Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance (33 page)

“What do you want, then?” Elise was red-hot and ready to win. “He’s not going to marry me, okay? Is this some sick fantasy about being a grandmother? A second chance for you to fuck up some kid? Because I don’t think the job you did with me was a good audition for potential grandkids.”

Elise wanted to cover her mouth as soon as the words left it. What a hateful thing to say. “I’m sorry,” Elise muttered. “That wasn’t fair.”

Peggy sighed and turned away. “Actually, I think it was. I messed up with you. I don’t want you to marry Jack—or anyone—because of me. I want you to be happy. And it’s easier to be happy with someone than alone.”

That made no sense at all. Elise frowned at her mother. “You’re alone.”

“Not by choice,” Peggy said to her hands.

“Yes, by choice. You left Daddy, came here hoping Tom would divorce his wife and marry you. And that was over twenty years ago. What’s your excuse for not finding another guy to love?”

Her mother didn’t look up. There was a long ragged pause, full of indecision, before Peggy squared her shoulders and looked straight at Elise. “I never got over him.”

“So? You weren’t still… Oh my God, you were. You were still in love with him. That’s…so wrong, somehow. You’re a smart, competent, attractive woman. You should have moved on.”

Peggy lifted her hands in a useless gesture. “I just want you to be happy. And you’re not. Jack wants to make you happy. Only the difference is he’s got a chance of pulling it off where I know I can’t.”

“You were in love with that schmuck this whole time? Where’s your pride? He didn’t want you. He didn’t want
us
!”

“Elise! That’s not fair. He left me, not you.”

“The hell he didn’t. It was about me when he’d take me to the park and then for ice cream. When he’d talk about vacations we were going to go on, vacations that never happened.” Elise drew in a shuddering breath. “There were two of us in that picture when he talked about leaving his wife for us. You
and
me. I believed him too, you know. I waited for him to come get me. He promised…” She trailed off.

She got up and walked back to the window. She couldn’t face her mother. These were old, old stories and they had nothing to do with her life now. “I like my life the way it is,” she announced to the parked cars. “I love my job, I love my house, and I don’t need a man to make me happy.”

“No, I can see that.” Her mother’s voice was dry to the point of sarcasm.

Elise watched a pickup truck inch its way out of a tight space. Her mother had put all her emotional eggs into one basket—Tom—and look where that had got her. Lonely and she wasn’t even sixty yet. No wonder Elise tended to flit from relationship to relationship.

And where are you going to be in twenty-five years?
a voice in her head asked.
You’ve refused to put any eggs into the relationship with Jack.

God, Jack’s penchant for being right must be rubbing off on her. And, surprise, surprise, it was just as annoying when she did it to herself.

“I have to go pack,” Elise announced. “I’ll call everyone this afternoon so they know you’re going home tomorrow.”

She took a quick look at Peggy’s face, which was pinched with disapproval. No surprise there. Elise couldn’t remember her mother ever relenting. Maybe that was where Elise got her bitch-cold heart. Jack would do well to give up any notion he had of their relationship going the distance. She gave her mother a gentle hug. Without thinking, Elise pressed her cheek against her mother’s hair, which smelled the same way it had when Elise had been the one getting hugged.

“I love you, Mommy,” Elise whispered.
I’m sorry we’re not nicer to each other.
She couldn’t say that aloud. Not yet.

She blinked away the emotion as she strode down the hall toward the elevators. She caught herself pulling her phone out and checking for messages. Nothing.

Force of habit, she told herself. It didn’t mean anything.

Jack held a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of flowers at the junction of two busy walkways in the Philadelphia Airport. He shifted his feet. Used to be one could wait at the specific gate and thus only have to look at the faces—some smiling, some grim and determined—of the other passengers on the incoming flight. Now, though, if he wanted to meet Elise at the earliest possible moment—and lord knew he did—he had to hang around the spot where the terminal’s passengers rejoined the regular population.

Which is how he came to be standing at ten p.m. outside a men’s room, across from an airport newsstand, upstairs from the check-in area and down the hall from the food court. Clutching some flowers that were probably dying by the minute.

He felt awkward, like he was sixteen again. Only he was pretty sure he’d never felt like this before, not even when he’d actually been sixteen. Anxious, eager, horny, and lonely. Lost in his memories of her, desperate to see those silvery curls again.

“Jack!”

Elise was running toward him, a little wheelie carry-on suitcase wobbling by her side. She dropped the handle just before throwing herself into his arms. “Oh, Jack,” she breathed into his neck.

He squeezed her hard against his body, as though he could attach her permanently to his heart. He had no words to tell her how amazing it felt just to hold her close, to know she was back in his arms again.

She pulled back eventually. “I wasn’t expecting you. It’s so late, I figured I’d take a cab.”

“I know.” Jack kissed her swiftly, then pulled back as though on a bungee cord. Any more of that and the horny teenager would be calling all the shots. “It’s just—I wanted to be here. I wanted to be the first person you saw.”

She grinned at him, clearly pleased. He felt weightless for a moment. “Here.” He thrust the flowers at her. “These are for you, obviously. Probably dead, but I’m hoping to get some ‘thoughtful gesture’ credit.”

She sniffed them appreciatively. “They’re lovely. And it counts a lot.”

She picked up the handle of her suitcase and stuffed the stems of the bouquet into its outside pocket. “Let’s go get my checked bag.” She put her arm through his and headed toward the stairs down to baggage claim.

They waited for the baggage carousel to start up, filling the time by making out like adolescents. Somehow he managed to keep it just this side of pornographic. One thing was sure, though. He’d let her decide which house they were sleeping in tonight—no way they were sleeping apart.

With her luggage stowed in the trunk, he paid for short-term parking and got onto I-95, which wasn’t very busy at the late hour.

“You know what I want?” she asked.

“What?”
Anything,
he wanted to tell her,
as long as it involves sex.
Wow. He was turning into her.

“A cheesesteak. And a water ice.”

Jack laughed. Classic Philly fare. “What, no pretzel?”

“No, and no Tastykakes either. Can we stop in South Philly on the way home?”

Jack liked the sound of “home” in the singular. “Of course. Pat’s or Geno’s?”

They had a lively debate about the relative merits of the two cheesesteak stands. Jack was amused when Elise’s argument against Geno’s included a First Amendment argument on the constitutionally protected right to free speech. They ended up at Pat’s.

They settled at one of the picnic benches on 9th Street, bathed in brilliant fluorescent lighting. “So, how’s Peggy?” Jack asked.

“Mmm.” Elise savored the first bite of steak, cheese and onions. “Greasy and delicious.”

“Elise.” He gave her a mock growl.

“She’s fine.”

“Have they transferred her to the rehab facility?”

Elise grabbed one of the flimsy napkins. “No, I got her settled at home. She’s got some muscle weakness from the surgery, but they’ve organized daily transport to rehab. They just want to make sure she’s capable of the various activities of daily living, I think they’re called. The case manager will check in and arrange for home health care nurses, if necessary.”

“Do you want to call her?”

Elise shook her head. “Give me a couple days to miss her, okay?”

Jack laughed. “That bad?”

She put down the sandwich, wiped her hands, then pulled back her hair before answering. It was hot even nearing midnight, and there was a faint gleam to her skin where the mix of fluorescent and neon lights hit it.

“I don’t know. We’re good, I think. I love her. She loves me. That’s not in doubt. She just drives me crazy.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s in the parental handbook—drive your adult children mad.” Jack had an image of their children, his and Elise’s, growing up with a lawyer and a judge for parents. He should start saving for their therapy sessions.

“Maybe that’s why I’ve stayed away for so long. She’s so smart and interesting, but she’s so stubborn.”

“Not like anyone I know.” Jack contemplated his sandwich.

Elise shifted in her seat. “Yeah, I get that. Guess what? She admitted that she’d been in love with Tom all this time. That’s the man Peggy left my dad for.”

“Oh.” Jack had heard snippets of the story, mostly to explain why Elise had grown up in Oregon rather than Ohio.

“Oh, come on. I told you about that, right? That’s why my parents split up. Peggy had an affair with Tom Weaver when I was a child. Then he got a job at the University of Oregon, so she left Daddy and moved us both out there. Age-old story: Tom left his wife, got an apartment, planned to get a divorce until suddenly they’re back together. Buh-bye Tom.”

Jack could see the bitterness in Elise’s face. There was a lot of hurt there too. Tom hadn’t just been dating Peggy, he’d been courting Elise at a young age. What had she been—six? Young enough to need stability while old enough to know what’s going on.

He reached out and held on to Elise’s hand. “I’m sorry. That must have been rough.”

Elise squeezed his fingers, then pulled her hand away to pick up the sandwich. She stopped as though something occurred to her. “I don’t care about myself so much. I ended up in Ohio. Peggy was spouting off some nonsense about how it’s easier to be happy when you’re with someone and all this time she was still in love with Tom. She’d kept track of him his whole life. Oh, not that she’d stalked him. As far as I know they never saw each other again. Still, she knew the moment he died.” She pushed her cheesesteak away with an impatient shove.

Jack wasn’t sure he understood what Elise was saying. Hell, he wasn’t convinced
she
knew what she meant. Or even if he was expected to react.

What he did know was that he wasn’t like Tom, who sounded like a schmuck, or Elise’s dad, who sounded cold and distant. And Elise wasn’t like her mother. Perhaps Peggy had married too young and paid for that mistake later on by falling in love with a married man. Whatever the reason, Elise had gone to the other, “just sex” extreme. Maybe she thought all men were feckless and unreliable pricks.

If Jack could get her to see that she loved him and they were perfect for each other, if he could sell her on the idea of a happy marriage being easier than this one-date-per-weekend nonsense, then they’d make a future for their kids completely unlike the one Elise had suffered through. Other than living with two legal eagles, that was. Still, none of that had to be settled tonight.

“Are you going to eat the rest of that?” he asked, tilting his chin at her cheesesteak.

“Nah. We can go.”

“Good. Because my inner randy teenager has been hot for you from the moment you leapt into my arms.”

“I did not leap. I ran. No jumping was involved or implied.”

“Okay, no leaping. Nonetheless, if I don’t get you in bed soon, we’re going to be in serious danger of violating some municipal code about lewd and lascivious behavior.”

“Oh, and that would not sit well with the judicial ethics police.”

“Nor the senior partners at Fergusson. So are you willing to come now?”

Elise laughed at the double entendre. “About as fast as you’re willing to make me.”

When he asked, Elise surprised herself by telling Jack to go to his place. “I can wait until tomorrow morning to face the avalanche of junk mail at home,” she assured him.

What she didn’t say was that she wanted to be in Society Hill simply because it was his home. He had roots in that house, a history. After living at Peggy’s place for over a week, she wanted that sense of rock-hard solidity. At her house, he was just passing through. For some reason, Elise didn’t want to see him as a transient visitor.

“Are you hungry?” he asked as he carried her suitcases in after her.

“After that cheesesteak? No chance. A glass of water would be nice.”

“I have beer for you, if you’d rather?”

Elise looked over at Jack, now puttering in the kitchen, finding a vase for the flowers. He was fussing. That wasn’t like Jack.

Then it hit her. He was nervous for some reason. She got suspicious.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

He looked up, surprised. “What do you mean?” He tweaked the blooms, pulling each stem out and then pushing it back in again. The flowers looked the same each time.