Practice Makes Perfect

  Payton struggled with the cumbersome box as she tried to find the other sleeve to her jacket. She reached back, groping, still feigning interest in her mother’s lecture, when—

  —someone held up her jacket and gently settled it across her shoulders.

  Grateful for the assistance, Payton turned around—

  —and unexpectedly found herself staring at J.D.

  She blushed. No clue why. “Oh. Hello.”

  “Hello,” he smiled.

  “It’s you.”

  “It’s me.”

  Payton suddenly felt the need to appear casual. “So we’re here for the brunch,” she said breezily. “They said it was the best in the city for Father’s Day.”

  “You’re here with your family, then?” J.D. asked. He appeared curious about this.

  Before Payton could respond, she heard a not-so-subtle cough behind her. Shit!—her mother. She had completely forgotten about her.

  Normally, Payton liked to give people a preparatory speech before they met her mother—topics of conversation to avoid, what not to wear, and if a meal was involved, what not to eat. Men introduced to her mother needed additional coaching, at least several days’ worth of Lex Kendall 101. Despite all this, very few people—even normal, perfectly harmless people—managed to come through an encounter with her mother unscathed.

  From behind Payton came a second, more pointed cough.

  J.D. and her mother could not meet.

  And if they did, she absolutely did not want to be anywhere in the vicinity. Payton eyed the door. Was it too late to make a run for it?

  J.D. pointed. “Um, Payton? I think someone’s trying to get your attention.”

  Oh, bloody hell. Payton turned around and saw her mother’s fierce gaze—nobody put Lex Kendall in a corner—and reluctantly made the introduction.

  “J.D., I’d like you to meet my mother, Lex Kendall. Mom, this is J. D. Jameson. He works with me at the firm.”

  Payton watched as J.D. politely shook her mother’s hand. It felt strange, the two of them meeting. She quickly tried to think—was there any safe topic, anything they had in common? She came up with zilch. Nada.

  Lex carefully looked J.D. over, suspicious from the outset. Payton knew she was making mental note of the expensive cut of his pants, the fine quality of his dark gray shirt, and the way he wore his jacket, without a tie, in an effortlessly stylish look.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Kendall,” J.D. said.

  Payton winced. Already a screwup, and on the basics at that. Having kept her own name, even after marrying Steven, Lex Kendall was no “Mrs.”

  J.D. smiled at her mother, obviously unaware of the shaky ground on which he stood. “I hope you and Mr. Kendall had a nice brunch.”

  Oh . . . no. Payton saw her mother’s eyes flash.

  “Well—J.D., is it?” Lex led in with what could only be described as a “tone.” “Putting aside your blatant patriarchal biases in assuming the necessary presence of a male familial figurehead, yes, I had a nice brunch, thanks.”

  Payton rolled her eyes in exasperation. “He was just being polite, Mom.” She glanced over apologetically at J.D., expecting to find him annoyed, irritated, offended, or some combination thereof.

  But instead, he seemed amused. “My mistake, Ms. Kendall,” J.D. corrected himself. “And thank you.” He looked over at Payton, his eyes dancing. “Suddenly, everything has become much clearer.”

  Payton shot him a look. Very funny.

  She was about to say something to extricate her and her mother as quickly as possible, before this encounter that teetered on the brink of disaster got any worse, when a voice, a woman’s, came from behind J.D.

  “If you don’t intend to introduce us to your friend, J.D., perhaps your father and I should go ahead and be seated at the table.”

  Payton turned to J.D., her eyes wide. Now this was interesting. “You have parents,” she said.

  “Yes, shockingly, even I have parents.”

  Payton laughed. She had forgotten that J.D. could actually be kind of funny every once in a while. If you liked that whole dry-humor kind of thing.

  “No, I meant here, with you.” Curious, Payton peered over and saw a distinguished-looking couple in their early sixties heading in their direction.

  J.D. made the introductions. “Payton, these are my parents, Preston and Evelyn Jameson.” He gestured to Payton and her mother. “Mom, Dad, this is Payton Kendall and her mother, Lex Kendall. Payton is a coworker of mine; she works in the same group as me.”

  With a formal air, J.D.’s father stepped forward to shake Payton’s hand. He was tall, like his son, had salt-and-pepper hair, and looked very dignified in his gray tweed sport coat and wire-rimmed glasses.

  “So you’re a lawyer as well, Ms. Kendall?” he inquired.

  “Yes, Judge,” she said, shaking his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” As a member of the legal profession, it was indeed an honor for her to meet the Honorable Preston D. Jameson of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

  Judge Jameson gave her a slight nod, as if to acknowledge her acknowledgment of his judicial status. He had a stern demeanor, Payton noticed, which struck her as being very unlike his son. There were lots of words she could use to describe J.D.—no comment on whether any of them would be particularly complimentary—but “stern” would not be among them.

  Payton turned next to Evelyn Jameson, and the first thing she noticed was a pair of brilliant blue eyes. J.D.’s eyes.

  The startling familiarity of those eyes was immediately overshadowed, however, by the second thing Payton noticed about J.D.’s mother: the beige suede car coat she was wearing that had—oh, lord—a sable fur collar.

  Payton shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Jameson. Could you excuse me for one second?”

  She spun around to her mother and whispered quietly. “If you let the coat slide, I’ll give up dairy for a week.”

  Lex gave her a look that was 100 percent pure motherly reassurance. “Of course, Sis, if it’s that important to you. Make it a month.”

  Quintessential Lex Kendall.

  “Fine,” Payton hissed softly. “Just be polite.”

  Lex snickered, stealing a glance at the Jamesons. “Don’t worry, I know how to deal with people like this. They look exactly like your father’s parents, the first time I met them.”

  Payton blinked, shocked. Her father had money? This was the first she had heard of any such thing.

  But she tabled that discussion and held her breath as she watched her mother introduce herself to J.D.’s parents. Lex was pleasant enough but—it never failed—still Lex.

  “Nice coat,” she told J.D.’s mother. “I have two just like it at home.”

  Evelyn smiled politely. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she replied, somehow managing to sound both condescending and genteel. “This is a Christian Lacroix, you know.”

  Payton stifled a laugh. Ah, J.D. was right. Suddenly things had become much clearer. She heard a voice, low in her ear.

  “You don’t have to say it out loud; I already know what you’re thinking.”

  She looked over her shoulder to see J.D. standing next her. “You think you know me so well.”

  “I do,” he said, still speaking so that their parents couldn’t hear.

  “Then what am I thinking now?” Payton asked coyly. Wait—was she flirting? No. Yes. To be determined.

  “You’re thinking that out of all the brunches in the city, you had to pick the same one as me,” J.D. said.

  Payton couldn’t help but smile at that. She had a view of their parents, and she watched as her mother—undoubtedly on yet another diatribe—took off one of her animal-cruelty-free clogs and held it up to Evelyn Jameson. J.D.’s mother looked pained.

  “Close. I was thinking that if I knew we were going to pick the same brunch, I would’ve had that third mimosa before our parents met.”

  J.D. turned in the direction of their parents a
nd eyed the scene with amusement. “There’s always the bar off the lobby.”

  Payton laughed.

  J.D. studied her for a moment. “Actually . . . I was thinking I might have to sneak off to the bar myself.”

  Now it was Payton’s turn to study him. Was that an invitation? Hard to tell. “That does sound tempting,” she said, figuring that answer worked either way.

  “Tempting,” J.D. repeated.

  Then his gaze fell to her lips.

  Payton suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder, interrupting them. She glanced over and saw her mother’s pointed look.

  “We don’t want the food to get cold, Sis.” Lex gestured to the box of food for the unhoused people.

  Payton nodded. “Yes.” She glanced up at J.D. “We should get going.”

  J.D. nodded. “Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  Payton murmured a quick good-bye to J.D.’s parents, then left the restaurant with her mother. When they got outside, she handed the ticket to the valet.

  She and her mother waited in front of the hotel, neither of them saying a word. Finally, Lex broke the ice.

  “Do you want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “He’s just a coworker, Mom.”

  More silence.

  “Why have you never mentioned that my father had money?” Payton asked.

  Lex shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t think it was relevant, I guess.”

  Payton didn’t buy her mother’s nonchalance. “Did that have anything to do with why you two never married?”

  For a moment she didn’t think her mother was going to answer.

  “When his parents found out I was pregnant, they told him to choose me or his inheritance,” Lex said. “He didn’t choose me. He didn’t choose us.”

  “You don’t think that’s something I might’ve wanted to know?” Payton couldn’t believe she was first finding out about this after all these years. It explained so much.

  Her mother turned to her. “Listen, Payton—I know you tune out a lot of what I say, but trust me on this: stay away from him.”

  At first Payton thought her mother meant she should stay away from Shane, her father, but then realized she was referring to J.D.

  “I don’t even like him, Mom.” Most of the time.

  Lex studied her shrewdly. “That’s not how it looked to me.”

  “I didn’t realize you could see us through all those witty barbs you were flinging at J.D.’s mother.”

  “I saw enough.”

  Payton cocked her head, conceding. “The part where he helped me out with my jacket wasn’t half bad.”

  “Chivalrous crap.”

  “Don’t hold back, Mom. Tell me what you really think.”

  Her mother eyed her warily. “I think you’ve gone soft, that’s what I think,” she grumbled.

  Payton thought about this. Maybe she had.

  Her mother, of all people, had once fallen in love with a high-society rich man. At this point, anything was possible.

  Even being civil to J.D.

  Maybe.

  Seventeen

  “SO WAIT—WHERE was this great moment between you and Payton? Did I miss it?”

  J.D. shook his head, sighing. Sometimes he really regretted telling Tyler anything.

  “I didn’t say we had a ‘moment.’ What I said was, at the restaurant, there was a brief second—”

  “—You said a ‘brief moment,’ ” Tyler corrected.

  Growing agitated, J.D. sat back in the aged leather nail-head armchair, gesturing distractedly.

  “Fine, whatever, maybe I used the word ‘moment,’ but I didn’t mean, you know, ‘moment.’ ” He mockingly emphasized the word, tempted to use finger quotes, but he really hated when people did that.

  “What I meant to say was, there was a brief period of time at the restaurant when I thought we were . . .” he searched for the right words “. . . getting along.” He decided that was the safest way to describe his and Payton’s interaction earlier that morning.

  He and Tyler were in the cigar bar at Crimson, a private club for Harvard graduates. It was an unofficial tradition they had started several years ago: every Father’s Day evening, J.D. and his friends met here to unwind. Some people, particularly in his social circle, sought out the comfort of their therapists to recover from the stress of family holidays. J.D., not a believer in the whole my-father-never-played-catch-with-me psychoanalytical crap, found that a nice, smooth glass of single-malt Scotch did the trick just as nicely, and for about one-tenth the cost. (Yes, fine, Payton had guessed right in her tirade in the library, he liked to drink Scotch, so sue him.)

  Being a private club—although a Harvard degree was the only membership requirement—the bar was small. It had been designed to resemble a private library: warm brown bookshelves lined two walls; the other walls were decorated with paintings boasting various equestrian scenes. Leather armchairs, all of which were taken that evening, had been arranged in intimate groupings throughout the room. J.D. and Tyler had been lucky to score two chairs in the back by the fireplace. Their friends Trey and Connor, who had arrived fifteen minutes later, had not been so lucky and were now part of the seatless masses that lined the main bar.

  Somewhere around their second drink, J.D. had found himself mentioning to Tyler that he had run into Payton and her mother at the Park Hyatt hotel. His friend had been on his case ever since.

  “You thought you and Payton were ‘getting along,’ ” Tyler repeated.

  “Maybe more than that, even.”

  “That would be a shock,” Tyler said. “Do you have any support for this claim?”

  Holding his glass by the stem, J.D. gave the Scotch a swirl, watching the legs run down the side of the crystal. “I don’t know. I thought I saw something different in her look.”

  “Now there’s hard evidence if I’ve ever heard it.”

  J.D. folded his arms behind his head contentedly. Tyler’s quips had no effect on him today. “Ah . . . my droll friend, I guess you just had to be there.”

  Tyler looked him over. “You’re in an awfully good mood for having spent the day with your father. Is there more to this story with Payton than what you’re telling me?”

  J.D. shook his head matter-of-factly. “Nope.”

  “Then I want to make sure I understand the scene correctly: there was this alleged nebulous look that took place during these couple of minutes at the Park Hyatt hotel where you two somehow miraculously managed to string a few polite sentences together.”

  “I think it was a bit more than that,” J.D. said.

  “Do tell. Because this is really steamy stuff. What happens next?”

  J.D. grinned. “That’s the interesting part—I don’t know.”

  “Well, I hate to be the one to point this out, but whatever is going on, the fun’s about to end. Because you and Payton have all of about, oh”—Tyler checked the date on his watch—“less than two weeks left before the firm makes one of you partner and the other of you . . . well, you know.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” J.D. said dryly. As if he needed Tyler to mention it. As if he didn’t already know that fact himself, as if this hadn’t been the very thing he’d been thinking since the moment he’d left Payton’s apartment the other night.

  It was the worst possible circumstances. She was the only one standing in the way of his making partner. He needed to crush her. But that desire had ended the moment he had found out how she’d helped him with the deposition.

  He wished they had more time.

  Tyler was right—he and Payton were speeding toward the end of their eight-year race and there was nothing he could do to change that. Which meant that if there was anything to be done, he had to do it fast.

  So the question was: Was there anything to be done?

  A few weeks ago, J.D. never would’ve believed he’d be having these thoughts. But things had changed. And not just for him, for Payton, too. Unless he was really, real
ly reading her wrong, that is.

  So again, if he wanted something to happen, the time was now.

  For what might’ve been the first time in his adult life, J.D. didn’t know what to do. He cleared his throat. “I need your advice, Tyler.”

  His friend did not seem particularly surprised by this lead-in. “Lay it on me. But first—shall we?” Tyler pulled a black leather cigar case from the inner pocket of his corduroy jacket and offered one of the cigars, a Padron Millennium 1964 Series, to J.D. It was part of their Father’s Day tradition, an homage to the time when they were kids and had discovered J.D.’s father’s premium cigar collection in a locked cabinet in the den. It had been a Padron that they had smoked that day, out on the verandah, thinking they were hotshots, not realizing that shortly thereafter both of them were going to be violently ill for the next twenty-four hours for amateurishly inhaling the smoke.

  J.D. took one of the cigars out of the case. Tyler pulled out a matchbook, lit his cigar, then he handed the matches to J.D. After lighting his own cigar, J.D. eased back in his chair, puffing and rotating and tasting—not inhaling—the smoke.

  After they sat in silence for a few moments, Tyler glanced over. “I can start you off, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, this should be good—by all means.” J.D. gestured for him to proceed.

  Tyler raked his hand through his hair to get it mussed just right. He casually leaned back in his chair, then raised one eyebrow in an over-the-top smirk. “Tyler—I’ve been thinking about a few things—”

  J.D. held up his hand, offended. “Hold on. Is that supposed to be me?”