Practice Makes Perfect
Page 69

Payton held up her finger. “But I pay for half of the room.”
J.D. grinned. “You know what, Payton—you go right ahead. At fifteen hundred bucks a night, you won’t get any argument from me.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Good god—that’s how much you’re paying?” She paused. “Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
“Hmm, since the room costs that much, it’s a good thing I didn’t plan to do much sleeping.”
J.D. laughed and pulled her close. “I really, really like . . . the way you think.”
Payton smiled. She suspected there might have been a little slip and cover-up there. And the truth of the matter was, she really, really liked . . . the way he thought, too.
So she took the hand J.D. held out to her and followed him inside.
Twenty-three
THEY SLEPT IN the next morning.
Payton couldn’t remember the last time she had slept past seven—she woke up with a start sometime after eight and nearly panicked when she saw the alarm clock on the nightstand. But then she saw J.D. sleeping next to her.
He stirred—he’d had his arm wrapped around her and she had thrown it off when she sat up after seeing the clock. Payton quickly nestled back in, hoping not to wake him. She wanted him to sleep. He needed the sleep—hell, they both did. And not just because it had been a very late night—although that probably didn’t help—not that she was complaining one bit—but more because they’d both been through an exhausting couple of weeks.
And it wasn’t over. True, by agreeing to stay in Palm Beach until Sunday, they now had only one more actual workday to get through. But the hard part would come on Tuesday, Decision Day, the day the firm chose one of them over the other. Decided who was better, in essence.
She and J.D. hadn’t spoken much about the firm’s impending decision since they’d arrived in Florida. But it was a constant nag in the back of Payton’s mind and she suspected he felt the same way.
It was kind of funny, the thought of spending the entire day and night with J.D. Not funny in a bad way, just new. A month ago, Payton never would’ve believed she’d be here, in an oceanfront suite at the Ritz-Carlton, sleeping next to the man who had been her sworn enemy for the past eight years. But now, it felt . . . right.
That was perhaps the scariest part of all—just how right it felt being with J.D. Because, whether they talked about it or not, they had a big, big problem facing them on Tuesday.
Payton snuggled into the crook of J.D.’s arm. These were things she didn’t want to think about, at least not yet. For now, the most serious issue she wanted to tackle was whether the two of them were going to straggle downstairs for breakfast on the hotel’s oceanfront terrace or simply order room service.
As Payton closed her eyes and began to let sleep retake her, she couldn’t help but think: normally, it would’ve gone against all her principles and better judgment to spend fifteen hundred dollars a night on a hotel room, or even half that. On the other hand—and this was her justification and she was sticking to it—she’d barely touched any of the three weeks’ vacation the firm gave her each year and she thought—What the hell?—she was allowed to have a little fun for one weekend.
Fun. Payton opened her eyes again and glanced at J.D. Was that all this was between them? Fun?
She knew, for her own good, that she probably should run right out of that hotel room, head straight for the airport, and get on the first plane back to Chicago. There was a definite danger in extending things.
But then she watched as J.D.’s eyes fluttered lightly, then relaxed again, deep in sleep. She’d never seen him look so calm.
Payton curled up closer to J.D. and yawned sleepily. Ah, screw it—she was staying.
If for no other reason, she was curious to see how the whole oceanfront-terrace-breakfast-versus-room-service dilemma turned out.
“SO WHAT WOULD you think about trying your hand at a round of golf this afternoon?”
Payton finished her sip of freshly squeezed orange juice, set the glass down, and looked across the table at J.D.
“I think that’s not very likely to happen,” she told him. But she sweetened it with a smile.
Room service had won out for breakfast. Actually, it had turned out to be the only viable option—while the hotel provided every toiletry imaginable for guests staying in their suites, the only clothing currently available to Payton was a black dress with a ripped zipper and a Ritz-Carlton bathrobe. And while the robe was perfectly acceptable for breakfast on the balcony with J.D., a more interesting question was what the hell she was going to wear to walk back to her own room to get her things.
Maybe she could borrow J.D.’s jacket or a T-shirt to throw over her dress when she headed down to her room. Sure, and maybe she could also just tack a sign to her ass that said, Hello, rich people, I just spent all night in someone else’s room getting fu—
“But I was thinking,” J.D. cut into Payton’s thoughts, still on the golf thing, “that it could be fun if I showed you how to play.”
Payton grinned as she buttered her blueberry muffin. “I’m sure that would be fun. For you.”
“Come on, Payton,” he baited her, “don’t you want to broaden your horizons? Try something new? Get a little insight into ‘my world’ as you like to call it?”
She cocked her head. “You know what—you’re right. Let’s both broaden our horizons. I’ll learn how to play golf this afternoon and then you can, well, let me see . . .” She pretended to think for a moment, then pointed. “I got it: you can eat vegetarian all weekend.” She shrugged matter-of-factly. “Seems like a fair trade to me.”