Practice Makes Perfect

  Curled in the crook of his arm, Payton couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “You really don’t,” she assured him. “You’ve met my mother—picture her scaled down just a notch or two.”

  “Considering that we’re lying here naked, I think I’ll pass on picturing your mother doing anything, thank you.” J.D. tilted her face up toward his. “Although I am kind of curious—did she hate me as much as I think she did?”

  “My mother generally dislikes everyone I introduce her to,” Payton said evasively.

  J.D. gave her a pointed look.

  “Okay, fine—you weren’t exactly her favorite person,” she conceded.

  “Does that bother you?” he asked.

  Payton thought that was kind of a curious question. “No, it doesn’t.” Along with her angst-y days, her attempts to follow in her mother’s footsteps had ended long ago.

  Payton noticed that J.D. relaxed again after her response, and while she had suspicions where he might have been going with his question, she wasn’t 100 percent positive. Which meant, once again, that she went for a light and teasing tone.

  “Does this mean we can now talk about what you were like in college?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  In one smooth move, J.D. suddenly rolled Payton over, tangling them both in the sheet and trapping her beneath him. He stared down at her with sort of a half-coy, half-serious expression. “I want to talk about what’s going to happen when we get back to Chicago.”

  Payton met his gaze. Okay. Good. Frankly, she was relieved they were finally going to talk about this.

  “I don’t know,” she answered him truthfully.

  Now that answer he didn’t seem as pleased with.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” Payton continued. “A lot, actually.”

  “And?”

  “And I think this has probably been the most amazing two nights of my life,” she told him. “I’d love to figure out a way for this to work back in Chicago. But I’m worried about what’s going to happen after Tuesday.”

  She saw the acknowledgment in J.D.’s eyes.

  “I’m worried, too,” he admitted.

  “I can’t hate you again, J.D.” Payton touched his face gently.

  He took her hand in his. “I thought you said it was never hate.” He said it lightly, but his expression remained serious.

  “The problem is that we’re both in this race to win,” Payton said. “What’s going to happen to the one of us who the firm doesn’t choose—the one who has to leave, who has to go out and interview and start all over again somewhere else? I’d like to tell you that I won’t be resentful if they choose you—that I could swallow my pride and not be angry or embarrassed—but honestly, I’d be lying. I know myself too well. And I know you, too.”

  She searched J.D.’s eyes, trying to gauge his reaction. He was quiet for a few moments. Then he rolled off her and lay on his back with one arm folded behind his head.

  “So are you saying this is it?” he asked.

  Payton felt something tug at her. “I’m saying . . . that I think we need to see how things go on Tuesday. Then we take it from there.” She moved next to him, wanting him to look at her. “Don’t be mad at me,” she said softly.

  J.D. turned his face toward hers. “I’m not mad at you. Just mad at the situation.”

  Not knowing what to say, Payton kissed him while holding his face in her hands, hoping the gesture at least somewhat conveyed the way she felt. And when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer, with his chin nestled against the top of her head, Payton closed her eyes to savor the moment and forced herself not to think about what might lay ahead.

  J.D. MADE UP his mind: Payton had given her answer and that was that.

  Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he disagreed with her concerns. Come Tuesday, one of them might very well resent the other for making partner, and—given the animosity that had been the cornerstone of their eight-year relationship—who knew where that could take them?

  While it was true that J.D. had some definite reactions to Payton’s “wait and see” approach—to put it bluntly, he hated it—he didn’t want to have to tell her that. And he certainly didn’t want to spend any part of their remaining time together arguing. So for the rest of the night, he said nothing.

  Similarly, the next morning, when he woke Payton up by sliding over her, when he laced his fingers through hers and kissed her neck, not wanting to waste another moment with sleep, he said nothing.

  During breakfast, as they joked about whether they could bill their time for the weekend, and about how Ben and Irma and Kathy and everyone else back in the office would react if they only knew what they had been up to, he said nothing.

  During the airplane ride home, when Payton leaned her head against his shoulder and kept it there nearly the entire flight, J.D. may have reached over the armrest to take her hand, but he still said nothing.

  And finally, when the plane landed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and Payton gave him a sad, regretful smile, J.D.’s heart sank because he knew he was losing her.

  But even then, he said nothing.

  AS THE TOWN car pulled to a stop in front of her building—and despite the fact that it was only mid-afternoon—it finally struck Payton that the weekend was over. She turned to J.D., not having a clue what she was going to say, and was surprised to see him already getting out of the car. He took her suitcase from the driver and asked him to wait, saying he would only be a few minutes.

  Once inside her building, J.D. carried her suitcase upstairs and deposited it on her doorstep. But when Payton unlocked her front door, he didn’t follow as she stepped inside her apartment.

  “I should get back to the car,” he said.

  She nodded. “Thanks for helping me with my suitcase.” Lame. They had been home for all of about thirty seconds and she already hated the way things were between them.

  She leaned against the doorway. “I don’t want things to be strange between us.”

  “I don’t want that, either,” J.D. said. He hesitated. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say, Payton, something I need you to understand, and that is . . .”

  Payton caught herself holding her breath.

  “. . . that I’m not going to chase you.”

  Payton blinked. Whatever she thought J.D. was going to say, that hadn’t been it.

  “You’ve made your decision,” J.D. said. “You want to see how things turn out once the firm makes its decision, and I get that. And while I’m not angry, at the same time I don’t know what you expect me to do in response to your decision. So I just felt like I needed to say, for the record, I guess, that—”

  “You’re not going to chase me,” Payton finished for him. “I got it. We’re all clear.” She tried to decide how annoyed she was with J.D. for thinking she might be the type of girl who wanted to be chased. Then she tried to decide how annoyed she was with herself for secretly thinking that maybe she did.

  J.D. gave her a half smile. “Okay. I just didn’t want you to be expecting me to show up outside your window blasting Peter Gabriel from my car radio or anything.”

  Payton couldn’t help but laugh at that. The thought of J.D. standing in front of the Bentley holding a boom box over his head was just too priceless. “Are you too proud for that kind of thing, J.D.?” she teased.

  She’d meant it as a joke, but J.D. suddenly turned serious.

  “Yes,” he said softly. He gently touched her chin. “With you, Payton—actually, only with you—I am.”

  As he held her gaze, Payton realized that he might have been trying to tell her a lot more than she’d initially thought. But she didn’t get a chance to do anything further, because he turned and headed down the steps and out the front door.

  Payton shut her door, walked over to the window, and watched as J.D. stepped into the town car that waited below for him. For a long while after the car had dr
iven off, she continued to stare out the window, running through his words again and again.

  She knew she was in over her head. After a weekend like the one she’d just had, she needed input. Guidance. She needed someone with an objective eye with whom she could review the past two days, someone with whom she could conduct the proper analyses of tone and facial expression, someone whose skills she trusted in that nebulous and precarious art known as Reading Into Every Word. She needed someone who not only understood her, but the enemy as well.

  In short, things were going to get tough and she needed her wartime consigliere.

  So she picked up the phone and called Laney.

  Twenty-four

  LANEY OPENED THE front door to the town house she shared with Nate. Payton quickly stepped inside, eager to get out of the rain that had set down upon her as soon as she’d jumped in the cab to come over.

  They had decided to skip the coffee shop, their usual meeting place, since Nate was out with some friends and because Payton was already wired and could probably do without the additional buzz of caffeine.

  She had been vague on the phone with Laney—saying only that she needed to talk—because she wanted to say this in person. But unable to wait any longer, she had barely stepped foot into her friend’s immaculately designed Martha Stewart Living-esque home before she got right down to it.

  “I have something I need to tell you about this weekend,” Payton said, setting her purse on the console table next to the front door, never again making the mistake of tossing it onto the couch as she might have done at her own home, because—as Laney had most helpfully noted the one and only time Payton had done so—this was, indeed, not her home.

  “And I know this is going to come as a shock,” she continued, “so I’m just going to come right out and say it.” She stopped. “Wait—I just realized that I never told you that I broke up with Chase.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Laney said pointedly as she oversaw Payton’s efforts to dry her shoes on the mat next to the door. “I had to learn about it through Nate.”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry about that—everything’s been happening so fast these days, and I meant to tell you, but then the trip to Florida came up.” Payton tentatively stepped one shoe off the mat. When Laney said nothing, Payton took this as an indication that she had been granted access to the town house proper.

  She stepped into the living room. “But if it makes you feel any better, you are the first and only person who I’ve told this to.” She turned and faced Laney.

  “I slept with J.D.”

  Laney’s mouth dropped open, stunned.

  “I know.” Payton smiled. “Holy shit, Laney—I slept with J.D.”

  Laney shook off her shock. “Where? When?”

  “This weekend. Palm Beach. We flew down to meet Jasper Conroy and the new general counsel of Gibson’s.” Payton looked her friend in the eyes. “Laney—it was incredible.”

  Payton pointed down the hallway, in the direction of the kitchen. “Do you mind? I’m gonna grab a glass of water.” Hell, she was already getting flushed, reliving the weekend in her mind. As she headed down the hall, she began the postgame analysis. “I barely even know where to start—”

  “Actually, Payton, you might want to—”

  “—I mean, we had sex, like, a billion times. And I’m talking everywhere—in the bed, on the floor, on the desk, in the shower—I’m sure the unlucky people in the room next to us heard that one—which reminds me: Do you and Nate have one of those bench thingies in your shower?”

  “As a matter of fact, we do, but—”

  “Good—because I’ve gotta tell you about this trick I figured out that makes it a helluva lot easier to—”

  “I really don’t think you want to get into that at this particular moment—”

  Payton waved over her shoulder. “Fine, later then—anyway, I had no idea how ridiculously hot J.D. is—and I don’t only mean his body, which, yummy—the things I did to that man, that’s all I’ll say there—but also the way he looked at me and, ho-ly shit, some of the things he said were so sexy they blew my mind, like this one time when he pinned me against the wall and told me he wanted to—” She stopped as she turned the corner into the kitchen.

  Nate and five other guys were standing around the counter.

  Having just heard everything.

  The six men stood motionless with their mouths agape as Laney came next around the corner.

  Payton glared at her. “I thought you said Nate had a softball game.”

  Laney gestured to the window, at the rain falling steadily outside. “Canceled.”

  Payton’s mouth formed an O. Canceled. Bugger.

  Suddenly finding his voice, Nate turned to his wife with a question of his own. “Is this how you talk?” He gestured between the two women.

  Laney shrugged. “Yes.”

  Nate and his friends whispered nervously amongst each other at this.

  Men.

  If they only knew.

  Payton glanced over at Laney. “Maybe we should go to the coffee shop after all,” she suggested, with a raised eyebrow that spoke volumes in code. Me: Embarrassed. You: Deep shit. Next time. Try harder. To warn.

  “In light of what I’ve heard so far, I think I’m going to need something stronger than coffee,” Laney said. She grabbed her keys off the organizer that she and Nate had built into the wall, then walked over and gave her husband a chaste kiss on the cheek. “I might be late. There’s a lasagna in the fridge.”

  Nate nodded. “Okay—call me from the cab on your way home.” Then he paused, glanced briefly in Payton’s direction, and lowered his voice as he whispered in his wife’s ear.

  “And find out what the trick is with the shower seat.”

  GIVEN THE RAIN, they decided not to go far and took a cab the short distance to 404 Wine Bar. The intimate atmosphere of the bar suited Payton’s confessional mood. She and Laney sank into a leather sofa in front of the fireplace. When the waitress arrived, Payton ordered one of the red wine flights, thinking multiple drinks spread out all at once was the right way to go that evening. Laney ordered the same.

  Payton threw her a look. “By the way, I nearly had a heart attack when you said those guys were from Nate’s softball team. I was waiting for Chase to come out from around the corner having heard what I said about J.D.”

  “Actually, Nate mentioned that Chase had a date tonight. That’s how I knew you two weren’t seeing each other anymore,” Laney said. “I’m guessing—in light of everything that’s happened with J.D.—that you’re okay with that?”

  Payton nodded. “Definitely okay. I’m glad to hear it, actually.” She liked Chase. And maybe if the circumstances had been different . . . well, probably not even then. But regardless, she still thought he was a good guy.

  The waitress arrived with their flights. After she set four glasses down in front of each of them and explained the wines, Payton decided it was time to tell Laney everything. Or at least, the PG-13 version of everything. Laney listened carefully, then finally jumped in with a question that was surprisingly blunt for her.

  “So was this all about sex?” Laney held up her hand, her expression softening. “That sounded like I was judging. I’m not judging.”

  Payton shook her head. “No, it wasn’t only about sex.” She knew that much was true. “That’s just the part that’s easier for me to talk about.” She hesitated, then decided to come out with it. “I think I’ve had feelings for J.D. for a while.”

  Laney laughed at that. “Oh, really? You think?”

  Payton sat upright. “Well if you knew so much, why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  “I did. For years I’ve urged you to get along with J.D.”

  “I thought that was some weird Republican loyalty thing.”

  “No, it’s because I’ve always thought you and he just needed to get back on the right track.” Laney took a sip of the second wine, a South African pinotage. “By the way
, while you two were bonking your brains out, did you happen to figure out how your feud even started?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Payton threw Laney an amused look. “ ‘Bonking our brains out’? Really?”

  “It’s as tawdry as we Republicans get.”

  Payton thought back to certain portions of her weekend with a certain Republican that had been cut out of the PG-13 recap. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “I didn’t get to tell you about the time on Saturday night, when we got back to the room after dinner and J.D. pushed me up against the desk and said—”

  Laney held up her hand. “Don’t. I can’t know these things—I’ll be blushing every time I see the guy. I have to work with him, remember?”

  She’d meant the comment in jest, but it had an immediate sobering effect on Payton.

  “Do you think you’ll still work with him after Tuesday?” she quietly asked.

  Seeing the look on her face, Laney fell serious, too. “I honestly don’t know who they’re going to choose, Payton.”

  Payton swirled her glass, pretending to study the legs of the wine running down its side.

  “If they don’t choose me, I’m not sure I can ever look him in the face again,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it if he felt sorry for me.” She took a sip of her wine. “Of course, if they do choose me, then that’s exactly how he will feel, and I’ll probably lose him anyway.”

  Laney sighed. “That is a predicament.”

  “You have to give me more than that, Laney. You’re my wartime consigliere.” Payton saw her friend’s clueless look. “It’s from The Godfather.”

  Laney folded her hands in her lap. “Oh. Never saw it. Too much violence. But remind me—who, exactly, are you at war with?”

  “It’s just an expression.”

  “An interesting one. I think my first piece of advice as your wartime counsel-whatever is to stop thinking of J.D. as the enemy.”

  Payton thought about this. Good point.

  Laney pressed harder. “Seriously, how do you feel about him? You’ve already slept with him, Payton—I think it’s okay to admit it now.”