“Actually, I’m under a duty of candor toward the court,” she retorted. “And I think I was being extremely candid.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him fold his arms across his chest, presumably squelching the urge to strangle her.
Elise grinned to herself. What a great weekend. She’d even been able to sleep in his bed, which shocked her. He was warm and solid, and when she’d woken up from a bad dream he’d cuddled her until she fell back asleep. She got a thrill just thinking about it.
This recreational drug thing was working out great. The sex—well, the sex was better than great. He was a quick study—she never had to tell him anything twice. Together they were inventive and thorough, a good combination.
But this—the teasing and joking around—was nearly as good as the sex. She hadn’t been bored once over the weekend, and she thought for sure she’d need to whip out a notepad and draft some deposition prep to fill the time. She never needed to.
The best part was going back to their own lives during the week. She was looking forward to sleeping in her own bed. She reviewed her schedule for the week, which was light by work standards, but she had the Voy deposition in ten days that almost certainly would be a bear. She should get a head start on the preparations for—
“I had fun this weekend,” Jack said.
Huh? Elise didn’t want to take her eyes off the road, but he sounded wistful. “Me too,” she agreed lightly.
“It’s always hard to leave,” he added.
She recalled their conversation about his childhood visits to Eagles Mere. He’d made it sound like happiness personified, but to her ears it had seemed very sad—a series of relationships interrupted when each year’s playmate grew too old or left.
This must have been the first weekend in years that he’d had a playmate around all the time. Good God, they’d even played Monopoly before going to bed. Admittedly it was strip Monopoly with rents payable in either money or clothing, but still…
She’d waited too long to respond to his comment. Time to change the subject. Work, of course. “Tell me about the trial.”
“You know I can’t talk on an ongoing legal matter before the court.”
What a freaking straight arrow. “Okay, so don’t tell me anything substantive. Tell me about the experience. Are you enjoying it, or do you find yourself wanting to leap over the bench, wrench the exhibit out of the guy’s hand and show the jury how a cross-examination is really supposed to go?”
“Would I rather be arguing the case? I don’t think so. Admittedly, counsel for defendant is an idiot—that’s off the record, by the way—but it’s actually nice to be impartial. I’m enjoying seeing both sides of the argument.”
She kept him talking about his job until they got to the Schuylkill, which was predictably clogged on a summer Sunday afternoon. He shut up then and she maneuvered through the traffic in comfortable silence.
When they’d parked by her house, Jack got her bag out of the back of the car. “Will I see you before next Saturday?”
That was a toughie. On the one hand, she knew it would be delightful to see—and touch—him before the weekend. On the other hand, it felt like a slippery slope straight to a bad end. She couldn’t explain it. Just a gut feeling of danger, like driving along a highway where the guard rails were conspicuously missing.
She gave him a swift kiss. “You’re on trial, and I have a deposition to prep for. Better not.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her more thoroughly, reminding her of everything they did in Eagles Mere and making her long for more. His fingers slid through her hair, caressing her scalp lightly. Finally, he straightened and smiled at her. “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”
Tempting. Painfully tempting. Frankly, she was having a hard time not clinging to him, or dragging him inside for more of that wonderful drug. They didn’t call it willpower for nothing, and she prided herself on being able to say no.
“Call me with details for the graduation, okay?” Another peck and she was in the door before she could change her mind.
Elise was just about to go to bed that evening when her mother called.
“Hi, Peggy.”
She imagined her mother rolling her eyes at her daughter’s refusal to call her “Mom,” but after fifteen years, that battle wasn’t worth waging again.
“Sweetheart. I called you yesterday, but you didn’t pick up.”
Shit. Elise was so floaty after leaving Jack she hadn’t checked her voice mail. “Sorry. I was busy.”
“At two in the morning?”
“You called here at two in the morning?” What possible reason could Peggy…? Oh. “Please don’t check up on me.”
“Fine. I’m rude. I think you’re rude for not calling me and making me track you down. Regardless of which of us wins the award for rudeness, where were you last night?”
Elise carried the phone into the living room and sank onto the sofa. “I was staying with a friend.”
“Well, it wasn’t Christine because I called her.” Peggy said smugly.
“Not at two in the morning you didn’t. Jeez,” Elise protested. “Isn’t it enough that you have my secretary reporting to you like some double agent? Now you have to disturb my friends?”
“Kim doesn’t tell me anything. She’s still too impressed that you got her mortgage refinanced.” Her mother made that sound like a bad thing.
Elise had to explain again. “Look, you live on the other side of the country. I visit, maybe not as often as you’d like, but I do. It’s true, I don’t share the intimate details of my life with you but I don’t with anyone so you shouldn’t take it personally.”
She waited for her mother’s plaintive, “I just want you to be happy” speech, but Peggy decided to throw a curveball. “Are you going to ruin your life the way you ruined mine?”
Elise shook her head. “How did I ruin your life?”
Peggy’s words slurred slightly, suggesting she’d been drinking, or crying, or both. “Every single time Tom looked at your big, wide, ‘I want my dad’ eyes, he saw his own kids. It was because of you that he went back to his wife.”
Elise couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You think I ruined your love affair because I couldn’t keep my shit together? Jesus. I was seven years old.”
“All I’m saying is, don’t make the mistakes I made. I should be Exhibit A for doing things differently.”
Well, that was a new tack. “Uh, let’s look at Exhibit A, then, and see which of your mistakes I should avoid repeating. You got married young, had me, met some married professor, fell in love and followed him to Eugene where he finally decided he wasn’t leaving his wife for you. What part of that scenario am I repeating? Because I’d say I’m doing a great job of avoiding all of it.”
“Except you’re alone, Elise. You’re just as alone as I am.”
“Right, but unlike you, I never expected anything else. So I’m happy where you weren’t.” Elise tried to keep her tone civil and reasonable, but that note of bitterness was bleeding through. How did her mother make her furious in such a short amount of time?
“El…” Peggy made the nickname sound plaintive.
What were Elise’s options? Try to reason with her mother, who was presumably grieving Tom? Or rehash old history to no great effect? “Mom, I’m sorry you’re sad about Tom, but it’s late and I need to get to bed.” Elise hung up and disconnected the phone. She’d deal with the voice mails in the morning.
As usual, it felt great climbing into her bed, made just the way she liked it. Until she reached for Jack and discovered that being alone no longer comforted her.
The morning of the commencement, Jack met Stacy and Bill at their Ritz-Carlton suite for breakfast. His sister wasted no time asking the question.
“Who is she? When you said you’d have a guest after all, I was stunned.”
Jack turned to his brother-in-law. “Hi, Bill.”
“Hey,
Jack. Nice work on the judgeship.” Bill retreated to his chair, already surrounded by the New York Times. He went back to the crossword, his half-moon glasses perched on his nose.
So much for using Bill to run interference on Stacy’s cross-examination. Jack turned back to Stacy. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“Let’s start with her name, and work from there.”
“Elise Carroll, early thirties, about five foot seven, blue eyes, light hair, no visible tattoos or scars.”
Stacy grimaced. “Do we have to pick out her mug shot?”
“Just stating the facts, Sis. Ask me what you really want to know.”
“How did you meet? Why is she the first woman you’ve brought to a family event? Do you plan on marrying her?”
“In court, because I want her to meet you, and yes.”
Stacy goggled at his last answer. Jack gave her a level look. He’d refined his frosty stare as a prosecutor when he’d needed to break shaky alibis. He found it effective now for suppressing the pretensions of hack lawyers in his court.
Unfortunately, Stacy was immune to the Blackjack icy indifference. She glared at him, her eyes narrowing. He knew that look and it didn’t bode well for him.
“Do you want me to tell her about the time I caught you—?” Stacy raised an eyebrow.
Wow. She might be in her fifties, but she’d lost none of the older sister’s deft hand at intimidation. She had him cornered. Of course he knew embarrassing things about her, but she wouldn’t care if he shouted them out in the street.
Show no weakness just didn’t apply with sisters.
Jack helped himself to coffee and took a seat. “Order breakfast and I’ll tell you all about it.”
When he was done with the story of the Everton hearing, Stacy had flopped back in her chair and even Bill looked up from the crossword.
“Love at first sight?” Stacy asked, her voice thin and squeaky.
“It happens.” Jack struggled not to sound testy. Why was everyone convinced this couldn’t happen even after he told them it had?
“Happened to me,” Bill offered unexpectedly.
“What?” Stacy’s voice was close to being audible only to dogs.
“I saw you at that senior mixer and I knew.”
“William Pembroke, you have never told me that.”
“Well, based on how you’re reacting now with your brother, can you blame me? You’d have laughed yourself silly. You were Stacy McIntyre, related to a movie star, and you were not shy about letting people know it. In a word, you were a bitch. But I knew I’d fallen for you.”
Jack was agog. He turned to Bill. “I thought you guys met at a museum function when you were an associate.”
Bill Pembroke was a solid sort of guy, a superb lawyer, but not the star in any room. Jack knew from experience that Bill could reason his way around the thorniest legal problem, then deliver the answer in a monotone. Unsexy, but a very suitable demeanor for a tax lawyer.
Bill looked boyish and even coy as he explained, “I didn’t say we met at school, just that I fell in love with her then. I waited until circumstances were more, shall we say, propitious. We had a couple friends in common, so I kept track of how she was doing while I got established at the firm.” He turned to Stacy. “When I knew you’d broken off your engagement, I got myself on the guest list for that reception for the Hogarth exhibit.”
Stacy’s jaw went slack. Jack was really enjoying this.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this, sweetheart?” she asked her husband.
“Too empowering,” Bill said.
She shook her head in confusion, like a dog shedding water. She looked at Jack as though he might have the answer. Jack just shrugged. He wanted to hear more—Bill’s reasoning could be helpful in his own situation with Elise.
“What does ‘too empowering’ mean?” Stacy demanded.
Bill rubbed the top of his head, which was shiny and pink. It was a familiar gesture. Bill’s scalp looked well-polished, probably the result of being married to Stacy and having twin daughters.
“You’d never have gone out with me if you’d thought I was the kind of guy who took one look and swooned at your feet. I had to play my cards close to my chest to get and keep your interest.”
“Wow.” It was a red-letter day when someone managed to reduce Stacy McIntyre Pembroke to a single syllable.
Jack wanted to stand up and applaud Bill’s accomplishment. Instead, he brought the conversation back to his situation with Elise. “I wish I’d had the chance to keep my feelings to myself, but judges are required to state their reasons for disqualifying themselves.”
He might as well have been talking to an empty room. Stacy’s mouth still gaped open like a gaffed fish. She didn’t take her eyes off Bill, who’d gone back to his puzzle.
Jack shrugged. Looked like he was off the hook, at least for now.
While Bill and Stacy went back to their bedroom to change, Jack descended to the lobby to wait for Elise, who walked in a few minutes later. She looked lovely. Her suit—the warm blue of a summer sky—suited her coloring perfectly. She’d clearly made an effort to look her best. There was just enough time to give her a quick kiss before the Pembrokes joined them. Jack made the introductions and they set off along Broad Street toward the Kimmel Center. Elise tucked her hand in the crook of Jack’s elbow, but still managed to make conversation with Stacy.
“Lissa’s been staying with Rand and Libby,” Stacy was explaining. “They had to get there early so that Libby could get dressed in her cap and gown. We’re to meet Rand and Lissa outside the concert hall.”
“Wait.” Elise turned to Jack. “Who’s Lissa? I thought your nieces’ names were Elizabeth and Alice.”
“Oh, Jack’s too stuffy to use their nicknames,” Stacy explained. “Everyone calls Alice Lissa—she’s the one who lives in Alaska—and Elizabeth is Libby. Everyone except Jack.”
Elise turned to him. “Judge McIntyre, I object. You can’t call them by their birth certificate names. That’s not being formal, that’s being a tool.”
He stared at her. It had been an adolescent affectation, but no one ever objected. “Okay, I’ll call them Libby and Lissa.”
Elise leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. “That’s my judge,” she whispered in his ear.
Alice—no, Lissa—rushed at them, giving her parents quick hugs. She had a longer embrace for Jack. “My favorite uncle.”
“Your only uncle.” They grinned at each other. It was a familiar exchange.
Jack introduced Elise. He watched carefully, but she seemed comfortable being thrown in at the deep end. She immediately started chatting with Libby’s fiancé, Rand.
After a couple of minutes, Elise called over, “Hey, Judge—Rand wants to know how you tell the twins apart.”
Jack excused himself from a conversation with Stacy and Lissa and walked over to greet Rand.
“How is it I’ve never known this, that you have a way to tell the twins apart?” Rand asked.
Jack looked at Elise. He was confused—Rand had to know that he could tell them apart.
Elise explained it to him. “They know you can tell them apart, but they think you do it by magic, or using your hyper-developed powers of observation. I know you don’t have any such powers, so there has to be something you know to look for.”
“Wow. Really? You guys don’t know this?” Jack glanced around to check, but even Bill was staring at him, waiting. “It’s the scar—or rather, where the scar isn’t—near Lissa’s eyebrow.”
He turned to look at his sister. “Remember when she fell off her bicycle as a kid? She had a small gash near her eyebrow, and I watched the ER doc stitch her up. There’s no scar, but if you know where to look, there’s a paler patch by Lissa’s eye that Libby doesn’t have.”
Everyone but Jack and Elise swiveled to stare at Lissa, who protested when she realized she was the focus of everyone’s attention. “What? He’s crazy. You guys can see he’s crazy. I�
�d know if there was anything wrong with my skin.”
Rand spotted it first. “My God—there it is!”
Jack said calmly, “Of course, the light has to be good. Here in daylight, no problem seeing it.”
“Okay, you guys are all crazy,” his niece said. “You can stop looking at me like that. I’m not the freak here, Uncle Jack is. And—” she turned to Elise, “what’s with not believing that he has superpowers? Apart from Mom being his Kryptonite, we all just assume he sold his soul to the dark side in exchange for Dorian Gray looks and X-ray vision, among other things. Why aren’t you on the same page?”
Elise’s cheeks went a charming shade of pink. “I think I’ll invoke my constitutional right against self-incrimination when it comes to my experience with Jack’s so-called superhuman abilities, including stamina and finesse.”
“Traitor,” Jack muttered for her benefit.
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Sorry, sweetie—now that you’re a judge, the last thing you need is more adulation.”
She turned back to his family. “I’ve been convinced for a while—long before I met Jack—that being a judge is a recipe for narcissism. Everything a judge says and does is right, by definition. At the same time, it’s the only job where the evaluations of job performance are published for the world to see.”
“What evaluations?” Jack asked.
She grinned at him. “Appellate reviews. I saw one Third Circuit opinion that actually said, ‘We don’t know what the lower court was thinking.’ Ouch.”
“At least I’ve got a year or so before I get dinged by the circuit court,” Jack said.
“A year filled with people saying ‘Yes, Judge,’ and ‘Thank you, Your Honor,’ as they tug their metaphorical forelocks,” Elise retorted. “By the time you get reversed—if you ever get reversed, that is—a lot of lawyers will have stroked your ego.”
“Now you know why I made it impossible for you to appear in my court. You weren’t exactly falling over yourself to stroke my ego.”
“Of course not.” She turned back to Stacy and Bill. “He told you about the Everton hearing? I felt like the kid in the fairy tale. The Judge’s New Clothes. I was the only person who could see he was certifiable.”
Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance Page 17