Jonquils for Jax (Blueberry Lane 3 - The Rousseaus #1) - Katy Regnery Page 0,28

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.

Meanwhile, Gard was supposed to be considering whether or not a life as Haverford Park’s head groundskeeper could be his next step in life. And damn but he wished it felt like the next organic step for his life rather than a backup plan born from a shattered dream with skills he’d never really intended to use.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. It was a mellow evening with crickets chirping and the sound of a sprinkler whoosh-whoosh-whooshing in a rhythmic circle nearby. With the summer solstice only recently behind them, the sun was still brightening the sky even at 8:05, and a warm summer breeze blessed the skin of his face.

His face, which Jax had finally noticed, in all its gnarled ugliness, today. His face, the upper half of which was covered in the scars left behind by taking a sprinkle of birdshot to his forehead that had compromised his vision so irreparably that even after six surgeries, it was unlikely he would ever see clearly again.

He tipped the bottle to his lips and let the cold water sluice down his throat, unable to keep his dark memories at bay.

It had been an unseasonably chilly September day, almost two years ago, when he and his partner, Gil DeMarco, had approached Miguel Santiago’s apartment in the rough Strawberry Mansion neighborhood of Philadelphia. As he pounded his fist on the Santiagos’ door, he’d had no idea that it would be Gil’s last day on earth and his last day as a whole man.

If he’d known, would he have done anything differently? Would he have ignored the screams of Carolina Santiago from inside the apartment and waited for backup? Probably not. Miguel was armed, she was in trouble, and if he and Gil had waited, her brother