Jonquils for Jax: The Rousseaus #1 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 12) (4 page)

She stood before him, just across the railing from him, wearing a skimpy little navy-blue top with a bow in the front and white pants molded to her long legs. Her hair was back again today, but in a ponytail, not a chignon, with a white bow tied low on the back of her neck. She wasn’t wearing deep-red lipstick as she had been last night, but her lips…
merde
. Slick, pink, and pouty, they were even more tempting today than they’d been yesterday.

“Hi,” she said.

“Mornin’, Duchess.”

“Morning?” She grinned. “It’s almost three.”

“I was up late helpin’ damsels in distress,” he said, feeling foolish the moment the words left his lips.

She chuckled softly, however, making his risk pay off. “I came to thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Do you have another cup?”

He looked down at the mug in his hands. “Of coffee?”

“Yes. Thanks. I’d love some,” she said cheekily.

He suspected she knew he hadn’t really been offering, but his mama hadn’t raised a total cretin either. “Uh, sure. Come on in.”

He turned and headed back into the apartment, turning right to go into the kitchen. He’d moved the bistro table out of the center of the room almost as soon as he’d gotten there, after banging into it twice. His peripheral vision just wasn’t what it used to be.

Taking a mug out of the cupboard over the stove, he set it on the counter and poured her a cup of coffee.

“Milk?” he called. “Sugar?”

“Black,” she answered, and he could tell from the placement of her voice that she’d taken a seat on the sofa where he’d bandaged her head last night.

When he turned around, she was perched on its edge, looking up at him. He held out the mug to her from a safe distance. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” she said, smiling again as she took a sip. “Mmm. It’s good. What’s in this?”

“It’s chicory coffee,” he said, taking another sip of his own.

“I’ve had this before…Hmm…oh! Ah-ha!” she exclaimed, placing her cup on the coffee table in front of her. “New Orleans! The coffee. Your accent. That’s it. You’re from New Orleans!”

“I am originally.” He nodded. “You’ve been?”

“A couple of times. My brother, Étienne, went to law school there. Mad and I visited him a weekend or two.”

“Mad?”

“Madeleine. My sister.”

“Jax and Mad?” he asked, scowling at her for no good reason except that they had perfectly good names and used ridiculous nicknames instead. Gard had two sisters: Lily and Iris. Everyone called them Lily and Iris.

“That’s us.” She cleared her throat. “And
your
name is Gardener.”

“I told you that last night. Several times.”

“A gardener named Gardener? Surely you understand my confusion.”

He stared at her, wondering why she was here, why she’d been asking about him, and who had told her his name, but before he could ask her, she’d already asked him another question.

“Why didn’t you just say that Felix was thinking about retiring and you were trying out his job?”

He raised his cup and drank slowly, making her wait. “Why do you feel entitled to an explanation?”

She narrowed her eyes at him and offered primly, “It’s absurd that a gardener should be named Gardener. You know that, don’t you?”

Bossy, brassy, and a little rude when she didn’t get her way
, he decided.
Probably because beautiful girls with hot bodies get away with a lot.

He stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. “If you say so, Duchess.”

“I do.”

He cut his eyes back to hers. “Anyone ever tell you that you come across as a snob?”

She raised an eyebrow in surprise, but her lips twitched like she thought he was funny. “Is your name really Gardener?”

“
Oui, Duchesse
.”

“And are you really the part-time gardener at Haverford Park?”

“For now. We’ll see what happens.”

“Then you do see…the irony.”

“Not really,” he said, shaking his head slowly, watching the way her tongue darted out to swipe her lips. His gaze lingered on her lips a touch too long, but he couldn’t help it. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman, and this one was getting under his skin. He met her eyes. “Irony signals a difference between the appearance of things and reality. If anythin’, my name is
un
ironic.”

“I don’t think your definition is right,” she sniffed.

“I know it is.”

“Are you a cop or a gardener or an English professor?”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” he drawled, smirking as he picked up his coffee and took a sip.

Why did all this feel like flirting? Or like foreplay? And why was he enjoying it so damn much? Much more than he should. He straightened his expression.

“A
wad
?” She wrinkled her nose, looking affronted. She shook her head and said under her breath, “A gardener named Gardener.”

“A fact we’ve established,” he said, giving her a bored look, though he didn’t feel bored at all. “Repeatedly.”

“How did that…
happen
?”

“The name or the job?”

“Both.”

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be, Duchess?”

“And miss your scintillating explanation of this fascinating sobriquet-slash-profession collision? No way.”

“My full name is Gardener Pierre Thibodeaux.”

“Posh,” she said.

He rolled his eyes at her, which only made her smile widen.

She cocked her head to the side. “Do you have a brother named Trowel? Or Rake?”

He shook his head. “Just two sisters.”

“Named?”

His mother would have laughed and told him he was about to “walk into the poo.” He sighed. “Lily and Iris.”

“Ha!” she said, her eyes bright with delight. “Flowers! You’re messing with me!”

He shook his head, forfeiting a smile to her because she was just that adorable and it was almost impossible not to enjoy her. “Nope. My father was a landscaper. I guess he thought…”

“He’d mix business and pleasure?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, it’s good to meet you, Gardener Thibodeaux.”

He watched her as she said this, taking a ridiculous amount of pleasure in the way she said his name and wanting to hear her say it again and again.

“It’s good to meet
you
, Duchess.”

They weren’t touching. He was sitting across from her in a chair, a coffee table and two steaming mugs of chicory coffee between them, and yet he felt a zap of electricity shoot through his body as surely as if they’d both been shocked with a live wire. She must have felt it too because her cheeks colored.

She cleared her throat, dropping her eyes to her coffee mug. “We’ve established Gardener the name. Now, how about gardener the job?”

“I was a cop,” he said.

“Here in Philly?”

He nodded.

“Why not in New Orleans?”

“Change of scenery.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I bet there’s a story there.”

There was, but he didn’t feel like sharing it with her.

He didn’t answer, so she plowed forth. “Why aren’t you a cop anymore? Why work here at Haverford Park?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Is that a problem?”

He took a deep breath and let it go slowly. Maybe it was. How much did he want her in his business? For that matter, why was she still here? She’d said thank-you. It’s not like they were going to be friends or something. So what was her game?

He met her eyes and held them for a long moment before asking, “What do you want,
Jacqueline
?”

She leaned away from him. “I wanted to say thank-you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, standing up and glancing meaningfully at the door.

It was fucking with his head, sitting here chatting with her over coffee. The more time he spent with her, the more time he wanted with her, but he’d already determined her an unlikely candidate for a friend and a disastrous choice for anything more, no matter how much his dick disagreed. He saw her coming from a mile away with her designer clothes, entitled manners, and pushy questions. He was trying to build a quiet, new life for himself, and he didn’t need the distraction of Jacqueline Rousseau.

He needed her to go.

As though she knew she was about to get the boot, she said, “I wanted to ask a favor.”

“A favor?”

She nodded, looking up at him from where she still sat on his couch. “Weston English said that you used to work in the Special Victims’ Unit.”

Shit. Weston was talking about him? Was he also gossiping about the accident? Fuck. Gard wasn’t interested in his business being discussed by virtual strangers. He didn’t want her to—well, if she knew what had happened, she’d look at him differently, wouldn’t she? Yes. Of course she would. And why that mattered he wasn’t certain, but it did. It mattered to him that Jax Rousseau
never
looked at him with sympathy or pity.

“What else did he say?” he asked roughly, feeling pissed.

She shrugged. “Not much. He was surprised when you applied for this job. Said you used to be a detective for the SVU before retiring. Said you helped him out with a couple of cases he worked on at the DA’s office. And he said you were a really, really great cop.”

Something inside of him twisted at her words. Not because she meant to hurt him, but because he
had
been a good cop, and he had
loved
his job. He searched her face, looking for signs of pity, but he didn’t see any. “So…?”

“So last night you told me I should take a self-defense class if I plan to hang around rapists.”

He raised his eyebrow, giving her a dry, impatient look.

“And since most of the guys I know are…well, like Tripp, you know, when they drink…well, I was thinking that maybe you’re right. It couldn’t hurt to take a few classes…so…”

Something about her tone made him anxious. “So take a class.”

She shook her head. “Nope. I want you.”

I want you.

His brain short-circuited for a moment. His skin flushed hot. His dick jumped behind his sweat pants, every fast beat of his heart making it throb.

“
Wh-what
?”

“I want
you
…you know, to teach me.”

“Teach you
what
?” he asked in a rush.

“How to defend myself,” she said, her forehead wrinkling in annoyance. “What have I been saying?”

You’ve been saying “I want you,” which is something you should never say to a man unless you mean it in the only way that matters.

Gard rotated his neck from side to side, listening to it crack as he took a beat to catch his breath and try to focus on what she was saying, not on the dirty fantasies lapping through his head.

Self-defense. Wait. Self-defense
classes
?

“I don’t teach self-defense classes.”

“Oh, really?” She stood up, giving him a sour look. “You have no idea how to defend yourself?”

“Of course I do. But I’m not a teache—”

“If you know how, you can teach me.”

“Go to your local YMCA. They must have a class.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it, her whole body seeming to deflate before him. When she finally spoke, her voice wasn’t as strong or sassy as it had been a moment before. “I can’t.”

“Why not? Too good to take a class with the unwashed masses?”

She grimaced, drawing back as she would if he’d slapped her. “No. That’s not it at all.”

“Then what?”

“I’m…”

“You’re what?”

She took a deep breath. “They’ll take pictures.”

“Who?”

“They’ll…I mean, they…forget it.” Her voice was soft and tired as she dropped his eyes. “I should go.”

“Wait jus—”

“Thanks for the coffee.”

He blew out a frustrated breath, hating the conflicted way he felt as he watched her sidestep between the coffee table and sofa, her head down as she neared the door.

“Jax,” he said gently but firmly, drawing his fingers into fists by his sides. She stopped. “
Who
will take pictures?”

“Everyone,” she said softly, turning to face him with glassy eyes. “I won an Oscar last year for producing
The Philly Story
. My last name is Rousseau. Suddenly I was linked to every actor and director in Hollywood. They sneaked into my gym and tried to get pictures of me coming out of the shower. Another one chased me on his motorcycle until I rear-ended another car. Thank God no one was seriously hurt.” Her eyes flooded with tears, and she reached up to brush the Band-Aid still affixed to her temple. “It’ll be all over Instagram and Twitter:
Jax Rousseau with a black eye. Jax Rousseau taking a self-defense class. Who beat up Jax Rousseau?
They’ll make up stories and say things. It’ll start all over again and I can’t…” She shook her head, one hand swiping away the wetness on her cheeks. “Forget it. Not your problem. I’ll find someone else.”