J.D. studied her. “Would you like some help?”

“From you?”

“Yes, Payton. From me.”

“But you’ll miss out on the cocktail reception. Don’t you need to go chat up Ben and the other litigation partners?” she asked.

“Not if you don’t,” he said.

Good point. Maybe J.D. really was trying to help. He seemed very big on the gestures these days, Payton thought. Or maybe he was just that confident in his chances of making partner. Her mind went back and forth, and part of her wanted to tell J.D. that she didn’t need his help, that he didn’t need to pay her back for the deposition. But the truth was, she could actually use the help, and the second truth was, she kind of wanted J.D. to stay—and not just because she didn’t want him to go to the cocktail reception and schmooze without her.

She nodded. “Okay.”

J.D. smiled. “Okay.”

He took a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. “Why don’t I start with this pile here?” He pointed to the stack of cases closest to him.

“Sure.” Payton began to explain. “I had Brandon pull all the relevant decisions from both the Seventh Circuit and Northern District of Illinois, plus he found a couple of cases from the Central District, those would obviously only be persuasive authority—”

“I’m not a first year, Payton. Just tell me what the issues are.”

“Look, just because I accepted your offer of help doesn’t mean this still isn’t my case.”

“I had a feeling I was going to regret this . . .”

“Well, then, you’re certainly free to leave at any time . . .”

“And deny you the pleasure of your power trip? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Et cetera.

HMM.

He was wearing his hair a bit longer these days.

Payton snuck another look.

J.D. leaned back in his chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he read through the next case in his pile. His head tipped slightly downward as he read, and Payton could see that the back of his brown hair just nearly brushed up against the starched blue collar of his shirt. Definitely a good one-eighth inch or so longer than he usually wore it. Not that she paid attention to these things.

She had moved and now sat in the chair next to J.D. It was easier for them to work like this—this way, she didn’t have to keep leaning across her desk whenever he wanted to point out something he had come across in one of the cases he was reviewing. And that was her story and she was sticking to it.

The stacks of cases on her desk had been whittled down to nearly nothing. It was a good thing she’d flown through her pile when she and J.D. had first begun working together, because her pace had slowed drastically over the course of the past half hour. Over the last fifteen minutes in particular she had become, some might say, a tad distracted. She’d strangely found herself having thoughts that some might call a bit . . . racy.

It was the stupid tie again, Payton thought. She had been innocently minding her own business, reading, when J.D. had casually reached up to loosen his tie and she had thought, hmm . . . he really should just take the damn thing off, no one else was in the office anyway. Then, hmm . . . speaking of no one else being in the office, she wondered what J.D. would do if—hypothetically speaking—she reached over and loosened the tie for him . . . And then, hell, if she was already going that far—still hypothetically of course—she supposed she should also undo those top buttons of his shirt, they looked a little constricting, too, and, oops, in that case she might as well just throw in the towel and move right on down to the button on his pa—

“So how long have you been seeing Chase?”

The question—from J.D.—abruptly yanked Payton back into reality.

“Hmm? What?” Flustered, she covered by gesturing to the case she held. “Sorry. Reading. The law and all. Damn, that’s good stuff.” She fanned herself. “I’m sorry, you asked me something?”

J.D. shifted in his chair. “I was just asking how long you’ve been seeing Chase. He said you two were dating. I ran into him last night,” he explained.

“Yes, he mentioned that when I saw him earlier today.”

Payton could’ve sworn she saw J.D.’s eyes flash at this.

“You two are serious, then?” he asked.

Payton hesitated. Did she care what J.D. thought about her and Chase? Surprisingly, she thought she might.

“We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks,” she said.

Tiptoe, tiptoe.

J.D. nodded. “You two seem to have a lot in common.” He waited to see where she would pick up with that.

Tiptoe, tiptoe.

“We would seem to, yes.”

Silence. Once again, they were at a standstill.

Then Payton thought, What the hell? and decided to go for broke.

“Why are you here, J.D.?”

“I work here, remember? See, right over there is my office and—”

Payton put her hand on top of his. “Don’t. Let’s just skip over the sarcastic part for once.”

J.D. glanced down at her hand, then up to meet her gaze. “What is it you really want to know, Payton?”

She asked him the question she had been asking herself for the past few days. “Why are you being so nice to me now?”

J.D. leaned forward in his chair. He gazed directly into her eyes, and Payton suddenly found herself wondering why it had taken him eight years to look at her that way.