Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance (35 page)

When he turned back, she was hugging her torso as if she was cold. It was warmer downstairs than in the bedroom, where the air-conditioning was still running.

“I need a drink.” He lifted the bottle of Scotch in his hand. “Want one?”

She shook her head and went to the fridge to get a beer.

Beer. Of course. Did Elise really think he cared what she drank, that it was emblematic of some class difference between them?

“Can we talk about this?” She leaned against the island, holding the beer bottle. She hadn’t bothered to take the top off yet. She played with the label around the neck, pulling at a loose edge with her fingernail.

“Okay.” He felt exhausted, heavy, weighed down by the past twenty minutes. Or maybe it was the past twenty weeks. “Are we breaking up?” Even his voice sounded leaden.

Elise put the bottle down on the counter. She looked like she wanted to join him, but she didn’t move. “No, of course not. I love you. I do. I just don’t know how to do—what you want. I don’t know how to be married. It’s not a relationship I’ve ever wanted.”

“What is it you think people in love do?”

“That’s just it, I have no idea. I’ve never been in love before.”

“Neither have I, but there are certain conventions that give us some idea what our options are.”

Elise came to him then, grabbing him. Her eyes implored him to—do something. Give her something? Four months and he still had no idea what this woman wanted.

He looked down at her hands, clutched around his wrists. She could have been fighting him off, if someone only considered their body language. “Do you want to date other men?”

“God, no!” She pushed away from him, apparently revolted by the idea.

He grimaced. “What then?”

Elise threw her hands up in an I-don’t-know gesture. “I do love you, though. I’m not saying that because it’s what you want to hear. If I was saying what you wanted to hear, I’d have accepted your proposal.”

She walked back to the kitchen. She hitched herself up on one of the tall chairs by the island, her shirt riding up enough to show the bridge of lace across her hip. She’d put on her panties, although he couldn’t say why that struck him as important.

Elise picked up the beer bottle again, maybe so she’d have something to hold on to. Jack went to sit in the other chair, placing his highball on the counter. Their knees were an inch apart, but there was no intimacy.

She parted her lips, thinking. “I know things aren’t right the way they are. I get that. Dating on the weekend and not seeing each other during the week—that’s not what I want either. When I think about moving in here, with you, and selling my house, and making room in the closet for my things and getting up every morning and coming home every evening and—what if you’re not here?” Her voice sounded tinny and small, as though scratched by some emotion she was holding back.

“Of course I’ll be here,” he said softly. He touched her knee, cupping the side of it so his fingertips curved into the crease of delicate skin at the back. She didn’t look up at him.

What was really going on in that head? He could argue with her assumptions. She wouldn’t have to sell her house if she wasn’t ready to do that. Or they could sell both houses and buy a place that was equally new and different for each of them. He’d miss his home but without her, it was just a house.

There were solutions to any specific hiccup, but she didn’t make it sound like this was a solvable problem.

“I’m scared,” she said in the smallest voice yet.

Then, in a stronger voice, she said, “God, I hate being emotional. I despise it. The tears, the snot, the loss of control.” She glared at him. “I cried all the way to Oregon, starting at the departures lounge right after you drove away. I
never
cry.” She sounded as though the tears were chasing her, and winning.

Jack’s heart cracked. He could kick himself. She’d just come back from dealing with her mother’s heart attack, and he launched at her with a marriage proposal. He stood up and scooped her into his arms. “My darling girl,” he murmured into her hair. “It’s okay. I’m here.” He could feel her melt, almost shrinking as her bravado bled away.

“I don’t know what to do,” she mumbled. He could feel the dampness of her tears slick on his skin. She reached up to scrub at her cheeks or something, but he had his arms around her so tightly she couldn’t get rid of the evidence that she’d cried. She put her arms around his back and shuddered.

“It’s okay,” he said again. He doubted she was listening. “It’s okay.”

No surprise to Jack, their two a.m. drama got lost in the bustle of getting ready for work while still blurry from lack of sleep. “Are you sure you want to go in to the office today?” he asked her as he looked in the closet’s mirror to adjust the knot of his tie. “I can let Brenda know I’m running late and take you home first.”

Elise was hunched down over her open suitcase, pulling out clothes. “Jack, don’t be silly. I just need to go in to the office and see what’s what. I probably won’t even work a full day. I’ll come back here and make us supper, okay? Then you can drive me home after that.”

“You’re welcome to stay longer,” he said, but she’d already headed into the bathroom and turned the shower on. She probably hadn’t heard him. He thought about trying to talk to her over the noise. A glance at his watch told him it was a bad idea. She’d be there that evening and they’d talk then.

At least, he hoped they would talk.

In his chambers, Jack deliberately buried himself in work, getting through the last of the backlog of briefs and memos that had piled up while he’d been in Oregon. The distraction worked until he looked up and saw how late it was. Six and still nothing from Elise asking when he was leaving.

Somehow he’d known not to count on her rather optimistic prediction for the evening. He barely registered surprise when she called to apologize for having to work late. “I’ll just walk back to my house, okay? We’ll meet up tomorrow night and I’m sure at some point my suitcase will make it back to Fitler Square.”

He sighed, said that sounded fine, and hung up as quickly as he could without seeming rude.

His office seemed deadly quiet after the call ended. He could hear his clerks chattering away in their office. No words, just the cheery tone of their conversation. He pushed his door shut then walked back to his desk. If he swiveled his chair a little he could see the lights of Market Street and the Bourse in the late summer afternoon. People going for dinner out or maybe heading to the movies. He could see couples walking hand-in-hand, comfortable with the status quo. He turned back to the work on his desk, but he couldn’t focus on any of it.

Why the hell had he proposed in such a ham-fisted manner? As a lawyer, he should have known better. How many trials had he handled? Had he ever done a worse job examining a witness or arguing to the jury?

His trial advocacy professor had a rule—never ask a witness a question to which you didn’t know the answer. Well, he’d blown that rule last night.

A future together seemed so obvious to him that he couldn’t see why it wasn’t similarly obvious for Elise. All along, he figured his job was to get her to see how well they fit together and how much they loved each other. Well, Elise had finally seen that she loved him and there was no suggestion they didn’t fit well together. Who didn’t want to marry the person they loved, or at least plan a future of some sort?

Instead, he got “I can’t.” What did “I can’t” mean? Oh, and “I’m scared.” What the hell did she have to be scared of?

Just as quickly, his annoyance was replaced by a sad resignation. He propped his elbows on the desk and pressed his face into his hands.

It wasn’t a lost cause. Elise loved him and she liked sleeping with him and she hadn’t dumped him.

She just didn’t want to marry him.

No, he cautioned himself, that wasn’t what she said. She’d said she couldn’t. She’d also said she was scared. She’d been sincere about that. She’d even sounded young, like a child terrified of the monsters under the bed.

Monsters. Childhood monsters. Jack’s head started to pound. Could Elise have been molested as a child? Maybe by that bastard, Tom something or other?

There was a good reason he’d let other prosecutors in the US Attorney’s office handle the kiddie porn cases. He wasn’t good with the nuances and the need to understand the sick pervs who preyed on kids. He lacked the ability to split them open like overripe bananas.

He called the woman over at the US Attorney’s office who had handled all their sex-crime cases. She reassured him that anyone with Elise’s confidence in bed and out was unlikely to be an adult survivor of molestation.

He leaned back in his chair and let out the breath he’d been holding. He thanked her and got off the phone. Sometimes ruling something out was almost as good as solving the problem.

Jack turned to stare out the window again. He’d get another shot at it, and the second time he’d mount a much better case for the two of them building a future together.

When Christine walked into Elise’s office, Elise stopped sorting through files in one of the many banker’s boxes on the floor.

“I’m hiding from Jack,” Elise announced.

“Why? I thought he was the hero
du jour
for flying out to Oregon and providing a buffer between you and Peggy.” Christine folded herself into one of the visitor chairs and played with the end of the ponytail dangling over her shoulder.

“He was. He is. And he met me at the airport last night. With flowers.”

“Wait, you mean he was actually in the airport, not just pulling up the car after you’d gotten your bags?”

Elise grinned. “Actually splurged on short-term parking,” she confirmed.

Christine looked impressed. “Then he’s a precious jewel and you should treasure him.”

Elise toyed with the pen resting on a pad covered with doodles of hearts, flowers, X’s and O’s. “I do.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Elise didn’t want to tell Christine that Jack had proposed. She could imagine the hoots of derision now:
He’s a great guy, totally hot, really loves you, etc., etc.
It was all true, of course, but it didn’t address any of her misgivings.

“I don’t know. He wants me to move in and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.” She gave Christine a significant glance. “I love my house too much. What if it didn’t work out?”

Christine nodded. “Yeah, I know. Men think it’s just a matter of making space in the closet for the woman’s clothes. It’s a big step, not something you’re going to do because he crooks his finger. And what are you supposed to do with your home while he wants you to play house over at his place?”

Just as though she agreed wholeheartedly with Christine’s cynical view, Elise said, “Precisely.”

Christine shrugged and changed the subject. Guilt poked at Elise, needling her for mischaracterizing Jack’s intentions. Now Christine would think he was a schmuck, interested only in his own convenience. Elise couldn’t see what else she could say, though. Getting cross-examined on her feelings about marriage when she didn’t have any of the answers? Never going to happen.

Christine was rattling off some story about the latest guy who’d asked her out. Elise listened without much interest. Christine’s sad-sack boyfriends were a running joke. Elise used to arrange dates for her with actual men—Christine would always find something wrong with them. Elise gave up. Not her problem to solve, she reckoned. So she smiled at the funny bits and nodded in commiseration when Christine got to the part where the latest disaster showed his true colors as a dweeb or dork or loser.

At the back of Elise’s mind, she calculated how long she’d need to stall Jack before he let the subject of marriage fade away. She wanted to see him, she definitely wanted to keep sleeping with him, her stomach dropped at even the thought of losing him, but marriage? Kids? A future? Elise’s heart slammed into a cinder block wall every time she contemplated the prospect. It would be like jumping off the roof of a building, figuring the ground-floor awnings would save you. No one would be stupid enough to think they’d survive the fall. And yet Jack wanted her to take the plunge. Better all round to avoid the topic if she could.