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Up front, Payton heard the ruckus coming from the audience behind her, so she turned around—
—and the peeky cheeks now faced the judge and jury. The jurors’ mouths dropped open, and a few murmured something incoherent, and they all gaped as Payton hobbled about the courtroom on uneven shoes, confused as to the source of the commotion.
At the defense table, Brandon/Brendan timidly whispered something to Payton; J.D. couldn’t hear it and apparently neither could Payton because she bent over toward Brandon/Brendan to hear better, exposed white buns up in the air for all to see, and the courtroom erupted in complete pandemonium and J.D. started to climb past the people in his row—he somehow had to put a stop to this—
But Payton finally heard Brandon/Brendan.
She stood up, her hand flew to her skirt, and she felt the rip in the seam. She instantly reacted; she unbuttoned her jacket and quickly tied it around her waist—no more peeky-cheeks—and J.D. heard a few groans of disappointment as the judge finally got things under control, banging his gavel and calling for order in the courtroom.
And as quickly as the chaos had erupted, things quieted back down. As people took their seats, the clamor settling, J.D. sat down, too, hiding, thinking now definitely was not the time to be seen by Payton.
As a silence took hold of the courtroom, all eyes were on Payton. Everyone waited to see what she would do, how she would react.
She paused for a moment. Then she turned and faced the jury.
“Raise your hand if you had no idea you’d see so much nudity in one week of jury duty.”
Twelve hands flew straight into the air.
And unbelievably, Payton laughed.
The jurors joined in with her. Then the judge raised his hand, too. With that, the entire courtroom laughed and people began to clap.
Payton held her hand up, acknowledging. “Thank you, thank you. I’m here all week.”
And it was in that moment, as J.D. sat in the galley with people laughing and applauding all around him, as he watched Payton smiling, embarrassed but undefeated, that it happened.
Something changed.
He didn’t know anyone who would’ve handled such a ridiculous situation nearly so well. Maybe he hadn’t noticed it before, but she was actually kind of . . . fu
And suddenly J.D. found himself looking at Payton with quite a bit of admiration.
He gri
Uh-oh.
J.D. watched as Payton picked up the shoe and presumably noticed the clean, precise way the heel had broken, the remnants of the glue he had applied. She ran her finger over the broken heel, examining it, and in that moment J.D. knew that she knew.
A random thought occurred to him right then, about how they say that criminals always return to the scene of the crime—wasn’t that how Bundy or Berkowitz or one of those guys got caught—and actually, it was kind of fu
When Payton met his gaze, J.D. thought he had never seen her dark blue eyes look so cold. And he knew one thing for certain.
He was toast.
PAYTON STORMED OUT the courthouse doors—suit jacket still tied around her waist—with J.D. following closely on her heels.
“Come on, Payton—it’s not like I meant for that to happen!” he called after her. “Honestly, who could’ve pla
A part of her wished she never had to come back to court. Better yet, a part of her wished the earth would just open up and swallow her, she was that mortified.
The judge had called a one-hour recess so that—as he had delicately put it—“anyone who wished to adjust his or her attire could do so.” Payton now was in a race to get back to the office, change into her spare suit, then get to the nearest department store to buy a new pair of shoes. On top of everything else, the bastard—no other name was necessary, from now on the man formerly known as J.D. would simply be called The Bastard, The Prick, or The Shithead—had ruined her best pair of shoes. But that was hardly her biggest concern.
Her ass had been hanging out in open court.
Her ass had been hanging out in open court.
Clomping along the sidewalk unevenly in her broken heel, stomping past i
“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 gri
Payton couldn’t take it a moment longer. She advanced on J.D. “Oh, you think this is fu
“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.
Thirteen
“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.”
An hour later, Chase had surprised her at home with a bag of Asian takeout. To cheer her up, he said. Not sure which one she preferred, he’d brought both tofu pad thai and vegetable fried rice. Touched by the gesture, Payton figured she could at least give him the condensed version of what had happened that morning. She appreciated it when he politely covered his laugh as a cough and blamed the spiciness of the food.
“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.