Practice Makes Perfect (13 page)

“Thank you for being so accommodating, Ms. Kendall,” the lawyer said to Payton after she had concluded the deposition. He had become far more friendly once the deposition had begun and the complimentary popcorn and cookies had arrived.

“No problem, Mr. Werner,” Payton said, shaking his hand in farewell. “J.D. will be in touch with you to discuss the schedule for the remaining depositions. Once again, I know he’s very sorry for all the confusion this afternoon. Unfortunately, Judge Pearson didn’t leave him much choice.”

Payton and Werner shared a sympathetic chuckle. It never failed: lawyers could always at least find common ground in griping about the oft-orneriness of judges.

After the lawyer and his client left, Payton began to pack up J.D.’s files, being careful to keep them organized in the way she had found them. She asked the court reporter to email her a copy of the real-time transcript, figuring she could forward that to J.D. right away.

When she finished, Payton took a seat and proudly propped her feet up on the chair across from her. Not a bad bit of lawyering she had pulled off today, if she did say so herself.

She spotted the tray of cookies left over from the deposition. What the hell? She certainly had earned a treat. She checked out the selection and picked out a double chocolate chip. She grabbed the cookie and was just about to bite in when—

“What have you done?”

At the sound of the voice, Payton froze, mouth open. Cookie midair.

She turned and saw J.D. standing in the doorway.

“How bad is it?” he asked in a gravely serious tone.

Payton took a bite of the cookie. She chewed deliberately, taking her time, then cocked her head. “Actually, it’s quite tasty.”

J.D. stepped into the room. It was then that Payton noticed how frazzled he looked. Which was particularly striking, because J. D. Jameson never looked frazzled. His hair was uncharacteristically mussed and he seemed out of breath, as if he had run over right after finishing his court hearing.

Payton sympathized. She knew how tough his day must’ve been—she’d had a few of those days herself. For a moment, she almost felt bad for J.D.

Too bad the moment didn’t last.

“Ah, there’s that quintessential Kendall sarcasm,” J.D. said. “All right—lay it on me. What did you do? Make obscene statements on the record? Feign a stutter? Ask the witness the same question five hundred times?”

“No,” Payton told him. Although she made a mental note for future reference—those were not half-bad ideas.

“No, of course not.” J.D. scowled. “You would never do anything that would harm your own reputation. Whatever you did to undermine me would have to be much more subtle.”

He looked around the room. His voice had an edge as he fired questions at her. “Where are Werner and the witness? They’ve left? You finished that quickly, huh? Well, forget it—I’m bringing them back here. I want to reopen this deposition and fix whatever mess you made.”

Payton stood up and straightened her jacket.

“Sorry, J.D., I’m afraid you’re stuck with my mess. Rule 30(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: examination of the witness shall proceed as if at trial. That means only
one
attorney can question the witness. Didn’t they teach you that at Har-vard?” she drawled sarcastically.

“Yes, they taught me that at Har-vard,” J.D. said dryly. He folded his arms across his chest and peered down at her. “I want to see the transcript. Immediately.”

Payton glared at him. So this was the thanks she got for helping him. She didn’t know why she was surprised.

“No problem,” she said. She grabbed her briefcase and pulled out her laptop computer. As J.D. stood there, glowering down at her, arms folded across his chest, Payton opened up her email and found the real-time transcript the court reporter had just sent her. She quickly forwarded it to J.D.

“There,” she said. She snapped her laptop shut and threw it back into her briefcase. She stood again to face J.D. “Was that immediate enough for you?”

His eyes flickered, and for a second, he seemed to pause.

“Yes,” he said tersely.

“Good.” Payton slung her briefcase over her shoulder and headed toward the door. “Your files are all there—I put them back in the same order you had them. And Werner wants you to call him tomorrow to talk about the remaining depositions you need to schedule. Enjoy your transcript, J.D.”

With that parting thought, she walked out of the conference room. Furious. With herself, mostly.

For ever having thought that their conversation would’ve been anything different.

Fifteen

J.D. RANG THE buzzer a second time.

When she still didn’t answer, he rechecked the address he had pulled up on his BlackBerry. According to the firm directory, he was at the right place.

The upstairs lights of the two-flat were on, so presumably somebody was home. A thought occurred to J.D. then, the same one he’d had after the dinner with Jasper and the Gibson’s team:
maybe she doesn’t live alone
. The buzzer and mailbox provided no clues to this.

Earlier, after Payton had stormed out of the conference room, J.D. had immediately headed down to his office and pulled up the deposition transcript she had emailed him. He had feverishly dove in, expecting the worst. As his reading progressed, he continued, tensely waiting to find the twist, the screw she put to him, something. Anything.

But.

What he had discovered instead was . . . nothing. No tricks. Unless one counted the trick Payton had pulled off in managing to take a pretty damn good 30(b)(6) deposition on about thirty seconds’ notice. Sure there were a few minor things, a few lines of questioning with which J.D. might have taken a slightly different approach, or maybe not—but nevertheless, all he could think was—

Wow.

And just when he thought he couldn’t feel more like a jackass, Tyler called and filled him in on everything.

And thus, J.D. found himself here, on Payton’s doorstep.

Standing aimlessly on her front stoop with nothing else to do, he looked around, checking out the neighborhood. There were several row houses on the block, including the one that presumably belonged to her. The tree-lined street had a quaint yet urban feel to it.

He liked it. Not as much as his downtown high-rise condo with a view of the lake, of course, but he found it an acceptable place to leave the Bentley parked on the street. And for J.D., that was saying
a lot
.

He pushed the button on the intercom again. Third time’s the charm, they always say, which was good, because given the circumstances, charm was something he definitely need—

“Hello?”

The voice—Payton’s—came crackling loudly through the intercom, momentarily surprising him. She sounded annoyed. And he hadn’t even spoken yet.

J.D. cleared his throat and pushed the button on the intercom.

“Uh, Payton, hi. It’s J.D.”

Dead silence.

Then another crackle.

“Sorry. Not interested.”

Cute. But J.D. persisted. Again with the button.

“I want to talk to you.”

Crackle.

“Ever hear of a telephone, asshole?”

Okay, he probably deserved that.

Button.

“Listen, I’ve been standing out here for fifteen minutes. What took you so long to answer?”

Crackle.

(Annoyed sigh.) “I was about to get in the shower.”

J.D. raised an eyebrow. The shower? Hmm . . . he liked the sound of that. Wait a second—no, he didn’t.

Bad
J.D.

Button.

“I read the deposition transcript.”

Crackle.

“Good for you.”

She certainly wasn’t making this easy. But he had expected that.

Buzzer.

“Payton,” J.D. said in an earnest tone, “I would like to say this in person. Please.”

Silence. He could practically hear her debating.

Then the buzzer rang, unlocking the front door. J.D. dove to beat the buzzer before she changed her mind, and let himself in.

PAYTON’S EYES QUICKLY scanned her front room and kitchen, making sure they were presentable. Not that it mattered, because (a) it was The Shithead and (b) he wasn’t staying. Her apartment was her sanctuary, which meant 100 percent J.D.-free.

She opened her front door, thinking she’d catch him on the stairs and cut him off at the pass. But instead, she found him already standing there. The quick way she threw open the door caught him off guard.

With one hand on the door frame and the other on her hip, Payton glared at him. “Whatever you have to say, say it quickly. I’ve had a long day.”

Recovering from his momentary surprise, J.D. looked her over. “That’s a little abrupt. Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Great. Thanks.”

He brushed by Payton and stepped into her apartment.

Payton huffed. Oh. Well. Apparently she had no choice in the matter. She shut the door behind him and watched as he looked around curiously.

“So this is where you live,” he said as if fascinated, a man who’d snuck into the enemy’s camp. “Nice space. Looks like you get a lot of light.” He glanced over. “Just you?”

Payton nodded. “Yes. Look, whatever you—”

“Can I have something to drink?” he interrupted her. “A glass of water would be fine. I came here straight from work.”

At first, Payton said nothing. She simply stared at him, wondering what the hell he was up to.

“I’m a bit parched,” he added.

She thought she saw the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. Was he trying to be cute? Or perhaps he was just stalling.

“Fine.” She sighed. Reluctantly, she turned to head into the kitchen.

“Perrier, if you have it.”

Payton threw an evil eye over her shoulder.

J.D. grinned. “Just kidding.”

Definitely trying to be cute.

Whatever.

Ignoring him, Payton went and got his glass of water. It was weird, him being there in her apartment. It felt . . . personal. She felt oddly jumpy. Skittish.

After unenthusiastically filling a glass with tepidly warm tap water, she went back out into the front room. The room was divided by a wall of built-in bookshelves—one of the few things from the original design she hadn’t changed after buying the place—and she found J.D. there, looking at her collection of books.

As he leaned over to check out the lower shelf, Payton noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing a suit jacket. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up around his forearms, his tie loosened, and his hair had a casual, raked-through look.

This is what he looks like when he comes home from work
, Payton thought. She caught herself wondering if there was someone he came home
to
.

Brushing that aside, Payton walked over and unceremoniously shoved the glass of water at him. “Here.”

J.D.’s hand brushed against hers as he took it. “Thank you.”

There was something about the
way
he looked at her, Payton noticed. For years, his expressions had fluctuated somewhere along the smug/haughty you-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about-silly-Clintonite to the more frustrated I-would-strangle-you-dead-except-I-don’t-have-time-to-pick-up-your-workload spectrum. But lately it was different, and she found it very hard to read him.

“Why are you here?” she asked bluntly.

After skeptically eyeing the cloudy glass of Eau du Lac Michigan she had poured him, J.D. took a sip, then paused as if still figuring out the answer to that himself.

“I have questions,” he finally said.

“Questions?” Payton asked, surprised. Whatever she had been expecting him to say, it wasn’t that.

“About the deposition,” he explained.

“Oh. Well, you read the transcript. Was there something you didn’t understand?”

“Yes.” J.D. set his glass down on the nearby end table. He stood up and peered down at her, reminding her just how tall he really was. “Why did you do it?”

Payton cocked her head. “You didn’t really think I would screw up a deposition, did you? Aside from my
reputation
”— she emphasized this in reference to his earlier insult—“I would never do that to a client.”

J.D. waved this off. “No, I get that part. But I talked to Tyler. He said that you came to
him
about the deposition. You had me in a corner—if you’d done nothing, I would’ve been screwed. You know how Ben works: there’s no room for error when it comes to his clients.” He paused, coming around to his original question. “So? Why did you help me?”

She held up a hand. “Easy there, buddy. I didn’t do it to help you.”

“Okay, fine. Why then?”

Payton, herself, had thought long and hard about this very question after she had gotten home that evening. So she told J.D. the only logical answer she’d come up with.

“I decided that I don’t want to win by default. If the Partnership Committee chooses me—
when
they choose me, I should say—I want to know that it’s because I earned it, not because some stupid mix-up edged you out at the last minute.”

J.D. didn’t say anything at first. Then he nodded. “Fair enough.” He hesitated with the next part. “Well, regardless of your motives, the real reason I came here tonight is because I . . .” He took a breath, as if needing to steel himself. “I wanted to thank you. And to apologize. When I found you in the conference room after the deposition, you had this satisfied expression on your face and, well, I guess I assumed the worst.”

He paused.

“Is that it?” Payton asked, not entirely mollified by this apology.

“Oh—I was just waiting for you to say something sarcastic about assholes and assumptions.”

Payton gave him a level stare. “As if I would be that cliché.”

She noticed he was watching her. Again. “
What?
”

J.D. grinned. “Now I’m waiting for you to do the thing with your hair. The little flip.”

Payton glared.
Note to self: invest in hair clips.

“You know, as apologies go, this one could use a ton of improvement,” she told him. “Is there more?”

“Not really.” He shrugged matter-of-factly. “Well, except that I was thinking . . .
I
don’t want to win by default, either. So maybe we could call a truce.”

“A truce?” Payton asked. “That’s very magnanimous of you, considering the next play is mine. What do I get out of this?”

J.D. took a step closer to her. “Hmm. How about the satisfaction of being the better person?”

Payton paused, highly intrigued by this. “You would admit to that?”

J.D.’s eyes shone with amusement. He took another step closer. “In this context, Ms. Kendall, yes.”

Payton considered the terms of his proposal. Higher stakes for her there could not be.

“All right,” she agreed. “A truce.”

She had to tilt her head back to meet J.D.’s gaze, they were suddenly standing that close.
Uh-oh
, she thought,
this is how it all started last time
. She felt that familiar rush and thought about stepping back, but heaven help her if she ever gave an inch to J. D. Jameson.

“I suppose now I owe you.” J.D.’s voice had turned softer.

Payton shook her head. “No, you really don’t.”

He nodded yes. “I read the transcript.”

“You said that already.”

“You were amazing, Payton,” he murmured, his voice husky.

Well.

Goddamn if that wasn’t just about the sexiest thing she had ever heard.

J.D. gazed down at her with a coy expression, as if interested to see what she was going to do next. And from his look Payton realized that somewhere in the middle of all this, the game between the two of them had changed.

It had all started with that stupid fight in the library. Or had it begun before that . . . ? Standing there, looking up into J.D.’s fantastically blue eyes, Payton suddenly wasn’t so sure.

Hmm. He had really long eyelashes for a guy—she had never noticed that before. Almost blondish, like the warm streaks of gold in his brown hair. And speaking of his hair, she kind of liked the way it was slightly mussed that night. Something about it made her want to grab him by that designer tie of his and get him really mussed spending hours doing something she suspected would be far more amazing than this afternoon’s deposition.

Wow—she really needed to get laid.

Not
by J.D. He was far too type A for her tastes. She’d bet he’d be all controlling and dominating in bed. Although that could have potential . . .

And now she was blushing.

Seeing she wasn’t backing away from him, J.D. raised an eyebrow. Payton saw the corners of his mouth tilt up in a smile, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear that he was daring her to make a move.
Wanted
her to make a move, even. And she wouldn’t have to do much—if she tilted her head a mere inch, they’d be kissing.

Hmm.

She wondered if J.D. had polo ponies on his condoms.

“You have to go,” Payton blurted out emphatically.

J.D. cocked his head but didn’t move, so to hurry him along Payton put her hand on his chest, pushing him to the door—wow, he had a
really
firm chest for someone so fancy—

“Now—you have to go
now
,” she said as she opened up the front door and literally shoved him out into the hallway.

J.D. protested. “Hey! Wait a second, there’s something else—”

Payton tried to shut the door, but J.D. blocked it with his arm.

“Jesus, woman, will you just let me speak?!”

“No. You’ve said what you came here to say. Apology accepted, no more sabotage, et cetera, et cetera. And by the way, I can’t believe you actually just called me ‘woman.’ That’s almost as bad as ‘cupcake.’ ”

“I bet there are a lot of women who think it’s endearing to be called ‘cupcake.’ ”

“If there are, they sure don’t live in this apartment.”

J.D. looked ready to tear his hair out. “You know what? Forget it. I changed my mind, I don’t have anything else to say. And seriously,
woman
—I think you might actually be crazy. Or maybe that’s just the effect you have on me!” He finished his speech in a shout, then turned and stormed off down the stairs.

Payton half shut, half slammed the door behind him—good, she didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say anyway and now at least he was out of her apartment, and by the way, he really needed to come up with some snap-pier comebacks and—

An impatient knock at her door. Then again, louder.

What, did he just think of a better line? Payton threw open the door and—

J.D. immediately held up his hand.

“Don’t. Say. Anything.”

Payton opened her mouth.