The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte

“How’s the work coming along?” her sister asked from the passenger seat.

“Apart from Eli bitching about the dust? Pretty good, I’d say.”

“Glad to hear it, since it looks like a nasty big mess to me.”

“You think?” Jillian peered more closely and felt a quiver of excitement deep where it mattered. “Oh, look, he’s done the windows!”

Mercedes stared, too. “Hate to break it to you, but those are holes in the wall.”

“No, they’re windows. Great big, rounded arches that reflect the shape and size of our wines.”

“You’ve obviously been working too hard, since you’re sounding scarily like me.” Mercedes shook her head as she reached for her door. “Go ride your horse and clear your head of that marketing-speak.”

Jillian grinned. “I intend to.”

But first she needed to change clothes and report to Anna, a thought that turned her smile upside down as she drove back to the Vines. While their half sisters had seemed friendly enough, she’d seen the exchange of looks when she’d broached the topic of Anna and Jack. The cooling from friendly to wary to let’s-not-push-this-too-far. It would not be easy, winning acceptance and a fair deal for this latest addition to the Ashton clan.

She parked her car and hurried upstairs, pausing at the open door of the guest room. Anna looked up from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by piles of clothes and baby gear, and her eyes widened in surprise. “You’re back.”

“And still in one piece.” Jillian sidestepped a stack of cuddly toys and perched on the end of the bed. “Where’s Jack?”

“Being thoroughly spoiled by your parents.” Anna picked up a onesie, and smoothed her hands over the garment before she looked up at Jillian again. “It didn’t go well, did it?”

“Well, we met Megan and Paige and Charlotte. They were all open to what we had to say—especially Megan.”

“Except?”

“Except the news about Jack has come as a shock to them. I suspect they just need a little time to adjust.”

Anna released a harsh snort of breath. “I can’t say I’m surprised but thanks for trying, Jillian.”

“Hey, that’s only step one. You’re not giving up. We’re not giving up.”

“I won’t give up.” Anna clutched the onesie tight in her fingers, then pressed it to her chest. To her heart. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect him and keep him safe, you know.”

Yes, Jillian did know. She saw the determined set of Anna’s jaw and the fierce light in her eyes, like a tigress set to defend her cub, and it echoed in the hollow of her own maternal soul. “I’m sure I’d feel the same way if he were mine.”

Anna nodded, a little stiffly, then returned her attention to the clothes. For the first time Jillian focused on that folding and stacking. “Are you packing?”

The other woman’s hands stilled for a second. “I’ve imposed on your family’s hospitality enough.”

“Oh, no, you haven’t even begun to impose. You haven’t let me babysit once, and you know I’m dying to have Jack all to myself.”

“You say that because you’ve never changed his diaper.”

“I muck out six stables every day. One little baby is nothing.”

Anna smiled at her attempted humor, but the effort looked forced. She picked up a stack of baby clothes, so small and innocent, and carefully placed them in a duffel bag. “I have to go, Jillian. I can’t take your charity indefinitely and I don’t want to leave owing your family any more than I do now.”

Pride held her shoulders straight, and that posture and the quiet determination in her voice chimed a loud note of recognition in Jillian. She understood Anna’s need for independence, to not feel beholden as she had done to Seth. Seth who had stepped in and insisted on helping, as her mother had done with Anna. Seth who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Seth, whose kiss had been a long time coming.

Jillian straightened her own shoulders, to ward off the stray stroke of desire. “Are you going back to your apartment in San Francisco?”

Anna shook her head. “I can’t risk that. Between the threats and the photographers.”

“Then where?”

“I’ll find somewhere.”

She had nowhere to go, nowhere except another cheap room like the one she’d fled to before. With nowhere for Jack to play, no company for Anna, and no security against whoever had threatened Jack’s safety. Jillian leaned forward and put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

“Stay a few more days, until you find somewhere clean and comfortable and safe for Jack. I’ll help—we all will. If we put our heads together I’m sure we can come up with a decent rental. An apartment or a cottage or even a room in a boarding house.” She could feel the tension in Anna’s shoulder, knew pride wouldn’t allow her to give in easily. “Promise you won’t go right now. Give us a few days.”

“Until the weekend,” Anna relented finally.

Jillian smiled. “We’ll find you somewhere before then. I promise.”

Jillian hadn’t expected to find an answer to her promise so close at hand or so soon. Half an hour later, it loomed out of her afternoon ride so unexpectedly that she reined Marsanne to a halt and just stared in why-didn’t-I-think-of-that bemusement.

“Caroline’s enchanted cottage,” she murmured. “How utterly perfect.”

She urged Marsanne into a canter and by the time they halted beside the pretty rail fence, her mind was humming with certainty. The cottage had been empty since their vineyard foreman fell for Abby Ashton and moved to Nebraska a month or two back. They could set a nominal rent, enough to satisfy Anna’s pride but not too much that she couldn’t afford to pay. How could she object?

Because she wanted to keep Jack safe.

Jillian’s excitement dimmed as she studied the pretty but not very childproof fence and the lake beyond. She clicked Marsanne into her long, loping stride and circled the perimeter, studying the fence with an objective eye. “It wouldn’t be too big a job, would it?”

Marsanne shook her head.

“Well, yes, you’re right. For me it would.”

But what about for—say—a builder? A builder who had survived the toddler years as a single parent, keeping his child safe and protected and loved.

Her heart quickened and tightened in her chest.

A builder she’d avoided these past two days because she lacked the courage to deal with his answer to her “what now?” question.

It had been so much easier to bury herself in work and the busy-ness of life than to face the consequences of that kiss and Seth’s admission. That kiss has been a long time coming.

“Not good enough, Jillian,” she muttered, stiffening her spine despite the clutch of nerves in her stomach.

Today, by driving up to the Ashton estate and meeting her half sisters, she had conquered one fear of the unknown. Perhaps, she decided as she touched thumb to ring finger and turned her horse back toward the winery, it was time to face another.

Seth had left before Jillian rode up to the winery on Tuesday afternoon, but she caught him on his cell phone the next day. He was working on another job, but he promised to take a look at the problematic fence before the weekend. Sometime. Thursday he found himself driving by Louret on his way home from a site inspection, and he decided he might as well swing by the cottage.

Three minutes, give or take, and he’d worked out a fix for the fence. He’d also worked up a decent level of irritation. Any half-handy vineyard or winery worker—or brother or stepfather—could have repaired this fence. She hadn’t needed to call in a builder any more than he’d needed to say, “Sure, no problem, I’ll take a look.”

Hell, and weren’t those the words that got him into trouble in the first place? Agreeing to take a look at her tasting room when every instinct had screamed “no” and “are you a masochist?”

Seth stalked to his truck and slapped on a tool belt. Since he was here, he might as well fix the loose screen he’d seen on one of the windows round back. While he was at it, he’d check all the latches. According to Jillian, Anna Sheridan was nervous about security.

He heard a vehicle but paid no attention until it pulled up out front. Then every disgruntled cell in his body stood up and took notice. Damn. He didn’t even know who was out there. It could be Anna or Caroline or some half-handy worker come to fix the blessed fence.

Except it wasn’t.

Instinctively he knew that before he saw her coming through the gate, her arms loaded up to her chin with God knows what. With his truck parked in clear sight, his presence here was pretty much a given. Yet Jillian pulled up short when she saw him round the corner of the veranda. Her mouth softened in a soft “oh” of surprise, and all Seth could think about was that kiss.

Four days and he could still taste her on his lips and in his blood. Four nights of shouldn’t-have-done-it recriminations and all he wanted now was to kiss her again. To simply walk right up and take that open mouth with his.

Except he didn’t.

Instead he leaned his shoulder against a veranda post, crossed his arms, and concentrated on anything but her mouth’s wet heat.

The stuff in her arms. That would do for starters.

“Moving in?” he asked, inclining his head toward her heavily laden arms.

She blinked, then glanced down. “Oh, this. No. It’s just some things for Anna, to make the place more comfortable. For Jack’s room, mostly.”

“She’s agreed to take the place?”

“She took some convincing, but yes.” With a small grimace, she readjusted her load. “This isn’t heavy, but it’s awkward. Maybe you could get the door for me…?”

The door. Right. He straightened and started to turn. Then remembered it was locked. “Keys?”

“In my hand.” She jiggled the keys in said hand, somewhere beneath the voluminous folds of what looked like a duvet. Then, with a sharp yelp of alarm, she clutched at her slipping cargo.

Seth leaped in to help—what else could he do?—and ended up with his arms full of soft duvet and his veins filled with the heat of body contact. Carefully, with a minimum of self-indulgence, he redistributed the weight.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” she said, her voice low and husky. They were standing close, and when he looked down into her face their eyes met and held, and the connection, her nearness, the four-day-old kiss pulsed through him with the slow, steady beat of desire.

“The door,” she said quickly. “Can you please get the door because this is starting to slip again?”

Yeah, and so was his willpower. One kiss, one taste, one fleeting contact arm-against-breast and he wanted so much more. He wanted—

With a snort of disgust, Seth swung away and strode to the door. He wanted a good hard kick to his senses. He wanted his head examined. He wanted to build a wall of aggravation to keep this insidious desire at bay.

“Any more in your car?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Mom had Lucas bring down the cot and some other bits and pieces earlier.”

“You didn’t think Lucas could have checked the fence, too? Seeing as he was here?”

She’d started fussing with the duvet and a baby blanket, folding them, smoothing them, but his snippy tone brought her head up slowly. “Yes, but I thought you’d do a better job, since you’ve probably faced the same toddler-proofing problems with Rachel.”

“It’s not rocket science.”

“If you didn’t want to help me,” she said, her tone frostier with each carefully delivered word, “you should have said so.”

She was right, but why waste her snooty mood? Why not slap a few more bricks on the wall?

“I’m not doing this to help you, Jillian.” He crossed to the living-room window and checked the catch. “I’m helping Anna. Seems like she can use all the help she can get.”

As he moved to the kitchen, he felt her gaze shadowing him every step of the way. Felt it in every tense muscle of his body, every wired nerve. In every brain cell that urged him to stop acting like a jerk and admit what he wanted, straight-up and honest.

Except what would be the point? He wanted her, but how could he have her?

“I’m glad you see it that way,” she said finally. “Anna can use a friend or two.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have felt the same way about her sister.”

“Why is that?”

Slowly he turned from the window and met her puzzled gaze. “She had an affair with a married man.”

He brushed by her on his way out of the kitchen, left her standing there in stunned silence, while he moved from room to room, systematically noting the locks that needed changing, the latches he could shore up. Work, system, routine: the props that had kept him functioning through his short and troubled marriage, and through his discovery of Karen’s infidelity.

Jason hadn’t cared that she wore a wedding band or that she was married to his own brother, but he wasn’t like his brother. He would never sleep with another man’s wife…or widow while she still wore that ring.

Why the hell did she still wear it?

Why the hell don’t you ask her?

Seth huffed out a breath. Yeah, it was time to talk. It was past time.

He walked to the last room and saw that she’d spread the brightly patterned duvet over a single bed and draped the baby’s blanket over the side of a cot. Jillian herself stood with her back to the door, holding a framed picture to the wall, and the sight of her there, amidst all the trappings of family, hit him hard.

Same as the day at the Vines when she’d taken Rachel to check out her pony collection. Same as Sunday evening, in Caroline’s garden, with Rachel’s pigtails mushed trustingly against her shoulder.

Damn, but this was supposed to be physical. The sweet ache of lust, the slow throb of sexual need. That’s all he wanted. No emotion, no happy families. None of that phony fantasy.

“You want that picture hung?” he asked, his voice as surly as his mood.

“Yes, but I can manage.” Cool, so very cool. And she didn’t even turn around. “Have you finished out there?”

“Checking the locks, yes.” He stalked over and took the picture out of her hands. “Center of this wall?”

For a second he thought she would argue—for a second he hoped she would—but then she nodded stiffly. “Where you have it is fine.”

Not a picture, he noticed after he’d positioned the small whitewood frame, but a message done in some kind of fancy stitching.

You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think.

“Yours?” he asked.

“My mother made it for me.” Then she said, “It’s from Winnie-the Pooh.”

“Huh.” He straightened the frame and stepped back from the wall, his ragged mood soothed by the simple task of hammering a nail. And by her softly voiced explanation. “I didn’t know the bear was such a philosopher.”

“Christopher Robin said it to Pooh.”

“Not sage advice from mother to daughter?” he asked as he moved forward and thumbed the frame up a tenth on the left. He edged back and surveyed it through narrowed eyes. Gave a small grunt of satisfaction. Waited for Jillian’s response.

She couldn’t answer right away. She’d been so ready to show him the door, to slam it on his moody brooding back, but that quiet question turned her around all over again. The affirming message, stitched by her mother’s hand so many years ago, resounded through her with an escalating rhythm, reminding her of the decision she’d made two days before.

A decision made and put on hold.

Well, Christopher Robin, let’s see how brave and strong and smart I am.

Drawing a deep give-me-courage breath, she turned to face Seth. The hand she extended trembled like a newborn colt, but she still managed to hold her shoulders straight as she splayed the naked fingers of her left hand.

“It feels very strange after wearing it for so long.” She wriggled her fingers. Yes, it felt strange in several ways. Strange unfamiliar, strange scary, and strangely liberating now she’d finally taken this positive step forward, out of the shadows of the past.

“Why did you keep wearing it?” he asked after one long beat of intense silence.

“Not because I still felt married or bound to Jason.” And since her hand wouldn’t stop shaking, she tucked it in the pocket of her jeans. Then she lifted her chin and looked right at him. “I wore it as a reminder of all that marriage cost me. I’m ready to put that behind me, now. To move on.”

“What are you telling me?”

“I’m not telling, Seth, I’m asking.” Jillian paused to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. “What now, Seth? Now that I’m not wearing the ring?”

Eight

Still and silent, he stared back at her, but today that intensity didn’t make Jillian uncomfortable. The fact she’d obviously read him wrong did. She’d thought that Seth wanted her, but then she’d believed the same of Jason.

Could she be any worse a judge of men and their motives?

“I’m sorry,” she said briskly, avoiding Seth’s eyes in case she detected any—Lord help her—pity. That would be the last straw. “I’ve overstepped and put you in an awkward situation. Forget I said anything.”

She swung away and would have kept on walking, except his harsh expulsion of breath brought her gaze back around. And what she saw there halted her in her tracks. Her limbs, her thoughts, her heart all seized in that one second of sizzling heat.

“Why would you think I could forget it?” he asked.

“You didn’t say anything. You didn’t respond. You just stood there looking so…stunned.”

“Yeah, well, you got that right.” He shook his head slowly. “Hell, Jillian, you could have given me some kind of warning.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know the warning system. Is it lights or hand signals or semaphore flags?”

His response fell somewhere between a snort and a laugh, which would have gotten Jillian’s back up again if not for the heat in his eyes. They remained steady and unwavering on hers, igniting a lick of hunger in her veins and a surge of courage in her gut.

“So.” She lifted her chin a fraction. “You said the kiss was a long time coming.”

“I did.”

“And was it worth the wait? Was it something you might want to repeat or was once enough?”

“One kiss wasn’t close to enough,” he said, his voice as deep and dark and hot as his eyes. “I want to do much more than kiss your mouth.”

“Oh.” Heat suffused her skin, a small part of her shocked and a much larger part aroused. Intensely aroused. “More…in what way?”

“Don’t push me, Jillian. My willpower is hanging by a loose nail here.”

Okay, but she had to know where she stood, in case the nail gave way while she was standing in the danger zone. In case all that dark and dangerous intensity came toppling down on top of her. “I just need you to tell me straight, so there’s no misunderstanding. Is that all right?”

His expression screamed no, it’s far from all right.

“Please?”

His nostrils flared slightly and he jutted his chin in a gesture that was pure male aggression. Jillian’s heart did an uh-oh kind of lurch, but then it was too late to back down. He’d started talking. Telling her exactly what he wanted to do with her in short, blatant terms that blew her mind and tempted her secret, hidden core.

He wanted sex—all those ways—with her, the good girl, the ice princess, the wife who couldn’t keep her husband satisfied. Oh, wow.

Jillian closed her mouth and swallowed audibly. Their eyes clashed with enough heat to set the timber cottage ablaze. She didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, just held his gaze with wide-eyed, I’m-shocked-but-in-the-nicest-way interest, and stunned them both by saying, “Okay.”

Okay?

Seth stared back, unable to muster enough blood to jump-start his brain for several long drawn-out seconds. Enough blood had mustered in other places to jump-start all kinds of motors, to send them revving and roaring and rocketing into overdrive.

“Okay?” he asked finally, on a rising note of disbelief. “All you have to say is ‘okay’?”

“Actually, no.” A whisper of a smile crossed her lips. “But I’m having some trouble with words. With finding a path from here—” she tapped her head “—to here.” She touched those same fingers to her mouth. “I suspect your straight talk just melted a few synapses.”

Yeah, well, same here, he thought. He’d thought he’d shock her right out the door with his hard-core honesty, by laying his every erotic midnight fantasy on the line, but all he’d done—apparently—was incite her sloe-eyed interest.

She couldn’t want to do all that with him.

His head spun with the improbability. And then he remembered the look on her face when she’d galloped up that hill. He recalled her passion in the tasting room and the cab sav headiness of her kiss.

Yeah, she could.

“Have you found those words yet?” he asked, needing to know for sure. To hear more than “okay” from her lips. He didn’t know whether it was dread or hope that thudded hard in his blood and his head and his ears, whether he wanted her to tell him to go to hell or to see her start unbuttoning the prissy pink shirt she wore.

“Sex,” he said, just to make sure she had the picture. “Once, not as any kind of a relationship.”

“I’m not looking for a relationship, Seth. I don’t have a great record with those. But I’ve never had a one-night stand or an affair or whatever this is we’re talking about. How do we, um, go about this?”

With creditable control Seth rocked back on his heels. “You sure you don’t want to think it over?”

“Good Lord, no! After all those things you said…” She huffed out a breath and straightened her backbone decisively. “I don’t want to think about it, Seth. I want to do it.”

She was killing him. Slowly. Inch by painful inch.

“The logistics are going to be awkward,” she continued in a rush, “since I can’t ask you over to my place and vice versa. Do we book a room somewhere?”

Hell, no. The tacky hotel room was Jason’s modus operandi. Get a woman, get a room. Seth’s jaw locked hard. He couldn’t do this, not this way. “We’re not getting a room.”

“Well, there is here,” she suggested after a moment’s hesitation. Her hands waved around to indicate the cottage. “It’s empty until Anna moves in. And sort of isolated.”

Which made it sound as if they’d be sneaking around behind her parents’ back like a pair of horny teenagers. Didn’t that just beat everything? She lived with her parents. He lived with his daughter. And this wasn’t going to happen.

He rubbed the back of his neck, tried to find the words, discovered that the one word he needed to say—no—kept sticking in his throat.

“How would Saturday night be?” she asked, hesitant, hopeful. “I’m babysitting Jack tomorrow night while Mom and Mercedes take Anna out to dinner. Maybe I could fix a pic—”

“I’ve got something on Saturday night.”

Her mouth formed a silent “oh.” Disappointment and something else flickered in her eyes, then she looked away. Moistened her lips. “Like…a date?”

“You think I’m dating someone? And spending every night thinking about sex with you?”

A flush pinkened her cheeks but she lifted her chin. “Of course not. That just slipped out. I suppose it’s something to do with work?”

Yeah, right, because that was the only social life he had. It irked him that she was right, irked him that she was watching him and waiting for an explanation. “It’s a dinner up near Oakville. Robert and Sophia Neumann asked—”

“You’re going to the Casinelli dinner? Wow. I am speechless!” But only for a second, because then she was shaking her head and saying in an awed tone, “I heard Sophia’s pouring her 2001 pinot noir and you can’t get a ticket for love or money. How did you come to get one?”

“They’re friends.”

“I adore their wines. Are you good friends? Old friends?”