J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: The Rousseaus #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 14) (4 page)

Ring.

Something’s ringing.
The thought slipped into her mind for a moment, then exited just as quickly as his palm, wide and sure, slid up the left side of her body, stopping just under her breast. He tilted his head, changing the angle of their kiss, and Libitz arched her back, inviting him to touch her more intimately.

Ring.

His hand slipped boldly into the bodice of her dress, the heat of his palm covering the flesh of her breast as his thumb and forefinger found her painfully erect nipple and rolled it. Fire spread like lava, red-hot liquid heat, deep inside her body, invading her core and saturating her sex. She moaned into his mouth, returning his thrust as he clutched her ass and pushed her forward into his cock again.

Ring.

“Fuck!” he bellowed, ripping his mouth away from hers.

Panting with need as she opened her eyes, she felt his hand slip quickly from her breast as he reached into his back pocket for his phone. With one hand, he pressed a button on the screen and held it to his ear, while the other held her to him, an uncompromising band around her waist.

“
What
?” he roared, his eyes fierce as they stared into hers from an inch away, his massive erection still straining against her pelvis.

“This better be good, Jax,” he grated out. “I’m
with
someone.”

She couldn’t hear his sister through the line because her blood was rushing so fast in her ears, she could only hear its whooshing, accompanied by the wild beating of her heart.

“Walk,” he growled, tightening his arm around Libitz, his breath hot where it landed in jagged pants on her cheek and nose.

Libitz’s hands were trapped between them, still flattened on his chest, but now, as she realized what had just happened between them—how far from a single kiss in the moonlight they’d wandered—she pushed against him, trying to shove him away.

His eyes narrowed and he tightened his arm again, refusing to yield.

“
Moi
?
I’m
the asshole?” he said into the phone, though his eyes nailed her, and Libitz wondered if he was speaking to her as well. She pushed at the muscles of his chest again, but his arm flexed around her, trapping her against him. “Try again.”

“Release me,” she hissed.

He looked angry, his eyes boring into hers as his slick lips tightened into an unhappy slit. Struggling to back out of his arms, she mashed her heel into his shoes, and he finally loosened her, covering the phone with his palm.

“What’s the problem?”

“No problem.”

“We don’t have to stop.”

“Yes,” she said firmly, “we do.”

“Why?”

Because you’re my best friend’s brother-in-law, and I want to be in her life forever, and fucking you on day one isn’t going to do either of us any favors.
Besides, she hadn’t expected to lose herself so completely in his kiss. Her brain was still swimming. Her body was still pulsating. She’d barely escaped, and now that her eyes were open again, she needed to get away from him.

“We agreed on one kiss,” she said. “We kissed. It’s over.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Her body throbbed with need, but her mind was more and more in control and issued a final warning that she couldn’t ignore:
He is the worst possible candidate for a fling. Stop this. Now. With big guns, if that’s what it takes.

“I only kissed you to get you off my back.” She smirked at him. “I don’t
want
you.”

“Yes, you do. It’s obvious,” he said, but he flinched before he said it like maybe he wasn’t sure, and it gave her just enough doubt to straighten her back, aim, and fire.

“If you touch me again, it will be
without
my permission,” she said, every word precise and meaningful. “
Obvious
enough for you, Romeo?”

Recognizing her words for the warning and threat they were, he flinched again, his whole body stiffening at her words, his eyes growing icy as he stared down at her, searching her face to ascertain the severity of her meaning, ugly words like
assault
and
rape
passing invisibly between them and souring the sweet night air.

Her conscience pinched a little, but she remained firm in her refusal of him, even as he raked his eyes down her body, stopping at the breast he’d caressed so intimately and eyeing it with disdain.

Finally, he eased his palm away from the phone, staring into her eyes and purring, “It was a slice of heaven,
petite
. I’ll call you sometime.”

Sarcasm was thick and mean in his tone, and he licked his lips provocatively, a premediated gesture meant to make her feel slutty and small. A debonair dismissal. A line he’d told a thousand women a thousand times, meant to remind Libitz that she was a tiny blip on the landscape of his conquests. And a kiss that had momentarily rocked her landscape was actually just…nothing. She knew that’s what his words and gestures were trying to convey.

And yet…his eyes were intense, despite his efforts to relax them. With a man who had a modicum of respect for women, she might have wondered if it was a defensive move—if maybe a kiss that had been utterly intoxicating to her had unexpectedly been the same for him. But with a predator like J.C., who, according to people she trusted implicitly, cared about his own pleasure and nothing else? These were words and gestures purely meant to one-up her refusal of him and make her feel dirty. It was a good strategy on his part. It worked.

“I hope not,” she murmured, ignoring the flush of heat in her cheeks as she adjusted the bodice of her dress and took another step away from him. “I hope
never
.”

His eyes flashed with anger.

“
Tu vas fermer ta putain de gueule
,” he growled softly into the phone.

She’d learned enough French curse words at prep school to know that he’d just said,
Shut your fucking mouth
, and she gasped softly at the lewdness of his language, wholly uncertain if he was talking to his sister or to her.

Only one thing
was
certain: J.C. Rousseau was a minefield of a man—nothing about him was simple or genuine. He was complicated and ruthless, smart and devastatingly sexual. And yet Libitz was drawn to him, fascinated by him, her body still throbbing, her heart still fluttering. Even now, both of them having rejected each other and exchanged insults meant to sting, she felt more raw lust for him than she’d ever felt for anyone.

In all her life, Libitz had never run from anyone, yet she felt an overwhelming urge to flee from J.C. Rousseau—to get away from him and never look back. It took all her strength to stand her ground and wait for him to hang up his phone so they could settle their business and go their separate ways.

“I’ll be there in five,” he spoke into the phone, still staring at Libitz with cold, narrow eyes. “You owe me.”

Without looking away from Libitz, he tapped on the phone and put it in his pocket. He was angry. She knew he was angry, yet his eyes seemed to soften a little as he tilted his head to the side and looked at her like he couldn’t quite figure her out.

“So that’s it?”

“That’s it. One kiss.”

“But it was good,
n’est-ce pas
?”

Her lips parted in surprise.

The unexpected gentleness in his voice caught her off guard, confused her, moved her even, but she’d already decided, long before this moment on a terrace in the moonlight, that J.C. Rousseau was off limits for her, and she had no interest in rethinking that conviction now.

She shrugged with ennui, hoping she looked much more dismissive than she felt inside. “I’ve had better.”

He clenched his jaw, his quick temper flaring, his last vestiges of patience or gentleness gone. “You’re a bitch.”

“I’ve been called worse,” she replied, refusing to let him see that his words stung.

“I feel sorry for the man that falls for you,” he lashed out, clenching his fists by his sides.

And though she didn’t take the time to dwell on it, somewhere deep in Libitz’s mind, she marked the moment, because his reaction felt…off. It felt far more emotional than it
should
be.

“That’s your prerogative.”

He sniffed, his expression mean. “You’re skinny, flat, hard, and cold. You’re not my type anyway.”

Her stomach fell, and she had to swallow forcibly over the lump that rose up in her throat, but she raised her chin and narrowed her eyes. “And you’re disgusting, egomaniacal, and think you’re God’s gift to women, but volume doesn’t equal skill.”

“So we basically hate each other,” he muttered.

“Pretty much,” she whispered.

Feeling strangely and unaccountably miserable, she gulped, unable to look into his eyes anymore. She glanced over her shoulder at the happy couples dancing in the ballroom, blinking her eyes rapidly.

“That said, my best friend just married your…”

She turned back to finish what she was saying, but he was already gone, a lone figure striding across the dark lawn, farther and farther away with every second.

Libitz took a ragged breath, reaching up to wipe at her eyes.

Wait. Tears? Tears for
him
when she almost never cried?

Oh, no. No, no, no. That was
not
okay.

“Stop it,” she hissed, closing her eyes and inhaling again, a smoother and deeper breath this time.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone from view. Her tears dried up quickly as she thought about the hateful words they’d exchanged, though surprisingly they didn’t bother her as much as they probably would another woman. They’d each said hurtful things, meant to prey on each other’s insecurities with a practiced finesse on both sides. In a strange way, they canceled each other out, and she almost marveled at the skill it took to verbally spar so evenly with someone. In a grudging admission of respect, she had to recognize that part of her—a very sick and cerebral part of her—had even enjoyed it, up to and including the insults he thought would hurt the most.

She took a deep, even breath and exhaled into the night.

All that remained now was the fading taste of him in her mouth and the throbbing of her heart as she thought about their kiss. The way her body had reacted to him—blossoming, opening, arching closer, reaching for him like she was a sunflower and he was the sun. She couldn’t remember
ever
responding to a man with such vulnerability, like they were plugged into each other in a way that was safe and real.

For just a moment, she wondered what it would have been like to give in…to sleep with him. And for that moment, her heart trembled with such unfulfilled longing, it almost flattened her, because…

You’re a bitch…
and
…we basically hate each other.

Now she’d never know.

But at least she’d been strong, and their anger toward each other would eventually fade, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. And in the meantime, she hadn’t fucked her best friend’s brand-new brother-in-law, which meant that she had no regrets.

At least that’s what she told herself as she turned back to Kate’s wedding, walking into a room of joyful revelry with an unexpectedly heavy heart.

“I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since your wedding!” cried Libitz, jumping up to close the door of her office so that she could talk to KK without interruption. “How was the honeymoon?”

“Heaven,” said Kate, her voice gooey, and Libitz could perfectly picture her best friend’s dreamy expression.

“Mooréa. God, that’s so romantic. I followed your pics on Facebook, but you have to tell me everything!”

“I will. I promise,” she said. Kate paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had gotten very serious very quickly. “But, Lib…I have something else to tell you first.”

Libitz had been straightening the orders and invoices on her desk, but now she froze, worried by the grave tone of KK’s voice. “Wha—I mean…is everything okay?”

Kate sighed. “Are you sitting down?”

Libitz lowered her hands to the edge of her desk and sat down as a shot of adrenaline made her heart race into high gear. “Now I am. Kate, you’re scarin—”

“I’m having a baby!” shrieked Kate, all pretense gone as joy warmed her voice. “I’m sixteen weeks pregnant!”

Libitz’s eyes flew open as she slumped back into her chair and sighed loudly. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Ha ha!” Kate giggled. “Sorry! I didn’t want you to guess, and you’re so freaky about always knowing exactly what I’m thinking, so I…oh, Lib, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Libitz laughed, nodding her head and sitting up. “Yeah. I’m okay. And you’re…KK, you’re pregs? Wait a second! Sixteen weeks? You were pregnant at your wedding!”

“Pays to be fuller-figured once in a while,” said Kate. “No one knew. Étienne and I decided to keep it a secret until after the honeymoon.”

“A baby,” sighed Libitz. “Oh, my God, Kate. You’re going to be a mom! Soon!”

“Uh-huh,” said Kate. “Christmastime.”

“Chanukah-time,” corrected Libitz.

“The
best
time,” said Kate. “And Lib, we just found out this morning…we’re having a girl.”

Libitz didn’t expect the sob that escaped from her throat, but her eyes swelled with tears as she pictured her best friend holding a beautiful baby girl. “KK. That’s amazing.” She sniffled softly, sitting up in her chair and wiping her tears away. “But promise me you won’t name her something seasonal like ‘Holly’ or ‘Merry,’ okay?”

“Too late!” Kate giggled, the sound so happy that Libitz chuckled too. “We already decided on Noelle.”

Libitz groaned. “I should have guessed.”

“We also decided something else…” Libitz took a deep breath, sensing the importance of whatever Kate was about to say. “We want you to be Noelle’s godmother, Lib.”

Her breath caught and she blinked back more tears. Though she would have insisted on being Noelle’s surrogate auntie, she hadn’t expected an honor this great.

“But Kate, I’m…
Jewish
.”

“Same God,” said Kate gently but firmly. “Besides, we checked. Since Jean-Christian is Catholic, you don’t have to be.”

The loud sound of tires screeching in her head made Libitz scowl.

“Wait. What? What does
he
have to do with it?”

“Oh,” said Kate, giggling softly, “I forgot to mention. We want him to be Noelle’s godfather. Étienne’s talking to him tonight.”

“But
why
?” blurted out Libitz, horrified at the idea of Kate’s smarmy brother-in-law being allowed anywhere near her goddaughter. And God! She’d have to stand up next to him in a church again? Gah! No!

“Ummm”—Kate’s voice was a mix of amused and bemused—“because he’s her uncle? Who
else
would we choose?”

“Stratton?” demanded Libitz. “Barrett, Fitz, Alex, Wes?”

“I love them, but they’re not—”

“Literally,
anyone else
on the face of the planet!”

“Lib, are you serious?”

“Yes! He’s a…a reprobate. A letch. He’s disgusting! You can’t…I mean…” Libitz stopped talking, suddenly realizing what she was saying and to whom. “I just mean…”

“You don’t know everything about him,” said Kate with quiet conviction.

“I know all I need to know.”

“I wish you’d tell me what went down between you two at the wedding,” said Kate, some of the previous warmth missing from her voice.

Libitz bit her upper lip, considering Kate’s words, but then decided against saying any more about the relentless way he’d pursued her only to end their beautiful kiss with a scathing shower of verbal abuse.

“Nothing, KK. Seriously. It was nothing.”

“Did you two…?”

“No! Absolutely not.”

“Because I know that you both, you know…”

“We’re both a little slutty?” supplied Libitz. “Fair enough. But no. We didn’t fuck, Kate. I promised you we wouldn’t.”

More importantly, I promised myself. And thank God. How could I face him across the baptismal font if I’d banged him at KK’s wedding?

“You know I don’t judge…but it would make things awkward, Lib.”

“I know that,” said Libitz, “which is why we didn’t. I promise. We just—we don’t get along.”

Kate was quiet for a few minutes before she spoke again. “Can you try harder? For Noelle’s sake?”

Libitz’s lips softened, turning up in a smile as she thought about her goddaughter, growing safely but surely within her best friend’s body. She breathed deeply, thinking of how much she would love that little girl, taking her to Broadway shows and the American Girls’ store for tea. They’d get their toes painted together, and Aunt Libby would shower her with gifts. She’d be Noelle’s auntie, a special friend…her godmother. Oh, God. Her heart ached with the goodness of it.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ll slay dragons for Noelle, and you know it.”
I can certainly put up with Jean-Christian Rousseau.

Kate laughed, all the warmth returning to her voice. “I know that. You were my only choice. Étienne said we could ask Stratton and Mad instead, but I insisted on you. I love Mad, but it
had
to be you, Lib. It just…it
had
to be.”

For the third time in their conversation, Libitz’s eyes welled with tears, and she sniffled again, clearing her throat. “Well then, it’s settled. Now stop making me cry and tell me all about the jungle sex you and Ten had in Mooréa!”

***

“I paid over a million dollars for it,” said J.C. evenly, sitting back in his desk chair and feeling annoyed. The office at his gallery was dark, and he was going to be late to Jax’s if he didn’t get a move on. “I expect it here on time.”

“Rousseau-san,” said Hiroto, his art dealer in Tokyo, “it isn’t that simple. It was flagged in Customs, and now—”

“Not my problem,” said J.C., glancing at his watch. “Have it here in Philadelphia by tomorrow or keep it and return my million. Clear, Hiroto-san?”

“
Hai
. It will be done.”

J.C. placed the receiver back in the cradle and shuffled the papers on his desk back into a file folder with an irritated sigh. He’d paid $1.2 million for the 1967 Kusama, and he had someone coming up from Washington, DC, to retrieve it on Monday. He wasn’t about to lose the sale due to Hiroto’s ineptitude.

His phone buzzed as he stood up from his desk, and he glanced down at the screen to find a group text his sister had sent to her siblings.

Jacqueline Rousseau:
Dinner. 8:00pm. Don’t be late.

Jacqueline Rousseau:
And, J.C., I want to show you something. Remind me.

His little sister had gotten bossier since settling down last month with her new fiancé, Gardener Thibodeaux. All things considered, however, J.C. was happy to see her with someone who was so crazy about her. Fuck, Gard had actually pissed away most of his trust fund buying Le Chateau, their childhood home, for Jax. If that wasn’t love, J.C. didn’t know what was.

Not that he knew anything about love.

He didn’t.

And that was the way he wanted it.

Except…

Since his brother’s wedding last month, he’d felt a subtle shift in himself. Fucking Felicity had gotten stale, so he’d been making more excuses to get out of seeing her. He craved something different, something challenging and more exciting, something that didn’t come so easy and feel so cheap. He just didn’t know how, or where, to find it.

But tonight—the first time his entire family would be reunited at Le Chateau since the wedding? Tonight felt a little weird for him. Étienne was married to Kate. Jax was engaged to Gard. Even Mad, who returned this morning from a week in London with her new boyfriend, Cort Ambler, seemed to have her eyes on settling down. That left J.C. still free as a bird, fucking whomever he wanted and committing to none. Is that what he wanted forever?

He was thirty-four years old, and he’d never—not in almost twenty years of adulthood—had a mature, loving, committed relationship. He hadn’t allowed it. And at this point, he didn’t even know if he’d be able to figure out how.

So fuck it. There was no point thinking about it.

He sighed, standing up from his desk and flicking off the light as he left his office and closed the door behind him. In the dim light of the gallery, he moved slowly, checking out the paintings and sculptures, allowing his guard to fall, allowing warmth and wonder to fill his heart. His eyes followed bold contours and sought out subtle shading in a Picasso original. He stopped under a mobile made from Swarovski crystals and let a rainbow of twinkle lights shower him like a blessing. Shifting his gaze to a colorful Kandinsky, he felt the joy of the childlike technicolor brushstrokes as he continued toward the door. But as he did every night, he stopped by the Andrew Atroshenko portrait of a ballerina he’d tucked securely into a dark nook by the door about a month ago and stared.

The angles of her body—of the arm raised over her head, of one leg flexed almost perfectly behind her, of the flat plane of her chest in a loose-fitting, corseted, white satin bodice—made his body tighten and his eyes widen. She was exquisite. Sublime. She was nowhere near the most expensive piece in his gallery, but she was among the most precious to J.C., filling him with an almost painful melancholy as he bid adieu to her every night.

“You shouldn’t have called her a bitch,” he muttered to himself softly before turning quickly away, punching his code in the security pad and closing the front door behind him.

***

“Neil!” called Libitz, rising from her desk with a grin to embrace her boyfriend, whom she’d been dating for a little over three weeks.

Neil Leibowitz, to whom her mother had introduced her at a cocktail party almost a year ago, had gently pursued Libitz for months, calling her every four to six weeks to ask if she’d join him for dinner, a concert in the park, a Mets game, or a movie. Each time he made a different suggestion, and each time Libitz politely refused. But when he called her on the Sunday night she returned from Kate’s wedding, she’d suddenly accepted his invitation, making them both stutter in surprise.

“W-wait! Did you just say yes?”

“I guess I did.”

“Did you mean to?”

No. Not really.
She had no idea where the word “yes” had come from, but she decided to roll with it. “Yes, I’d love to go to a winetasting with you, Neil.”

“Libitz,” he’d said, laughter thick in his Brooklyn-accented voice, “if I’d-a known a winetasting would make you say yes, I would’ve suggested it last October!”

She’d laughed politely, though if he’d asked her a moment before, she couldn’t have actually told him what sort of date she’d finally accept. Something within her just felt desperate to do something, to go somewhere, to move on, to say yes to someone.

As he entered her office, kissed her cheek, and gathered her in his arms, Libitz closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Per usual, Neil smelled comfortingly of vanilla, which was, he claimed, part of his charm. His grandfather and father had started their family-run company, Baked Kosher of New York, back in the 1960s, and fifty years later, Neil and his brother, Aaron, who’d attended NYU’s Stern School of Business together, were being groomed to take it over.

It was a successful business that supplied fresh-baked challah to bakeries all over New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, in addition to temples and synagogues that ordered the loaves in dozens for Shabbat fellowship dinners. And Neil’s position as vice-president of operations afforded him an extremely comfortable lifestyle: a Crown Heights townhouse with four bedrooms and a private garden and a house in the Hamptons he co-owned with Aaron. He never arrived to pick her up without a huge bouquet of fresh flowers and, of course, a loaf of freshly baked bread—one for her and one for her parents.

Her grandmother called Neil a “mensch,” which, translated from Yiddish, meant she thought he was a good man—a “catch” for her only daughter—and Libitz supposed he was. He was a grown-up (unlike some people from recent memory). He was also polite and earnest, serious and focused—the sort of man who’d be a good provider and loyal husband. He’d take their sons to see the Mets on summer Saturdays and take Libitz to Paris for their anniversaries. Life would be comfortable and safe with Neil.