Julie James - Practice Makes Perfect

J.D. suddenly felt Payton’s hand rest on his thigh underneath the table.

Interesting.

The waiter set dessert menus down in front of everyone. With her free hand, Payton picked up her menu and casually looked it over. “Now what am I in the mood for?”

She began lightly stroking her finger along J.D.’s thigh.

Very interesting.

“Come on now, Payton—this is Florida. Y’all have to try the key lime pie,” Jasper declared. He took the liberty of ordering for all of them, and the waiter scooted off.

“In fact,” Jasper said, “did you know that just last year, key lime pie was named our official state pie?”

Payton’s fingers moved higher on J.D.’s thigh, now approaching Semi-Naughty territory. Two more inches and they would be officially within the limits of Outright Naughty.

“I didn’t know that, Jasper,” Payton said, never breaking stride. “In fact, I didn’t know that states even had official pies. Did you know that, J.D.?”

“No.”

He could give two shits about pies.

“Oh, absolutely,” Jasper assured them. “It caused quite a stir in the senate, actually. There was a fairly large contingent that lobbied to name another as the state pie. Any guesses? Payton?”

Circle. Circle. Fingers. Thigh. Higher.

Payton cocked her head, thinking. “Hmm . . . some kind of pie with oranges?”

“Nope.” Jasper smiled, clearly enjoying being the only one in the know. He turned to his right. “Richard?”

“Peach pie?” the general counsel guessed halfheartedly.

“That would be Georgia, sorry. How ’bout you, J.D.?”

At Jasper’s question, three pairs of eyes suddenly turned and stared directly at J.D., who, in addition to not giving two shits about pies, had been busy concentrating on the fact that Payton had teasingly stopped her fingers right at the Semi-Naughty/Outright Naughty border.

“Are you okay, J.D.?” Payton asked with a mischievous grin. “You’ve been so quiet these past few minutes.”

Ha. She was going to pay for that later.

J.D. paused. Then—

“Pecan.”

Payton blinked, then smiled as Jasper smacked his hand on the table and shouted.

“Yes! With all the pecan farms in Florida, there was a push to make that the state pie. Good going, Jameson,” Jasper said, impressed.

“What can I say? I work well under pressure,” J.D. replied, with a smug look in Payton’s direction. “Now—if we’re through with the games . . . I think Payton was going to give us her overview on the substantive ways in which we should attack the plaintiffs’ claims.”

“Yes, I was—thank you, J.D.”

“No problem, Payton—the floor is yours.”

Three sets of eyes turned to Payton. Just as—underneath the table—one of J.D.’s hands moved to her knee. How convenient it was that the slit of her dress parted at her thigh, giving him easy access to her bare skin.

Payback could be such a devilish little bitch sometimes.

SHORTLY AFTER TEN o’clock, Payton and J.D. stood in the lobby with Jasper and Richard, waiting for the valet to pull the car around front.

“I’m really glad we got a chance to do this,” Jasper said, shaking their hands warmly. Richard did the same, saying how much he enjoyed meeting them.

“Didn’t I say you’d be impressed with these two?” Jasper gave Richard a jovial slap on the back, nearly knocking the poor guy right into the heavy mosaic urn that sat atop the oak table next to them. J.D. had a sneaking suspicion the new GC wasn’t going to last more than a month.

“Now normally I don’t like lawyers,” Jasper drawled with a chuckle, “and I definitely don’t like it when somebody tries to sue one of my companies for two hundred million bucks, but with you two”—he squinted one eye, taking aim with his fingers at Payton and J.D.—“I’ve got a good feelin’ here. I think I’m in good hands with y’all.”

That had been the only negative part of the evening.

J.D. watched as Payton tried to keep her expression impassive, but he could see it in her eyes. She hated not telling Jasper the truth just as much as he did, that because of the firm’s—to coin Jasper’s colorful phrasing—load-of-steamin’-bull-crap decision, one of them wouldn’t have anything to do with his case in about five days. Not for the first time, J.D. resented Ben and the other powers that be for putting him and Payton in this position. That being said, he had to acknowledge his own shortsightedness; perhaps he had jumped too quickly at the opportunity to go to Palm Beach, before really thinking through the fact that going would also mean he’d have to be deceptive, in part, to Jasper. But candidly, it wasn’t Jasper he’d been thinking of when he had agreed to the trip.

Not that J.D. regretted his decision to come to Palm Beach—far from it. True, the under-the-table hijinks between him and Payton during dinner had never crossed the Semi-Naughty/Outright Naughty border, but in reality, he never really believed they would. Without having to say a word to each other, they both knew exactly where to draw the line with the fun and games. Although at one point during dinner, J.D. had briefly worried that Jasper had seen something.

They had just finished dessert, and the waiter had finally brought the check. Payton and Richard had both excused themselves from the table to go to the restrooms and, after sliding his credit card into the check folder, Jasper turned to J.D. “Would you mind if I ask you a personal question, Jameson?”

J.D. grinned. “Sure, although I can’t promise you that I’ll answer. And remember that you’re a gentleman, Jasper.”

Jasper chuckled at that. “Fair enough. I’ll put this in the most gentlemanly of terms: Are you courting Ms. Kendall?”

“That definitely is a question I’m not going to answer.”

“Because I get a vibe.”

“We can’t have this conversation, Jasper. Sorry.”

“Something about the way you look at her.”

“Hmm.”

When J.D. remained absolutely, firmly silent, Jasper laughed. “Wow—my whole life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a lawyer shut up so fast. You guys are normally happy to shoot your mouths off about anything. All right then—I know when to back off.”

J.D. had simply smiled, and as quickly as possible, steered them onto another topic. Because if there was one thing he knew, it was to never make the same mistake twice.

WHEN THE VALET finally pulled Jasper’s car around, J.D. couldn’t help but give a low whistle of appreciation. Even the valet—who undoubtedly encountered many an expensive car while working at the Ritz-Carlton, looked giddily shell-shocked as he stepped out of the driver’s seat and held open the door of the sleek admiral blue Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupé. Perhaps not J.D.’s first choice in color—he fancied himself more a jubilee silver kind of guy—but the car made quite an impression nevertheless.

Jasper killed the hush of respect that had momentarily befallen every man within sight of the Rolls by giving Richard another hearty slap on the back. “Thanks for offering to drive, Dick. I think that Baileys they put in my coffee musta done me in.”

J.D. and Payton exchanged amused looks. Or maybe it was the eight whiskeys on the rocks, but who was counting? At least Jasper had the sense not to drive himself home in his condition, or at the very least, the awareness that the three lawyers surrounding him would never let him drive himself home in his condition.

Jasper handed the valet a tip—a generous one, J.D. surmised, judging from the way the guy’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the bill in his hand—and climbed into the passenger side of the Rolls-Royce. But just before he and Richard drove off, Jasper—being Jasper—rolled down the passenger window, unable to resist a few parting words.

“Now you kids be sure to enjoy the rest of your stay, y’hear?” he called out to Payton and J.D.

With a sneaky wink, Jasper rolled up his window and gave a decisive “let’s roll” signal to Richard. Carefully, ever so carefully, Richard nudged the four-hundred-thousand-plus automobile out onto the hotel’s circular drive, and—at a breakneck speed of at least six or seven miles per hour—they were off.

Payton turned to J.D. as the car pulled away. “Is there anything I should know about that wink Jasper gave us?”

“He fished around about us when you and Richard were in the restrooms,” J.D. told her.

Payton stared him in the eyes. “You didn’t say anything, did you?”

“You mean, like how all through dessert you could barely keep your hand off my c—”

“Yes, J.D.’ ” she bluntly cut in, although not without a smile, he noted, “did you say anything about that, or anything else about us in general?”

Now it was J.D.’s turn to give her a look. “Of course not, Payton. I know better than to mix business with locker-room talk.”

Her slow exhale of relief reminded him just how narrowly he had dodged that bullet a few years back. Yes, he certainly did know better.

Now, however, was not the time to drag up unpleasant parts of his past. Right then, all J.D. wanted to do was focus on the present. He reached out and took Payton by the hand. “Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”

“I bet there is,” she said with a laugh.

J.D. grinned. “I meant the beach, sassy. We’ve been here for eight hours and haven’t seen it yet.” He led Payton through the lobby, in the direction of the verandah. When he held the door open for her as they stepped outside, he caught her look.

“What?” he asked.

A light breeze blew her hair across her eyes. With her free hand, Payton reached up and tucked a long blonde strand behind her ear.