It was as a result of that disastrous last first date that Payton had vowed to temporarily cease all dips into the dating pool. At least until her professional life was in order, that is. It was kind of funny, and maybe a tad pathetic: she had realized earlier that evening as she’d been getting dressed that it was the first time in weeks she’d worn something other than a suit outside of her apartment. Not wanting to look too formal—or as if she was trying too hard to impress the Gibson’s reps—she’d ditched her standard suit jacket and gone instead with a fitted button-down shirt, pencil-thin skirt, and heels.

Having by now polished off her drink, Payton checked her watch and saw that her dinner companions were twenty minutes late. Truth be told, she was a bit worried about this dinner with the Gibson’s reps. She had done plenty of pitch meetings before, and she was sure J.D. had, too, but because their practices rarely overlapped, she and J.D. had never done one together. Alone together. These meetings required a certain finesse and cohesiveness between the lawyers doing the pitching—they needed to present a united front.

Unity.

Cohesiveness.

These were not exactly qualities that she and J.D. possessed together. Hence the slight jitters of apprehension she felt that got worse with every moment she sat alone at the bar.

When five more minutes passed, Payton reached into her purse for her cell phone. She figured she should check her voice mail, just to make sure J.D. hadn’t left a message. She was mid-dial when she looked up—

—and saw J.D. standing in front of her.

For a second, Payton was struck by the fact that something about him looked different. She realized that like her, he had dressed more informally for the evening. Instead of his customary suit and tie, he wore an open-necked black pin-striped shirt and perfectly tailored charcoal gray pants.

It was strange, because for whatever reason, what popped into her head at that very moment were Laney’s words from the other day about how good-looking J.D. was. Payton had seen J.D. pretty much five days a week for the past eight years, but right then she found herself looking him over more closely. She tried to see him the way a stranger might. Someone who hadn’t ever actually spoken to him or anything.

He was tall (as previously mentioned, all the better to look down on people), he had light brown hair with warm golden streaks (probably highlights), his build was lean (undoubtedly from all that tennis or whatever else he played at his I’m-so-cool sexist country club), and he had blue eyes that, um . . .

. . . Well, fine. There wasn’t really anything negative Payton could say about J.D.’s eyes. Speaking in a purely objective sense, she kind of liked them. They were a brilliant, bright blue. Such a shame they had to be wasted on him.

Having finished her assessment, Payton supposed that, if pressed, in that upper-crusty, Ralph Lauren-y, sweater-thrown-over-the-shoulders, have-you-met-my-polo-pony kind of way, J.D. was pretty damn good-looking.

Misinterpreting her look, J.D. cocked his head and pointed to her phone. “Oh, I’m sorry, Payton—I didn’t mean to interrupt you in the middle of your important business,” he said with just that right tinge of mocking.

Deciding it was better to go about with the business as usual of ignoring J.D., Payton turned her attention to the group of men he had arrived with. She immediately recognized Jasper from the pictures of him she had found on the Internet while researching his company and the lawsuit.

She stuck out her hand in introduction. “Payton Kendall. It’s very nice to meet you, Jasper,” she said warmly. With a firm handshake, she greeted the other members of the Gibson’s team—Robert, Trevor, and Charles—being sure to look each man directly in the eyes.

“I hope you haven’t been waitin’ long, Ms. Kendall,” Jasper said. “It was Charlie here’s fault—how many strokes did you take on that last hole?” He turned to Charles, who clearly was the most junior member of the trial team. “Fourteen? Fifteen?”

“I’m not much of a golfer,” Charles admitted to Payton. She liked him instantly.

“I’m a bit of a novice myself.” She smiled. Then she turned back to Jasper. “And please, call me Payton.”

“Like one of my favorite quarterbacks,” Jasper grinned.

“Only with an a instead of an e. And slightly fewer yards in passing,” Payton said. Damn—now she’d already blown one of the three measly sports references she knew in the first two minutes.

Jasper laughed. “Slightly fewer yards in passing—I like that.” He turned to J.D., gesturing to Payton. “Where have you been hidin’ this girl, J.D.?”

Luckily, J.D. was saved from choking on any polite words he was expected to utter by the hostess who appeared and asked to escort the group to their table.

Once seated, the group chitchatted through the standard business dinner preliminaries: Had Jasper and the others ever been to Chicago before? Where were they staying? Were Payton and J.D. from Chicago? They hit only the slightest bump in the road when Trevor, Gibson’s general counsel, asked Payton if she lived in the same neighborhood as J.D. and she realized that despite having worked with him for the past eight years, she had absolutely no idea where he lived. In fact, she pretty much knew nothing about J.D.’s nonwork life. Assuming he had one, that is.

Payton glossed over the question, telling Trevor instead how Chicago was a relatively compact city, how close everything was, et cetera, et cetera. She saw J.D. watching her out of the corner of his eye as he spoke with Robert, the head of Gibson’s in-house litigation department. Presumably, he had overheard her say his name to Trevor and was checking to make sure it wasn’t being taken in vain.