Practice Makes Perfect

Her ass had been hanging out in open court.

Clomping along the sidewalk unevenly in her broken heel, stomping past innocent pedestrians who were having a lovely, normal day, people who presumably had not had their asses hanging out in open court, Payton grumbled out loud to herself about the worst part of it all.

"I just had to wear a thong today, didn't I?" she hissed angrily. She could've smacked herself in the head for that decision.

The Shithead was suddenly at her side. He grinned. "Well, point of fact, I think that women should wear thongs every d . . ." he trailed off, seeing her look. "But I can see you're not in a place to discuss that right now."

Payton couldn't take it a moment longer. She advanced on J.D. "Oh, you think this is funny? Please—allow me to disabuse you of that notion."

"Payton—"

"Don't. Don't 'Payton' me, don't waste your breath with excuses or explanations—I don't care."

She stared J.D. right in the eyes. "If this is how you want to play the game, Jameson, that's fine with me. The gloves are now off. I am about to become the bitch you've always thought I was."

Payton saw that her comment took J.D. aback, that it wiped his grin—which she interpreted as a smirk—right off his face. And she saw something momentarily flash in his eyes, maybe it was anger, maybe it was something else—right now she didn't care either way. Right now, as she stood on that sidewalk, facing J.D. in her torn skirt and broken heel and her naked butt barely covered by the jacket tied around her waist, all she cared about was at least having the dignity of getting in the last word.

So, seeing that she had momentarily silenced him, Payton took advantage of the opportunity and turned and walked away.

"IT COULDN'T HAVE been that bad."

Curled up on her couch, Payton gave Chase a look over the carton of pad thai she held. She swallowed, then gestured with her chopsticks for emphasis.

"Oh, no, trust me, it was that bad."

Chase had called her earlier, while she was still at the office. Although the rest of her day in court had thankfully passed by uneventfully—after the break she had even managed to get back on track with her cross-examination of the plaintiff—Payton still had been so embarrassed that she told Chase only, in what had to be the understatement of the year, that she'd had "kind of a bad day in court."

"But you recovered well—that's what the jury will remember," Chase told her. Stretched out comfortably on the couch across from her, he set his carton down on the coffee table and leaned in.

"I'm actually kind of sad I wasn't there—I think I would've liked the view," he said with a boyish grin. Then he leaned over and kissed her.

As Payton had described to Laney the other day, she found being with Chase to be . . . calming. It was a nice change of pace for her—certain situations at work, and certain unnamed someones in particular, had a tendency to get her worked up. But with Chase, there was no fuss. At a time when things in Payton's life seemed uncertain and more than a bit out of control, being with Chase was easy. He was easy.

Not that way.

She didn't know that.

Yet.

After they kissed for a moment or two, Chase pulled back and gave Payton a serious look. "There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about. I think maybe it's time we take our relationship to the next level."

Payton raised an eyebrow. Oh, really? "The next level being . . . ?"

"A weekend date."

"Ah, a weekend date." Payton shook her head teasingly. "I don't know, that's a big step. Did you have any particular weekend in mind?"

"Actually, I was thinking about this one," Chase said.

"Wow. I don't know. This weekend, let me see . . ." Payton pretended to mull this over. "There's some laundry I've been meaning to get to, but I suppose if I rearrange my schedule . . ."

With a wink, she smiled. "Okay."

Chase pretended to sigh with relief. "To think I nearly lost out to laundry. My ego never would've recovered."

"Hey, this isn't everyday laundry we're talking about," Payton said. "I was going to do sheets. Maybe even a towel or two. If that's not your idea of a Friday night party, I don't know what is."

Chase laughed. "Well, now that I know that I rank above sheets, I feel so much better."

Payton smiled, then fell more serious as she studied him. There was something she felt she needed to say.

"You do know that it's just all this stuff I have going on at work, right? I'm really busy with this trial, and they're going to name the new partners at the end of the month." She had told Chase earlier that there was stiff competition in her bid to make partner, although she hadn't gone into specifics.

Chase nodded and took Payton's hand, lacing his fingers through hers.

"I'm just teasing you. I know how busy you are right now."

Payton peered into his warm brown eyes. Yes, that's all it was, she told herself, she was busy with work. Nothing else.

Before any contrary thought could creep into her mind, she reached up and gently pulled Chase in to kiss him.

AN HOUR OR so later, they said good night. After briefly discussing their plans for Friday, Payton shut the door behind him. She leaned against the door, reflecting.

That Chase. Such a good guy. How she so looked forward to their next date.

Payton sighed peacefully.

Then she eagerly sprang away from the door.

Back to the business at hand. She had some serious plotting and scheming to do. At least eight hours had gone by and she hadn't yet come up with any suitable way to strike back at the evil that was J.D. She needed a plan. Fast.

He had wanted to make her look stupid. Frankly, he had succeeded in that. But the next move was hers.

Now what could she possibly do that would top naked-butt-cheek courtroom pratfalls . . . ?

Payton bustled around her apartment, cleaning up after her dinner with Chase, musing over this. She needed to come up with something final. The kill shot. The check-mate. The move that would lock up the partnership spot once and for all. Then she would be done with J. D. Jameson forever. No more having to prove herself; no more of those pesky jitters she felt whenever she saw him at work—something like butterflies in her stomach, it was actually quite annoying; no more stress; no more fights in the library; and definitely no more sexy I'm-gonna-kiss-you-now-woman blue-eyed heated gazes.

She had no idea why she just thought that.

Sleep deprivation, undoubtedly. Like the high-altitude sickness, it struck suddenly and at the oddest times.

Payton sped through her nighttime routine and crawled into bed. When the lights were off, she did not think about J.D.

Except to plot her schemes of revenge, of course.

I F, AS LEX Kendall liked to say, all women were sisters under the same moon, then Lady Justice was no exception. She was kind to Payton indeed.

It took only two days before she stumbled upon her big chance.

The best part of it was that Payton didn't even have to do anything. The opportunity just happened upon her. She took it as a sign that the Fates—also women, she noted—were on her side.

She got back to the office early that afternoon. One of the plaintiff's witnesses had a family emergency and needed to be rescheduled to testify the following day. With no other witnesses present in court or available on such short notice, the judge had recessed the trial until the following morning.

Payton had settled down at her desk and begun reviewing her email, finding over twenty messages marked urgent (some people were far too liberal in their use of that little red exclamation point), when she noticed Irma over at J.D.'s secretary's desk. The two women had their heads bowed and were whispering intently.

Ignoring them at first, Payton continued on with her email. Of course she found no actual emergencies, just everyday, run-of-the-mill client panic attacks. But a few minutes later, after seeing the secretaries still deep in their huddle, she became intrigued. Especially after Kathy, J.D.'s secretary, hurried off from her desk looking frantic.

Payton called out to Irma as she passed by her office.

"Psst! Psst! Irma!"

When Irma glanced over, Payton gestured for her to step into her office.

"What's going on?" she asked as soon as Irma shut the door. "I saw you over at Kathy's desk. She looks like she's freaking out about something."

Irma peeked out the glass window of the office, then turned back to Payton. "I'm not supposed to say anything, but J.D.'s in trouble."

Ooh . . . this was good. Payton resisted the urge to rub her hands together gleefully.

"What kind of trouble? Tell me," she said, eager for the details.

"Well, apparently," Irma began, "he got called into court for some sort of emergency motion—what did Kathy say it was—a contempt motion? Contested motion? I can't remember which—"

Payton waved impatiently, moving Irma along. "Either way. An emergency motion. And?"

"And"—Irma threw Payton a look, she was getting there—"the judge won't let him leave. He wants to hear oral argument and have a hearing on the motion right now. But the problem is, J.D. has a deposition scheduled for this afternoon that was supposed to start, like, fifteen minutes ago. The other lawyer and his client are upstairs and threatening to leave if the dep doesn't start immediately. Kathy went to try to stall them."

Payton and Irma suddenly spotted Kathy hurrying back to her desk. She did not look happy.

"I better go out there and see if there's anything I can do to help," Irma said.

She headed back out to Kathy's desk. Payton watched through the glass as J.D.'s secretary held up her hands, gesturing anxiously, then ran off again.

Payton called out to Irma once more.

"Psst! Irma! Psst!"

Irma walked back into Payton's office. "What is with you today? You're awfully pesty."

Payton ignored this. "What did Kathy say? It didn't look good. Is it bad? How bad? Tell me."

"You know, you could just talk to Kathy yourself," Irma told her.