Jonquils for Jax (Blueberry Lane 3 - The Rousseaus #1) - Katy Regnery Page 0,46

running through the sprinkler with them and teaching them how to swim. She would tuck them in at night, telling them “Vous etes si belle que vous regarder est une souffrance” after singing them lullabies in French and pushing their dirty-blond hair from their foreheads—

“Wait!” she exclaimed, stopping in her tracks. She blinked twice, turning to look over her shoulder, not at Westerly, but at the chimneys of Haverford Park just beyond, where a dirty-blond-haired gardener would be waiting for her in just a few hours.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said, quickening her pace as she ducked through the hedgerow. “You barely know him!”

And yet the image was there in her head. As clear as day. A sleeping child with the gardener’s hair, falling asleep to lullabies sung in soft and dirty French.

***

If Gardener Thibodeaux had ever believed that only women got the jitters before a first date, the way he’d felt all day would have soundly trounced such an idiotic notion. As he pulled an old border of pachysandra from around the swimming pool area, he thought of nothing but Jax.

It wasn’t that he was nervous about spending time with her…since meeting her, he craved time with her, and not seeing her since Wednesday afternoon’s lesson had felt like a long time.

It wasn’t that he was nervous about taking her to Club7, the restaurant and bar associated with the Philadelphia Brotherhood of Police. He was proud to be seen with Jax Rousseau. If he ran into the guys he used to work with, they’d be blown away by the girl on his arm.

That said, he wasn’t entirely sure she was ready to see the guys he used to work with. He hadn’t been around them much since Gil’s death and his own retirement. Several of his buddies had tried to reach out to him, but he’d ignored their attempts. What if he ran into them tonight? And what if they talked about what had happened in any detail? Did he owe it to Jax to fill her in first?

Speaking of Jax, it felt really weird and really wrong to have her pick him up and drive them. But the thing was, he needed to figure out how to live this life. And living this life meant letting other people drive sometimes. Sure, he could have rented a limo and driver, but that wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was. Trying to find a silver lining, he reminded himself that even if she was driving, he still got to be alone with her.

Over the past two days, he’d read her script, and while he’d found it lacking in some realism, overall he thought it was a strong project. It was the story of a multigenerational cop family with Irish roots, and the protagonist, a third-generation female cop named Jenny O’Laughlin, starts her first day as a vice detective when the series begins. Though she’s been led to believe that she’ll be conducting investigations, instead she’s asked about her willingness to go undercover as a prostitute in a long-term sting.

The series, which would explore the underbelly of Philadelphia’s prostitution and narcotics rings by way of a department insider, could be a fascinating study of the “other side” of vice, flush with opportunities for drama in Jenny’s job, with her family, and with her boyfriend, a fireman who won’t find out what she’s been doing until episode five or six.

Gard could understand why Jax had liked it, and he knew plenty of cops with whom she could speak, to be sure she got the script perfect every time. Heck, he could work with her as an advisor, tweaking a word here and there, correcting a misconception, or just keeping the show as accurate as possible. Even though he’d worked SVU, he could still—

No.

No, he couldn’t.

He sighed, gathering a pile of pachysandra, throwing it into a wheelbarrow, and heading back toward the gardening shed.

More than once over the last few days, he’d gotten carried away like this. The script was compelling enough to make him dream about having a chance to put all his now-worthless knowledge to good use once again. But he needed to remind himself that life was gone. He wasn’t a cop anymore. He wasn’t a TV script advisor. He was a gardener, and if he didn’t want any more disappointment in his life, he’d do well to remember it.

After dropping off the wheelbarrow, he headed back to his apartment and took a shower, soaping his body and shampooing