Jonquils for Jax: The Rousseaus #1 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 12) (8 page)

She gave him a look. “You forget. I grew up with two older brothers.”

He scoffed. She was cool for letting the whole “yet” thing slide, and he was willing to couch their relationship in friendship if he was going to be training her over the next few weeks. But the duchess chugging a beer and burping her pleasure? Yeah, right. Not likely.

“Oh, you don’t believe me, huh?”

“Nope.”

“Not even a little bit?” she hummed, grinning at him like she knew something he didn’t.

“Not even a little bit,” he confirmed, straightening his smile and remembering why he was there. “Now, let’s get back to the eyes, huh?”

For the following hour, they shelved the flirtation, and Jax was a surprisingly committed student, concentrating fully on his instruction. He taught her two techniques for startling and/or disabling her enemy: eye poking and eye gouging.

With eye poking, he explained, she should spread her second and third fingers and thrust them into her attacker’s eyes, momentarily blinding him and hopefully giving her enough time to run away.

With eye gouging, he demonstrated how to grab your assailant’s head and press your thumbs forcefully into his eye sockets with the intent of dislodging an eyeball.

Jax hesitated while performing both moves on the punching bag, which Gardener had expected, because poking or thrusting your fingers into the eyes of another human being was anathema to most people.

“I know it feels wrong to attack another creature’s eyes. We’re wired to reject it,” he told her. “But these are two really useful moves and I need you to try, okay?”

Her jabs were pathetic at first, but by the end of the hour, she was trusting herself more. Using a punching bag as a “person,” she was able to poke and gouge successfully several times.

One problem, however? For as good shape as she was in, Jax lacked the arm strength required to make either move truly effective.

He handed her two ten-pound dumbbells. “Time to build up some muscle mass in those arms.”

As she took the weights from him, their fingers brushed together, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel it. He did. And it sent a tiny shiver of pleasure up his arm, making his hair stand on end, making his skin long for more contact. She must have felt it too because her eyes flared deep and green, and she gulped softly as she looked up at him.

“W-what do you want me to do with these?”

“Bicep curls,” he said, pantomiming the movement and ignoring the annoying hint of gravel in his voice. “Twenty.”

“Twenty,” she said, lifting the weights from her hips to her shoulders.

“Shoulders back,” he said by rote, instantly regretting the words as she followed his instructions and Jax’s breasts, only covered by her blue sports bra, were thrust forward.

His eyes pinwheeled. His heartbeat quickened.

Blinking before looking away, he muttered, “Uh. Eighteen…seventeen…sixteen…”

“Gard…” she said between lifts, her voice breathy.

“Huh?” he asked.

“They’re breasts. Half the population has them, including your mother and sisters.”

They don’t have yours
, he thought, and even though the mention of his sisters and mother should have been enough to deflate things, it wasn’t. His blood was already headed south. Fast. Very, very fast.

“Nine…eight…”

“Well, now that we’re friends, you’ll just have to stop noticing,” she declared.

Like that was even a fucking possibility. He clenched his ass cheeks together, actively willing his dick not to swell anymore and begging the universe to shut down her voice box temporarily so she’d stop talking about her breasts.

Because one, they were fucking perfect.

And two, it had been way too long since he’d felt the warm weight of a woman’s breast in his hand, and he missed it so fucking bad that his mouth watered.

“Four…three…”

She stopped at seventeen lifts, holding the dumbbells against her shoulders until he met her eyes. “Are you done?”

“With what?”

Her lips twitched, but she didn’t let herself smile, tracking her eyes down to her breasts then back up again. “With whatever’s going on here?”

Nope. He wasn’t. Now that she was staring at him, her eyes flashing like jewels, surrounded by thick, dark lashes, he was in even more trouble. Exhaling the breath he was holding, he released his glutes and let nature do exactly what it wanted to do. His dick tented his sweats, and he could feel the throbbing knob pressed against his boxers, lifting the material of his pants. Well, so be it. There wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it now.

As Jax slowly lowered the weights, her eyes trailed down his chest, stopping at his hips. He watched as her lips parted, the way her teeth razed her bottom lip and her cheeks flushed crimson. A bead of sweat slipped from his hairline, sliding down the side of his face.

Lord, she was going to kill him.

“Oh,” she murmured.

“Two,” he growled.

She lifted the dumbbells, her eyes sliding back up, over his waist, so slowly he bet she could count the ridges in his chest. She paused for a moment at his throat, then met his glare.

“Apparently friends sometimes give friends hard-ons,” he said sourly, pursing his lips.

Her eyes flared with surprise again and her shoulders started trembling. She let the weights fall to her sides as she started giggling.

He understood it was amusing to get a massive boner from talking about breasts, but she didn’t know how long it had been since he’d been with a woman. He felt frustrated and embarrassed, out of control and annoyed. He needed a cold shower or a long walk, and getting naked and showering here at her gym didn’t seem like a very good idea. She lifted and lowered the weights a final time and he took them from her, depositing them back on the rack.

“One,” she said softly, and he wasn’t sure if she was finishing off his curl count or counting the number of erections she’d given him. In the case of the latter, she was way off. Since meeting her on Saturday night, she’d given him at least half a dozen.

He headed for the gym door, grumbling, “I’ll be back Wednesday, Jax” over his shoulder without looking back at his hot, sexy, funny, boner-inducing new “friend.”

***

The door clicked shut behind him and Jax stared at it, her breathing shallow, her breasts rising and falling with each rapid breath.

She felt exhausted and exhilarated, unsatisfied and excited. Her lips still twitched, but now that he was gone, she didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

Lesson one was over.

She reached for a bottle of water, took a sip, closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again.

Lesson one was—
gulp
—over.

She looked at the door and sighed long and low.

Merde.

There was no point denying it: Jax Rousseau officially had a scorching crush on the Englishes’ new gardener.

She moaned softly, remembering the roughness of his fingertips under her chin, the hunger in his eyes as he’d gazed at her, and later, the telltale bulge in his pants. He was tall and muscular with thick dark-blond hair and deep, coffee-brown eyes that had seen better days.

And he was mysterious, this gardener with a past. How did someone born in New Orleans become a cop in Philly? Why had he left the South? Why had he stopped being a cop? What had happened to the skin around his eyes? She had so many questions and not enough answers. Who was this beautiful, enigmatic man who lovingly tended moonlight gardens but could also teach her how to disarm an assailant by gouging his eyes out? Gentle and lethal. Protective and taciturn.

One thing she knew for certain: they were both hiding from the world. She at her family’s home, away from the prying eyes of a public she’d never intended to enamor. And he in a little studio tucked away on a grand estate, biding his time in a garden when he’d once had, according to Weston English, a decorated career.

Maybe that’s why she was drawn to him so strongly—because they were both hiding, and she sensed that neither of them
wanted
to hide, but they had accepted their secluded existences because they
had
to. She didn’t know for sure that she was right, but she felt inexplicably drawn to him, as though they shared a bleak commonality that made her feel a certain camaraderie toward him. She
liked
him. As the heat of his presence faded second by second with his absence, she felt the cold of her aloneness, her loneliness, surround her.

Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz.

Her cell phone sat on the table by the gym door buzzing.

“Hello?”

“Jax?”

“Hi, J.C.,” she said, turning off the lights in the gym and heading through the door. “What’s up?”

“I’m not good at this shit, so I’m going to cut to the chase.”

“Ooooo-kay.”

“Mad’s worried about you. Chewed my fucking ear off in the car this morning. She thinks we need to get you into the city more often.”

Jax walked through one of the sliding glass doors that led to the pool and sighed. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah. That’s what I said, but you know Mad.”

She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder, then reached for the waistband of her leggings, shimmying them down her legs until she stood on the pool deck in her sports bra and a pair of matching black-and-aqua boy shorts.

“I know Mad.”

“She kept driving around until I promised I’d invite you to hang out. So…there’s a game on tonight. Football.”

“My fave,” she said sarcastically.

She reached down for her leggings and threw them on a lounge chair, then stepped over the hot concrete to the stairs that led to the shallow end of the pool. Her father hadn’t believed in heating outdoor swimming pools, so the water was icy cold on her feet.

“I’m heading to Mulligan’s to watch it. You’re welcome to meet me there if you want something to do.”

Mulligan’s. A popular hangout near UPenn that had satellite TV and showed all the European soccer games, or—as European purists like her brothers preferred to call it—football. She grew up watching them sit side by side on the couch in the den, beers in their hands, farting and belching as they exclaimed in French over every little—

Her eyes flew open and a smile spread slowly across her face as Gard’s words resounded in her head:
Because we can’t sit on a couch together watchin’ a game, drinkin’ beer, and belchin’.

“What time does it start?” she asked eagerly, unable to mask her sudden rush of excitement.

“The game? Eight thirty. Wow, Jax! I thought you hated football. I never thought you’d say yes!”
“I
do
hate football and I’m
not
saying yes,” she said. “I have to go!
Je t’aime. Adieu
!”

“Jax? Jax! Wait a sec—”

But she was already out of the pool and hustling into the house. If they didn’t have any beer in the house, she had just enough time to go into town and buy some.

Dressed in jeans, a simple black V-neck T-shirt, and white tennis shoes, Jax walked across the lawns of Westerly at twilight, a six-pack of Big Easy IPA hanging from her fingers.

She’d jumped on the Internet to figure out if there were any breweries in Louisiana and had been delighted to learn that there was a very popular one, Abita, that distributed all over the country. And luckily, Haverford was the kind of town that had a posh liquor store with a walk-in cooler that sold beers from everywhere. She’d squealed with delight when she discovered not only several kinds of Abita beer available but a type actually called “Big Easy.” It had felt like a sign.

Part of the reason she’d shut down Mad’s suggestion about moving into Philadelphia was that there was a strong likelihood she’d be recognized there, and she couldn’t bear it after the way her life had collapsed under the pressure of being constantly stalked in LA. Out here in Haverford, she felt relatively safe. No one had recognized her or bothered her during her short jaunt to the village, and she loved that measure of anonymity. She was finally breathing easier for the first time in months.

Crickets chirped noisily at Westerly, which smelled of cut grass and fresh mulch. A light summer breeze blew her loose hair off her shoulders and she breathed deeply, hoping this wasn’t a massive mistake. Hmm. What exactly did she hope to get out of tonight?

She walked across the carpet of green as she mulled over the question. She felt safe at Le Chateau, but she also felt lonely…though she hadn’t when Gard was there with her today. She wanted his friendship. Companionship. She wanted him to answer a few of the myriad questions she had about him. She liked looking at him. She felt a little thrill of victory every time he smiled or laughed instead of scowled or growled. Maybe he needed her just as badly as she needed him. And maybe it just felt nice to be needed.

Besides, friends drank beer and watched soccer together, right? Anyway, if he looked angry to see her, she could always play it off that she’d brought the beer as thanks for the lesson today. He couldn’t object to that, could he? If it felt awkward, she could shove the six-pack at his six-pack and run home.

“Jax!”

Someone called her name from the back patio of Westerly, and Jax’s thoughts scattered as she looked over to see Skye Sorenson Winslow, the wife of the eldest Winslow brother, Brooks, sitting in a wicker rocker with her two-month-old daughter, Sailor, in her arms.

“Hey, Skye,” said Jax, waving at Brooks’ wife.

Skye and Brooks seemed to be spending more time at Westerly since Sailor’s birth, and Jax had run into her a few times. She got a good feeling from the no-frills, down-to-earth blonde. She just didn’t know her very well. And suddenly it occurred to her that she didn’t know anyone on Blueberry Lane very well…and wondered if she should consider remedying that. Especially if she planned to stay at Le Chateau for a little while.

Stepping over to the foot of the patio steps, she looked up and grinned. “Hope you don’t mind that I’m cutting through.”

“Not a bit! On your way to see the Englishes?”

“Um, yeah, I’m headed to Haverford Park,” she said, hoping Skye would let her sidestep the question. She didn’t feel like explaining that the Englishes’ part-time gardener was teaching her self-defense and it was him Jax was visiting…the whole situation still felt strange to Jax, and part of her wanted to protect it by keeping it to herself. “How’s Sailor?”

“Come see her,” said Skye, her pretty face brightening at the mention of her tiny daughter.

Jax climbed the steps of the patio, setting the beer on the flagstone steps as she approached the mother and child. Nestled in a pink blanket, her eyes closed, her tiny fingers in a fist under her chin, was Sailor Winslow, fast asleep.

“Oh,” sighed Jax as her heart tightened with a wave of unexpected longing. “She’s beautiful.”

“Mmmm,” hummed Skye. “Right now she is. In a little while, when she’s hungry, she’ll be a holy terror.”

Jax chuckled softly, lifting her eyes to Skye. “I know nothing about babies.”

“Neither did I eleven months ago. That’s why you’re pregnant for nine months. It gives you time to learn everything.”

Jax had never thought of that, but it made sense to her. She gestured to the grand house behind Skye. “How long are you three staying?”

“Well,” said Skye, “I have some news, actually. Now that Sailor’s here, we’ve decided to settle down and really make Westerly our home. My mother-in-law, Olivia, lives in London as you know, though she’s welcome to visit whenever she likes. Brooks will still take sailing gigs now and then, but he’s going to confine them to the Eastern Seaboard, and only for a week here and there.”

“No more jaunts to Australia?” asked Jax.

Brooks Winslow was a world-renowned sailor and an Olympic medal winner who consulted for sailing teams all over the world. Because Brooks was several years older than she, Jax hadn’t known him very well throughout her childhood, though she and Brooks’ sister, Jessica, had been occasional playmates.

“Nope. No more. He’s a family man now,” said Skye. She leaned down and pressed her lips to Sailor’s forehead. When she looked up, she smiled. “You know…I noticed you were staying at Le Chateau, and I’ve been meaning to ask you something. I’d like to, well, I don’t know what exactly, but I’d like to host something, here at Westerly, you know? Sort of a summer party so people know we’re living here now—that we’re a permanent part of the neighborhood. I’d invite the Englishes, of course, and the Storys. Most of them live around here or in the city. I’d love for you, your brothers, and your sister to come too. We could have it in a few weeks when Kate and Étienne get home.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Jax, surprised that it actually
did
sound fun. She’d been so reticent to be out in public, her once-robust social life was now at a standstill. But Skye’s party, with people she’d known all her life, behind the high walls of Westerly, with her siblings in attendance, would be safe from prying eyes. She could be herself. It could be a blast!

“What about the Amblers?” asked Skye, tilting her head to the side. “I don’t hear very much about them.”

“The…Amblers.”

Jax thought about the family who owned the fifth and final house on Blueberry Lane, a sprawling farmhouse called Greens Farms across the street from the Englishes’ estate, Haverford Park, and almost a full half-mile from the Storys’ estate, Forrester. There was a reason Skye didn’t know as much about the Amblers.

They’d long been the black sheep family of Blueberry Lane. While the Englishes, Winslows, Rousseaus, and Storys had reunited at every neighborhood cocktail party and local wedding, the Amblers were regarded as more Bohemian, free-spirited, or as Jax’s father had observed more than once, “more flaky than a bowl of cereal.”

Mariah and Theo Ambler were college professors, their minds steeped in and distracted by academia, leaving their four kids to run wild around the untended acres of their estate with seasonal au pairs trying unsuccessfully to keep order. Mrs. Ambler, né
e
Coopersmith, came from old money, and a lot of it, but she’d rejected the Haverford lifestyle of country clubs and benefits, trading it for university life, wild and premature gray hair, and a near-constant look of absentmindedness. She hadn’t encouraged her children to mix and mingle with the upper crust of Main Line society, and Jax strongly suspected she’d even discouraged it. As neighborhood children, they’d all known one another socially, and the Ambler children were sent to the same private Catholic school attended by the Rousseaus, Englishes, and Winslows, but with the exception of Bree, who was more Coopersmith than Ambler at heart, they didn’t exactly move in the same circles anymore.

What made this news especially interesting to Jax, however, was the possibility of seeing Cortlandt Ambler once again. Jax and Cort had dated for one hot-and-heavy year of high school and broken up on the night of the junior prom. Since then, she’d seen him once or twice, but as far as she knew, he didn’t spend much time, if any, at Greens Farms. Hmm. Cort. Did she want to see him again? Would he even show up to a party hosted by Brooks Winslow? Or would he look down his free-spirited, creative, Bohemian nose at his high-society neighbors?

“Sure,” she said. “Invite the Amblers. Why not?”

“Brooks says they’re kooky.”

Jax giggled. “They are…a little.”

“A splash of local color?” asked Skye with a minxy grin.

“The only splash of anything you’ll find on Blueberry Lane,” said Jax, thinking that the rest of them were pretty predictably upper class next to the “kooky” Amblers. “Are you thinking of doing a cocktail party?”

Skye grimaced. “That’s not really me.”

“You don’t like cocktails?” kidded Jax.

“Sure I do. But a sleek, sophisticated party? I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I didn’t grow up here, Jax. My dad’s a boat mechanic.”

Jax shrugged because she truly didn’t care what Skye’s father did for work. It didn’t alter her opinion of Skye Winslow to know her beginnings were modest. “So what are you thinking?”

“Well…what do you think about a movie night on the lawn?” asked Skye, her blue eyes sparkling hopefully. “I was thinking about
Wind
. It’s a great sailing movie.”

“That
is
sort of your thing,” said Jax, grinning, remembering that Skye and Brooks had met at the marina where Brooks moored his sailboats.

Skye nodded with excitement. “I was thinking I’d have a caterer pass around little hot dogs and sliders…and maybe have a concession stand with a popcorn maker, candy, and cocktails.”

“You could have green apple and candy apple martinis in green and red to represent port and starboard!”

“I love that idea!”

“And Daisy English could make you cookies in the shape of sailboats or sand dollars as party favors,” said Jax, warming up to the idea.

“Oh! That’s a great idea! I see her at Mommy and Me class tomorrow. I’ll ask her!”

“Daisy’s Delights is off the hook,” said Jax.

Skye grinned in agreement. “Do you think I need to serve a sit-down dinner?”

Jax shook her head. “No way. Keep it casual. Passed hors d’oeuvres. I think you’ve got the perfect plan.”

Skye looked like she was about to say something, then smiled and dropped Jax’s eyes.

“Skye? What’s up?”

Skye looked at Jax, a blush coloring her cheeks. “I know you’re probably incredibly busy with movies and…I don’t suppose you’d…”

“I’d what?”

Skye shrugged, looking sheepish. “Any chance you’d be willing to help me? I want it to be really fun and still look great, and I don’t know if I trust myself.”

“Sure.” Jax chuckled, nodding her head. “I’d love to help.”

Skye gasped. “Really? You would? You don’t mind? You have time? I mean, you’re a big Hollywood producer, and—”

“I’m sticking around her for a while,” said Jax, “and I don’t have a project right now. Plus, I think it sounds like a blast. I have a great projector in the screening room too. You’re welcome to borrow it, or relocate to Le Chateau if it rains.”

“Thanks! I’ll take you up on that!”

Baby Sailor squirmed in her mother’s arms, opening her rosebud lips to bellow with surprisingly sudden and white-hot anger. Her eyes fluttered open and her face reddened as she looked up at Skye.

“The terror awakens,” said Skye, standing to maneuver a bawling Sailor to her shoulder. “I better take her inside to feed her. Can you come over Friday? Maybe for lunch? We’ll get some ideas together.”

Jax headed for the steps and picked up her six-pack. “Noon?”

“Perfect! I’ll call Daisy English too!” said Skye, heading into the house. “Thanks, Jax. See you then!”

Jax watched her new friend head inside, Sailor’s cries muffled as the door closed behind her, then she turned and hopped down the patio steps, feeling a lightness she hadn’t enjoyed in a long, long time. Since moving home to Le Chateau, she’d thought of her childhood home as a temporary hiding place, but maybe it could be more. Maybe there was a new life to be found here if she chose to look for it. Besides, in the short term, she was good at planning parties, and seeing her childhood friends for a night of fun sounded promising.

The only thing she wondered, as she slipped through the hedges that bordered Westerly and Haverford Park, was whether or not she should bring a date.

***

Gardener had spent from four to eight o’clock weeding the formal rose garden and remulching it, and presently he was sitting in the rocker on his tiny porch with a cold bottle of water, taking his break before he’d spend another two hours planting more flowers in the moonlight garden before turning in. For some reason, he’d been thinking about jonquils this afternoon. Bright-white petals with a kiss of bright orange in the middle. He’d order them tomorrow from the local nursery and add them to the moonlight garden. Maybe around the base of the bench where he’d first met the duchess.

Scowling at himself for such fanciful thoughts, he took another gulp of water.

He was grateful for this job. His hours were loose—Felix understood that it was more comfortable for Gard to work in lower light and didn’t seem to mind if Gard did most of his work in the late afternoon, evening, and night. He stopped by Gard’s apartment every afternoon around one or two o’clock to touch base about what needed to be done, and so far the arrangement between the two men was working. Felix was still the head groundskeeper at Haverford Park, but Gard did a lot of the heavy lifting at night, which relieved a great deal of Felix’s burden.