Jake's Love (Courthouse Connections, #7)

by Ann Jacobs

  “I met Marcy at the gym a couple of weeks ago. She’s beautiful—a lot of fun, too. They seem happy now. I’d think he’d want her to be pregnant. After all, he has to love babies to make his living delivering them,” Jake commented.

  “They do want a family, but the miscarriage split them up for all that time. I don’t think either of them ever quit loving each other, but Sam made some pretty bad mistakes. Marcy was terribly hurt—hurt enough to shut him out for more than five years until last spring. I think she’s happier, now that she isn’t working herself half to death in the state attorney’s office.”

  Jake nodded. “I’m glad Meghan wants to stay at home with Joci and any other children we may have.” When Maury looked confused, he laughed. “With all the tension in there tonight, I guess I forgot to tell you that Meghan and I are getting married. Small wedding on May 17, down in Englewood, just family and a few friends. You and everyone in the office are invited, of course. Meghan’s parents are holding a big dinner reception in August, so they can introduce us to their friends and business associates.”

  Maury buttoned his shirt, then held out his hand. “Congratulations. You’d have to search hard to find a woman sweeter than Meghan, or prettier for that matter. She deserves some happiness after losing her husband and then having Joci born with biliary atresia.”

  “Thanks. I hope I’ll be able to schedule a few days off for a honeymoon, because we don’t intend to wait to get married. I’ll just have to blame you if I have to spend our honeymoon working.”

  “I’ll do my best. I’ll even take an extra emergency call for you. Wouldn’t want to get off on a bad start with the newest wife in the group. You go on and spend some time with Meghan. It’s only eleven o’clock and you’re still used to residents’ schedules. I’ll stay here the rest of the night with Mrs. Anderson and catch a few winks in the surgeons’ lounge.”

  Jake wasn’t about to turn down the chance to see Meghan again, but he still hadn’t had a chance to call his mother, with all that had been going on while the donor’s kidney was in transit. He’d postpone that for tomorrow, he thought as he pulled out of the parking lot and called Meghan to be sure she was still awake.

  ● ● ●

  The phone startled Meghan, who’d just checked on Joci and was about to crawl in bed. “Hello?”

  “Are you still awake?” Jake sounded tired but ever so sexy.

  She smiled. “Yes. I’m sort of a night owl. Comes from having had to check Joci several times each night, for so long. I just looked in on her and was about to go to bed.”

  “Want company? Dr. Kramer offered to take my place on call for the rest of the night so I could come see my brand-new fiancée.”

  “Sure. I’ll show you the invitations I played with designing this evening. If you approve, I’ll get them to Mom tomorrow so she can take them to the printer. I did informal ones for the wedding, fancier ones for the reception.”

  She laughed when he told her he was more interested in seeing her, but he’d look at her handiwork too. “I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Good thing about this time of night, there’s never a lot of traffic.”

  While Meghan waited for Jake, she tidied up her work space, setting out the designs she’d drawn for wedding invitations, trying to decide which, if any, he’d like best. Her personal favorite featured a pair of kissing dolphins against a muted photo of the water beyond the beach across from her dad’s condo, but she also loved one she’d adapted from a photo of a six-sided starfish she’d found online, set against what looked like the floor of the sea as she recalled from scuba diving as a teenager and placed on plain, pale aqua paper as a top border. It lent itself to either formal or informal text.

  She’d played with text combinations, finally settling on a simple script font. When she thought of Jake, she thought conventional, in keeping with the dignity of his profession, so she kept the wording simple: “Along with their parents, Meghan Bryant & Dr. Jacob Levinson invite you to join them as they celebrate their marriage Sunday, May 17, 2015, at 4:00 in the evening, Lemon Bay Beach, Englewood Florida. Dinner and dancing to follow, Crabtrap Marina.” She’d printed out other possible wording, including a beautiful one with formal text placed inside a circle with a phrase in Hebrew at the top and one in English at the bottom, that obviously had been designed for a formal wedding.

  The doorbell rang and Meghan hurried to answer it, not wanting Patches to start barking. She greeted Jake with a hug and kiss, then dragged him in her office to see her handiwork. The first one he picked up was the one with the starfish she’d found. “I like this one, but can you make the star straight up instead of diagonal?”

  “It’s not a star of David, love, it’s photo of a starfish, but yes, it will look like a stylized star of David if I straighten it. The rest of the border is my interpretation of what the sea floor looks like. Are the colors okay?”

  “They’re as gorgeous as you, sweetheart. I didn’t realize how talented you are until I saw these. Is this the message that will go on the bottom?” He frowned when he saw the first line.

  Meghan flipped through the various wordings she’d copied. “I tried to select informal invitations, without going too wild with block print and wild, ones like these.” She brought up some really crazy informal invitations that made both of them laugh. “Somehow I didn’t think these would go over well with either of our families—or with most of your fellow doctors and their wives.”

  “You’re right there. My mother would die of heart failure, but I imagine yours would survive.”

  Meghan clicked on the mouse and killed the crazy invitation display. “A lot of the samples, even informal ones, have different phrases suitable for lovers, I guess, written in both Hebrew and English. At least I guess they’re the same phrases in both languages. I have to confess I don’t read more than a word or two of Hebrew.”

  Jake bent and looked at the samples that she brought them up on the screen. “This first invitation where the words swirl around the English and Hebrew letters is a loose translation of the English words. The one in the middle has a Hebrew phrase on top, and an entirely different English phrase on the bottom. I hate to admit it, but I can’t read what the Hebrew phrase encircling the last invitation text says. I’ll lay odds that whoever put it there just picked some pretty Hebrew symbols and arranged them to look nice.”

  “I like the idea us selecting a phrase together. It seems just a little bit traditional to put on an an informal invitation, though.”

  Jake picked up a pencil and paper, and sketched a Hebrew phrase. “I’d like to have this printed in Hebrew above the border with the starfish.” He stared at what he’d written, and shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart, I don’t write Hebrew well—so I can’t guarantee this is exactly what I intended, so I suggest you find a rabbi or cantor to print it out correctly for the engraver.”

  “What does it say?” Meghan couldn’t begin to make out the symbols. She wasn’t sure any translator she could find would be able to figure it out either.

  “Don’t ask me to say it in Hebrew, but I remember the English translation from a friend from medical school’s wedding invitation. It means, ‘I have found the one in whom my soul delights.’ Since that wedding, I’ve always hoped I’d find a woman I could say this to and mean it, even if it does sound a little stilted in the twenty-first century.”

  He bent, tilted her face to his, and kissed her, long and deep. “I’ve found her, love. I hope you’ve found your soulmate too.”

  Tears flooded her eyes, but they were tears of joy, not sorrow. “I found you the night you held me, comforted me while I was afraid I’d lose Joci.” Picking up a calligraphy pen, she wrote the words he’d said in simple script.

  “This can go below the starfish border. Two souls. One heart. I’ll save the design with the kissing dolphins for when we announce the birth of Joci’s sister or brother.” Meghan stood and put her arms around Jake. “Is your mother going to come to our wedding? If she is, I wan
t to include her in the text of the invitation.”

  He looked sheepish when he shrugged. “I didn’t have a moment of free time without an audience tonight, so I haven’t told her yet. I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise.”

  “You’d better. We can’t discount the possibility that my mom can locate yours, or that she’ll get on the phone to harass her about coordinating colors, sending guest lists for both the wedding and the three-ring circus you told Daddy we’d appreciate so he can keep things peaceful with Mom—and God only knows what else.”

  “Ouch. You do know how to light a fire under my butt. I won’t forget, now that I’ve been properly warned. Now how about us going to your bedroom and sealing some more promises before I have to go?”

  “That will have to wait until day after tomorrow, love. Mom is going to come stay with Joci, which means I can come spend the night with you. I’m no prude, but I draw the line at sleeping with you right under my daughter’s nose. Until we’re married, that is.” She went up on tiptoe and kissed him, only to be swept up in his arms and carried unceremoniously to her living room couch.

  “Is this far enough away from curious little ears?” he asked, setting her down and sprawling on the couch.

  “Not for what you have in mind, but it’ll do for a little foreplay before you go home to your lonely bed.” That said, Meghan sat on Jake’s lap and they necked like a pair of high school kids until he cried uncle and went home, muttering something about not knowing if he’d be able to wait another five weeks before they could sleep together every night.

  ● ● ●

  “Hello, Mother.” Jake toed off his loafers and stretched out behind his desk during the lunchtime lull in office patients. “I have wonderful news.”

  “You didn’t call yesterday. I was worried.” Miriam Levinson’s voice came out a little scratchy over the speaker phone, emphasizing the remnants of a Brooklyn accent she’d never quite lost during the fifty-plus years she’d lived in Atlanta. “What is this news of yours?”

  He glanced at his desk calendar. “Meghan and I are getting married May 17 in Englewood. We hope you and the nanas will come. The wedding will be small, for just families and a few close friends. Her parents are planning a reception—” He looked at the calendar again, thankful that his nurse had entered the dates. “—August 15, to introduce us as a couple to Tampa society. Teri Miller, Meghan’s mother, will be calling you to ask for your invitation list for the reception. Let me know who you’d like for us to invite to the ceremony itself, and I’ll let Meghan know.”

  “This Meghan, is she Jewish?”

  “Yes, Mother. She’s also beautiful, kind, and talented. Not to mention that we love each other deeply.”

  “Orthodox?”

  He took a deep breath. “No, her father attends a Reform synagogue. She’s a widow, and she has a five year old daughter. I love Joci almost as much as I love her mom.”

  “Oy vey. You marry her and you will be dead to me. You disgrace your father, may he rest in peace, by turning your back on your family. Your heritage. Hearing about this may very well put your nanas in their graves.”

  Jake took a deep breath. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I have to do what’s right for me—and that’s marrying the woman I love, not necessarily one who fits your definition of whom I ought to marry, for no reason other than to honor the deep love I know you felt for my father. I’ll send you plane fare and arrange for a hotel for you and the nanas. Use it if you change your mind. I have patients to see now, so I have to go. I love you, and whether you like it or not, I’ll always be your son.”

  With that, he cut off the conversation and called Meghan. “I don’t think we’d better count on my mother coming, but I told her the dates and that I’d send her plane fare and make hotel reservations for her and my two nanas in case she changes her mind. I’ll be busy with patients until close to five o’clock, but hopefully I’ll see you afterward.”

  ● ● ●

  May 17 came quickly. It was a beautiful day on the beach, even before the local florist set up the chuppah and decorated it with pastel-colored flowers and delicate seashells. A scarlet carpet marked the area for guests to sit in white-draped folding chairs, and pale-blue ropes on brass poles cordoned off the area where the wedding was to be held.

  By one o’clock, the dining room at the Crabtrap Marina had been turned into a showplace, where Teri and Meghan’s sister, Amy, were supervising the staff and deciding where to set up the open bar where guests would gather before dinner. They set out place cards and favors for each guest, and argued about which floral centerpiece would look best on each of the twenty round tables.

  Meghan found herself without anything pressing to do, so she looked for Jake until she found him staring out at the bay from the patio outside her daddy’s bedroom. “Hey, what’s wrong?” she asked when she noticed his pensive expression.

  He reached out and drew her to him. “I really didn’t believe they wouldn’t make an appearance, though it’s probably best that they didn’t come.”

  He sounded so sad, she wished she could pick up one of the concrete blocks the florist had used to tie down the chuppah and bop his mother in the head with it. “I’m going to call her. Give me her number again.”

  “Don’t. I’ll call her again before the reception your parents are having for us in August. Hopefully she’ll have settled down by then and accepted what isn’t going to change. I won’t have her ruin our wedding day.”

  Meghan didn’t call, but she had the videographer tape the ceremony from beginning to end, panning to show the idyllic setting as well as all the guests—and her standing with Jake under the gorgeous canopy Joci had helped her design. He looked incredibly handsome in the beige khaki suit her mom had picked for the men to wear with blue dress shirts unbuttoned at the collar, looking down at her with love in his eyes. Only one thing would have made him happier, she knew—that was his mother and nanas’ presence, showing they understood and accepted that he’d married for love.

  Just as his ancestors must have done in another time, when folks tended to stay in one place most of their lives, never mingling much outside their narrow circle of friends. The sadness in his eyes went away little by little, until all their friends joined in the traditional chair dance before the reception ended and they told Joci and her parents goodbye before boarding her dad’s cabin cruiser and beginning their life together, finally alone to share the feelings nothing could spoil—not even the absence of her husband’s family members.

  While Jake talked with her dad, Meghan drew her mom aside. “I want you to send a copy of the video to Jake’s mother. If it takes me the rest of our lives together, I intend to make her understand that our love is too strong for anybody to deny—even her.”

  “What were you talking to your mom about so seriously, sweetheart?” Jake asked as they stepped inside the cabin of their honeymoon hideaway.

  “Just girl talk, husband mine. I think I’m supposed to go in the other stateroom and change for our wedding night. You’re welcome to get comfy in here.”

  When she’d changed out of the blue-and-aqua wedding dress she’d chosen because Jake said the colors reminded him of her eyes, into an off-white silk nightgown gown and peignoir her sister had given her, Meghan joined him in the boat’s main berth.

  “I can’t wait to unwrap my beautiful package,” he told her, taking two steps until their bodies were so close she could feel his breath against her hair. “Never think I have the slightest regret about trading my family’s love for yours.”

  At that moment Meghan swore silently that some way, somehow, she’d find a way to mend the breach—to convince Jake’s family that their marriage was right in the eyes of the same God that looked over them all.

  For now, though, she wanted to show her husband how much she loved him...wanted him. She untied the peignoir and let it slide to the floor, listening to his breathing grow ragged as she stood before him in a nightgown so sheer it hid nothing from h
is view.

  Jake’s smile dazzled her when he carried her to the bed and followed her down. “I want to make love with my beautiful wife, now and always.”

  “Always, my incredibly hot husband.”

  Epilogue

  Late that summer...

  Meghan sat on the front porch, watching Joci play with Patches underneath the big oak tree next to the garage. Last week her mom and dad had hosted a party to celebrate their three month-old marriage, and the party had been a big hit with her old friends, the doctors and staff that Jake worked with and her parents’ separate set of friends. There’d been changes, lots of changes to get used to, and she was happy that Jake had agreed they’d live here in her house until their new, bigger home was built.

  She hugged her belly, wondering when her pregnancy would start to show. She’d just found out last week when she went to see Sam Kramer for a routine exam. Jake had wanted this, was thrilled beyond words, while she was happy yet a little apprehensive. Part of her had wanted to keep him for herself and Joci a little while longer before adding to their family.

  As Jake had predicted, not everything had gone smoothly. Although he’d been the one to insist that his mother accept his bride or walk away from him, Meghan had felt terrible when the woman had turned her back on her only child. At the reception that Meghan had shamed his mother and nanas into attending, his mother had warmed a little, especially to Joci, who hadn’t accepted that her new daddy’s family wanted to shun her.

  “You’re my daddy’s mommy. My nana. You’ve got to like me,” her precocious little girl had said to the woman at the reception after dinner. That had coaxed a small smile from Miriam, a smile that for the first time made Meghan notice that Jake shared a lot of her features.

  Joci had charmed Jake’s nanas even more. “Who could not love such a sweet, pretty child,” his ninety year old Grandma Levinson had said, lifting Joci on her lap and kissing her cheek. Not to be outdone, Miriam’s mother had to spend time with Jake’s new daughter, too.