Jonquils for Jax: The Rousseaus #1 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 12) (13 page)

“You were already ruined,” whispered Jax, on the edge of her seat.

Skye paused midbite, her smart, clear-blue eyes scanning Jax’s face. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Daisy and Skye exchanged a look, then Daisy asked in an overly casual tone, “Do you have a boyfriend, Jax?”

“No.”

“But there’s someone,” said Skye knowingly.

“And I’m betting a
new
someone,” said Daisy.

“I don’t know.” Jax picked up her wine glass and took a small sip. “Maybe.”

“You have to tell us!” said Daisy.

“No way,” said Jax, feeling her cheeks flush. “Not until there’s something, you know, to tell. And anyway, we’re here to talk about Skye’s party!”

Both women stared at her without flinching.

Daisy broke first. “We’ll promise to drop it if you promise to bring him.”

“Bring him?”

“Yes. We won’t ask you any more about him, but if he’s still in the picture in a few more weeks,” said Skye, in total collusion with her Mommy and Me friend, “bring him to the party.”

Bring the gardener, Gardener, to a party at Westerly.

Bring the gardener, who was a son of a gardener, to a party on Blueberry Lane.

Bring the gardener to a party his employers’ sons would be attending.

Bring the gardener, of whom her mother would never, ever approve, to a party with the Winslows, Englishes, Storys, and Amblers.

Bring him.

She took a long sip of wine, and when she finally lowered her glass, she grinned at her new friends. “Deal.”

“Wonderful,” said Skye. “Now let’s talk about my party!”

After they’d hammered out the party details, they’d sat in the sun for another hour laughing and talking, and Jax was surprised and gratified by how easily she’d slipped into a comfortable rapport with the other two women.

They were all right around the same age, and even though Daisy and Skye were married with young children, Jax had felt totally at ease with them, talking about TV shows they all loved and books they’d recently read. And as an hour turned into two and the first wine bottle was quickly traded for another, Jax realized that there was a lot to like about these suburban moms raising their children in safe, lovely Haverford and its environs. Before now, she hadn’t felt strong pangs for marriage and children, but as she walked back to Le Chateau after agreeing to go to Daisy’s house for another “planning” lunch the Friday after next, she felt them for the first time in her life.

A warm home. Children. A man who loved her. So much to love about the lives that Daisy and Skye were living.

And Jax would do it all differently—so differently from the way her parents had done it. She’d be a hands-on mom, like Skye and Daisy, taking Mommy and Me classes with her babies and spending time with them on purpose—because she wanted to. She wouldn’t foist them off on a nanny before they were able to speak, and she wouldn’t jet off to Paris, or Los Angeles, or Tokyo and hire a paid nurse when one (or four) of them came down with the chicken pox. She would spend long summer days running through the sprinkler with them and teaching them how to swim. She would tuck them in at night, telling them “
Vous etes si belle que vous regarder est une souffrance
” after singing them lullabies in French and pushing their dirty-blond hair from their foreheads—

“Wait!” she exclaimed, stopping in her tracks. She blinked twice, turning to look over her shoulder, not at Westerly, but at the chimneys of Haverford Park just beyond, where a dirty-blond-haired gardener would be waiting for her in just a few hours.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said, quickening her pace as she ducked through the hedgerow. “You barely know him!”

And yet the image was there in her head. As clear as day. A sleeping child with the gardener’s hair, falling asleep to lullabies sung in soft and dirty French.

***

If Gardener Thibodeaux had ever believed that only women got the jitters before a first date, the way he’d felt all day would have soundly trounced such an idiotic notion. As he pulled an old border of pachysandra from around the swimming pool area, he thought of nothing but Jax.

It wasn’t that he was nervous about spending time with her…since meeting her, he
craved
time with her, and not seeing her since Wednesday afternoon’s lesson had felt like a long time.

It wasn’t that he was nervous about taking her to Club7, the restaurant and bar associated with the Philadelphia Brotherhood of Police. He was proud to be seen with Jax Rousseau. If he ran into the guys he used to work with, they’d be blown away by the girl on his arm.

That said, he wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to see the guys he used to work with. He hadn’t been around them much since Gil’s death and his own retirement. Several of his buddies had tried to reach out to him, but he’d ignored their attempts. What if he ran into them tonight? And what if they talked about what had happened in any detail? Did he owe it to Jax to fill her in first?

Speaking of Jax, it felt really weird and really wrong to have her pick him up and drive them. But the thing was, he needed to figure out how to live
this
life. And living this life meant letting other people drive sometimes. Sure, he could have rented a limo and driver, but that wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was. Trying to find a silver lining, he reminded himself that even if she was driving, he still got to be alone with her.

Over the past two days, he’d read her script, and while he’d found it lacking in some realism, overall he thought it was a strong project. It was the story of a multigenerational cop family with Irish roots, and the protagonist, a third-generation female cop named Jenny O’Laughlin, starts her first day as a vice detective when the series begins. Though she’s been led to believe that she’ll be conducting investigations, instead she’s asked about her willingness to go undercover as a prostitute in a long-term sting.

The series, which would explore the underbelly of Philadelphia’s prostitution and narcotics rings by way of a department insider, could be a fascinating study of the “other side” of vice, flush with opportunities for drama in Jenny’s job, with her family, and with her boyfriend, a fireman who won’t find out what she’s been doing until episode five or six.

Gard could understand why Jax had liked it, and he knew plenty of cops with whom she could speak, to be sure she got the script perfect every time. Heck,
he
could work with her as an advisor, tweaking a word here and there, correcting a misconception, or just keeping the show as accurate as possible. Even though he’d worked SVU, he could still—

No.

No, he couldn’t.

He sighed, gathering a pile of pachysandra, throwing it into a wheelbarrow, and heading back toward the gardening shed.

More than once over the last few days, he’d gotten carried away like this. The script was compelling enough to make him dream about having a chance to put all his now-worthless knowledge to good use once again. But he needed to remind himself that life was gone. He wasn’t a cop anymore. He wasn’t a TV script advisor. He was a gardener, and if he didn’t want any more disappointment in his life, he’d do well to remember it.

After dropping off the wheelbarrow, he headed back to his apartment and took a shower, soaping his body and shampooing his hair. Watching as the water finally ran clear, he shifted his mind back to Jax, trying to figure out what the hell was going on between them and wishing he had the willpower to walk away now instead of watching her walk away later.

But instead of coming up with a plan of defense, as would be prudent, more and more he felt himself leaning into whatever was happening between them. His heart, which had been brutalized by Tiffany years ago, had recovered and was strong enough to fall in love again. And no matter how much of a bad choice Jax Rousseau seemed to be in theory, his head and his heart (and his dick, for Lord’s sake) wouldn’t admit it.

He liked her.

He liked her a lot.

And as far as he could tell, the whole game of “Did she or didn’t she?” was over. She liked him too. He was certain of it.

So he’d sort of tacitly decided that without taking advantage of her or pressuring her, he’d take what he could get…and when it was over—when she returned to Hollywood or New York or wherever her bold and glamorous destiny would take her—he would have an eternity to get over her. For now? He just wanted to enjoy her. He’d endured two years of hell; he’d earned a little bit of heaven.

After shaving and running a brush through his thick dark-blond hair, he stepped naked into his bedroom and tugged on a clean pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and a white button-down shirt, which he rolled up at the cuffs and tucked into the jeans. Pulling his pewter medal of St. Michael, the patron saint of cops, from his dresser drawer, he put it around his neck for the first time in over a year, slipping it beneath his T-shirt and whispering part of the policemen’s prayer—“Give me a cool head and a stout heart…”—as he slid his feet into black loafers and grabbed a black leather belt from his closet doorknob.

As he threaded the belt through the loops of denim, he thought about having a drink to calm his nerves but chastised himself as a fucking coward for the idea. Grabbing his keys from a hook by the door, he pulled it shut behind him and headed for the gates of Haverford Park to wait for her.

***

Jax pulled up in front of the Englishes’ estate, unsurprised to see Gard standing by the front pillars, his body tall, masculine, and graceful in jeans and a white shirt. What did surprise her, however, was her reaction to him.

Her heart instantly sped up.

Her breathing quickened.

Her skin flushed.

Her toes curled.

She sighed.

Merde
but she had it bad for this man.

He approached her Mercedes S-Class sedan, whistling low as he opened the door and swung his body into the passenger seat.

“
Bon soir, Duchesse
,” he said, grinning at her.

“Hi,” she said, ridiculously happy to be around him again.

“There have been many times I wished I could get behind the wheel of a car again, but none of those moments made me want to cry as much as this one,” he said, reaching out to caress the dashboard before him. He slid his glance back to her. “This is one fine automobile, Jax Rousseau.”

“It’s not mine,” she said, butterflies filling her tummy. “It belongs to my mother. I’m just borrowing it.”

She watched as he reached for his seatbelt and buckled himself in, the dark-blond hair on his tan forearm golden in the light of the setting sun. His arms were strong and muscular, corded with veins and muscle. Manly hands. Rough hands that would chafe her soft skin if he touched her. As if her thought could influence the movement of his hand, it suddenly rose, the backs of his fingers stopping when he reached her chin, resting there for a moment before gently lifting her face and forcing her eyes to meet his.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“You look beautiful tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“You smell like lemons and rosemary.”

“Is that…?”

“…okay?” he said softly. “I love it.”

“Good,” she whispered, mesmerized by the closeness of him, longing for more from him.

“Listen, now.” He drew closer to her, his chest leaning over the bolster between them, his drawl low and serious when he spoke again. “I’m goin’ to kiss you, Duchess. And this time, it’s not goin’ to be a blip or a mistake or
just
a kiss. Got it?”

His eyes, almost black and wide with hunger, searched hers for a refusal, but he wouldn’t find any. She’d been dreaming of this moment for two straight days.

Raising her hands, she cupped his jaw and pulled him closer, her breath jagged with anticipation and need. “Got it.”

His lips weren’t gentle and tentative this time. They crashed down on hers, urgent, impatient, and greedy, his fingers plunging into her hair and tilting her head to the side so that he could seal his mouth over hers. She moaned, her fingers clutching at his face as his tongue licked the seam of their lips and slipped into her mouth. She arched forward, meeting the touch of his tongue, tasting, twisting, swallowing the low groan that rose from his throat and was offered to her in surrender. Nibbling her lips, he tilted his head the other way, then kissed her again. Her breasts strained, aching for the firm pressure of his chest pressed flush against her throbbing nipples.

But the bolster. The goddamned bolster wasn’t going to let it happen.

She whimpered with frustration, pulling away and looking up at him—at his midnight-black eyes and slick lips. His chest rose and fell rapidly with his breathing, and she couldn’t look away, panting in time with him as he stared back at her.

“Glad we got that straightened out,” he said, his eyes fierce, his body taut. He slowly pulled his hands from her hair and cupped her cheeks, his gaze drinking her in for a thirst he couldn’t seem to quench.

She smiled at him—a tender, relieved grin accompanied by a wistful whimper. “Should we—maybe we should stay in tonight? We could watch a movie or…”