Jonquils for Jax (Blueberry Lane 3 - The Rousseaus #1) - Katy Regnery Page 0,2

another step back, half grateful that Tripp’s calls were closer now. “Scare…the flowers.”

He nodded. “You’re yellin’, Duchess.”

Duchess? Huh. Duchess. She cocked her head to the side, surprised to find she didn’t dislike this nickname half as much as she probably should. Something about the way he said it in his low Southern drawl was almost…sexy. Disarming. And incredibly distracting.

She cleared her throat and shook her head, saying in a loud whisper, “I’m not yelling.”

“Sorta you are,” he said, turning his back to her and walking a few paces away.

As she trailed him with her eyes, she realized, for the first time, that she was standing at the edge of a formal garden and that the flowers before her were…glowing. White and silver in the moonlight, petals of all shapes and sizes reached for the starry sky, drinking in the moonlight and transforming themselves into nature’s version of twinkle lights.

She sucked in an admiring breath, taking her first step forward but still keeping a white stone bench between her and the “gardener,” who had dropped to his knees to plant the seedling. He bent over the blueish-white border of flowers, concentrating on his work, ignoring her.

“What—what is this place?” she asked with quiet wonder so she wouldn’t scare the flowers.

He turned to look at her over his shoulder, his small smile still in place. “It’s a moonlight garden.”

***

Lord but Northern girls are brassy, thought Gardener, and this one, God help him, was jumpy and bossy too. Though, if he was being honest…the way she looked in the moonlight? With her dark hair piled up on her head, held back with a diamond tiara, and that long, gold dress that hugged the curves of her body like a glove? Well, she had him thinking about more than gardening.

He’d started working around six o’clock and had been listening to the wedding revelry float on the warm June breeze from Le Chateau to Haverford Park all evening long. Sounded like a good party. The kind he used to enjoy.

Using his gloved hand, he scooped a bit more earth from the hole he’d dug, then gently placed the lavender plant into the void before pushing the soil back over the seedling roots. The purple of the tight petals wouldn’t add much to the night glow of brighter flowers like white jonquils, Purity cosmos, Miss Jekyll White nigella, white larkspur, and the annual white foxglove Excelsior he’d planted a few nights ago, but the smell of the herb, when mixed with the night-scented stock that he planned to start planting tomorrow evening, would add a great deal of olfactory beauty to the garden on a hot summer night. His father would have approved, he thought wistfully.

The duchess cleared her throat behind him and he looked over his shoulder at her again, but he didn’t let his gaze linger. He couldn’t see her all that well anyhow, but her body language told him that she was uncomfortable finding herself alone with him. More than uncomfortable. Rattled.

And yet, he thought, for all her agitation, she’d still stood there in the dark giving him “what-for” and the third degree. She had spirit in her too. Because he hoped it might ease her anxiety, he knelt down and went about his business, though part of him, the stupid part, hoped she wouldn’t leave right away. It had been a lonely night before her arrival.

“A moonlight garden,” she said, her voice a little gentler and less uptight than it had been before. “It’s very—”

“Jaaaaaa-xy!”

Gardener heard the man’s voice in the distance again. Sounded like a neighbor searching for his dog, Jackie. Gardener looked up, scanning the darkness behind the woman but seeing nothing, even with the full moonlight shining down. He wouldn’t be any good helping someone find a dog. Couldn’t see but a foot in front of him on a good day with full sunlight, let alone nighttime, when he was as good as blind.

“Does somebody in this neighborhood where you’ve lived forever have a dog named Jackie?” he asked. “Sounds like it mighta went missin’.”

She huffed with annoyance, and when he looked up, she had her hands on her hips and a puss on her face. “I’m Jaxy.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to point out that she wasn’t a dog, but thank the Lord he held back. “You’re name…is Jaxy?”

“No!” She inhaled a deep breath, then released it. “It’s Jacqueline. My friends call me Jax.”

In the past year or so, his ears had started making up