Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance by Magdalen Braden Read Free Book Online

name this conveniently-shared interest. Maybe she liked to cook. It didn’t matter. In his imagination, she smiled at him—she was relaxed and having a good time.
    “I don’t know. In my fantasy she always says yes,” he said.
    “Jack, I agreed to help you get her over here, but I won’t let you turn a blind eye to her autonomy. She’s likely to say no, and frankly, if she does I’m backing her up.”
    “How can you know that she’ll say no?”
    “Because Ms. Carroll isn’t one of your billboard bimbos. She sees herself as a regular girl—excuse me, woman —and she sees you as a sort of celebrity. Which you are, in your way.”
    Jack glanced at the clock. Elise should be arriving any minute. His clever plan was starting to feel like a Hail Mary pass with ten seconds left in the game. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Anita King was right. This ploy might have bought him another chance, but there was a limit to how much he could do this way. He couldn’t trick a woman into dating him.
    Think . It was a problem. He solved problems all the time, it’s what had made him such a good prosecutor. “Is there any way I can appeal to her generosity? Sense of fair play? Convince her of my neediness?”
    Judge King laughed. “You have it bad, don’t you? To answer your questions, no, no and no. You can’t trap her, and she’s always going to turn you down. I won’t let you hound her. You may have to let this one go.”
    Jack rubbed his face. He wasn’t accepting no as an answer—yet. But he recognized that Judge King was right. He could only push so much.
    “Oh, stop thinking so hard,” she complained. “You’re giving me a headache. I’m a romantic, you know, and I figure if you two are meant to be together, you’ll figure it out. Both of you will figure it out. Stop assuming this is solely your problem to solve.”
    There was a knock, and one of Judge King’s law clerks showed Elise in.
    Her hair—with its gleaming silver curls—was tousled and her cheeks were rosy. Just seeing her overwhelmed his senses and snagged his breath. In the interval since the hearing, the memory of her had dimmed slightly. Now, with her standing there, his feelings clicked back on, a hundred neon signs flickering into brilliance. He couldn’t evade the sense she was his future, his life, his—everything.
    He froze, drinking her in. She was an oasis after he’d been dying of thirst.
    Elise looked over at him, a challenge in her eyes. He forced himself to stay where he was, feigning a relaxed pose against the judge’s desk. Every part of him wanted to touch every part of her.
    “How nice to see you again, Judge McIntyre,” Elise said. Her voice was like the Sahara. She turned to Judge King. “I gather this is about more than the Roundtable, Judge?”
    Anita King chuckled. “Yes, I’m an irrepressible shadchan —a matchmaker. When I heard that you’d managed to snag this one’s interest, well, I had to offer to help. You haven’t made it easy on him, have you?”
    “No, Judge, it’s fair to say I haven’t.” Elise’s deep-pink lips widened in a cheerful smile.
    She didn’t seem fazed at all by the summons to Judge King’s chambers. In fact, she appeared composed, even pleased. She looked like she knew Mona Lisa’s secret. Jack’s breath caught. Was this going to be a wasted gambit?
    “Anita, you can’t blame her,” he said to Judge King, although he couldn’t take his eyes off Elise. “I’ve mishandled this from the beginning. Any sensible lawyer would look askance at being accosted by a judge.”
    “Well, I can’t argue with that.” Judge King spread her hands out in appeal. “But, dear, just consider, it took a lot of—what’s the word you young people use these days? Oh, right— cojones for him to announce his feelings from the bench.” She smiled brightly at them both. “So, what’s it to be? Are you going to make this Jewish grandmother happy or aren’t you?”
    A rhetorical