to get her ass in gear if she was going to make it.
“Good morning,” called her twin sister, Madeleine, opening the door of Jax’s bedroom as though she’d somehow known her sister had just woken up. And she probably had. Like most twins, they shared an inexplicable bond—a closeness that couldn’t be quantified or explained and which Jax and Mad had pretty much always taken for granted.
“No, it’s not,” grumbled Jax, groaning as she sat up, making her head pound even worse.
Mad threw a bottle of Advil on the bed and put her hands on her hips. “J.C. told me what happened. How shall we kill him?”
Jax couldn’t help grinning at her little sister, who was almost a full twenty minutes younger than she. In a pink flowered sundress with a matching powder-pink cardigan and her long dark hair back in a pink gingham hairband, Mad was a vision of innocence and loveliness. She wasn’t killing anyone—unless it was with kindness—and they both knew it.
The Rousseau sisters had the same dark hair and green eyes, but that’s where the similarities ended. They were fraternal twins who’d been blessed with very, very different personalities. Jax had always been the spitfire, the wild card, the sass, and her counterpart, Mad, was the sweet, the thoughtful, and—of all the Rousseau siblings—the most universally beloved.
“You? Hurt a fly?” Jax scoffed.
Mad sat down on the bed, placing a glass of water on her sister’s bedside table and reaching up to gingerly touch the Band-Aid on Jax’s temple.
“Bastard.”
Jax opened the bottle and poured two pills into her hand. “Oui.”
“Are you going to press charges?”
Jax sighed, shaking her head. “And draw attention to myself? No, thanks.”
Mad frowned. “So Tripp gets away with it.”
Jax looked down at the pills miserably, then reached for the glass of water. “They’ll splash it everywhere, Mad. Legal proceedings are public. It’s not worth it.”
“It makes me furious,” said Mad softly.
“Join the club.”
Mad sighed. “So…J.C. said that the Englishes’ gardener came to your rescue.”
Jax swallowed the pills before meeting her sister’s eyes. “Something like that.”
“But Felix was here all night…with Emily and Barrett English.”
“New gardener.”
“Ah-ha.” Mad raised an eyebrow, somehow able to sense something distinct in her sister’s otherwise truculent tone. “Young new gardener?”
Jax flushed. “Young-ish.”
“Hot new gardener?” asked Mad, enjoying herself.
Jax scowled. “Hot-ish.”
“So…?”
“So what, Mad?” asked Jax, getting out of bed and stalking across her plush bedroom carpeting to the massive closet that held her clothes. “He’s a gardener.”
“Hold up. Hold up,” said Mad from behind her. “What was that?”
Jax plucked a navy-blue silk tank top from a hanger and draped it over her arm, then turned and pulled some ivory-colored linen pants from the opposite side of the closet. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t care what someone does for a living! You’ve dated bankers and actors, students, lawyers, horse groomers, that guy you met at Cannes who made the pretty lines in the beach sand every morning, the one from Vail who ran the ski lift, the Italian count who liked sucking on your—”
“Okay! You made your point. I date all kinds.” Jax gave her sister a sour look as she threw the clothes on the bed. “But the neighbor’s gardener? Can you imagine what Maman would say?”
“Since when do you give a shit?”
“Madeleine!”
“Jacqueline!” said Mad, mocking her.
Jax stared at her sister from across the bed, finally taking a deep breath and shrugging. “He wasn’t interested.”
Mad’s eyes widened. “I must be going deaf because I’m sure you just said—”
“Don’t make it worse,” said Jax, looking down. “He wasn’t—”
“Impossible,” interrupted Mad, who crossed to her sister’s bureau and took out a navy-blue push-up bra and white lace panties, which she handed to Jax. “They’re always interested. You’re…you.”
“And apparently he’s immune,” said Jax, throwing her nightgown over her head and reaching for the bra.
“Again, I say…impossible.”
Jax fastened the bra, then took the panties and stepped into them, pulling them up her long legs. “I made a pass at him.”
“You what?” asked Mad, her eyes wide and surprised.
“I made a pass at him. I offered him a kiss and he…well, he didn’t take me up on it,” she said, buttoning the pants before zipping them. “Do you still have my navy Prada sandals? The patent-leather ones with the wedge?”
“I’ll grab them for you in a minute,” said Mad, still staring at her sister in awe. “You don’t make passes. You don’t need to. Ever.”
“The fact that I haven’t had much practice making the first move was more than obvious,” said Jax acidly, shrugging into