A/N: Thank you everyone for such a warm response to this fic, some of you have high expectations for it, which is making me a bit nervous, hope this is up to your standards :)

This wasn't supposed to take as long as it did, but I had some trouble structuring this chapter.

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"Juliet, that's it, I'm putting my foot down this time, I have had enough."

Juliet set her half empty mug on the kitchen counter and looked up at her sister, who was busy cooking, "Oh, Rach, it's not that bad, it could be worse."

"Don't you even dare 'Oh, Rach' me," Rachel said as she turned angrily towards Juliet, angrily pointing a spatula at her. "And it isn't that bad? Have you lost your mind or is he dosing you with Xanax? It is that bad, actually, it's worse than that, worse than bad! The man's a jerk, Jules, the biggest bastard to have ever walked on the face of the earth! He's using you, making a profit from all your hard work while he's screwing some secretary in his office. I guess it could be worse, he could be doing her in your office, while you're down in the lab slaving over test tubes."

"Research assistants," Juliet said so softly that Rachel almost didn't hear her.

"What?"

"It's not secretaries, he prefers research assistants," she repeated more clearly, setting off her sister into a rant about men being useless scum bags, and how women would be better off without them -how Juliet would be better off without Edmund.

She was right, of course. It was just that bad.

Three years ago, she had been tidying up Edmund's paperwork, when she had found divorce papers, he had filled them out, all that was left for her to do was sign them. At first, she had been shocked, as if someone had dropped a bomb on her lap. Finding the papers had been unexpected, yet they hadn't been a total surprise. She and Edmund had been married a little under three years, and he had lost interest in her almost two years ago. So as she sat there, in his office, in their home, with tears stinging her eyes, she nearly had signed them, but had chickened out, decided it would be better if she just waited until he officially gave them to her and buried herself in work.

She had been secretly working on a developing a drug which would allow women, who had undergone chemotherapy to have children, and Rachel was her test subject. Instead of going home after work, she would stay in the lab, focusing on her research, and then she had a break through, her sister, who's fertility had become almost non existent due to the roughness of the courses of chemo she had went through, was pregnant.

Rachel was ecstatic, Juliet was elated, Edmund found out, had realised just how much money he could make off of her, and had never given her the divorce papers.

The day after Rachel had told her the good news, she had been going over some figures in her office, when Edmund had walked in -without knocking, as usual. He was carrying a kraft envelope in his hands, she thought the day had finally come, he was going to give her the divorce papers, he looked at her expectantly for a minute before saying, "Juliet, we need to talk."

"Sure," she replied, shuffling her papers into a neat pile and putting her pen down. "What's up?"

"I know what you've been doing, Jules."

She looked up at him, confused, "What are you talking about?"

"I was checking your reports, and what you took out of the lab, who's your guinea pig? It's Rachel isn't it?" he said, barely containing the excitement in his voice.

"Look, Ed," she cleared her throat, trying to stand up for herself a bit. "I've been doing my research in my own time, in my own lab, I really don't see how this is of any concern ..."

"Look, Julie, there are two ways this can play out. Your research is genius, it's going to change the lives of thousands of women. On the other hand, it raises some serious ethical questions, maybe even criminal," he emphasised on the word 'criminal'.

Juliet looked at him nervously, her breath was quickening, and anxiety was rising inside her chest. Was he really insinuating, what he appeared to be insinuating? Was he really threatening her?

"If you collaborate with me, based on my reputation, all this is viewed as cutting edge science. And we will win prizes and drink champagne," he continued.

"I'm not interested in publishing, Ed. It's my sister," she said.

"Juliet, we could do a lot of good for people," he finished.

So she had been faced with a Cornelian dilemma, work with Edmund, or be reported to the ethics board, the saying being stuck between a rock and a hard place had never felt as true.

When she signed the paperwork with Edmund, part of her felt as if she was signing her life away. If she had thought her life had been bad before, it got considerably worse.

Even though Juliet's name was attached to the drug, it was Edmund Burke's that was remembered by the investors, he had made sure of it. As he became more and more famous in the medical circle, Juliet recoiled into the shadow of his ego.

She tried to convince herself that it didn't matter, that she wasn't much of a public speaker anyway, but it still hurt. And as if to make matters worse, Edmund wasn't even going to the hassle of concealing his numerous affairs from the public eye. She had known he was being unfaithful to her, she had found the odd lipstick mark on his shirt when she did the laundry, but at least he had made been discreet.

But now it was like it had become a right of passage -each new female lab assistant had to take a detour through Ed's office before she began work. Everybody knew, Everybody knew Juliet knew. And Juliet knew they were talking about it behind her back.

"Juliet, are you even listening to me?" Rachel's irritated tone brought her out of her reverie.

"It doesn't matter, I still have to go," she sighed.

"No, you don't," her sister argued.

"Maybe not as his wife, but as his employee … I don't have a choice," she looked at her watch. "I better get going, I have to get ready."

"How do you do it? How can you go to this party which is basically just a reminder of everything he stole from you. This party should be for you, not for him."

Juliet looked at her big sister with sad eyes, as if to say 'don't I know', "I'll call you later, ok?"

As Juliet let herself out the front door, she heard her sister call out, "It's my birthday next month, do you know what would be the best gift ever? If you got yourself a divorce."

If only she could.

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A bit more intelligent than his usual marks?

"No kidding", Sawyer mumbled as he walked up the steps to the reception.

The woman was practically a Marie Curie in her field, a freaking genius.

He was convinced her IQ score was higher than the IQ of all his previous marks -put together.

As soon as Hibbs had given him her name, he had done some research.

Juliet Burke, early thirties, she was a medical doctor, some sort of fertility specialist, and she worked in the Medical Research Laboratory, at Miami Central University.

According to the articles google had returned when he had looked her up, about three years ago she had made a major medical break through. She had found a way to make sterile women pregnant, women who had underwent colossal courses of chemotherapy, rendering them infertile, were now giving birth to babies, thanks to her.

Impressive, had been his first thought.

How was a woman with a brain like that living in an unhappy marriage, was his second.

It didn't take long for him to come across the answer.

When you searched "Juliet Burke" on google, there were a couple of articles explaining how ground breaking the drug she had created was. But when you actually searched the name of the drug, it wasn't Juliet's name that came up, instead there were thousands of articles about Edmund Burke's research facility coming up with the miracle drug, which gave woman, for whom motherhood was an unattainable dream, the opportunity to become mothers.

He had stolen all her thunder, and, yet, three years down the road, she was still married to the son of a bitch, this made no sense whatsoever to Sawyer, who spent a good ten minutes wondering exactly what was wrong with this woman.

He had come to the conclusion that she just had to fit the stereotype of the perfect little scientist, massive IQ, emotionally stunted and socially awkward. He could just imagine her, pale skin, no make-up, unruly hair, dressed like it's 1994, squinting behind her thick glasses down into a microscope. The typical geek.

When Hibbs had said it wasn't one of his usual jobs, he hadn't been half right.

Right now he felt like he had gave up spending time with Daphne Blake, to try and coax Velma Dinkley away from her microscopes long enough to convince her to part with a hundred thousand dollar bills.

Great.

Tonight she was at some big flashy event praising her husband's success -the woman must be a masochist, and that was where he was planning on making his entrance into her life. He was living dangerously, working under her husband's eye, he had to admit that the idea alone enticed him, maybe Hibbs had been right, all he needed was a little bit of excitement.

He scanned the room.

Suits. Bimbos in short tight dresses. More suits. Even more bimbos.

What the hell was he doing, it's not as if he was going to be able to single her out in the crowd, he had never seen her before, he didn't even know what colour of hair she had.

He asked the guy standing next to him, "You know Juliet Burke?"

The guy shrugged and moved along, so he asked a couple more, each time he got the same answer, a shrug. For crying out loud, where the hell was she, and how was it that all these people, who were here to celebrate her husband's greatness, didn't have a clue who she was.

Finally, when he had almost lost all hope of spotting her tonight, someone pointed him towards the bar, there was a blond sitting alone on a stool.

The closer he got, the more he liked what he was seeing. Tall, slim, long blond hair, from where he was standing the curves of her dress suggested a more than generous cleavage.

If this had been an episode of Tex Avery, the wolf would have already been out howling, banging his fists against the bar, with his eyes popping out of his sockets.

Maybe this would be more enjoyable than he thought, he said to himself as he approached her.

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Here she was, sitting at the bar, all by herself, starring down into her glass.

They had barely been at the reception for half an hour and Edmund had already ditched her, apparently he needed to speak with an investor about something. Well unless that investor was a twenty something, voluptuous brunette, who's dress left little to the imagination, she guessed he had lied again.

She sighed, downing her drink.

As she put the glass back down, a southern voice drawled from behind, "You shouldn't drink alone. People always find out, and then it ruins the reputation."

She couldn't help herself from bursting into a fit of giggles, she turned around towards the man, she sized him up, tall, blond, good looking, a bit of a bad boy thing going for him -definitely not her type.

Not that she was that picky, not that she had ever had the choice really, she took what came to her. After all, she was and would always be a science geek, even in an expensive little black dress, which hugged her more figure in all the right places, when she looked at her reflection in the mirror, she couldn't see past that label someone had tagged her with in High School.

He looked at her funny, "Why ya laughing?"

"That line," she smiled. "It's out of Gone with the Wind."

He squinted at her, as if he was trying to read her mind, "So?"

"So, you don't look like the type of guy who would sit through a four long epic love story," she commented.

"More like an epic hate story. And, as a matter of fact, I haven't seen the movie, if you must know everything, I read the book," he said, leaning his weight against the bar.

"Really?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, ma'am, read it a couple of years ago, decent enough story, the beginning's a bit long, and the end is a bit rushed, but what can you do ..."

"So, Rhett Butler, you like your books?" she asked, kind of glad to have someone to keep her company.

He grinned back at her, revealing a particularly attractive set of dimples, she noticed, "Indeed I do. And the name's Sawyer."

She laughed, "Didn't think you looked much like a Rhett. I'm Juliet."

She gestured him to take the stool next to her, he complied and said, "It's a pleasure. Can I get you a refill?"

She shouldn't, it wasn't reasonable, she had to be up for work in the morning. What the heck, she thought, live a little, "Why not?"

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TBC

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A/N: FYI, just in case you don't know, Daphne Blake (hot chick) and Velma Dinkley (nerdy chick) are the female characters out of Scooby Doo.