J.C. and the Bijoux Jolis: The Rousseaus #3 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 14) (2 page)

If the best man and maid of honor are both single
, thought J.C. Rousseau, taking another peek at Kate English’s best friend, Libitz Feingold,
it’s practically an unwritten rule that they should pork.

And if anyone on earth looked to be in dire need of a good, hard, thorough fucking, it was Mademoiselle Feingold.

As the priest droned on about the blessing and sanctity of marriage, J.C.’s younger brother, Étienne, elbowed him subtly in the side and J.C. straightened, clearing his throat and shifting his glance away from Kate’s skinny, tiny, perpetually annoyed-looking friend.

She was definitely, positively
not
his type—she wasn’t even breathing the same air as his type—so why had he kept stealing glances at her over Étienne’s wedding weekend? Fuck if he knew. There was something intriguing about her, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

While he generally preferred blondes or redheads with long, luxurious hair, Libitz had short, jet-black hair she wore in a close-cropped pixie cut that could have looked masculine on a larger woman or twee on someone as small as Libitz. But he had to admit, she somehow pulled it off, looking both feminine and chic.

J.C. was partial to women with big tits and hips he could hold on to while he fucked them from behind. Libitz? Well, her “bits” were small and her hips were nonexistent, much like her ass, which didn’t have the usual curve and swell that made his mouth water.

She was practically boy-shaped under the champagne-colored silk bridesmaid gown she wore today, and yet he couldn’t stop staring at her.

Maybe it was her massive dark-brown eyes that took up half her face like a Margaret Keane portrait come to life…or the creamy-looking texture of her olive-colored skin…or the fact that her lips were almost perfectly bow-shaped and plump enough to pillow around a man’s cock and take him to heaven. Or maybe it was that she just seemed so fucking ambivalent about everyone at the wedding except for Kate, whom she affectionately called “KK.” He wondered what it would take to impress her—literally, to make an impression—but damned if he knew. Last night at the rehearsal dinner, he’d discovered that she was utterly immune to his charm.

“You must be the famous Libitz,” he’d opened, taking his assigned seat beside her and flashing his sexiest grin. After all, if she was his chosen conquest for the weekend, there was no time like the present to work his wiles.

Wearing a simple black sheath dress with aqua circles, seventies-style mod makeup, and oversized silver and crystal chandelier earrings that almost brushed her thin shoulders, she’d turned to him and blinked those wide, all-seeing eyes.

“And you…
must
be kidding.”

Taken aback, he’d stared at her for a second before chuckling. “Wha—I mean, how’s that?”

“Let’s start over,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “Here’s your line, Romeo: ‘Hi, I’m Étienne’s brother, Jean-Christian. It’s nice to meet you.’ Want to give it a try?”

He cleared his throat, his smile fading. “Hi, I’m Étienne’s brother, Jean-Christian. It’s nice to meet you.”

She locked eyes with his, her lips neutral, tilted neither up nor down. “Hi. I’m Libitz Feingold, Kate’s best friend…and it’s not cold enough.”

“What?” asked J.C., feeling completely turned around.

“It’s not cold enough in hell for me to fall for someone like you,” she said, then shifted back around to talk to the person on her other side.

Well, fuck me
, thought J.C., taking another gulp of beer as he tried to figure out if he was insulted or impressed. After a moment, he nudged her in the side with his elbow, and she looked at him over her shoulder, her expression annoyed.

“Yes?”

“I hear the temperature’s dropping there,” he said casually, then added, “because they’re expecting a visit from you.”

“Ha!” she chortled, a genuine grin brightening her eyes for a moment before she quickly reigned it back in to practiced ennui. “Is that right?”

He shrugged, tipping his bottle of beer back as he held her eyes, challenging her to come back at him with something clever. “So I heard.”

“From all the friends you’ve got there?”

He almost spit his beer out. Damn, but she was quick.

“Truce?” he asked, placing his beer on the table and holding out his hand.

She stared at his hand for a moment, then looked away, leaning forward to pick up her champagne glass and bringing it slowly to her lips. “No, thanks. Mama didn’t raise no fool.”

“You’re unreal.”

She shook her head, that bored look still in place. “Nope. I’m real. I’m just not a good target for charming scamps looking for trouble.”

“A target? Shit. Who got to you?” he asked, feeling a little abused by her insta-judgment of him without actually getting a chance to know him in person. Not that she was wrong exactly. But getting into trouble with the right person could be a hell of a lot of fun.

“The list is long and distinguished,” she shot back.

His eyes widened and his lips wobbled.

“Oh, God,” she said, shaking her head as her cheeks bloomed an appealing pink under her makeup, “I walked right into that one didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did,” said J.C. with what he hoped was a disarming grin. “All together, now…”

“
So’s my Johnson
,” they said at the same time, quoting the rebuttal line from
Top Gun
.

“Hey, look at that,” he said, still smiling at her. “You
do
know how to have fun. I was beginning to worry.”

Her smile instantly faded. “You’re not as cute as you think you are.”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding as he finished the last of his beer, “I am.”

She rolled her eyes and presented him with her full back, their conversation apparently over.

“Jean-Christian!” muttered Étienne, elbowing him in the side again as the priest gave him a dirty look.

“
Père
?” he asked, wondering what he’d just missed.

The priest sighed with exasperation. “The rings, my son?”

Fuck
.

J.C. patted down his pockets, finally remembering he’d placed the two gold bands in his inside pocket and winking at Libitz as he handed them to Étienne. She awarded him with a scathing look, shaking her head with disgust as the priest continued the ceremony by blessing the rings.

Damn, but he couldn’t catch a break with her. It was frustrating as hell.

He was good looking. He
knew
he was. For a fact.

Just last week, his sometimes-fuckbuddy, recent divorcee Felicity Atwell, told him that he was a “real-life Gideon Cross.” And while he had no idea who the fuck this Cross fellow was, hearing her purr the words “sexy and powerful…just like Gideon” into his ear while he thrust inside of her had made him come twice as fast.

Thankfully, Felicity was out of town this weekend, visiting friends in Scotland, so inviting her to the wedding as his date hadn’t been an issue. But frankly, he wouldn’t have invited her even if she was in town. He’d never promised her anything, after all. Theirs was a conscience-free, commitment-free arrangement of convenience, and either of them could walk away from it at any time. It was his favorite type of relationship, in fact: no expectations, no assumptions, no feelings. Just two mutually consenting adults who occasionally had drinks or dinner or fucked. It was perfect.

Perfect because J.C. had no interest in committing himself to one woman when the world was full of delicious ladies of every color, shape, size, and age. Perfect because J.C. didn’t want the pressure of living up to one person’s expectations of him. Perfect because he didn’t want to be on either end of a two-person relationship when feelings that were meant to last forever would inevitably start to fade.

He’d watched it with his own parents: his father’s disinterest in his mother as she aged from a graceful and nubile ballerina into a middle-aged mother of four. He’d been witness to his father’s philandering, even included regularly when his father went to meet a paramour in the city. He’d been so familiar with the Morris House Hotel, in fact, that the concierge and bartenders knew his name. The first time J.C. had ever gotten drunk, it was at the Morris House Hotel, in the lobby bar, where Monsieur Rousseau had handed the bartender his gold card and told him to “babysit” J.C. while he disappeared for an hour.

Faced with his wife’s hostility when they returned home, his father would slap thirteen-year-old J.C. on the back and use father-son bonding time as the excuse for them missing dinner or coming home so late on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday evening. Her face, a mixture of brittle and betrayed, would search J.C.’s eyes for a truth he was unable to offer. After a while, he couldn’t look into his mother’s eyes without flinching, so he stopped. He stopped looking into them altogether.

And he promised himself he’d never, ever make a woman look that way at him. And the best way to achieve that goal? Stay loose. Stay free. Enjoy women, as his father had, without the caustic damage to a disillusioned wife while using his young son as an alibi.

“Do you, Étienne Xavier Rousseau, take this woman, Kathryn Grey English, for your lawfully wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony?”

“I do,” said Étienne softly, his gravelly with emotion.

“Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keeping yourself for her only, as long as you both shall live?”

Étienne’s head jerked in a small nod before he whispered, “I will.”

“Kathryn Grey English, do you take Étienne Xavier Rousseau to be your lawfully wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony?”

Kate English locked her gaze on Étienne, her eyes full of tears, her lips tilted up in a smile so sweet and genuine, it was unbearable to see, and J.C. had to look away.

“I do,” she said, her voice soft and tender.

“Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keeping yourself for him only, as long as you both shall live?”

“I will,” she murmured, her voice breaking just a little.

It was a promise.

A promise J.C. had no doubt she meant. He could hear it in the sweet seriousness of her voice. He could see it in the glistening vulnerability of her eyes. She meant it.

But hadn’t their mother meant it once upon a time? Hadn’t their father meant it too?

It baffled J.C. that Étienne had somehow managed to move past their parents’ fucked-up marriage to find a committed, loving, stable relationship of his own. But then again, J.C. had never allowed Étienne to be the one to join their father in the city. He’d always shoved his brother aside and volunteered to go instead. And besides, at age fifteen, Étienne had been sent off to military school in the Deep South, only home for a few weeks at Christmas and in the summertime. He’d missed a lot of their parent’s wildly dysfunctional relationship, and the twins—his sisters, Jax and Mad—had had each other for comfort. J.C. had had both the exposure to his father’s infidelity and no one with whom to process it.

Not that it mattered at this point. He’d chosen how he wanted his life to be—free of the sort of emotion that could break your heart or someone else’s—and for the most part, he was happy with the way things were.

Looking past Étienne and Kate, he checked out Libitz again, wondering what it would take to get under her skirt…because fuck, but he loved a conquest, and he sensed that fucking Libitz would pay off in spades. Angry chicks were always nuts in bed, and she was the angriest he’d ever seen.

Kate had mentioned that, like him, Libitz had an interest in art. In fact, if he recalled correctly, she had a gallery in New York while he was in the process of opening his own gallery in Philadelphia. Now that was an interesting bit of information, because one of the few things in life about which J.C. allowed himself to feel genuine passion was art. He loved it. He fucking loved it.

It was honest.

It was raw.

It was ugly.

It was beautiful.

It was real in a way he could never be, and yet it allowed him to experience infatuation, repulsion, lust, and even love in a way that kept him, and others, safe. Art combined every emotion he didn’t allow himself to feel and offered it up in a beautiful, untouchable package. He could feel
about
it and
for
it, but it couldn’t hurt him and he couldn’t hurt it. It was an almost perfect relationship and, aside from that with his siblings, the only other to which he felt truly and wholly committed.

But conveniently, there was also no harm in using art as a topic to woo a woman trying to appear disinterested in him.

Like most serious women stuck in their own heads, he suspected that if he could get Libitz to talk about business—
her
business: art and galleries—she would feel powerful and equal. If he was right, it would also make her defenses fall, and maybe she’d think she was seeing another side of him through his enthusiasm for a shared passion. Of course he could never extend such emotion to her, a living, breathing human being with a heart capable of breaking. But that wouldn’t be an issue. Before they fucked, he’d make sure that she—like every other woman on the face of the earth—knew that Jean-Christian Louis Rousseau offered nothing except his eager tongue, his fat cock, and the desire to make her come all over both.