Practice Makes Perfect(74)

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 driven 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.