“Lib, are you serious?”
“Yes! He’s a…a reprobate. A letch. He’s disgusting! You can’t…I mean…” Libitz stopped talking, suddenly realizing what she was saying and to whom. “I just mean…”
“You don’t know everything about him,” said Kate with quiet conviction.
“I know all I need to know.”
“I wish you’d tell me what went down between you two at the wedding,” said Kate, some of the previous warmth missing from her voice.
Libitz bit her upper lip, considering Kate’s words, but then decided against saying any more about the relentless way he’d pursued her only to end their beautiful kiss with a scathing shower of verbal abuse.
“Nothing, KK. Seriously. It was nothing.”
“Did you two…?”
“No! Absolutely not.”
“Because I know that you both, you know…”
“We’re both a little slutty?” supplied Libitz. “Fair enough. But no. We didn’t fuck, Kate. I promised you we wouldn’t.”
More importantly, I promised myself. And thank God. How could I face him across the baptismal font if I’d banged him at KK’s wedding?
“You know I don’t judge…but it would make things awkward, Lib.”
“I know that,” said Libitz, “which is why we didn’t. I promise. We just—we don’t get along.”
Kate was quiet for a few minutes before she spoke again. “Can you try harder? For Noelle’s sake?”
Libitz’s lips softened, turning up in a smile as she thought about her goddaughter, growing safely but surely within her best friend’s body. She breathed deeply, thinking of how much she would love that little girl, taking her to Broadway shows and the American Girls’ store for tea. They’d get their toes painted together, and Aunt Libby would shower her with gifts. She’d be Noelle’s auntie, a special friend…her godmother. Oh, God. Her heart ached with the goodness of it.
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll slay dragons for Noelle, and you know it.” I can certainly put up with Jean-Christian Rousseau.
Kate laughed, all the warmth returning to her voice. “I know that. You were my only choice. étienne said we could ask Stratton and Mad instead, but I insisted on you. I love Mad, but it had to be you, Lib. It just…it had to be.”
For the third time in their conversation, Libitz’s eyes welled with tears, and she sniffled again, clearing her throat. “Well then, it’s settled. Now stop making me cry and tell me all about the jungle sex you and Ten had in Mooréa!”
***
“I paid over a million dollars for it,” said J.C. evenly, sitting back in his desk chair and feeling annoyed. The office at his gallery was dark, and he was going to be late to Jax’s if he didn’t get a move on. “I expect it here on time.”
“Rousseau-san,” said Hiroto, his art dealer in Tokyo, “it isn’t that simple. It was flagged in Customs, and now—”
“Not my problem,” said J.C., glancing at his watch. “Have it here in Philadelphia by tomorrow or keep it and return my million. Clear, Hiroto-san?”
“Hai. It will be done.”
J.C. placed the receiver back in the cradle and shuffled the papers on his desk back into a file folder with an irritated sigh. He’d paid $1.2 million for the 1967 Kusama, and he had someone coming up from Washington, DC, to retrieve it on Monday. He wasn’t about to lose the sale due to Hiroto’s ineptitude.
His phone buzzed as he stood up from his desk, and he glanced down at the screen to find a group text his sister had sent to her siblings.
Jacqueline Rousseau: Dinner. 8:00pm. Don’t be late.
Jacqueline Rousseau: And, J.C., I want to show you something. Remind me.
His little sister had gotten bossier since settling down last month with her new fiancé, Gardener Thibodeaux. All things considered, however, J.C. was happy to see her with someone who was so crazy about her. Fuck, Gard had actually pissed away most of his trust fund buying Le Chateau, their childhood home, for Jax. If that wasn’t love, J.C. didn’t know what was.
Not that he knew anything about love.
He didn’t.
And that was the way he wanted it.
Except…
Since his brother’s wedding last month, he’d felt a subtle shift in himself. Fucking Felicity had gotten stale, so he’d been making more excuses to get out of seeing her. He craved something different, something challenging and more exciting, something that didn’t come so easy and feel so cheap. He just didn’t know how, or where, to find it.