Laney sighed. “Do we have to do this right now?”

“You should try saying the word sometime.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

Payton shrugged. “Your choice, but I think you’d find it liberating. Everybody could use a good ‘penis’ now and then.”

Laney glanced nervously around the coffee shop. “People are listening.”

“Sorry—you’re right. Good rule of thumb: if you’re gonna throw out a ‘penis’ in a public place, it should be soft. Otherwise it attracts too much attention.”

The woman at the next table gaped at them.

Laney leaned over. “I apologize for my friend. She gets this way sometimes.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Tourette’s. So sad.”

The woman nodded sympathetically, then pretended to make a call on her cell phone.

Laney turned back to Payton. “If you’re finished with the First Amendment lesson, I thought maybe we could turn back to the subject of J.D. Because I do have a suggestion as to how you can solve your problem.”

Payton leaned forward eagerly. “Great—let’s hear it. I’m open to anything.”

“Okay. My suggestion is . . .” Laney paused dramatically. “. . . learn how to play golf.” She let this sink in a moment. “Then you’ll never have this problem again.”

Payton sat back in her chair, toying with her coffee mug. “Um, no.” She brushed off the suggestion with a dismissive wave. “Playing golf is just so, I don’t know . . . snooty.”

Laney gave her a pointed look. “You know, when you make partner, you’ll have to get used to being around people who grew up with money.”

“I don’t have any issues with that,” Payton said huffily.

“Oh, sure, right. You don’t think that has anything to do with why you’re so hard on J.D.?”

“I’m hard on J.D. because he’s a jerk.”

“True, true . . .” Laney mused. “You two do seem to bring out the worst in each other.”

In each other? “I hope you aren’t suggesting that I somehow contribute to J.D.’s behavior,” Payton said. “Because if so, we really need to get this conversation headed in a sane direction.”

“It’s just kind of odd, because J.D. has lots of qualities that you normally like in a guy. A guy who maybe isn’t quite so, you know . . .” Laney gestured, trailing off.

“So what?” Payton prompted.

“Rich.”

Payton rolled her eyes. “First of all: please—like I said, I don’t care about that. Second of all: What are these alleged other ‘qualities’ J.D. has?”

Laney considered her answer. “He’s very smart.”

Payton frowned and grumbled under her breath. “I changed my mind—I don’t want to talk about this.” She grabbed the dessert menu sitting next to her and stared at it intently.

Appearing not to hear her, Laney kept going with her list of J.D.’s supposed attributes. “He’s also passionate about the law, interested in politics—albeit on the opposite side of the spectrum. Which, interestingly, doesn’t seem to bother you about me.”

Payton peered over the top of her menu. “You have charm.”

“That’s true, I do.”

“It’s quickly fading.”

Laney went on. “And J.D. works hard, just like you, and he can be funny in that sarcastic kind of way that—”

“I object!” Payton interrupted. “Lack of foundation—when has J.D. ever said anything funny?”

“This isn’t a courtroom.”

Payton folded her arms across her chest. “Fine. Total crap—how about if I just go with that instead?”

“Gee, sorry, Payton—I didn’t mean to make you so uncomfortable,” Laney said with a grin. “I won’t say anything else.” She picked up her menu. “Let’s see . . . now what looks good? That flourless chocolate cake we split last time was divine.” She glanced up at Payton. “Except just one last thing on the subject of J.D.: he’s totally hot.”

Just in time, fighting her smile, Laney put her menu up to block the napkin that came flying at her face.

“Hot?” Payton nearly shouted. “That smarmy, prep-school-attending, pink-Izod-shirt-wearing jerk who’s been handed his career on a silver platter?” She covered her mouth. “Well, look at that—maybe I do have one or two issues with money.”

Laney nodded encouragingly, as if to say they were making progress. “But you’re about to be named partner. I get why you’ve been guarded in the past, but you’ve made it. You don’t have to keep trying so hard to prove that you fit in with these guys.”

Payton was surprised by this. “You think I come across as guarded?”

“At work, you can sometimes . . . have a bit of an edge,” Laney said carefully. “Like this thing with J.D., for example.”

Payton tried to decide whether she should be offended. But as much as she might not want to admit it, a part of her knew that what Laney was saying wasn’t completely off base.

“I suppose this ‘thing’ with J.D. has gotten a little out of hand,” she sniffed reluctantly. “You’re right—I should be the better person in this.” She smirked. “That shouldn’t be too hard in comparison to J.D.”—she caught Laney’s look— “is exactly what Edgy Payton would’ve said. But the New Payton won’t go there.”

Laney tipped her coffee mug approvingly. “Good for you. To the New Payton.”

“The New Payton.”

Payton clinked her mug to Laney’s, wondering what she was getting herself into.

Five

BE THE BALL.

J.D. focused intently. His eyes never left the tee.

Be the ball.

He pulled back, then—swoosh! His swing was effortless. With one hand raised to block the sun’s glare, he watched as the ball landed on the green 240 yards away, within inches of the hole.

J.D. smiled. God, he loved this sport.

Hearing the whistling and clapping coming from behind him, he turned around to face his companions.

“Nice shot,” Jasper called out in his lazy Southern drawl. “A man who bills three thousand hours a year shouldn’t have time for a swing like that.” Their three companions, representatives from Gibson’s legal department, nodded in agreement.

J.D. walked over and took the beer Jasper held out to him. “Does this mean we’re talking business?”

Jasper grinned. He had the bold smile of a man completely at ease with the power he held. He glanced down at his beer, then took in the beautiful tree-lined scenery of the eighth hole. “Tell you what. Wait till the fifteenth hole. Then we’ll talk.”

Following Jasper’s lead, J.D. soaked in the warmth of the blue-sky summer day while admiring the view of the river that flowed just beyond the green. He tipped his bottle at Jasper. “Make it the seventeenth.”

Jasper chuckled. “A man after my own heart. But are you sure you want to wait? I heard the back nine of this course brings a man to his knees.”

“Maybe a lesser man, Jasper.”

Jasper laughed heartily at this. “I like your style, Jameson.”

Grinning, J.D. took a sip of his beer. So far, his afternoon with the Gibson’s team had been going very well. He was comfortable here, in his element—which undoubtedly was one of the reasons Ben had chosen him for this assignment. J.D. had grown up around men like Jasper all his life and was familiar with the “good-ole boy” routine. He understood the lingo, the game, the role he was supposed to play. Ben wanted to do a little showing off—that’s why he had specifically asked J.D. to bring the Gibson’s team to this course. He was trying to impress them, but didn’t want to look like he was trying to impress them. The fact that J.D. just so happened to have a membership at one of the most exclusive clubs in the country was the perfect way to accomplish this.

The only blemish on the afternoon was the nagging feeling he got whenever a vision of Payton sitting back at the office popped into his head. He kept trying to brush these feelings aside. Why should he feel guilty that she had been left out? After all, he was just doing his job, what Ben had asked him to do. And, had the shoe been on the other foot, he was quite certain Payton would’ve had no problem leaving him behind.

There was another image J.D. had a hard time shaking: the look Payton had given him when he’d told her that the club didn’t allow women. For the briefest moment, he’d seen something in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. A slight crack, a falter in her usual armor of confidence. For some reason, it had bothered him, seeing that.

Realizing that one of the Gibson’s lawyers was asking him a question about the course, J.D. pushed all thoughts of Payton from his mind. He couldn’t be distracted right now. He needed to be on, to be charming and professional. And, no less important, he needed to mentally prepare for the upcoming ninth hole—a ruthless par four that was one of the narrowest holes he had ever played.

Besides, as he knew full well, Payton Kendall could take care of herself.


PAYTON SAT AT the bar, waiting. She had agreed to meet J.D. and the Gibson’s team at Japonais restaurant at seven thirty. She was familiar with the restaurant, as was pretty much every other single woman in Chicago over the age of twenty-five. Trendy and expensive with a modern, ambient-lit decor, it was one of the most popular locales in the city for a first date.

Not that she’d had all that many first dates lately. It took time to meet people. It took time to date them, to get to know them, to figure out whether you liked them and whether they liked you. And time was something she didn’t have a lot of these days. So unless the mythical Perfect Guy fell out of the sky and landed smack-dab on her doorstep, dating was something she needed to put on hold until after she made partner.

Payton swirled her wineglass as she sat at the bar, thinking back to the last first date she’d had, with an investment banker she’d met at a local wine tasting. It had been at this very restaurant, in fact. Her date had polished off eight of the restaurant’s Mukune sakes by ten. By ten fifteen he’d fallen over in his chair while standing up to go to the bathroom and by ten fifteen and fifteen seconds—when Payton ran over to help—he’d slurringly confessed that he was having “a bidge of trupple” weaning off of his manic-depressive medication.