J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: The Rousseaus #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 14) (13 page)

Suddenly Bree’s voice was intimately close to Libitz’s ear. She spoke in a passionate whisper: “We warned you. Run away while you still can.”

Libitz looked up to respond to her, but she was already walking away, her fire-engine-red sundress a slash of angry crimson in the sunshine.

She shifted her eyes to Jean-Christian. “Friends of yours?”

He shook his head, his expression sobering. “Apparently not.”

“Exes?”

“I knew Alice at Princeton. We went out a few times, but she was a little too prissy for me.”

“By ‘went out,’ just to clarify, you mean ‘screwed,’ right?”

“No, actually,” he said, taking a seat beside her. “We had dinner a couple of times. Caught a movie or two. Made out, yes…but we never actually fucked.”

“You definitely fucked Bree,” said Libitz, hating the mental image of them together—Bree’s shock of blonde hair next to Jean Christian’s almost-black. They would have been a striking couple.

He nodded. “Yes. I did.”

“In more ways than one, I’d say,” deadpanned Libitz.

He shrugged, but his eyes weren’t as nonchalant as the gesture. “I’m not denying it, Elsa. I’ve fucked many.”

She took a deep breath. No woman liked hearing these words from a man for whom she was falling, but the only response circling in her head was,
Me too.

Like J.C., although probably not to the same extent, Libitz had engaged in a lot of gratuitous sex since high school. She didn’t shit where she ate, which made anonymous one-night stands her favorite, unlike J.C. who had hunted on home ground…but she certainly had no room to judge him.

That said, however, deep inside she had an almost-painful longing to know that he was finished with that sort of serial polyamory. She had no right to ask it of him or expect it of him, of course. They were many things to each other—co-godparents-to-be, bound through a strong and beloved family connection, business associates, fellow art lovers, and coconspirators in researching
Les Bijoux Jolis
. And sure, they’d kissed a few times, and he’d felt her up. But when she combined all that together, what did it make? Friends? No, that didn’t feel right. But they weren’t in a relationship either. She had no claim to him, regardless of the whisperings and yearnings of her heart.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds before he nudged her in the side. “I brought the ledger. I left it inside.”

Grateful for a more welcome topic of conversation, she turned to him and smiled. “Great! We can go take a look at it if you—”

Her phone started buzzing on the table, and she turned from him to find Neil’s name and number lighting up the screen.

“Nice Neil?” he asked, looking pissed.

She nodded. “I have to take it.”

“Fantastic,” he muttered, sitting back in his seat.

Apparently, he wasn’t going to give her any privacy. Okay. Fine. She pressed “Talk” and raised the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey, honey. I saw you called.”

Sometime between this morning, when she’d called Neil determined to break up with him, and now, several hours later, she’d decided that it was downright cold-blooded to break up with him over the phone. But she’d definitely hoped that she wouldn’t have to talk to him again until she saw him on Monday.

“I, um…yeah. I got your texts. Not sure if I’m free for dinner on Friday.”

“But it’s Shabbat,” he said.

“I know. I just…I have a meeting that might run late.”

“Lib,” he said, “I know your job’s important to you, but Shabbat is sacred. I think you should make an effort.”

Heretofore in their relationship, Neil hadn’t made comments like this, and it annoyed her that he was being so heavy-handed. “We can talk about it on Monday.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice flat. “About Monday…jeez, honey, I hate to do this.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to go up to the King Arthur campus in Norwich, Vermont, from Monday to Wednesday. My father was supposed to go, but he came down with the flu, and Aaron’s running point on the Yom Kippur orders, but we need to renegotiate our flour prices with them, so I have to—”

“That’s great!” exclaimed Libitz.

“But it means I can’t pick you up,” said Neil, his voice confused.

“Oh,” she said, clearing her throat, trying not to sound as relieved as she felt. “Oh, right. Well, no worries. I’ll just see you on Wednesday, okay?”

“Wait, wait, wait! Why don’t you come with me?” asked Neil. “They’re putting me up in this quaint little inn. It’s beautiful, Lib. We’d have our own room. We could…”

His voice trailed off, hope and longing thick in its tone.

She scrambled, trying to think of an excuse for why she couldn’t run off to Vermont for mediocre sex with Neil that would seal a dismal fate for her future. Looking up at Jean-Christian, she felt a smile spread across her face.

“I can’t. I bought a Kandinsky for Mrs. Carnegie from a gallery in Philadelphia. I need to deliver it on Tuesday. In person.”

Jean-Christian’s dark-green eyes looked deeply into hers, soft with promise, brimming with the same relief she herself felt. He reached for her free hand and she let him take it, let him lace their fingers together.

“Aw,” said Neil. “That’s too bad, but I understand. Maybe you can switch things around to make Friday Shabbat work?”

“Um,” she stalled, the feeling of Jean-Christian’s flesh pressed flush against hers distracting her. “We can talk about it on—on…”

“Wednesday,” said Neil. “I should be back in the city around six. I’ll pick you up for dinner at seven?”

“Come in for a drink first,” said Libitz, knowing that they’d never actually make it to dinner.

“Will do,” he said. “Can’t wait to see you, honey.”

“Bye, Neil,” she said, pressing “End” and lowering her phone as she stared deeply into Jean-Christian’s eyes.

“Neil’s got a business trip to Vermont,” she murmured. “He can’t pick me up on Monday.”

“I broke things off with Felicity,” he blurted out, leaning closer to her. “We’re not—we’re not getting together anymore. It’s over.”

She’d been holding her breath, but now she exhaled sharply in surprise, overwhelmed by his declaration and the implied meaning behind it. She sucked in a shallow breath, her fingers tightening around his, but that chaste contact wasn’t nearly enough. She needed more. She wanted more.

“Can we—Can we go somewhere?” she asked.

He nodded slowly, glancing back toward the house. “Your room?”

She tugged her hand from his. “Meet me there in five.”

“You go in through the kitchen. I’ll go around to the front,” he said, giving her a hot look before standing up and striding away from her, toward the side of the house.

Libitz waited a few minutes, pretending to look at her phone while her heart pounded out of her chest. When she could wait no more, she stood up and slipped her phone in her back pocket, heading for the kitchen with her head down.

“Lib!” said Kate.

She looked up at her best friend, who was standing on the patio talking to Mad, Jax, and Gard.

“Lib, is everything okay? Your cheeks are flushed.”

“I’m fine,” said Libitz, smiling at them. “I was just sitting in the sun. In fact, I was going upstairs for some sunblock.”

Kate grinned, looking at Lib’s cream-colored satin tank top and sailor-front dark-blue linen pants. “I forgot to tell you how cute you look.”

“Quit it,” said Libitz. “You’ll give me a big head.”

“See you in a bit,” said Kate, turning back to her in-laws.

Darting around the catering staff, Libitz hustled through the kitchen and into the dining room, her heeled sandals click-clacking over the slick parquet floor that led to the front vestibule. Glancing around the foyer to be sure that no one was around to put two and two together, she took the stairs two at a time, breathless by the time she reached the safety of the top. Racing down the hall, she stopped in front of her bedroom door, running a hand through her hair before opening it.

“Behind you, Elsa.”

Turning around, her breasts brushed against Jean-Christian’s chest as he backed her into the guest room and kicked the door shut behind them.

“You have cat skills,” she said, “I never heard you coming!”

“Fair is fair, baby.” Grabbing her around the waist, he jerked her against his hard body, his eyes onyx as he stared down at her. “I never saw you coming.”

He leaned down, and his lips claimed hers with an intensity that stole her thoughts and her words and the ability to speak or think. Sliding his hands down her back, he smoothed them back up under her blouse, unlatching her bra so he could splay his hands over the skin of her shoulder blades as she reached for the hem of her top and pulled it, with her bra, over her head.

In the split second it took for her to bare her breasts to him, he reached behind his neck to tug his polo shirt over his head. Chest to chest, warm and wonderfully naked, they collided again.

Jean-Christian’s hands skimmed down to her ass, pushing her firmly against his massive erection, and she gasped with pleasure, imagining how it would feel to have it lodged between her legs. She toed off her sandals and stepped on his shoes, letting him walk them back to the bed as he kissed her. When she felt the mattress behind her knees, she fell back, and he grinned down at her, lowering himself to his side, right next to her, where his view and access to her breasts was unimpeded.

As he dipped his head and took one dusky bud between his lips, she gasped, arching her back and saying, “The g-gallery in Marseille has five other, um, Montferrats.”

One hand held the breast he was suckling while the other plumped its twin, caressing the stiff, straining skin of her nipple.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” he murmured, nuzzling the damp flesh with his nose before sucking it between his lips again. “Keep talking.”

“Anh!” She whimpered, burying her head in the comforter as darts of pleasure unfurled all over her body, stealing her breath. “Di—different…models.”

His lips skimmed from the breast he’d laved to the other, and his tongue circled her other nipple, playing with it like a cat stalking prey. “I called a friend at the Met.”

“In…New York?” she asked, breathless as he dragged his teeth over her throbbing flesh.

“Is there another?”

“N-no,” she panted, closing her eyes as he sucked the distended bud between his lips.

When she couldn’t bear the sharpness of the sensation anymore, she plunged her hands into his hair and dragged his face to hers, demanding his lips, reveling in the feel of his chest pressed against hers as he rolled on top of her body and kissed her, bracing his weight on elbows planted by her head.

Reaching between them, she slipped her hand into his shorts, finding the velvet steel of his throbbing cock and wrapping her fingers around it as he groaned into her mouth, as his tongue tangled with hers.

Knock, knock, knock.
“Lib?”

Through the haze of her lust-induced subconscious, Libitz started, breaking off their kiss and turning her head to look at the bedroom door with panic.

“Lib? It’s Kate. Are you okay?”

“Fuck!” she hissed, unhanding Jean-Christian’s cock and dragging her hands to his chest, pushing against the wall of muscle futilely.

“Uh…KK?” she squeaked.

“I was worried about you. Can I come in?”

“Uhhh…” Jerking her glance up, her eyes slammed into Jean-Christian’s. “Gimme a sec, Kate?”

“Can I bring you anything, Lib? Aloe maybe? For the sunburn?”

“Yeah, uhhh…”

“Cold water,” suggested Jean-Christian in a strained whisper.

“Maybe some cold water?” Libitz called. “And an aspirin?”

“Of course!” said Kate. “I’ll be right back!”

Libitz looked back at Jean-Christian. “Get in the closet!”

He furrowed his brows at her. “What?”

“You have to hide!” she whisper-yelled, pushing at his chest.

“That’s ridiculous. We’re all adults. Why don’t we just tell her?”

“Tell her what?” demanded Libitz. “We don’t even know what this is!”

“Well, we could just say…”

“No! Get in the closet!”

She punched at his chest until he rolled off of her with a long-suffering groan. “This sucks.”

“Get. In. The. Closet,” she hissed, sitting up and grabbing her bra and shirt off the floor. “And don’t come out until we’re long gone!”

“We can be together if we want, Lib.”

“We’re not ‘together,’ Jean-Christian. Not yet anyway. When and if we ever
are
together, we’ll figure out the right way to tell her,” insisted Libitz. “But not like this.”

She threw her shirt over her head and turned to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, hair mussed, muscular chest sculpted and beautiful, cock straining against his khaki shorts. Taking pity on him, she stepped between his legs and smiled down at him, bending to kiss his lips. “Please hide.”