Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance (24 page)

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.”

Jack watched her charm his family, her face full of happiness as she laughed at him. In that moment, he had hope. He’d found this extraordinary woman, immediately recognized her as the love of his life, and somehow convinced her to spend time with him. Leaping buildings in a single bound seemed like a simple hurdles race by comparison. He hadn’t crossed the finish line yet, but it felt like a race he could win. Provided he remembered it was a marathon not a sprint.

His family loved her, he could tell. They were delighted that she didn’t ooh and aah around him. Stacy nodded at everything Elise said, and Lissa hadn’t stopped grinning. Even Bill seemed to hang on Elise’s every word. Jack wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen, but the way Elise fit right in unnerved him. She interacted with his family in a way he never had.

In most family situations, Jack was an extra wheel. Welcome, appreciated even, but with little purpose for being there. A vestigial limb on the family tree. When Mom died, Stacy became the hub around which everyone revolved. They made him welcome at holidays, included him in their celebrations, and encouraged him to treat their house as his second home. Only now, watching their delight with Elise, could he appreciate how uninvolved he’d been. They loved him, but how much work had he really done to reciprocate that love? They only stayed with him when business brought them to Philly, and not always then. He couldn’t remember ever making any of them laugh.

Not the way his moonlight girl did—admittedly at his expense. An expense he was happy to pay. He’d taken himself far too seriously for too long.

Watching the students cross the stage, Elise remembered her own law school graduation. Her dad had claimed an emergency case as his excuse not to show up. He’d missed her law school graduation so he could operate on a dog. Her stepmother wouldn’t leave Ohio without Dad, and Elise’s half-brothers had been in high school. Chances were Dad had never known how lonely she’d felt. Everyone else’s families hooted and cheered as their graduates received a diploma. She’d only had Peggy, who wasn’t the hooting type.

Elise understood why her family couldn’t be there, but it hurt all the same. She’d been calm while she waited for the As and Bs to precede her and she remained calm when she walked across the stage to shake the dean’s hand. Back in her seat, though, she’d cried as the rest of the alphabet filed up to follow suit. So stupid—it was just a diploma.

Still, it was bittersweet to be with Jack, watching all these fresh faces as they closed one chapter of their lives and prepared for the work to come. It wasn’t easy to be that young—at least she hadn’t found it easy. The gray hair made her look older, which had been awkward in law school. Once she started working as a lawyer, life got a lot better. Having people add ten years to her age became an asset.

She must have sniffled because Jack suddenly handed her his handkerchief. She smiled her thanks. He squeezed her hand, comforting her without knowing why she was upset. Sometimes his perfection was a good thing. To repay his kindness, Elise hooted and cheered when Libby Pembroke shook the dean’s hand. It was nice to celebrate as part of a family.

Elise rather thought the Pembrokes and Jack would jettison her after they found Libby in the throng of black robes and colorful cowls. Stacy set her straight.

“Don’t be silly. We’re heading out to The County Cork for an old-fashioned Irish celebration. You have to come. I have tons more questions about my baby brother.” Elise allowed Stacy to pull her along back to their hotel where Jack’s car was parked.

At the bar, Elise was introduced to everyone as Jacko’s girl, which amused her no end. Luckily, Libby was the star of the show.

“How’re you doing?” Jack asked. He curled his arm around Elise’s shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.

“A bit bemused, but fine. Who’s the woman putting out all that food?”

“Sheila, Barney’s wife. My sister went to Catholic school with Barney and Sheila.”

“Huh. I’d have thought the Fitzgeralds would have popped you guys into some exclusive private school,” Elise said.

Jack laughed. “They tried, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it, at least not for elementary school. Mom always said nothing good came from putting on airs.”

“So did you go to the same school?”

His smile faded and his jaw tightened. “At first. Then I got popped into that exclusive private school.”

“And was that putting on airs?”

“Things were different then,” he said. End of subject, clearly.

“So, Jacko, how did you find yourself a real woman?” Barney asked in a loud voice. Before Jack could respond, Barney announced, “First real woman he’s brought in here. One time, he and some tart came in wearing evening clothes. God’s truth. A tuxedo in here? I thought I’d never live it down.”

Jack seemed relaxed enough about being teased. “Now, Barney, be fair—it was St. Paddy’s Day. I couldn’t skip the Cork, no matter what I was wearing.”

“So—were your cummerbund and bow tie emerald green?” Elise asked him, earning a wink and thumbs-up from Barney.

“Vixen,” Jack whispered into her hair. His arm was along the back of her chair. She could feel his warmth when she leaned back.

After Libby got some amazing graduation presents—including an apartment from Jack—Elise sensed this was a good time to throw in her own present. “I feel like the evil godmother, handing over the last gift, but I promise you there’s nothing to prick your finger on.” She passed Libby the distinctive robin’s egg blue box tied with a white satin ribbon.

“Tiffany’s? I am
so
going to law school,” Lissa said to no one in particular.

Libby lifted the lid on a black velvet box and revealed a short strand of pearls. Elise figured everyone—every woman—needed a pearl necklace.

Libby put it on immediately, and let everyone admire it. Then she got up and hugged Elise as she had Jack. “It’s gorgeous. You didn’t have to, you don’t even know me.”

“I have some pearls I always wear when I go to court,” Elise told her. “They give me courage.”

Jack turned to look at her. “You weren’t wearing them the last time you were in my courtroom—or my chambers,” he murmured, leaning close to her. She could feel his lips brush against her ear and her skin tingled with a tiny frisson of desire.

“On the contrary,” she whispered, grinning at his expression. “I never took them off.”