The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte

Jillian received ample warning of Seth’s and Rachel’s Sunday afternoon visit. Her mother had called with the information. “I suggested four-thirty. That will give you enough time to clean up after closing. I’ll send Seth down to pick you up and we’ll have coffee in the garden.”

Enough time, also, to engage in a little self-indulgence, some harmless recollections of his last visit to the tasting room and the whole surreal encounter after her tumble last night. Then she packed away another layer of chardonnay glasses and, with each, she tucked away a layer of sensual memory.

His Tokay voice, deep, thick, intoxicating. The smooth curves of muscle in his folded arms. The bold burn of his gaze and a dozen imprints of his touch on her face.

Then she closed the lid of the packing case and gave it a solid all-done rap. This was her work space, her place of confidence and control, and she intended to maintain her professionalism despite the scary newness of this Seth thing. Today was a test, sooner than she’d expected, but she was prepared—prepared with the kind of nervous, let’sget-this-done butterfly accompaniment she’d always experienced at exam time.

Bring it on, Seth Bennedict. Do your worst. I’m ready for you and your macho sex appeal.

Except five minutes later, when she heard heavy footsteps crossing the tasting-room floor, she realized that while she’d prepared herself mentally, her body hadn’t been listening. Did it not understand the meaning of professional behavior? Ignoring the champagne fizz in her blood and the sultry tango of her heartbeat, she turned around just as his footsteps halted at her bar.

So.

That was as much as she could force from her brain in that first electric second of eye contact. Then she blinked the charge from her eyes and gave herself a mental shake. She needed to stop staring and start breathing or smiling or talking.

Or something.

It would help, no doubt, if she stopped staring at his eyes, his mouth, the stretch of a cornflower-blue T-shirt across his broad chest. His anything, really.

“How are you?” he asked. “After your fall?”

“I’m fine, thanks. It was only a tumble, barely a fall.” She cleared her throat. “Where’s Rachel?”

“Up at the stables. I bet she’s feeding your pony rice cakes with peanut butter right about now.”

“In which case my pony will be her slave for life.” Jillian felt his gaze dip to her mouth, to her smile, and her heart warmed in her chest. “It also puts me in my place.”

His brows lifted in a silent question.

“I thought her visit this afternoon was to thank me. At least, that’s what my mother implied. Do you suppose it was a ruse to visit Monty?”

“I don’t doubt it for a second.”

Before she could do more than moisten her lips—and feel his gaze follow the sweep of her tongue in another flutter of heat—he said, “Your mother was right.”

“About the purpose of your visit or something else?”

“She guessed you’d be packing up.” He inclined his head toward the boxes of glasses stacked on the bar. “She thought I could be useful. Where does this have to go?”

“The cellar.”

“Now?”

“Well, I have a builder starting here some time tomorrow, ” she said, straight-faced. “Everything has to be moved out beforehand.”

“You’re not intending to do that by yourself?”

“Eli’s organized some cellar staff to come in later and clear out all the big stuff. I’m only taking care of the glasses and bottles.”

One dark brow lifted. “You don’t trust anyone else with the glassware?”

Jillian smiled and prodded one of the boxes down the bar toward him. “I trust you.”

A throwaway line in an exchange of banter should not have imbued the room with heavy meaning. And perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps it was his response, his still intensity as he locked eyes with her.

“Do you?” he asked slowly.

Yes, she trusted him with her tools of the trade. She had complete faith in his word and his straightforwardness and his honesty. And, she realized with a pang of surprise, she would turn to Seth Bennedict again. She trusted him as a builder, as a friend of sorts, and as a person she could depend upon and borrow strength from in a crisis.

But as a man, as a potential lover?

Her heart danced a couple of hot, heavy steps. No, it wasn’t Seth she feared. It was herself, her own lack of judgment, her own inability to tell lust from love. And she certainly didn’t trust this sensual soul he’d awakened from its long, deep slumber.

“Do you trust me, Jillian?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I do.”

He nodded, just once. Then he stacked three boxes together and picked them up. “Good. While we’re taking these down to your cellar, you can tell me what was going on with you yesterday evening.”

Jillian blinked at the rapid change in mood, in pace, in topic. “What do you mean?”

“You promised to tell me why you were out riding so late. And why you were so distracted that you fell off.”

“Was unseated,” she muttered. Then, when he looked askance, she waved her nit-picking comment aside and slipped out from behind the bar. “I imagine you’ve heard the latest about Spencer Ashton?”

“There’s talk your family’s taking him to court.”

She picked up one box of bottles from the bar and headed toward the winery. “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. For Mom’s sake.”

“From what I’ve heard, the Ashton estate should have been hers.” Seth nudged the swinging door open with his hip and elbow and motioned for her to go first. “Seems like she has cause to sue.”

“That’s what Eli says, and I know it’s not right that she lost all the Lattimer assets, but she hates what could happen in the backlash. To our family and to his other family. Families,” she amended on a note of disgust. “Lord knows how many more of those he has hidden away!”

They kept moving, down the narrow hallway, through another door and into the winery. Just talking and thinking about Anna Sheridan’s story—and Grant Ashton’s beforehand—tied her stomach in knots.

She bore Spencer Ashton’s genes. This unprincipled, unfaithful, cheating bastard was her birth father. In the mirror every morning and every night she saw his eyes, his nose, his height and his long, lean bones. And at least once every day she thanked the Lord for her mother’s steady, loving influence that had balanced the brew.

Her mother, who now had so much to deal with, all over again.

“When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, we had a visitor,” she said. “At least, Mom had a visitor.”

“Anna Sheridan?”

Jillian stopped dead in her tracks, eyes widening as she rounded on him. “You know Anna?”

“I met her back at the house just now.”

Well, of course he had. If her brain weren’t so addled she would have worked that out herself. “Did you happen to meet Jack?”

“Yeah. Cute kid.” Steady, perceptive eyes fixed on hers. “I’m guessing this is one of those hidden families you mentioned.”

“Nice guess.” She exhaled heavily. “The cute kid’s mother was Spencer’s secretary. She died not long after having the baby.”

“Anna’s not his mother?”

“His aunt. She’s had custody ever since her sister died. She was doing just fine without Spencer’s help until the news about Jack’s paternity hit the tabloids. Then she had the pleasure of a raft of photographers staking out her doorstep.

“Oh, and some nutso is sending her threatening letters.”

With a box of glassware occupying her hands, Jillian couldn’t throw them in the air to illustrate her frustrated impotence. So she growled instead. Growled and swung away, stalking off toward the cellar entrance.

Seth caught up in three long-legged strides.

“And she came to Caroline for help? Why not the police?”

His puzzlement echoed her own reaction the previous day, when Mercedes dropped the clanger on her. “Apparently the police investigated and came up with zip. She thought Spencer might be able to use his influence, to get the police to take the threats more seriously or something, except she couldn’t get to see him and she had to get out of San Francisco.”

“Did she try his estate?”

“Yes and his wife all but ran her off. I gather she either didn’t believe Anna or didn’t want to believe her, and Megan—one of her daughters—overheard and suggested she come and see Mom.”

“This was yesterday afternoon and she’s still here?” he asked slowly. “That’s some visit.”

“And it’s going to get a whole lot longer!”

Jillian stopped. It was either that, slam into the cellar door, or turn and stride back from where she’d come. She exhaled harshly, and discovered she’d spent enough aggravation to continue in a more reasonable tone. “When Mom heard that Anna and Jack were living in a sleazy motel room, she insisted they move into a guest room at the Vines.”

“And you have a problem with this stranger moving in?”

“No, that’s not it. You met Anna. She’s gutsy, she’s genuine, and she dotes on little Jack. She only agreed to stay after Mom played the guilt card over what’s best for him.”

Jillian’s brows drew together in concentration as she tried to settle on what, exactly, disturbed her most. There was so much to choose from.

“I’m worried about how this whole situation will affect Mom,” she decided finally.

“She didn’t look worried or upset today.”

Trust him—a man—to sound so reasonable. “I know, but she stews over things. At night, when she’s not sleeping. How could she not be affected by this? Spencer’s current wife was his secretary, too, you know. When Mom was married to the bastard.”

“History repeats,” Seth said evenly.

“In Spencer’s case, over and over again.”

She felt his gaze on her face, lingering on the tired circles beneath her eyes, touching her with that same velvetedged tenderness as last night. “Sounds like you need to do something more positive and less dangerous than stewing and losing sleep.”

Her reflexes kicked in before her brain, stiffening her shoulders, framing the automatic objection. What about the family celebration she and Mercedes were planning for the new tasting room? That was positive, wasn’t it?

Or was it only a cosmetic fix? Like a fancy label plastered on a bottle of poor wine—nice effect, but unlikely to fool anyone once the cork came out.

Jillian inhaled deeply through her nose, and the familiar layers of fruit and oak that pervaded the winery air steadied her churning emotions. The man at her elbow might unsteady her senses but talking to him was no hardship, she realized. Not even when the topic itself was.

“You’re right,” she admitted softly.

“I usually am.”

That response startled a snort of laughter from Jillian, and with it an easing of the tension in her shoulders and neck and head. Seth was more right than he knew, she decided in a moment of absolute clarity. This renovation project was only step one in building her future. Steps two through ten involved clearing away the rubble of her past, starting with Spencer Ashton and working her way up.

And once you clear away that rubble, will you be ready for a man like Seth Bennedict?

A wild little rhythm beat in her chest as she cast a sideways glance at her companion and found him watching her, all serious and intense for three rapid heartbeats before he jerked his head toward the door and eased the mood with a dry comment.

“I don’t know about you, but if I don’t dump these boxes my arms are gonna be permanently curled.”

Jillian breathed a sigh of relief and cut him a look through her lashes. “Your fault for going all macho and taking three boxes.”

“I can handle ‘em.”

And to illustrate, he shifted the entire load into one arm—Jillian’s breath hitched with shattered-glass fear and, yes, because of how his biceps flexed as it took the extra weight. Vaguely she registered him reaching out to open the cellar door. Mostly she registered the heat and scent of his body as she ducked under his arm and started down the stairs.

“Steady,” he cautioned from behind.

“I know these stairs like the back of my hand.” She glanced over her shoulder, all cool and haughty until she realized that Seth lagged two stairs behind. Which meant she copped a nice eyeful of strong thighs gloved in faded denim. Big and bold and full-bodied.

“I could take them with my eyes closed,” she finished, turning smartly to face front. “Them” meaning stairs, not his jeans.

“Well, don’t,” he said dryly. “I’m not up for dusting off your backside again.”

Jillian scooted down the rest of the stairs without a word. She did not think about his hands on her backside or about taking his jeans with her eyes closed. Much.

She deposited her box on the long table she’d coaxed Eli into setting up that morning and watched Seth follow suit. A new tension seeped into her body, as sultry and musty as the cellar atmosphere with its rich scents of aging wine and earth and timber.

Empty hands, alone with this man, in the place where her senses sang with the spirit of wine.

Not good, Jillian, not good.

Leaning her hips against the edge of the table, she forced herself to relax. She would not run away. She would face temptation with mature, rational calm. “This,” she said, patting the table with one hand, “is where we’ll be doing the tastings while you’re working upstairs.”

Apparently he took that table pat as an invitation, since he parked his denims right beside her, not touching but close enough for her hormones to rattle and hum with near-Seth stimulation. To flex muscles of their own as they sucked in deep drafts of his body heat.

She should move. She didn’t.

Seth was looking around through narrowed eyes, a long, slow sweep of their high-ceilinged subterranean world, and Jillian followed his gaze. Attempted to experience it with fresh senses, as he was doing now and as her tasting-room visitors would over the next few weeks.

“The controlled temperature and the low light are ideal for the wine. For aging and storage,” she said.

“But not so good for your tastings?”

“I’m looking forward to the change, actually, and I’ve always loved the atmosphere down here. My brothers locked me in once, when I was eight or nine, and they hated that I didn’t dissolve with terror.” A soft smile curved her lips as she remembered. “I asked Lucas that night if I could move in down here.”

“Did he let you?”

“He convinced me my ponies would hate it.”

One dark brow arched. “You had a collection back then?”

“Lucas gave me my first the year we moved here. I wasn’t much older than Rachel,” she said softly. “My stepfather is responsible for my two grand passions. Horses and wine.”

“Your only two passions?”

She turned then, found him studying her. Dark, silent, still. A tiny ripple of excitement raced over her skin. Did she want to answer that question? Did she even know the answer?

Two things she did know.

He was going to kiss her. And she was going to let him.

Seven

“Just a taste,” Seth murmured as their eyes met and held and his body resounded with the knowledge that she wasn’t going to stiffen or turn away, that she wasn’t going to reject his kiss.

One sip, he promised himself, as his lips slanted over hers and stilled in surprise. Unexpectedly cool, those lips, when her reminiscent smile had warmed him right through. Cool and exquisitely soft, like the first sip of a delicate white.

“Another,” she whispered against his lips and when Seth hesitated, her breath hitched and caught at his willpower.

No, he cautioned himself. Bad idea.

But then her hand crept up his arm, her fingers curled around his biceps, and her mouth moved against his. “One more taste,” she pleaded, a low, husky appeal that curled through his blood like liquid temptation.

What harm could one small sample do? One sip of the passion he felt simmering beneath his mouth and his hands?

When his lips moved over hers, changing the angle and deepening the contact, she made a tiny yielding sound. Barely a sigh, it echoed through his body, bouncing off every tense, hard surface—and there were plenty—until it thundered in time with his pulse. It didn’t help that her other hand had fastened around his neck, holding him tight, urging him to forget every take-it-slow vow he’d ever made to himself.

Then her mouth opened under his and he was a goner.

Their tongues met and the essence of the kiss changed in one stroke of heat. Like one of her big California reds, she exploded in his mouth. Hot, intense, packed with complex flavors he knew would linger long after this kiss had ended.

End it now, he told himself. While you can.

Ah, but he couldn’t, not when this had been so many years coming, this chance to get his hands and his mouth on Jillian Ashton. He nipped at her bottom lip and dived back into her mouth. He eased back to taste her lips with his tongue, to press kisses to the corner of her mouth, to her chin, to her lips again. He kissed her throat because he couldn’t stop himself, and she tasted as he’d imagined, as addictively sweet and supple as the flesh under his fingertips. The flesh that curved in wicked torment—

He stopped cold.

He had his hands inside her jeans?

What had happened to take it slow, earn her trust, give her time? How far did he think he could stretch his willpower before it snapped? Before he lay her down on this table and ripped away her clothes and tasted the wine and woman on her body, in places he’d dreamed about, in ways he’d only fantasized about, for so many years.

Not the kind of horizontal tasting this table was intended for.

Carefully he slid his hands from the curves of her backside and up to her waist. He put her away from him and watched her faraway green gaze struggle to refocus as her grip loosened and slipped away from his neck.

And there they sat in an awkward afterward vacuum, their breathing ragged, her face flushed with sensual heat and his feeling about the same. Seth figured he should keep his mouth zipped until his brain started being helpful. Anything would be better than his current mental blame game. It didn’t matter who started the kiss or who goaded whom for more, only that he’d extinguished the hot connection before it burned out of control.

He should apologize—she probably expected at least a sorry, won’t happen again—but, dammit, he wasn’t sorry.

“I’d forgotten about kissing.”

Huh? Seth stared back at her for a second, completely thrown by her comment. “You’d forgotten what?” he asked, since she clearly hadn’t forgotten the how-to part. Maybe, like him, she was having trouble with cognitive function.

“The things that stir my juices,” she murmured absently. “Like a good wine or a hot gallop.”

He hadn’t known what to expect from Jillian, what reaction, which first words. Fair to say he hadn’t expected that comparison. “Are you saying that kissing should be on your short list of passions?”

“Possibly.” She pressed her fingertips to her lips, then—holy Moses—she reached up and touched him the exact same way. “And it should be on your list of skills.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

God, she was turning him inside out. The candor of her words, the heat in her eyes, the gliding touch of her fingertips across his cheek. Seth covered her hand with his, trapping it against his cheek and savoring its smooth warmth for the time it took him to feel something else.

The smooth warmth of her wedding band.

It lay flush against his skin, a real and visceral reminder of why he shouldn’t have been kissing her. Why he shouldn’t have been dreaming up some go-slow, win-herover fantasy, either. His brother’s widow still wore the symbol of her love, of her enduring connection to a man who’d scorned the sanctity of marriage.

Right up until the night he died.

Seth’s gut twisted as he peeled her fingers from his face. “I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said shortly, and he stood up. “I’ll go get the rest of your glasses.”

Confusion clouded her eyes as she stared up at him. “There’s no need to do that.”

Oh, yeah, there was a need. To get the hell out of here before the bitter churning in his gut had him saying things that didn’t need saying. He folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “You don’t trust me with your glassware anymore?”

“I trust you, Seth. You’ve always been straightforward and honest with me, so please don’t walk away now. Not without explaining what just happened here.”

No, he hadn’t always been straightforward and honest. He’d kept things from her, painful truths that he’d buried deep beneath the rubble of the past. There was no reason to share them, then or now or ever. No need to share the truth burning hot in his blood, either, but she was watching him with a steady, direct gaze, quietly pleading for the same from him.

“I haven’t always been honest with you,” he admitted tightly. “Not about you and me.”

A stillness came over her body, her expression. “Do you mean about this…attraction?”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Oh, okay. Because I’ve felt something, too, this past week. I know—”

“Not just this week, Jillian. You had reason to feel uncomfortable around me. That kiss has been a long time coming.”

Yeah, she had reason to look shocked, too. A right to stare at him with those big green eyes while the thick cellar air enclosed them in recollections of that kiss.

“And now it’s been—the kiss, that is—” She swallowed and moistened her lips. “What now?”

Seth straightened, preparing to leave and get those glasses, whether she wanted them or not. Preparing to get the hell away from honest-eyed temptation.

“While you’re still wearing that ring? Nothing, Jillian. Not one blessed thing.”

Seth might have rocked Jillian’s world on that sultry Sunday afternoon, but one breathtaking kiss and one ground-shaking revelation didn’t change much in the big scheme of things.

Afterward, back at the Vines, Caroline had insisted on serving coffee and cake in her garden. Rachel snuggled onto Jillian’s lap and made her chest ache with a hollow tenderness. Nobody seemed to notice the studied lack of eye contact between Seth and Jillian.

And the next day, life went on. The renovations started with Seth using the winery’s two visitor-free days to attack the heavy work. Better that no walls fall on tourists, she supposed, and she’d left him alone to do his thing. He knew where to find her if needed.

Obviously he hadn’t needed.

A good thing, Jillian reminded herself for the umpteenth time on Tuesday afternoon. Not seeing him meant she didn’t have to worry about forgetting herself and staring at, say, his mouth in a moment of unprofessional weakness. She had enough to keep busy anyway, what with setting up the tasting stations in the cellar and priming her staff on the new layout and procedure. On top of this, she’d initiated her let’s-stop-stewing-and-start-acting strategy regarding the Anna and Spencer situation.

If one could label a tentative first step with no planned future steps a strategy.

On Tuesday afternoon, with Mercedes for company and moral support, she’d visited the Ashton estate and met her half sisters Paige and Megan and their cousin Charlotte for the first time. Tea was taken, pleasantries exchanged, concerns expressed. Although nothing concrete had been accomplished, they had opened the lines of communication between the two families. And not a lawyer in sight!

A promising start, Mercedes and Jillian concluded on the drive home.

Jillian turned her car into the winery parking lot, and her heart did its usual upbeat jive when she saw the blue truck parked alongside the tasting room. Even though she was only dropping off Mercedes.