Practice Makes Perfect(18)



J.D. tried to stop her. “Payton, wait. I didn’t mean—”

“Well, there you are! We were startin’ to wonder what happened to you two!”

Payton and J.D. turned at the sound of Jasper’s voice.

Payton quickly regained her composure. “Jasper—we were just coming to join you,” she said calmly. “Did you save one of those cigars for me?” With her head held high, she followed Jasper to join the other men out on the terrace.

She didn’t look once at J.D. for the rest of the night.

DURING THE RIDE home, Payton’s mood was subdued. Tired and lost in thought, she’d barely realized that the cab had stopped, arriving at its destination, until the driver glanced over the partition and asked if there was somewhere else she wanted to go. After quickly paying the fare, she hurried up the front steps of the quaint two-flat row house she had bought and rehabbed three years ago. It was a cozy place, nothing extravagant, but the mortgage was in her budget and the place was within walking distance of the “L.” Most important, it was all hers. To her, home ownership was about stability and investment, and definitely not about hot trendy neighborhoods for which one paid a premium.

Payton let herself inside, tossed her keys on the side table by the front door, and headed back to her bedroom. Her heels clicked on the restored oak hardwood floors.

She didn’t know why she let it bother her so much, what J.D. had said. Yes, it was insulting of him to suggest that she was playing up her sexuality to entice the Gibson’s reps. The comment had come way out of left field—she had never done anything even remotely unprofessional to deserve such an attack on her character. But what bothered her even more was the fact that she had been completely unprepared for the insult. Normally she had her guard up around J.D., but tonight she had thought they were getting along—or at the very least, that they were tolerating each other, that they had put away the boxing gloves for the evening in the spirit of working together.

Boy, had she ever been wrong about that.

An oval full-length mirror stood in the corner of her bedroom, an antique she had inherited from her grand-mother. Before changing out of her clothes, Payton paused before the mirror. She self-consciously fingered the neckline of her button-down shirt. It wasn’t that low-cut, was it?

She stopped herself right there and stared defiantly in the mirror.

The hell with him.

FOR HIS PART, J.D. was not exactly in a celebratory mood when he got home, either. Over and over, his mind ran through the same debate.

He could call her, to apologize.

She’d hang up on him, no doubt.

And why should he bother, anyway? So she was pissed at him . . . big f**king surprise there. She lived to be pissed at him. In fact, it probably had made her night, what he’d said. With his comment he had single-handedly given her the logs of legitimacy to fuel her fire.

But still.

He had crossed the line. Over the years the two of them had traded innumerable barbs and insults, but he knew he had gone too far that evening.

So J.D. settled it in his mind. He would call her.

He looked up Payton’s phone number in the firm directory. This certainly had been a night of firsts for them, all starting with the complimentary things they had said about each other to Jasper. And now he was going to call her? They’d never even spoken on the phone before, outside of work.

Sighing to himself—not relishing this task he was about to undertake—J.D. reached for the phone. It was then that it occurred to him that he was about to call Payton at home. He tried to picture her in her . . . apartment? Condo? House? He wondered what it looked like, the place she lived.

Then he wondered why he wondered that.

Mere curiosity, J.D. assured himself.

He pictured her place as being a tad . . . plebian. That probably wasn’t the most politically correct way to say it. What word did liberals prefer nowadays? Granola? Organic?

In reality, however, Payton was none of those things. In fact, if she never spoke, one might actually think she was quite normal.

Then a second thought suddenly occurred to J.D.

Maybe she didn’t live alone.

He should know things like this, shouldn’t he? He should at least know the basics, have some inkling of what her life was like when she wasn’t busy being her.

Realizing he was stalling, trying to avoid apologizing to Payton, J.D. grabbed the phone. He was about to dial her number when he noticed that he had a new message. He entered the code to access his voice mail, then heard a familiar deep voice as the message began to play.

“J.D., it’s your father. I thought I’d check in and see if there’s any news on the partnership front. I’m guessing no, otherwise we would’ve heard from you already.” There was a preemptory disappointed sigh. “I suppose if you don’t make it, I can always call my old firm. But maybe you’re going to surprise me for once, son. Although—no offense—I bet your mother a new mink that you’ll be calling me to bail you out by the end of the month, ha-ha. And that woman really does not need another fur coat.”

When J.D. heard the beep, signaling the end of his father’s message, he hung up the phone. He sat there, in the leather armchair in his living room, staring out the windows and their sweeping view of the city at night, but not seeing.

After a long moment, he put the phone receiver back in its cradle.

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