay, not in the mood for late night small talk, I take it," Taylor said, interpreting his few-worded mumbles as apparent lack of interest for what she was saying. "You're tired, I get it, and I'll leave you to drift off into the world of dreaming."

Outside the thunder raged, the rain poured and lightning bolts continued to momentarily light up the room. Ryan rested his head against the squishy pillow, worrying about whether or not he would be able to make it home in time to wish his son a happy birthday in person, and found it very hard to believe that he would be able to get any sleep at all lying here on the floor.

She climbed over him and hopped onto the bed, tossing around a few times in order to make herself as comfortable as she could on the lumpy mattress, before finally settling into a decent position. "'Night Ryan."

"Good night Taylor," Ryan replied.

And for some reason, some unexplainable reason that he had yet to understand, besides worrying about his son, all he could think about was the mysterious woman lying in the bed next to him. He was going over their encounters in his head, and found himself being fascinated by her, and the way he wasn't able to label her in any way. He was appalled by her insane yelling at the airport, impressed by the way she'd stood her ground when they'd been fighting over the room, amused by her crazy hysterical ramblings, amazed by her beauty and most of all intrigued to learn more about her.

She was a mystery; like an unsolvable, million-pieces puzzle and unlike anyone he'd ever met. And though he tried to deny it to himself, he knew deep down that he was saddened by the fact that he would never get the chance to know her and figure her out.

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