Jonquils for Jax: The Rousseaus #1 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 12) (6 page)

“Yes,” said Mad, giving him a saucy look. “You almost missed your ride back to Philly, sleepyhead.”

J.C. gave Jax a quick kiss on the cheek as he threw his duffel bag into the backseat of Mad’s car and jumped into the passenger seat beside her. He pulled on some sunglasses and grinned at his baby sister. “Ready, Jeeves.”

Jax chuckled at their antics, waving as Mad pulled away.

Finally she turned and walked backed back to the house. All their relatives and family friends had left yesterday, and Étienne and Kate wouldn’t be returning from their honeymoon in romantic Mooréa for three weeks. Everyone was gone.

Aside from the skeleton staff—a part-time cook hired by Jax, in addition to her mother’s housekeeper, Mrs. Jefferson, two part-time maids, and a gardener/groundskeeper—Jax was now alone. And after the mad rush of the last two weeks, when the estate was full of guests and aflutter with wedding plans, it felt lonesome and welcome all at the same time.

She closed one of the three front doors behind her and ducked into a front room to the right of the entryway—a masculine man cave that had once been her father’s study—and sat down at the desk. Clicking on the mouse, she pulled up the security system feeds and made sure the front gates closed and locked after Mad pulled through them. They didn’t have fences between Le Chateau and the abutting estates—Westerly, owned by the Winslows, and Forrester, owned by the Storys. There had never been a need, and Jax prayed there never would be. She liked the freedom of roaming around the neighborhood on a beautiful afternoon—checking out the Winslows’ famous gardens or sitting beside the pond at Forrester—and knowing that she was safe from prying eyes behind the secure gates of her neighbor’s homes.

Plus, she thought, a catlike grin spreading across her lips, in about two hours, a certain gardener would be walking across Westerly’s lawn to meet her, and she liked the idea of him making his way to her discreetly. Discretion had become paramount in her life.

Especially when hot men were in play.

Even
, she thought, frowning,
when they appeared to have zero interest in her.

Satisfied that Le Chateau was secure, she minimized the window on the computer screen and headed upstairs to get changed for her lesson. While the idea of a self-defense class probably wouldn’t have occurred to Jax on her own, something about the idea greatly appealed to her once Gardener had made the suggestion. Over the last four or five months, she’d lost so much control over her life. Learning to defend herself physically felt like a strong step toward reclaiming her self-reliance.

As she climbed the grand staircase to her bedroom, she toyed with the idea of wearing her skimpiest, sexiest workout clothes. Would he notice? Probably. Would he care? Probably not.

“Quit thinking about him,” she said aloud, feeling annoyed.
You’re not taking a class to see him.
Taking lessons was something she was doing for herself—to learn how to protect herself and start building up her strength and confidence again. Right? Of course, right.

Plus, she thought pragmatically, groaning at the growing stack of scripts beside her desk as she stepped into her bedroom, it was a welcome distraction from her life. It would make her feel productive to learn a new skill, even if she was technically “stuck,” as Mad had observed.

And as far as distractions went, her instructor, despite his rude and gruff ways, and especially when he smiled, wasn’t too shabby.

***

The walk from Haverford Park to Le Chateau probably took most people about ten minutes if they walked across the lawns and through gates and hedges at a brisk clip, but Gardener knew it could take him up to twenty minutes, since he’d be walking slowly, careful not to bump into anything, lacking the long-distance and peripheral vision, taken for granted by everyone else, to make the journey efficient.

Uncertain of what equipment the duchess would have at her “gym,” he threw some dumbbells, a blow-up punching bag, and a towel into a duffel bag and tossed it over his shoulder. Then he grabbed his collapsible walking stick, locked his apartment door, and set forth.

He’d walked over to Westerly twice before—once with Felix to meet the gardener of the adjoining property and once on his own to ask to borrow a double-male connector for the hose when he’d inadvertently stepped on theirs and broken it. He knew where the patio was and how to get around it. He walked confidently over the bright-green grass, taking his time when he saw a blur of brown (tree trunks) or gray (stone benches, large, landscaped boulders, or small outbuildings) in the distance and trying to remember its placement as he grew close enough to identify what it was. Finally, met with a five-foot-high wall-like structure of varying shades of green before him, he knew he’d reached the hedgerow that separated Westerly from Le Chateau. Looking up over the chin-high shrubbery, he could make out the yellowish stone of the adjoining estate mansion some distance away. The only problem? The hedgerow itself.

Hedgerows were, quite literally, rows of tangled hedges, sometimes four or five feet deep. Almost impossible to walk through, unless you were a squirrel or rabbit, they were a great choice for impassable natural beauty when property owners didn’t feel like opting for fences. Because the Rousseaus and Winslows were, as far as Gardener could tell, friendly neighbors and because Jax had obviously walked from Le Chateau to Westerly on Saturday night, there had to be a break in the hedgerow with an opening or gate. If he could find it, he could get through.

Raising his wrist to a few inches beneath his eyes, he looked at the time. Two fifty-five. Shit. This walk had taken a little longer than he thought. He looked up, hoping for an opening to magically appear, but the messy green blur of the barrier looked solid both right and left as far as his eyes could see.

“Fuck,” he muttered, starting to the left.

The thing that really frustrated Gard was that for anyone with halfway normal vision, the entrance would be clear. It was
right here
somewhere. And yet for him, it was elusive. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair, and it pissed him off to have been robbed of his independence, of his God-given right to
see
.

He poked his stick into the row and started running alongside it, hoping that he’d find the void and wouldn’t trip, but he got to the end of the row before realizing that left had been the wrong choice. Turning around as he murmured a string of curses, he switched his stick to the other hand and ran back down the row, jogging past the void, though luckily his stick pattered on the slats of a picket fence, telling him to back up.

Sweating and panting, he took several steps back and there it was: the cutout in the hedge with a little white gate almost hidden between the rows. Walking quickly through and fastening the gate behind him, he trudged across the green lawn toward the massive yellow structure, then bore to the left, able to make out the shape and color of a circular gravel driveway. Pausing by the corner of the house, he folded up his stick and tucked it into the duffel, then swiped his forearm over his sweaty face.

Forcing himself to walk in a way that looked leisurely, not frazzled, he made his way around the building, staring at the ground so he wouldn’t stumble. He stopped when he came to a set of stairs and ascended five steps that—presumably—led to the main entrance of the house.

Standing before the door, he looked for a bell, but finding none, he knocked and waited.

And waited.

Hmm. Nothing.

No sound of footsteps. No hot brunette. Nobody.

He knocked again, then pressed his ear to the window, hoping to hear the sound of her making her way to the door. Still nothing.

How late was he anyway? He held up his watch close to his eyes again. Three twelve. Shit. Did she think he’d stood her up? While he didn’t love the idea of teaching her, he wouldn’t want her to think he’d just flake out without a word either.

He knocked again, more forcefully this time, his frustration about the walk and the hedgerow and his general resentment about his lot in life making the knock sound more like a bang.

“Coming! Coming!”

His heart.

Oh Lord, his fucking heart nearly beat out of his goddamned chest at the sound of her voice.

He stood back from the door, wiping the relieved smile off his face and steeling his expression.

The door opened.

He smelled her before he saw her, before she came into focus, and it took all of his fucking willpower not to close his eyes and breathe her in like oxygen. Much like his ears had sharpened over the past year, Gard’s sense of smell had sharpened too. Combined with a lifelong working knowledge of plants and herbs, it wasn’t hard to sort through the mix of scent that was Jax: rosemary…and lemons.

Fucking heaven.

“Hi!” she said, holding the door open.

“Hi,” he said, walking through it.

He looked around, expecting to find himself in a grand entry hall, but they were in a small study-like room instead. He breathed in, wrinkling his nose as he traded Jax’s fresh scent for old cigars and leather.

“Why’d you come to the side door?” asked Jax. “It’s a wonder I even heard you. The study door was closed.”

Fuck. He’d gone to the wrong door. Must have been one of those houses with all sorts of doors along the front façade.

He cleared his throat, following her through the study and into the grand entry hall he’d been originally expecting.

“Just went to the first door I found, Duchess. When there are fifty, it’s hard to choose the right one.”

She turned to face him. “Well, anyway…you’re here.”

Close enough to touch, and therefore close enough to see clearly, he let his eyes linger on the loveliness of her face for a long moment before dropping them…and the next breath he sucked in had nothing to do with cigars or lavender. On her mouthwatering little body she wore a bright-aqua sports bra and skintight black nylon leggings that just made it to her knees. Her flat stomach was bare. Her legs and feet were bare. As he stared at her feet, he exhaled slowly, running his eyes back up her body, checking out her legs, the slight flare of her hips, her tight waist, tan stomach, and full, perky breasts. Since it was impossible not to ogle, he didn’t attempt to conceal it, slowly making his way back to her eyes to find them sparkling with amusement.

“Do I pass inspection?” she asked, smiling at him.

He scowled at her, taking a deep breath. Had she done this for his benefit? His dick thanked her for her thoughtfulness. The rest of him was slightly pissed off about the distraction. He was here to teach her how to defend herself, not make himself so sexually frustrated that he’d be up half the night jacking off to relieve his lust.

“Where’s the gym?”

Her smile faded just a touch as she arched an eyebrow at him. “Downstairs.”

“Lead the way. I’ve only got an hour.”

“I wouldn’t want to keep you,” she said, her voice losing its warmth.

He’d hurt her feelings, and that really hadn’t been his intention, but all things considered, it was probably for the best. The more he could keep a little distance between them, the better it would be for both of them.

Trudging downstairs, he couldn’t help but check out her ass, a thing of incredibly beauty in second-skin Lycra. She was in good shape. She shouldn’t need more than a few lessons before he’d feel like she could at least get herself out of a bad situation. And that was the point, right? Not to spend time with her. Just to make sure she could protect herself from future assholes.

“So…you’re involved with movies?”

She turned right at the bottom of the stairs. “Yep.”

“You live out in LA?” he asked.

“I’m staying here for a while.”

“I was wonderin’…” he started.

“About what?”

“You mentioned people taking pictures of you.”

She stiffened. “Mm-hm.”

“Did you really win an Oscar?”

“My movie did,” she answered.

They were in a long cream-colored hallway with recessed lighting and classy framed black-and-white pictures on the wall. He passed a room on the right that read “Screening” on the dark-glass door and another across the hall that read “Studio.”

“Are you an actress?”

“Nope. Producer.”

“Are producers generally bothered by the paparazzi?”

To his left, they passed three clear-glass sliding doors leading to what he assumed to be a pool from the rectangular-shaped aqua blob surrounded by what appeared to be gray slate.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they are. If they’re only twenty-seven and…”

Smokin’ hot.

“And…?”

“Their family’s already, you know, on the media’s radar.”

“Like Paris Hilton?”

She turned around to face him, stopping before another dark-glass door that read “Gym/Spa.”

“No,” she said emphatically, her green eyes wide and angry. “
Not
like Paris.”

Gard stopped walking, standing before her, close enough that her unusual combination of lemons and rosemary made his senses soar a little. Her glower brought him back to earth.