Practice Makes Perfect (15 page)

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 and 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, really 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
?”

“Don’t interrupt. It takes me out of character.” Tyler went back to his impersonation. This time, instead of the sly eyebrow and smirk, he folded his arms across his chest, held his cigar aloft, and sighed melodramatically.

“Tyler—I’ve led quite the charmed life, haven’t I? I drive the right car, I wear the right clothes, and I’m fantastic—if I do say so myself—at every sport I play, and well, let’s be honest here”—he winked ever-so-proudly—“women love me.”

J.D. was not amused. “Your life has hardly been any less char—”

“But, Tyler,” Tyler went on, talking over J.D., “lately I’ve begun to suspect that something’s missing from my perfect existence, that perhaps there’s something more I want, a certain female, perhaps, who, shall we say . . . intrigues me.”

Tyler paused here and looked at J.D. expectantly.

“Oh, is that my cue?” J.D. asked sarcastically. “Now am I supposed to be me or you?”

“I could keep going if you like.”

“Thanks, I think I can take it from here,” J.D. retorted. “You’re worse than she is,” he grumbled under his breath.

“Admit it, you love it,” Tyler said. “You subconsciously feel guilty about your overprivileged upbringing, so you purposely hang around people who castigate you for exactly that as a form of self-flagellation.”

Now
that
J.D. laughed at. “I didn’t realize you were still TiVo’ing
Dr. Phil
.”

“Ha. Try Psych 101. Your ego is trying to balance the desires of your id while not upsetting the goals of your superego.”

J.D. rolled his eyes. “Speaking of superegos, if we could get back to the subject of Payton—”

“Please—you’d just love for your id to be all over that superego.”

J.D. paused. He wouldn’t have put it that way, but come to think of it . . .

“Help me out here,” he said to Tyler. “Give me your honest opinion. Do you think it would be totally crazy if I—”

“
No fucking way!
”

The shout, resonating through the bar, came from behind Tyler. Recognizing the voice as that of their friend Trey, J.D. glanced over and saw him shaking hands with some other guy—whose back was to them—whom Trey was obviously excited to see. Momentarily tabling his conversation with Tyler, J.D. watched as Trey gestured in his direction. The mystery guy turned around.

Surprised to see a face he hadn’t seen since law school, J.D. stood up, grinning, as the man walked over.

“Chase Bellamy . . .” J.D. said, extending his hand in greeting. “What are you doing here?”

Chase slapped him on the shoulder. “J. D. Jameson. It’s good to see you.” He pointed to Trey, explaining. “I ran into Trey the other day when I was coming out of court. He told me about this place and said I should stop by tonight.” He looked J.D. over. “I haven’t seen you since graduation. You wished me luck and said something sarcastic about saving the world.”

J.D. grinned. Say something sarcastic? Who, him? While he and Chase hadn’t hung out regularly in law school, he liked the guy well enough. He could sum up Chase Bellamy in one word: harmless. A bit of a liberal do-gooder, and maybe too agreeably passive in J.D.’s mind, but harmless. He remembered a strident debate he and Chase had once gotten into in their Constitutional Law class, over the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms. What he recalled most distinctly about that debate was that Chase had given up far too easily.

“So the last I heard, you were in D.C. working on a campaign,” J.D. said. “Are you living in Chicago now?”

Chase nodded. “I just moved here a few months ago—I’m doing pro bono work with the Chicago Legal Clinic.”

J.D. smiled. Of course he was. He introduced Tyler, who had been in the law school class below them. The three of them quickly fell into talk about work.

“So what about you? Where did you end up?” Chase asked.

“Ripley and Davis,” J.D. told him.

A look of recognition crossed Chase’s face. J.D. assumed this to be an acknowledgment of the prestige of his firm, until Chase remarked, “Oh, I know someone else who works there. Are you in corporate or litigation?”

“Litigation.”

“Then you probably know her—Payton Kendall?”

“Sure, I know Payton.” J.D. grinned. Funny. Small world. “How do
you
know her?” he asked. Strange, he hadn’t meant for his tone to sound so proprietary.

Now Chase grinned. “Actually . . . we’re dating.”

J.D. probably would’ve been less stunned if Chase had hauled off and punched him straight in the gut. He cocked his head. “Wait—Payton
Kendall
?” As if there were just too many Paytons floating around the litigation group to keep track of.

“Yes, Payton Kendall.” Chase looked him over curiously. “You seem a bit surprised.”

It didn’t matter, J.D. told himself. Really. He was fine with it.

He shook off Chase’s question. “No, not at all. Why would I be surprised? You and Payton have a lot in common. Good. Yes. That’s great. Tyler, did you hear that? Chase here is dating Payton Kendall. You know Payton, don’t you?”

Tyler gave J.D. a look that said he quickly needed to shut up.

Too late. Chase seemed to suspect something. “Wait a second . . . I just realized what’s going on here. You’re the competition.”

“The competition?” J.D. asked loudly. “Why, whatever do you mean?” Christ, now he sounded like he was doing bad dinner theater. He needed to pull his shit together.

“Payton didn’t mention any names, but she told me there was stiff competition in her bid to make partner,” Chase said.

J.D. blinked. Oh . . . competition for the
partnership
. Of course.

“You’re in the same class as her,” Chase continued. “It’s you she’s talking about, isn’t it?”

A few weeks ago, J.D. would’ve been pleased to hear Payton describe him as “stiff competition.” But now he had thought things were different.

But why was Chase asking him about this, anyway? This was
his
personal business with Payton. No one else’s.

“Payton and I are both up for partner this year, yes,” was all J.D. said.

But then he wondered just how much Chase knew about recent events. He could only imagine how Payton might have described certain situations—in particular, certain situations involving, say, a shoe and perhaps a couple of peeky-cheeks—to outside third parties. And if Chase did know about said certain situations, well . . .

J.D. did a quick assessment. Chase appeared to be about five-ten, maybe one-sixty, one-sixty-five pounds. No problem. If the little tree-hugger started swinging, coming in at a lean six-two, J.D. was quite certain he could hold his own.

But Chase, being Chase, merely grinned good-naturedly. “Well, Jameson, I’d love to wish you luck in making partner, but I guess I have a conflict of interest.” With that, he stuck out his hand. “It was good seeing you, J.D.”

Harmless, easygoing Chase Bellamy. He really was the kind of guy no one could find fault with. The kind of guy who never got angry or annoyed. The kind of guy who preferred to amiably let things roll off his back rather than stick it out and fight. The kind of guy that Payton liked, apparently.

And J.D. knew that he was not that kind of guy.

Furthermore, he would never be that kind of guy. Frankly, he didn’t
want
to be that kind of guy. He just wasn’t wired that way.

So with that in mind, he shook Chase’s hand firmly.

“It was good seeing you, too, Chase,” J.D. said. “And good luck. With everything.” He even managed a polite smile.

After all, while he might not be the kind of guy Chase was, he could at least still be a gentleman.