Free Blackjack and Moonlight: A Contemporary Romance by Magdalen Braden Page A

diabolically elusive Elise Carroll. He also understood what the poets had been saying for millennia— love sucked . Even if Elise had shared his feelings on day one, they’d still have an uphill battle merging their lives. That the feelings were all on his side left him struggling to know how to proceed. How does a man treat the woman he wants to cherish forever when all she wants is to f—uh, have her way with him?
    Jack fumed in the cool April air. He’d been born a century too late. A hundred years ago, his courtship would have gone very differently. He’d have asked her father for her hand in marriage. Elise might have been allowed the option to say no, but the economic reality gave women little freedom to decide things as essential as who they married.
    Once married, they’d have had a lot of time to get to know each other. Now he got one night with her per week. And precious little of that time was going to be taken up with conversation. How was he supposed to court a woman determined to keep everything purely physical? Better the sexual frustration inherent in the early twentieth century approach.
    No, he had that wrong. He might be a throwback to an earlier time, but the woman in that scenario wouldn’t have been his Elise. The fearless woman he’d fallen for in his courtroom couldn’t have existed in any other century. She was a product of the present, and that included having autonomy over her sex life.
    Bad luck for him that he’d fallen for a thoroughly modern woman with no economic need for a husband, and seemingly no interest in romance.
    His stride lengthened.
    What was wrong with this picture? Wasn’t it supposed to be the man who wanted sex with no emotional ties? And wasn’t the woman more likely to be the one mooning over her lover’s photo on the office website? Because he had to face facts. He’d clicked on Elise’s photo at the Fergusson & Leith website more than once. A lot more than once.
    Elise was a cipher to him, unlike anyone he’d known. His previous experience had resulted in fairly formal encounters followed, eventually, by fairly formal sex. Formal, unemotional sex. He’d actually caught himself thinking about a particularly tricky prosecution while engaged in certain intimate acts in bed.
    Jack shook his head. He enjoyed sex, of course, but surely it was just a physiological imperative, like scratching an itch? He’d always assumed it got so much attention because of the cultural taboos around nudity and non-procreational coitus.
    Yet, here he was, intensely aware of how few blocks were left between his body and hers. He was already aroused just thinking about the evening, feeling his desire for Elise welling up inside him. If all it was going to be was sex, at least it was going to be sex with the woman of his heart.
    Which brought him back to that final kiss last week. He needed to guard against that…that tiniest touch of romance. Turned out, kisses could be equally enthusiastic but where one type said, “Wow, you’re hot,” another said just as clearly, “I love you.” Without being sure how he knew, he sensed he’d lose Elise if every touch said, “I love you.”
    That meant he’d better be prepared to run through the cases on his docket to keep his emotions in check. And wasn’t that the most depressing resolve? It was even having a deleterious effect on his desire.
    Jack could just see Elise’s house on the next block. He looked at his watch—still too early. He walked over to a park bench in Fitler Square, near a bronze sculpture of three turtles. He was nervous. It felt a bit like those first few days as a judge, when he’d expected someone to leap up and declare the Senate confirmation had been revoked on the basis of Jack’s incompetence.
    These anxieties happened with new jobs. Once he found his groove, he’d be okay. He’d worked through it as a prosecutor, then as the US Attorney, and he could do it now as a judge. His nerves around Elise were