A dynasty in crisis…reunited by desire!

THE ASHTONS: JILLIAN, ELI & CHARLOTTE

Three of your favourite authors bring you three sexy and seductive romances following the scandalous Ashton family

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April 2010

The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte

Featuring

Just a Taste by Bronwyn Jameson Awaken the Senses by Nalini Singh Estate Affair by Sara Orwig

Maitland Maternity: Triplets, Quads & Quints

Featuring

Triplet Secret Babies by Judy Christenberry Quadruplets on the Doorstep by Tina Leonard Great Expectations by Kasey Michaels Delivered with a Kiss by Mindy Neff And Babies Make Seven by Mary Anne Wilson

The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte
Bronwyn Jameson
Nalini Singh
Sara Orwig

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Just A Taste

By

Bronwyn Jameson

Bronwyn Jameson spent much of her childhood with her head buried in a book. As a teenager, she discovered romance novels and it was only a matter of time before she turned her love of reading them into a love of writing them. Bronwyn shares an idyllic piece of the Australian farming heartland with her husband and three sons, a thousand sheep, a dozen horses, assorted wildlife and one kelpie dog. She still chooses to spend her limited downtime with a good book.

Bronwyn loves to hear from readers. Write to her at bronwyn@bronwynjameson.com.

Look out for Bronwyn Jameson’s exciting new novel, Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress, available from Mills & Boon® Desire™ in December 2010.

To that pair of fabulous Desire™ authors Kathie DeNosky and Kristi Gold – thanks for the inspiration, the guidance and the laughs. Love your work, girlfriends!

Prologue

As the first strident notes of the bridal march screeched through the Vegas chapel, Spencer Ashton didn’t bother hiding his wince. He closed his eyes to shut out the faux-marble columns and the ceiling painted—poorly—as a cloud-scattered sky.

Unfortunately, losing the faculty of sight only intensified his other senses. The recorded music sounded even tinnier. The sweet sickliness of massed flowers and candles clogged his lungs.

He didn’t deserve this. He’d earned his cathedral and pipe organ and choir. He wanted to turn and see the pews overflowing with business and society luminaries, to feel their handshakes and back-slapping congratulations as they welcomed him into their elite kinship of power and privilege. And more than any of that, he deserved to see his bride walking down the aisle on her father’s arm.

Oh, how he would have relished the moment when John Lattimer handed over his only child and answered the question of “Who gives this woman?”

That was the only “I do” that mattered to Spencer. The two little words that meant his boss and mentor for the past five years was handing him the final key, not just to his investment-banking megalith, but to the entire Lattimer wealth.

Self-satisfaction hurtled through Spencer’s blood, turning his earlier wince around. At his side, Caroline completely misinterpreted that smile. Her biting grip on his elbow fluttered into a soothing caress as she leaned close and whispered, “I know. I feel the same way.”

Spencer doubted it, but why not indulge her?

He wasn’t getting the ceremony he deserved but he was getting the result. He squeezed her trembling hand and smiled right into her eyes. “You make a beautiful bride, Caroline.”

Easy words, when he stood to gain so much. As easy as the romantic words he’d chosen to sweep her off her feet. As easy as the avowal of everlasting love that preceded his let’s-get-married-right-away, I-can’t-wait-darling proposal.

No, he hadn’t wanted this quickie wedding, but he couldn’t risk the publicity or the complications of a high-profile wedding preceded by an engagement party and all manner of but-you-must-have-family-to-invite occasions.

He had no family that he cared to acknowledge, but today he would join one of California’s finest. Soon he would sit at his father-in-law’s right hand in the boardroom of the Lattimer Corporation. In time, it would be the Ashton-Lattimer Corporation.

Oh, yes, that had a near-orgasmic ring to it, as rich and glorious as the cathedral bells that tolled in Spencer’s imagination, in the wedding he wasn’t having. The rich and glorious sound of his future. All he had to do was pretend he adored the mousy blonde who was about to become his wife.

The minister swept into the chapel, apologetic for his tardiness and obviously pressed for time since he launched into the ceremony without preliminaries. Spencer half listened. His eyes drifted down to the Lattimer pearls at Caroline’s throat.

She might not match him in looks or ambition or character, but John Lattimer’s daughter was his ideal wife in other ways: demure and agreeable, quiet and giving, rich and ready to inherit.

He smiled and gazed into her moist and tremulous eyes as he repeated the same meaningless vows as last time. In his mind he added an extra vow. He promised to spend enough time in Caroline’s bed to breed the babies she wanted, children to keep her occupied and out of his hair, grandchildren to link the Ashton and Lattimer names and bind him more securely to all that would be his.

As the minister said the final words that joined them together as man and wife, euphoria rose again from Spencer’s gut, stronger this time, almost choking him with its intensity.

Spencer Ashton had traveled a long way from the farm-stench of Crawley, Nebraska, and finally he had arrived. He hadn’t gambled and gotten lucky. He’d succeeded because he was smart enough and shrewd enough and focused enough to turn ambition into reality.

Everything he had ever wanted, everything he deserved, everything that mattered would soon be his.

Everything.

One

Napa Valley, California. Thirty-eight years later.

In naive, lust-crazed, love-addled ignorance, Jillian Ashton wagered everything that mattered when she eloped to Vegas with Jason Bennedict. And when the marriage ended in a fiery late-night car wreck, she lost it all.

Her lying, cheating husband, her home, her savings, her job, and the last tattered shreds of her self-respect.

Poof, all gone.

Two years later Jillian had a home and a job in her family’s Napa Valley winery. As for that lost esteem…well, today she stood a chance of regaining a sizeable chunk. More literally she stood—in two-inch businesswoman heels—in the Louret Winery meeting room gaping at her brother. As Louret’s business manager, Cole controlled the purse strings. He did not, by virtue of his job and his personality, ever make things easy.

And yet…

“Everything?” Jillian asked on a rising note of suspicion. April Fool’s Day wasn’t until Friday, surely. She waved a hand at the flip chart by her side. “You’re agreeing to all these changes?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Jellie. I’m saying your idea has merit. Get some quotes.”

“But you haven’t seen the rest of my—”

“Pretty pictures?” Cole rocked back in his chair, looking more amused than impressed by the presentation she’d slaved over. “Save the rest for next Monday’s meeting. I’ve a ten o’clock appointment to get to.”

Jillian sucked in a breath and released it slowly. Sure, his casual use of her childhood nickname and the pretty-pictures dig rankled, but she should be used to her brother’s—to both her brothers’—patronizing indulgence.

As the youngest of four siblings, she’d endured such head-patting all her life.

In retrospect the flip-chart presentation had probably been a tad over the top for a family business meeting—especially since Cole and his dog were the only family members to show for said meeting—but she’d wanted to knock his socks off. For months she’d worked on her proposal to expand and remodel the winery’s tasting room.

This was important.

She needed the challenge, creatively and professionally and personally. She needed to prove herself to her family and, most importantly, to herself.

“What’s your time line on this project, Jellie?”

Jillian—aka Jillie, aka Jellie, aka Jellie-Belly—felt her shoulders tighten reflexively. Oh, yes, she definitely needed to prove herself more than the little sister. She might have failed at her marriage but she was a graduate in viticulture and enology. For the past eighteen months she’d successfully managed Louret’s tasting room.

And she was past thirty, for heaven’s sake!

Biting back her annoyance, she carefully packed away the last of her presentation materials before responding to Cole’s question. “Ten to fourteen days, depending on the selected contractor’s schedule.”

“You have a list of contractors?”

Jillian smiled sweetly and tapped her portfolio. “It was on my next pretty page. The one preceding my proposed time line. How many quotes would you like me to get?”

“Your call, as long as Seth Bennedict is one of them.” He paused to study her closely. “Will that be a problem?”

Yes. She swallowed a lump of imminent panic and met his eyes. “No.”

Cole nodded. “Good. If Seth’s your man, I know it’ll be done right.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

With the portfolio tucked under her arm, she calmly left the meeting room and closed the door at her back. For a brief moment, she indulged the tremor in her limbs by leaning against its solid timber strength.

But only for a brief moment. Irritation skated the edges of her nerves as she stalked to her own office, the smallest of half a dozen built atop the tasting room in Louret’s winery building.

If Seth’s your man, I know it’ll be done right.

So much for her brother’s confidence in her ability to manage this task. As it happened, she’d done her research. She’d talked to a stack of locals about their dealings with Napa building contractors. And, so okay, her brother was right about whose name kept popping up, but…

“Seth Bennedict is not my man,” she muttered as she sank into her chair, inordinately bothered by that wording. Oh, Seth Bennedict was a man all right. A big, dark, brooding mass of male with a disturbingly intent gaze and an equally disconcerting habit of taking charge.

He was also her brother-in-law and the only living soul who knew the most humiliating details of her disastrous marriage.

Even when she’d not wanted Seth’s help—especially when she’d not wanted it—he’d bulldozed over her objections. Sure, he’d untangled the financial mess that was Jason’s legacy, which meant he also knew how gullible and witless she had been in allowing their joint affairs to become so knotted.

Jillian’s fingers curled into the cushioned arms of her chair. Success with the tasting-room redesign was her chance to drag herself beyond the crippling grip of her past. If that meant working with Seth Bennedict and his indissoluble links to those dark years, then so be it.

It wouldn’t be any fun, but she would deal with it.

And she would start dealing today. Right now. Before she chickened out.

She grabbed her purse and car keys from her desk drawer, then shook her head ruefully. The way her life had panned out, she wouldn’t recognize fun anyway, even if it came tap-dancing across her desk wearing a Team Fun sweatshirt.

Seth Bennedict recognized fun. A bosom buddy of hard physical labor and on-the-job satisfaction, it screamed through his muscles with each swing of the ten-pound hammer then settled damp with sweat on his skin.

Man, he didn’t get to do this often enough.

The downside of success as a building contractor was too much business and planning and consulting, not nearly enough hands-on. He couldn’t think of a more gratifying way to spend his thirty-eighth birthday than pounding down walls.

Well, okay, so he could think of one.

He’d woken that morning thinking about it, with the remnant shreds of a broken dream hard in his body and hot in his mind.

But then his phone had rung—Lou, foreman on this job, calling in sick—and before he could replace the receiver his daughter had propelled herself onto his bed, bouncing and gabbing with it’s-your-birthday-Daddy excitement.

His phone rang again. Then his housekeeper Rosa appeared, looking for Rachel and breakfast orders. And that was reality.

A thriving business, a phone that never quit, and a three-year-old daughter who owned him heart and soul. No time to indulge his body in anything more than a stray early-morning fantasy—forget the real deal!—which left the only other physical release he was getting any time soon.

Seth squinted through the dust of demolition, fixed his gaze on the target wall and lifted his hammer.

“Boss.”

He turned to find one of his younger laborers standing in what remained of the doorway.

“You have a…uh…visitor.” Tony thumbed over his shoulder and shuffled his feet in a way that invoked ghosts of birthdays past.

Seth released his breath on a sigh. He was too old for this—for whatever this turned out to be. Reluctantly, he downed tools, removed his dust mask and goggles, and schooled his expression to take in good humor whatever strip-o-gram surprise came sashaying through the door.

Please, just let her keep her hands off of me.

But when he looked up, genuine surprise wiped all expression from his face and a good amount of cognitive function from his brain. Possibly because every early-morning fantasy of the last year exploded through his blood.

He did notice that Jillian Ashton-Bennedict was over-dressed…for both his fantasies and for the reality of a building site. She wore a dress the color of sandstone, a slender column of material that ended just shy of her knees. She wasn’t sashaying. Instead she picked her graceful way through the rubble, all long legs and high heels and cool female elegance.

No one did cool elegance like Jillian Ashton-Bennedict.

And nothing turned Seth on quicker or hotter than her particular brand of femininity.

With one hand she smoothed her hair—shorter than last time he’d seen her, curling around the elegant length of her throat in soft ash-brown layers—and he caught the glint of gold on her ring finger. Then she looked up and her eyes met his across the pile of century-old bricks and timber that separated them.

Debris of the past. How appropriate.

It never changed, this first stilted moment born of their shared history. The hurt to her pride because he’d witnessed her lowest point. His forced restraint, hiding the fact that she turned him on just by walking into a room.

And underlying both, the knowledge of what bound them together—the accident that had killed both their spouses.

“Stay there,” he said, more sharply than he intended or wanted. Damn. And she still wore his dead brother’s wedding band. “Tony shouldn’t have let you in here without a hard hat.”

“I told him I wouldn’t be long.”

“Which doesn’t change a blessed thing. He knows the rules.”

“Don’t blame Tony,” she said quickly. “I sort of lied.”

Seth peeled off his gloves as he started toward her. After five years with Jason, he knew how highly she valued honesty. Knew her bending of the truth would barely register on any fib-o-meter. He stopped in front of her. Waited for her explanation.

“I said you were expecting me.”

Which, while no whopper, did qualify as extremely untrue. He hadn’t seen her since a few days before Christmas, and on that occasion only by chance. She’d brought a present for Rachel and hadn’t expected to find him home.

Seth stopped in front of her. “I haven’t seen you in over three months. I was starting to think you were avoiding me.”

“No.” She shook her head in denial, but her eyes didn’t quite meet his.

“I’m surprised Tony believed you. Since you’re such a lousy liar.”

“Oh.”

Oh, indeed.

The whisper of a sigh escaped her lips. “You’re right, I am, and I suspect Tony thought the same. He said he was only letting me in here because it’s your birthday.”

“Did he think you might have brought me some sort of birthday surprise?”

She met his gaze then, a momentary connection before she blinked and looked away. Seth didn’t blame her, since he imagined his eyes burned with all kinds of erotic birthday surprises.

Most of them included her. Naked and gift-wrapped.

“Sorry.” And, dammit, she really did look sorry. “I should have remembered.”

Seth tried but he couldn’t stop himself asking, “And if you had?”

“I’d have at least brought you a card. Or maybe even a cake.”

“With candles?”

“Wouldn’t that constitute a fire hazard?”

Only to Seth’s imagination.

Somewhere during their birthday-cake banter, he’d started to picture Jillian wearing nothing but teeny tassels and those sexy high heels, bursting from the top of a tacky surprise cake. The kind his buddy Lou might have arranged had he not been out sick. The kind he had no right placing in the same fantasy as Jillian, the sister-in-law he had no right lusting after. But since he’d done so from the first moment he laid eyes on her, and since she’d never shown any sign of being anything other than uncomfortable in his company, he figured he’d keep right on lusting from afar.

Part of the ongoing penance for coveting his brother’s wife.

She looked uncomfortable now, no doubt because he couldn’t help staring—yeah, and lusting—and because the silence between them had stretched into the realms of long and awkward.

“I called in at your office,” she said, bridging that conversational gap while casually widening the gap between them. “Mel told me you were working out here. She didn’t say you were destroying Villa Firenze.”

To indicate the scene of carnage, she did this little gesture thing with her hands. They were elegant and eloquent, Jillian’s hands, and one of the many, many things he’d noticed that first time he met her as Jason’s new bride.

One of the many, many things that turned him on.

“The Maldinis are converting the ground floor into a restaurant.”

“Ahh.” Pivoting on her high heels, she took in the whole scene through thoughtfully narrowed eyes, as if picturing the completed renovation. “It looks like a big job.”

“A satisfying one.”

And not only because he’d lucked out and gotten the chance to wield tools today. He followed her gaze around the Italian-style villa, solid and structurally sound, yet with the soul of its century-long history alive in the cellars and gardens and kitchens.

“I hope they’ll go with Tuscan food,” she said.

“They will.”

Jillian nodded, satisfied with his assurance. Seth Bennedict had that way about him. He said; you believed. And she grabbed at the perfect segue into her reason for being here. “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Seth.”

One thick dark brow lifted in surprise. “You’re starting a restaurant?”

“No. Oh, no.” She loved good food, which meant someone else needed to cook it. “But I am extending and remodeling our tasting room. I’d like you to quote.”

There, that hadn’t been so difficult. Not once she’d gotten past the unsettling sight of Seth looking so rough and, well, uncivilized. Although she wished she’d known about his birthday. A card, a cake, a gift of wine would not have been inappropriate.

Staring at the tiny snagged tear in his T-shirt, at the teeny sliver of dark skin and darker chest hair…now that was inappropriate.

“Is this not a good time?” she said, looking away. Rattled because she’d been staring, and just a bit giddy with a sense of airless heat. “To talk about this?”

“You’re here now. We can talk, but let’s take it outside.”

He wore a hard hat. He’d already mentioned the fact that she didn’t. “I guess I’m breaking all kinds of safety regulations.”

“Yeah.” He met her eyes, his as dark and intense and disquieting as always. “You are.”

“So. How extensive is this job of yours?”

This question she could answer, now that Seth had removed himself from her breathing space. With an extremely disconcerting hand at her back—not quite touching, but hovering thereabouts—he’d shepherded her away from the curious sidelong glances of Tony and his coworkers and into a stand of olive trees beside the villa.

Leaning against the gnarled trunk of one old tree, arms crossed over his chest, he looked relaxed and receptive.

Reassured, Jillian waved a hand toward the villa. “Not very extensive compared with your present job. A lot of the work is remodeling and refitting, but there is a storage room that has to go so I can expand the tasting room space.”

“Business is good, then?”

“Busier than ever. Easter weekend was complete madness and we’re anticipating even more traffic over the summer, since we’re doing a national marketing push.”

His brows rose a little. “I thought boutique wineries like yours were all about word of mouth and competition medals.”

“Yes, but we’re releasing our first chardonnay. Plus with the economy tight the gap between premium wines like ours and the average bottle is narrowing.”

“You’re losing market share?”

With Cole at the helm? Oh, no, her brother would so not allow any market to get away from him! “Our sales are still growing, but we’re not resting on our laurels.”

“What’s your schedule for the renovation?”

“I really need this to be quick and hassle-free. I don’t want to close tastings, so I’ll be setting up a temporary area in the cellar.” Which Eli was going to hate. “As for starting time—” She drew a breath and looked right at him. “That will depend on you.”

He stared back at her for a long minute, those dark eyes even harder to read than usual in the mottled pattern of light and shade. “I haven’t said I’ll do it, Jillian.”

“Are you saying you won’t?”

“Not won’t. Can’t. Not if you want it done in the next month or two.”

Jillian’s stomach plummeted. “You’re that busy?”

“Signed contracts on two new jobs last week, and that’s on top of a heavy schedule.”

All the emotional energy she’d spent worrying over coming to see him and asking for his help, and he couldn’t do it? Why hadn’t she considered this outcome? Why hadn’t she realized that his reputation would always keep him booked way ahead of time?

Well…blast!

Except right on the heels of that initial sense of anticlimax, came a subtle easing of tension in her shoulders and limbs. It felt almost like relief. She had identified Seth as number one on her best-builder list; she’d driven over here and done the asking; he’d said no.

Now she could carry on as before, not exactly avoiding him but not needing to seek him out. She wouldn’t have to deal with his macho intensity or her reaction to it. Truth be told, the man scared her, unsettled her, made her too aware of herself. And she neither liked nor trusted any of those reactions.

With her thumb she touched the back of the wedding band she still wore on her left hand, not to remember, but as a caution against repeating the mistakes of her past.

A caution to proceed slowly and with care, especially when it came to men.

Yet this man—this builder—had brought her out here, encouraged her to talk about her plans. What was that about? “If you weren’t interested,” she began slowly, frowning, “why didn’t you say so before, inside?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.” Something shifted in his gaze, deep and dark, making her feel as breathlessly offkilter as when his hand had hovered at her back. “I said I can’t fit your time frame.”

Semantics. Jillian dismissed the whole conversation with a frustrated little shrug. She didn’t have time for this…for this bandying of words or for her body’s rogue responses.

Whatever the reason, he wasn’t interested in quoting for her tasting room renovation. Discussion closed.

Seth watched her press her lips together and straighten that long, elegant backbone. Gathering her poise and dignity after copping another blow on the chin. He’d seen her go through the same motions many times before, and knew she wouldn’t try and change his mind.

And, damn, just once he wished she would beg a favor of him.

Exasperated with himself—for wanting something that would never happen, something so out of character for Jillian—Seth straightened from his slouch against the tree and rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.

“Just a minute.” He wasn’t going to change his answer, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help in a smaller way. “I hear Terry Mancini’s finding retirement tough. He might be interested in a job like yours. Or I can call around and see who’s—”

“There’s no need to do that,” she interrupted. “I can manage to find someone else on my own.”

Posture straight and her shoulders all stiff with pride, she turned to leave. And wasn’t that just like Jillian, going all cool and haughty and knocking back his offer of assistance?

Once she had accepted his help, eventually, but not because she had wanted to. She’d had no choice. And oh how she’d resented that lack of choice, his intervention, and the inevitable slam to her dignity when the truth about Jason’s affairs unraveled.

Seth felt his own shoulder muscles bunch with tension. “I’m sure you can find any number of builders who’ll jump at the work, Jillian. But will they do a good job?”

She had already started to turn, preparing to leave, but she paused to look back across her shoulder. “I don’t know, Seth. That’s why I came to you first.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help.”

“So am I.” She looked right at him then, her gaze clear and direct. “I wanted the best.”

Well, damn.

Two

The sun was still sleeping when Jillian rose. She tiptoed from her second-story bedroom and down the winding staircase without missing a step in the near-dark. She’d taken the same path so many times she imagined she could do it blindfolded. This was her family home, where she’d grown up and lived into her twenties, and she’d moved back after Jason’s death.

She didn’t mind living with her parents. It wasn’t as if she had a social life—or, Lord help her, a sex life—to consider. Safe, secure and nonthreatening, her life at The Vines was everything she’d rushed to escape in her early twenties and everything she wanted in her future.

At the foot of the stairs, she swung toward the kitchen…and barreled right into her mother.

The solid impact drove a whoomph of breath from Caroline Sheppard’s lungs. Surprise startled a squeak from Jillian’s. With one hand flattened over her wildly thumping heart, she peered through the wan predawn light into her mother’s face.

“Good grief, Mom, you scared a year off my life! What are you doing skulking around at this hour?”

“I might ask the same of you.”

“As it happens, I do have a reason.” Jillian held the riding boots she carried aloft. “I’m on stable duty this morning and I have to be finished before eight.”

“Another builder?”

“Yes.” Unfortunately.

The sigh in her answer must have sounded as weary as she felt because her mother’s hands came up to gently squeeze her shoulders. “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, Jillie. There’s no rush.”

“After dealing with the crush over Easter?” She shook her head ruefully. “The remodel needs to be done before summer, Mom, and the sooner the better.”

Yesterday seemed about perfect to Jillian.

After a week of calling and chasing and calling again, she had exhausted her A-list of builders. Every morning she woke with nothing more concrete than, “I’ll do a quote and get back to you.” And today she faced Louret’s weekly business meeting with no solid quotes and only one builder of questionable reputation showing any solid interest. Cole might well decide that he should be overseeing the job.

“I can do this, Mom,” she said, straightening her shoulders. And she would, once she found a builder who wasn’t booked solid right through summer. Or who didn’t think he knew better than she how her tasting room should look and function.

“I know you can do it, hon.” Her mother gave another reassuring squeeze. “So, who is it this morning?”

“Travis Carmody.”

Caroline frowned. “I can’t say I know him.”

“He hasn’t been in California long.”

“Is he any good?”

“He’s available.” Which, somehow, had moved way up Jillian’s priority list. She bit her bottom lip, worried all over again. “Or at least he says he is.”

“You don’t trust his word? Isn’t that telling you something?”

“That I have deep-seated trust issues?”

Caroline smiled at her wry attempt at humor, but it was a small smile tempered with maternal concern. “Or perhaps he’s not the right man to hire. Have you tried Seth Bennedict?”

“He gave me a straight ‘can’t do it.’”

Her mother’s finely shaped brows arched expressively. “Well, I am surprised that Seth wouldn’t help you out.”

“I didn’t want him to help me out, Mom. I wanted him to quote the same as anyone else. A business deal. No special favors.”

She met Caroline’s eyes, and the circumstances of her previous dealings with Seth Bennedict arced between them. They had never discussed the nitty-gritty of Jillian’s marriage, and her mother, God bless her, had never asked for explanations. She’d simply offered her love, the sanctuary of her childhood home and a shoulder to cry on.

Yet Caroline had been in a similar place herself after the crushing demise of her marriage to Spencer Ashton. Jillian saw that empathy in her mother’s eyes now, and her throat tightened with emotion.

She flung her arms, boots and all, around her neck and held on tight.

“What’s this for?” Caroline managed to gasp around that constrictive hug.

“Just because.” Jillian’s smile wavered and her vision misted for a second before she blinked the gathering moisture away. “And I haven’t had enough sleep to do emotion real well at the moment.”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother gathered her into an even tighter hug, then saved the moment and both their tears by suddenly pulling clear. “You know what you need?”

Jillian shook her head, her emotional state too rocky to chance words.

“A good bracing gallop to clear your head.”

Oh, yes. That sounded perfect. She and Marsanne both needed a rousing blowout.

Instantly enthused, she dropped down on the bottom step and pulled on her boots. Then was struck by an even better idea. “Why don’t you come too, Mom? We haven’t been out riding together in ages.”

They’d galloped, a little more sedately than Jillian’s long-legged thoroughbred would have liked, but she’d held Marsanne back in deference to her mother’s elderly mount.

Now, with that initial burst of energy spent, both horses were content to walk on a loose rein. Their elevated breathing puffed clouds of steam into the air, adding warmth to the cool ribbons of mist that wisped off the lake.

A perfect spring morning, Jillian decided, breathing the commingled scents of warm horse and fresh growth and the crisp chill of the dawn air. Perfect both from her own perspective and that of the vines that stretched in flawlessly drilled lines to their left and right.

The frost alarms had remained silent last night. Good news for the sensitive new growth that grew apace with the warmer, lengthening days. Good news too for the vineyard staff, including Jillian, who bounded out of bed to turn on overhead sprinklers at the first shrill of those temperature-triggered alarms.

“That smile looks good on you,” her mother commented.

“Well, it feels good, too.” Jillian’s smile turned into a laugh of pure and simple pleasure. “Thank you for suggesting this, Mom. You always have the best ideas.”

Something changed in her mother’s expression, the tiniest hint that she didn’t agree. Jillian felt it as much as she saw it, and her ebullient mood faltered. Caught up in her own troubles, she hadn’t considered her mother’s state of mind. And an awful lot had happened in the last months—the last week, even—to trouble Caroline’s mind.

“You haven’t told me,” Jillian commenced in a casual, reflective tone that matched their ambling progress through the vineyards, “why you were wandering around the house at the crack of dawn.”

“I woke early.” Her mother smiled, but the effort didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Lord knows I love the man, but Lucas snores loud enough to rattle bottles in the cellar.”

“You’re stewing over this Spencer ruckus, aren’t you?”

“This Spencer ruckus” had blown up in January, when they’d discovered a whole unknown chapter in Spencer Ashton’s past. Another family in Nebraska. An earlier wedding that made his vows to Caroline bigamous.

It hadn’t only blown up within their family circle, either. Every sordid note had played, loud and embellished, through both the tabloid and mainstream media. Ashton-Lattimer shares had hit an all time low after the latest revelation: an illegitimate child born from an affair with his former secretary.

Was that particular association disturbing her mother’s sleep?

“I hope you’re not worried about us, Mom. About us thinking we’re illegitimate or something.” To reinforce the concern she felt tight in her chest, Jillian leaned across and rested a hand atop her mother’s. Just for a second. “I mean, it doesn’t matter whether you were married to Spencer or not as far as I’m concerned. We all think of Lucas as our father.”

“I know, honey. But I can’t help wishing he were your father in the eyes of the law. I wish he could have adopted you, that you all could have taken his name.” Regret coated Caroline’s words, but then she shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Just listen to me, bemoaning what I can’t change.”

“If wishes were horses…?”

Their gazes connected, mother and daughter, and a whole world of understanding flowed from one to the other and back again. A sharing of present strife and past misgivings, some unspoken but none forgotten.

Then, with uncanny timing, Marsanne snorted and jiggled her head, breaking the gravity of the moment and surprising a bark of laughter from Jillian—perhaps simply to release some of her pent-up tension.

“Was that a laugh?” she asked her horse, leaning forward to stroke the gray silk of her neck. “Or a suggestion that it’s past your breakfast time?”

Marsanne didn’t answer, although her ears pricked and her stride lengthened as they turned by the lake to head back to the stables.

“I have been thinking a lot,” Caroline said, after they’d walked in silence for several minutes. Silent but for the hwark of a wood duck they startled from its nest by the water. “And, yes, a lot of it while I should have been sleeping.”

Jillian smiled her acknowledgment.

“But not over the legality of my marriage to Spencer. I said my vows before God and I stood by them. In my mind and my heart, it will never be anything but a real marriage since it gave me four of my greatest gifts.”

Eli, Cole, Mercedes and Jillian.

They had both reined their horses to a halt, as if tacitly acknowledging the significance of this conversation. Too important to continue while idling along on horseback.

“I no longer care how it started or why it ended,” Caroline continued, her voice as soft as the morning light. “But I am so very glad that it did end. Otherwise I would not have found Lucas. I would not have all this.”

And although she waved one hand in a delicately expansive gesture, Jillian knew she referred to more than the rich physical landscape and the boutique winery she had fashioned into one of Napa’s finest.

“All this” encompassed the solid strength of love she’d found with Lucas and the happiness she’d forged for herself and her family.

This is what worried her sleep—the threat of further disharmony within her family due to Spencer Ashton. Caroline had lost out badly in the divorce settlement, and finally they’d agreed to seek legal counsel. Since there’d been no marriage, there could be no divorce settlement, right?

“You don’t want to pursue legal action, do you?” Jillian asked.

“I’m afraid it will cause more hurt, more bitter words, and for what? What will it achieve? I have everything I want right here.” Caroline waved that same hand around, this time with more vigor. “Already this brouhaha has sent Cole and Dixie running off to elope.”

Because they hadn’t thought it an appropriate time to arrange and celebrate a wedding, with all that was going on. Of course that bothered Caroline. She’d married Spencer quickie-Vegas-style, and Jillian had followed suit.

Not exactly happy precedents.

“Selfish, I know,” she said softly, “but I wanted to be there.”

Jillian leaned across and took one of her mother’s hands in her own. “No, not selfish. A mother’s right.”

One they all should have recognized earlier, one they’d lost sight of in all the acrimony. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to make amends…

“You know what I’m thinking?” she said, a smile brimming as the idea gathered momentum.

“Please, Jillian, if it is anywhere near as wicked as that glint in your eyes, you can stop thinking it right now.”

“Wicked? I don’t think so.” She tipped her head to the side, considering. “Unless we make it a surprise party—and that would serve them right, seeing as they surprised us all by running off to tie the knot.”

The smile started in Caroline’s eyes, then spread all over her face. Her fingers curled around Jillian’s and held on tight.

“A party to celebrate Cole and Dixie’s marriage? Oh, yes, Jillie, that is a fine idea!”

They sat a moment, hands still linked, smiling at each other and the possibilities. A family celebration, a reason to laugh and dance and remember what mattered. Oh, yes, it was a very fine idea, even if she did say so herself!

“If Travis comes through—” Jillian mentally crossed both fingers and toes “—if he can do the renovation right away, we could hold it in the tasting room.”

“A wedding reception cum launch party,” Caroline murmured. “When?”

“Would early May be good?”

“Spring. The season of rebirth.” Jillian felt her mother’s hand move, felt the touch of her thumb against the wedding band she wore. Never had she commented on that symbol’s continued presence, and she didn’t now. She simply looked into her daughter’s eyes, rubbed her thumb along the gold band again, and said, “It’s the perfect time to forget past problems and concentrate on new beginnings, don’t you think?”

Jillian felt herself tense. Oh, no, this was not about her, not in any sense.

She started to shake her head, but Caroline blinked and her gaze shifted, as if distracted by something out of Jillian’s view. She pulled her hand away and pointed. “That will be your builder, stopping up by the stables.”

Now why would he do that? Was he lost, despite her specific directions to meet at the winery?

Jillian frowned as she gathered up her reins and urged Marsanne around.

“He’s early. Now that’s a change for the—” The rest of the sentence died on her lips as she caught sight of the truck. Her mouth probably hung open for a second. Her pulse definitely jumped.

“Is something the matter?” Caroline asked.

“Absolutely nothing,” Jillian answered slowly. Except for the fact that Travis Carmody drove a weather-beaten red truck, and this one was a distinctive shade of blue.

Her hands must have clenched with involuntary tension because beneath her Marsanne started to prance, her muscles bunching as if preparing for flight. Jillian settled deep in the saddle and soothed her in a low voice.

“I think she’s keen for a last gallop home,” Caroline said. “Why don’t you go on ahead?” When Jillian demurred, she shooed her off. “Go on, Jillie. I’ll potter back at my own pace. If your builder finds the barn deserted, he might not hang around.”

“Sorry, bud, I didn’t understand a word of that. I don’t speak horse.”

Seth didn’t feel all that comfortable speaking to a horse either, but this particular horse seemed to expect a reply…although calling the short-legged equine a horse might be stretching things. Whatever, the animal had a real gift of gab. Not your usual horsey neigh or squeal—his pony-mad Rachel had mastered both, along with a credible mane toss—but an eloquent combination of sounds and facial expressions.

A regular modern-day Mr. Ed, only shorter.

Mini Ed’s ears pricked up, his attention shifting to the open doors at the end of the barn. Seth heard it then, the thud of hooves striking the ground in a deep rolling rhythm, and his body quickened with expectation.

His companion whinnied and snorted. Seth managed not to, at least out loud.

He strolled over to the doorway in time to see horse and rider loom into sight. He knew Jillian rode, that before marrying Jason she’d competed in three-day events, but he’d never seen her on horseback. And the five minutes he’d spent cooling his heels in the barn hadn’t nearly prepared him for the impact.

Sure, he knew those mile-long legs would look spectacular wrapped around pretty much anything, including a huge gray horse. But he’d pictured her straight-backed and ladylike as she approached at a collected pace, not bent over the monster’s neck and thundering up the hill at full speed.

Not out of control, he decided, although that didn’t stop his whole body tensing for the eight seconds it took her to steady and slow to a walk. Seth let his breath go on a long gust that mixed relief with a strange sense of discovery. This was a Jillian he hadn’t seen before, her face flushed with exhilaration, her eyes shimmering as they locked with his.

So, the cool and prissy lady got off on speed. Who would have thought?

“Nice morning for a ride,” he said pleasantly.

“Nice?” One corner of her mouth quirked up. “Nice doesn’t do this sort of morning justice.”

“Point taken,” Seth murmured as she reined the horse to a stop.

When she swung her leg over and started to slide down, he moved in to catch her. After all, it was a long way to the ground. And somehow—despite his architect’s eye for perspective and measurement—he managed to misjudge the distance. Probably because he was distracted by the curves of her backside, clad in stretchy riding pants that fit like a second skin, coming right for him.

His vision actually glazed over for a second. The next, his hands were on her hips and sliding to her waist as that tight little backside connected with his front side. Quick, accidental, over before the heat burned right through his pants.

Yet the quick hitch of her breath, the instant tension in the lithe body beneath his hands, told him she’d felt something, too.

Yeah, well, she had cause.

Reluctantly he let her go, stepping back enough that she didn’t elbow him anywhere delicate when she started doing whatever had to be done with her saddle. It appeared to be quite a bit.

“Need a hand?” he asked after several seconds of watching her tug and fuss with straps.

“I can manage. And I’m actually quite competent at getting off my horse unassisted, too.”

He made a note for future reference.

“What are you doing here, Seth?” She glanced over her shoulder, her face prettily flushed. From the ride, Seth reminded himself, not from the impact of that sliding dismount. “I was expecting someone else.”

“So I heard.”

Her brows pinched together. “You heard that…where?”

“From Eli.”

“My brother called you?” she asked on a rising note of disbelief.

“No, I called you this morning to see if you’d found a contractor. Eli answered. He said you were out riding and then he mentioned that Carmody was coming to quote.”

He tried, but obviously didn’t succeed, in keeping his tone flat and free of condemnation. Her gaze narrowed a fraction as she turned around to face him. “And you don’t approve?”

“You said you wanted the best. Carmody doesn’t come close.”

“The best isn’t available. Travis Carmody is.” The clear green of her eyes deepened. “Unless that’s changed since Monday. Is that why you’re here, Seth?”

“I’m here to save you from employing a substandard tradesman. Hell, Jillian, I offered to give recommendations. I would have helped you line up someone dependable.”

“No one else is available. Not Terry Mancini or the Maine brothers or O’Hara. I tried them all. Travis is my last alternative.” She crossed her arms, sighed and met his eyes. “Exactly how bad is he, Seth?”

“After I got off the phone to Eli, I jumped straight in my truck and drove out here. Before my first cup of coffee. What does that tell you?”

“That bad, huh?”

Her smile was game, but deep in her eyes Seth saw the gathering shadows of disenchantment. He almost caved, almost offered…anything, but then she unfolded her arms and broke eye contact. She studied her hands, and he saw her twist that damn wedding band back and forth.

Rubbing in everything that was wrong about him wanting to offer her anything and everything, this woman who still loved his brother two years after he’d died. Two years after she’d discovered what a lying, cheating bastard he was.

Then she straightened and leveled her eyes right on his. “It’s a small job, Seth, but it means a lot to me. Would you reconsider taking a look at my plans?”

“Since I’m here anyway?”

“Yes. Since you’re here.”

That direct green gaze didn’t waver, and she stood tall and still and proud as she waited for his answer. She had asked for his help and he didn’t stand a prayer of saying no.

“No promises.” Cautioning himself as much as her. “But I’ll see what I can work out.”

“You’ll take a look at my plans? Now?”

“I’m not agreeing to take on the job or even to quote. But I’ll take a look and help you work out a solution.”

“I understand.” She huffed out a rueful-sounding breath. “And I’m not about to look that gift horse in the mouth a second time.”

Seth’s gaze dipped to her mouth, to the relieved smile that itched around its corners, and he couldn’t for the life of him think of a suitably light and witty response. Kissing her was out of the question, he supposed, but that was all he could think about doing, just bending forward and tasting the warmth of that smile in the quiet morning air…

“Seth Bennedict?”

Jillian started backward. Seth turned slowly and realized he’d—they’d both—been so engrossed that they hadn’t heard Caroline Sheppard’s approach. She entered the stable yard on a considerably smaller horse and at a much more sedate pace than her daughter.

And she smiled at Seth with a mixture of surprise and pleasure. “It is you!”

“How are you doing, Mrs. Sheppard?”

“I would be doing much better if you called me Caroline. ” She started to dismount, waving away Seth’s offer to help. “I have all morning to lever myself out of this saddle, and I’d be much happier doing so without an audience, thank you all the same.”

Given his recent experience helping with the out-of-saddle procedure, Seth conceded her point. Which prompted him to turn and seek out Jillian.

In the process of dragging the saddle from her monster horse, she met his eyes with a surprising note of humor. “Don’t even think about helping me again, Seth. I can handle this myself.”

“We know you can,” Caroline interceded, her gaze flicking from one to the other with carefully contained curiosity. “But if you two have business to attend to, I’ll look after the horses and finish up here.”

“That would be great, Mom. Seth’s agreed to take a look at my plans after all.”

“I’m pleased to hear that. Why don’t you join us for breakfast, Seth, once you’re done?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I promised I’d be home to take Rachel to day care. I don’t have a lot of time.”

“Then we’ll catch up another day.”

“I’d like that.” He turned to Jillian. “Ready?”

“Once I get rid of this saddle.”

She hurried off into the depths of the barn. So, okay, she didn’t want his help toting saddles but he couldn’t just stand here and watch, right? Not when watching took in the quick left-right hitch of her backside.

Funny, but he’d always thought those beige riding pants a bit starched and prissy. Not anymore. He followed those fast-moving pants inside—in case there was a door to open. Or something.

Off to his right he heard Mini Ed snicker. Probably at him. Seth Bennedict, unable to say no to the lady, despite his promise to keep a healthy distance and save himself this torture of seeing and wanting and not touching.

He knew he would lament this morning, from his foolhardy charge out here to save her from the mistake that was Travis Carmody, to his offer to look at her plans and help her find a workable solution. Then he remembered how she’d stood tall and looked into his eyes and all but admitted she needed his help.

And he couldn’t for the life of him summon up one scrap of regret.

Three

Two days later, Seth swung his truck into the parking lot beside the Louret Winery building and cast his eyes over the assembled vehicles. Besides the staff cars, he counted one minibus, two rental cars and several out-of-state plates. More than enough, he figured, to keep Jillian busy in the tasting room. Excellent.

The rushed Monday morning run-through hadn’t been nearly enough, not done cold, not with him mindful of getting back for Rachel. He needed to see Jillian at work, to see how she worked, before he could be satisfied with her ideas for the remodel. Structurally, the job would be simple enough, but this type of renovation was about more than knocking down a wall or two.

Inside the tasting room he paused while his vision adjusted from strong afternoon sunlight to the muted interior. Too dark, he decided, despite the number of light fixtures and the one floor-to-ceiling window.

His narrowed gaze swept the room, taking it all in, assessing, seeking…and taking too long to find Jillian. Standing behind one of two tasting bars situated along the side walls, she poured for a group of women who, curiously, all wore red hats. She didn’t give any sign of noticing his arrival.

Bad positioning, bad space planning, bad for business.

Jillian’s design with one bigger bar running smack down the center improved all of the above. Seth, the architect/ builder, needed assurance she’d optimized them. He strolled farther inside, circling around, sensing the instant she saw him.

He waited at the end of the long bar while she excused herself to the tasting group and came to meet him.

“Hello, Seth. I wasn’t expecting you.” Her smile was warm and welcoming. If his unexpected arrival flustered her, she didn’t let it show. “You’ve caught me in the middle of a tasting.”

He tilted his head toward the group at the bar. “Seems like a decent number for midweek.”

“Shannon has another half dozen or so looking through the winery so, yes, it is busy enough. It has been since opening, actually.”

She did this cute little wince, a token complaint since her face glowed with busy-is-good contentment. Man, he liked that. The hint of warmth he wasn’t accustomed to seeing in the cool and restrained lady. The absence of those haunted shadows he was too used to seeing.

And the knowledge that she got off on both galloping her horse and her work.

Work. He stopped staring into her eyes and straightened off the bar. “I’m just here to check on a few things. Don’t let me interrupt.”

“You should have called. I’d have said to come later, after I close at four.”

“I wanted to watch you work.” Seth met her eyes, saw them cloud with…circumspection?…and decided he hadn’t worded that so great. “I need to see how your tasting room operates. I’ll just be wandering around. You won’t even know I’m here.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Wandering around, doing what?”

“Some measuring—”

“You don’t need to check my measurements,” she interrupted with a spark of her trademark pride.

“Yeah, I do. That’s my job.” To illustrate that that’s why he was here—work, his job, nothing personal beyond a favor to his brother’s widow—he gestured toward the women in the wine-tasting group. “We’d both better get back to it.”

He went to work, starting down at back, taking measurements for the repositioned doorway between the tasting room and the winery, checking out the storage room she wanted gone, then working his way back down the room. Checking against her—detailed and accurate, he conceded—draft plan, making notations, setting up a work schedule in his mind.

And all the while aware of her voice, like the soft, rich melody of background music, as she went about her business. As he worked nearer, the hum of that voice took on the shape of words, then sentences, then the full commentary, and Seth reached three fundamental conclusions.

She knew her wines. She knew her audience. Her job in this tasting room married the two.

Oh, and yeah—if he took on this job, he was a masochist.

Squatting on his haunches to check the cypress flooring—it was making way for slate tiles and although well-worn, it might be salvageable for resale—he felt the passion for her work and for her wines play over him in warm, velvet notes. Not a good position with all that wine-talk flaring through his body.

Shaking his head, he stood. But being a masochist, he decided to observe for a few minutes, out of her line of vision but close enough to listen in as she finished up the current wine and selected another bottle.

She poured a small measure into each glass as one of the red-hatted crew—who were all dressed in various shades of purple—expounded her knowledge of big California reds.

“I think you’ll appreciate this cabernet sauvignon,” Jillian interjected smoothly when the expert paused to draw breath. “It’s our ninety-eight reserve.”

“My husband says cabernet is a man’s wine,” a woman commented. “And we don’t have the palate to appreciate it.”

“Carol, isn’t it?”

The fiftyish-looking woman nodded.

“Well, Carol, your husband might be interested in the Human Genome Project which showed that women, in fact, have finer palates. As a gender—” she paused to smile conspiratorially at the all-female group “—we’re better at sensory evaluation.”

“No kidding?” Carol grinned back. “I told Jim he was talking horse-spit.”

He watched Jillian temper her smile. “The ‘man’s wine’ comment is interesting since cabernet sauvignon is regarded as the king of red grapes. They make into wines that are big and bold and full-bodied. Some might say those are masculine attributes—others might think that’s a sexist viewpoint. Or simply horse-spit.”

They all laughed, Carol longest and loudest.

“And there are some women who prefer those qualities in their wine,” Jillian continued. “What about you ladies?”

“I like my men big and bold and full-bodied. Does that count?”

More laughter, and since the joker looked prim and ladylike and had to be pushing eighty, Seth grinned, too. Amused by the interplay, intrigued by Jillian’s easy rapport with the group—another facet he’d never been privy to—he leaned himself against a thick vertical support beam, crossed his arms and settled in to enjoy the show.

“Do you like the big wines, Jillian?” another woman asked.

“When I’m in a certain mood, yes. Other times I’m in the mood for something more elegant and refined. Less ballsy, if you will.”

“You must have a preference though,” the woman persisted. “What’s your favorite of the Louret wines?”

Jillian lifted a glass, tilting the angle until the opulent ruby color of its contents caught the light. “You’re about to taste it.”

“So, you’re feeling ballsy today, are you Jillian?” Carol asked.

No, Seth decided, as the warmth of the group’s laughter rolled through him. That didn’t describe her current mood. Ballsy was Monday when she’d galloped that monster horse up the hill. Today she was more relaxed and supple and confident.

“Pinot noir,” he suggested softly.

In his peripheral vision he saw a dozen red hats swivel in his direction, but his eyes were fixed on Jillian as she carefully placed the glass back on the bar and even more carefully turned his way.

“Why pinot noir?” she asked as her eyes met his. No wariness there, more a watchful stillness, as if she held her breath while she waited for his answer.

“My interpretation of your mood.”

Wow. Between the impact of those dark chocolate eyes fixed on hers and the complexities of his answer, Jillian could find no ready response.

Assuming that his pinot noir call wasn’t some off-the-cuff pick-a-wine retort.

Later, she would stew on that. Possibly for days. For now she needed to concentrate, since this tricky group was already firing questions at their new quarry.

“Do you think cabernet is a man’s wine?” Carol wanted to know.

“What’s your opinion on that gender research project Jillian mentioned?” another asked.

“Are you a wine drinker?”

“Have you ever done a tasting with Jillian?”

She really did need to concentrate, since she somehow heard that as “tasting of Jillian.” And the notion of Seth’s mouth on hers, on her body, tasting her…

Oh, boy. Instant dizziness and disorientation. Her mouth turned dry. Her hand shook as she reached for water and took a quick mouthful, washing away the taste of full-bodied wine and the forbidden heat of her thoughts.

Better. Except the women of the Golden Elms Red Hat Social Club looked set to drag Seth over and into their tasting circle. Making a time-out T with her hands, she raised her voice enough to be heard above the hubbub. “Ladies, let’s give Seth a break.”

Thankfully—and surprisingly—they quietened. Enough that when Kitty spoke, her cultured little lady’s voice chimed as clearly as silver on crystal.

“Is Seth your man, Jillian?”

Please, Lord, let me slip through these floorboards and disappear.

Of course the good Lord wasn’t listening. No doubt because of her previous sinful thoughts about tasting. And because she couldn’t look anywhere near Seth until her face stopped flaming, she focused on the faces in front of her as their interested observation turned to speculation.

I have to answer here. Let me do so with some coherence and dignity.

“Seth’s a builder. An architect and a builder, actually.”

Heartened because—hallelujah!—her voice did work, she chanced a glance his way. He didn’t look embarrassed. In fact, leaning against that beam with his sleeves rolled up to reveal dark forearms folded across his broad chest, he looked…like the embodiment of Eli’s ninety-eight reserve cabernet.

Big and earthy and full-bodied.

Good Lord, she did not mean that! She meant he looked less serious and intense than usual. Not exactly smiling, although there might have been a glint of amusement in his eyes.

“He’s helping me,” Jillian continued, looking to distract the women and herself, “with my plans to renovate the tasting room.”

“You’re changing this room? Why on earth would you want to do that?”

“I hope you’re going to lighten the decor with some pastels.”

“You can’t be serious, Linda! I love all the timber. It’s part of the ambience.”

Much diverted by the notion of a design and decor makeover, the women were off and running. They asked questions, but didn’t wait for answers. Suggestions and counter-suggestions swirled in a debate as lively and colorful as their own purple-suited, red-hatted attire.

After several minutes, she tried to bring them back on topic but failed. She shook her head and directed a helpless shrug in Seth’s direction. His full mouth crooked into a smile and for a beat of time Jillian just stared.

Completely mesmerized.

And it struck her that she’d never seen Seth Bennedict smile, or at least not right at her. Her heart stuttered and her skin tingled with warmth. Her internal sensors sounded a danger-danger warning, but she could not look away until the quietest of the group—Helen—touched her on the arm, breaking the spell.

“If you need to go talk to your man, Jillian, it’s fine with us.”

This time she let the “your man” assumption slide right by. It wasn’t worth explaining all over again. “I do need to have a quick word about the renovation plans.”

“Then vamoose. We’ll still be here when you’re done.”

That’s what she was afraid of. But she excused herself, they waved her off, she went…although not quickly enough to miss Kitty’s whispered comment about big, bold and earthy.

The wine. Of course she meant the wine, since they’d all lifted their glasses and taken a first sip of the ninety-eight reserve she’d poured.

It was a very big wine.

Still, her cheeks bloomed with heat as she slipped out from behind the bar. Who knew if Seth had overheard? He wasn’t smiling anymore, just standing there watching her approach in a way that made her nerves and her pulse lollop all over the place.

To compensate, she held herself erect, shoulders straight, and strived to make her smile polite and businesslike. “I have a few minutes if you want to talk about my plans, now you’ve had a decent look at the place. Why don’t we go over by the window?”

“Where it’s a bit more private?”

She glanced back over her shoulder and, sure enough, they were being watched.

Still, Seth seemed to be taking it in good humor, so she smiled and shook her head as they made their way to the far end of the room. “I’m not used to such a fascinated audience.”

“Not your typical tasting group?” he asked.

“Hardly. I don’t know if I could handle someone like Kitty several times a day!”

A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. It wasn’t the full disarming dazzler of before, but an attractive near-smile that made him look more relaxed. Not that it completely relaxed Jillian. When she took the chair he offered at the setting by the window, she tried to sit back and enjoy the sensation of resting her feet for the first time since breakfast. But then he leaned his hips against the table, stretched his long legs out in front of him, and goodbye relaxation.

“I don’t think there is any ‘typical’ group,” she continued, looking out over the vineyards, a safe alternative to other, closer, scenery. Right at eye level, actually, not that she was noticing. “We get all kinds through here, although I would say less drop-ins and more of those who seek us out.”

“People who are serious about their wines?”

“Yes, we get plenty who know exactly what they want. They might ask for a specific flight of wines or a vertical, say, of cabernets.” She predicted the next question and explained. “That’s a tasting of one wine’s various vintages, youngest to oldest, as opposed to a horizontal, which is the same vintage from several wineries.

“Anyway, that’s the enophiles but they’re balanced by groups like this one.” Turning from the window, she gestured toward the group at the bar.

“You mean groups with odd dress sense?”

“I take it you’ve never encountered Red Hatters before?”

“Not in numbers,” he muttered. “Scary.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Only if you’re scared by women of a certain age who aren’t afraid to have fun.”

“They’re an organization?”

“A disorganization, according to these ladies.”

And she only hoped that one day she’d have the chutzpah to wear purple and red together. To look toward the future and laugh about the past. Even to indulge the hormones that had hummed to life in her blood.

“They’re having fun,” he commented, “but they’re also keen to learn.”

“Yes.” She looked back up at him, found him watching her with interest. Not so threatening, that quiet intentness, when it focused on her work and when he got it so absolutely right. That made her confidence hum in perfect tune with her hormones. “That combination makes them my favorite kind of wine tourist.”

“The way you run your tasting—” he looked back at the group as a chorus of laughter rattled the window “—it’s different to what I envisioned.”

“Different how?”

“Your focus isn’t taste-and-buy like some other places I’ve seen. You’re giving them a whole lot more.”

Insanely pleased that he got it and unable to hold all that satisfaction inside, Jillian smiled. Deep inside she straight-out grinned. “Our philosophy is to provide a wine experience and education, without being too stuffy. I think we’re succeeding since we get a lot of traffic through word-of-mouth recommendations.”

“I imagine you do,” he said slowly, his eyes serious as they held hers. “You’re good.”

A small compliment should not create such a dizzying effect, but Seth’s did. It went to her head as swiftly as a good red straight from the barrel. She should not have felt the schoolgirlish need to push for more, but she did. “Not stuffy?”

The ladies laughed again, more raucously than ever, and Seth simply cocked one dark brow. Answer enough.

“Is that your focus with the refit? Not stuffy?”

“That’s one of the reasons I want to open the place up and bring in more light. That, and because to really show the differences in appearance and color of the wines you need natural light.”

“I’ve been thinking about the light problem.”

Seth pulled those long legs—which she hadn’t been noticing—under him and stood. When he moved along the wall, touching, inspecting, contemplating, she was intrigued enough to get back on her tired feet and follow.

“What would you think about arched windows, both sides of the room?” he asked.

“How big?”

“Floor to ceiling. Modeled on your entrance doors. Same shape, same width.”

“Yes. Oh, yes,” Jillian breathed, containing the excitement that cannoned around inside—he’s going to do it! He’s taking on the job!—by pacing out that width of window and nodding her satisfaction. “Arches are perfect, Seth. A reflection of the shape of the wine barrel, the bottle, the glass. Will knocking that shape into the walls be a problem?”

“Not for me, but the windows have to be custom-made. They won’t come cheap.”

“I’ll figure out a way to sell them to Cole.”

“I could talk to him—”

“No!”

She cut him off too abruptly, given the way his eyes narrowed, but she felt a strong need to keep control of this project. To let him know she wasn’t the weak basket case he’d had to rescue from Jason’s mess.

“There’s no need for that,” she added in a more reasonable tone. “Cole should be getting used to my additions and changes.”

“Yeah?” The focus of that narrow-eyed interest shifted. “What else have you changed since Monday?”

“Uniforms. These—” she held her arms out a little, showing the claret polo shirt all the tasting-room staff wore “—have to go.”

“Too stuffy?”

“And not individual enough. The marketing campaign is based around Louret’s individual hands-on approach and attention to detail. So, Mercedes and I decided we needed non-uniform uniforms. We’ll have a range of separates—tops and bottoms—in the same palette of colors, but every one different according to our own tastes.”

Seth nodded, seemingly impressed. She was impressed that his eyes hadn’t glazed over as Cole’s and Eli’s had when she pitched the idea to them. Not that they weren’t interested in the tasting room’s vital function at Louret, more that they weren’t interested in wardrobe choices.

Plus they’d both been distracted lately by the ongoing legal meetings over Spencer Ashton and the Lattimer estate.

“So, you’re after a bright and relaxed atmosphere and a functional, comfortable work space.”

“Yes, that’s it exactly!” Seth Bennedict didn’t only understand her plans but the reasoning behind them, and that set him apart from every other builder she’d spoken to.

That and the fact that he was here, tape measure and notebook in hand.

“So.” She drew a slow breath in a bid to steady the nervous let-this-work-out churning in her stomach. “Does this mean you are going to quote?”

“Yes.”

Yes! But she contained the urge to punch the air, needing to ask one more question. The biggy. “Is this a serious quote, Seth? Do you really want the job or are you only humoring me because I practically begged?”

He looked at her strangely. “I’m sorry. Did I miss the begging?”

“The other morning, at the stables.” She waved a hand in that general direction, but she did not want to go back there. She did not want to remember the desperate edge of panic that had driven her to swallow her pride and ask, straight out, for his help. “You said you’d take a look, no promises. What changed your mind?”

For a second he looked right at her, and something in his eyes made her draw herself back, as if that might deflect the impact of all that dark intensity. Then he hitched a shoulder and answered ever so casually. “Like you said, it’s a small job. And I’ve decided to take the opportunity to get my hands dirty.”

Oh, my Lord, it would be Villa Firenze all over again. The dangerous glint in his eyes. The masculine scent of hard work and hot muscles. The glimpse of his skin, glistening with sweat. Her own unaccustomed reaction, part fascination, part run-like-hell terror.

Jillian swallowed. “You’re going to do the work yourself?”

“Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.”

“But you said you were booked solid right through summer. ” She scrambled to bring order to her thoughts. “How will you fit this in?”

“By juggling and overtime. Will working at night present any problems?”

Yes, no, probably not. Frowning, she considered the situation. If he worked nights, there’d be less disruption. Less bitching from Eli about builders under his feet. “No, that would work,” she said slowly. “But what about Rachel?”

He stared at her a moment. “I thought you wanted me on this job.”

“I do. Yes. Absolutely.”

“Then stop reminding me why it’s not going to be easy.”

“Okay,” she said, exhaling in a long rush. “But promise me that if there’s ever a problem with Rachel and child care, you’ll let me know.”

“Rachel’s not your problem, Jillian.”

“I know that.” And she had no reason to feel stung, no matter how she felt about his little girl who’d lost her mother due to Jason’s recklessness.

Not your fault, she reminded herself. You had no influence over him. You couldn’t slow him down, settle him down, or keep him satisfied. You can’t hold yourself responsible for his actions.

She lifted her chin and looked Seth square in the eye. “And I don’t want to create any problems for her, either, Seth. You’re doing me a big favor here. Let me do this one small thing in return.”

“If it’s ever an issue.”

“You’ll call me, let me help you out?”

She didn’t think he would relent, and he did so finally with the barest inclination of his head. A small acknowledgment rather than any kind of surrender, but that was enough.

Unlike his brother, Seth Bennedict was a man of his word and Jillian intended to keep him to it.

Four

Eager to get his quote approved and the project underway, Jillian had convened a meeting with her brothers and sister for late Friday afternoon. No problem, Seth assured her, when she called and asked him to attend. His sister was coming up from San Francisco for the weekend. Eve could leave earlier and babysit Rachel.

He didn’t count on the trailer rollover and Eve’s phone call from the middle of traffic chaos. His housekeeper Rosa had already left for a weekend off. What could he do but get on the phone and reschedule?

“Sorry, but it’s too late to arrange another sitter,” he explained to Jillian.

“Where is Rachel now?”

“I’m about to pick her up from day care.”

“Bring her with you,” she said. “We’ll shift the meeting to the house. Caroline will love the chance to spoil her.”

Seth frowned, not because of the Caroline-spoiling thing but because his daughter had a shy streak. She hadn’t ever met any of Jillian’s family. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

There was the tiniest hint of a pause. “You said you’d let me help out with Rachel. Are you going back on your word, Seth?”

Hell.

“We’ll see you in half an hour, then.”

Twenty-eight minutes later Seth pulled up outside the Vines.

Still dressed in her work uniform, Jillian jogged down from the portico of the big rustic house before he’d even turned off the engine. Like she’d been watching for his arrival. The kick of that notion—Jillian waiting for him—resonated through his body as she approached, a warm and welcoming smile curving her lips.

A warm smile welcoming his back seat passenger.

His gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and found it filled with his daughter’s anxious little face. Her thumb went straight into her mouth. Damn. After Karen’s death he’d vowed never to let work come before his daughter. He should not have compromised that vow. He should not have brought her here.

By the time his boots hit the ironstone drive, Jillian was unstrapping Rachel from her car seat. But she didn’t grab her and swing her into her arms. Nor did she overpower her with meaningless remember-me? prattle. Hunkered down by the open door, she smiled quietly at his daughter and fixed on the perfect opener.

“Is that Pinky Pony?” She leaned back a fraction and inspected the toy Rachel held clutched to her chest. The one Jillian had given her last Christmas. “I’m so glad you brought him back to visit with me and his friends.”

Slowly the thumb slid from Rachel’s mouth, although her big brown eyes maintained a note of suspicion. “Have you got other ponies?”

“I sure do.”

Rachel maintained her wariness for, oh, another three seconds before wriggling out of the seat and tucking her hand in Jillian’s. “Are they in your bedwoom?”

“Yup. Should we ask your daddy if it’s okay to go and see them?”

“He woan want to come. He doesn’t like ponies. He says they got bad additudes.”

“Really? I did not know that.”

As she straightened from three-year-old level to standing, Jillian’s eyes sought and found his, and while her face and voice echoed his daughter’s serious-subject tone, those green eyes danced with amusement. “Is that right, Seth? You don’t like ponies because of their attitude?”

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know where she gets these things.”

Lips twitching as if to suppress laughter, she tilted her head and fixed him with a challenging look. “So, do you want to come and look at ponies with Rachel, then?”

“In your bedroom? I don’t think so.”

Which probably wasn’t the smart thing to say, not when he’d been enjoying standing close enough to absorb the warmth of her teasing mood. Not pinot noir today, but something as lively and vibrant as that spark in her eyes. A sparkling rosé, perhaps.

And, she didn’t shy away as he’d expected. She blinked slowly and something shifted in her expression. A hint of man-woman awareness, a knowledge that to Seth her bedroom was not a place of ponies and girlie tea parties but of feminine scents and lacy garments and every midnight fantasy he could remember.

Of course he had to be imagining things. If she detected any of that on his face, she’d run a mile. Instead she stood eye-locked with him, a touch of pink in her cheeks and a touch of mystery in her green eyes.

Until Rachel tugged at her hand. “Come on, Aunt Jellie. Pinky wantsta see your ponies.”

Jillian allowed herself to be towed off toward the house by his purportedly shy daughter, pausing only to call back over her shoulder. “Come on inside. Cole’s waiting in the library and Mercedes isn’t far away. Eli may or may not make it.”

A timely reminder, Seth decided, of his purpose and place here today. Not in her bedroom, breathing the intoxicating mix of wine and woman that clung to her skin, but in the library, talking business. He would do well to keep that in mind.

“The library is just through to your right.” Jillian’s voice drifted down from high on his left, and he looked up to find her partway up a winding staircase, still hand in hand with his daughter.

“Go on in,” she said. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Are you all right then, princess?”

“I’m going to see Aunt Jellie’s ponies,” his princess informed him in an imperious tone. Of course, she was all right. What was he thinking?

“Have fun, then. And don’t eat too much hay.”

She giggled, the sound muffled by the hand she slapped over her mouth. And as Seth started toward the library, he was smiling all the way into his heart, warmed by that spontaneous giggle at a very lame joke.

“Aunt Jellie?”

On the threshold of the library he turned to see Jillian crouched down and listening intently to whatever Rachel had to say. One small hand rested on Jillian’s shoulder as his daughter leaned forward to whisper in her ear, and that tableau with its hints of intimacy and implicit trust hit him mid-chest with paralyzing force.

For a second he felt as if he’d run full pelt into a steel girder. He simply couldn’t breathe. But then the pressure eased, leaving in its place a hollow sense that he had erred—in a way he hadn’t contemplated—taking on this job and bringing Rachel here today.

He was old enough and tough enough to deal with his infatuation with Jillian, but what about his daughter?

Jillian returned ten minutes later. Rachel did not. And while Seth went through the formalities of winning a job he didn’t need and would probably spend the next month regretting, his daughter—he knew—was falling for a second Ashton-Sheppard woman.

Caroline.

“Goodness knows how long they’ll be,” Jillian said as they walked from the library, the meeting over. “It might be best if you pick her up at the stables.”

Where, no doubt, she was falling for the Ashton-Sheppard pony. Mini Ed. Oh, yeah, Rachel would find that talking, snickering wiseass pony irresistible.

“It might be best if you come along, help me pry her off of that pony of yours,” he said.

She crinkled her nose apologetically. “I suppose that’s the least I can do, seeing as I mentioned Monty in the first place.”

“Monty?”

“My pony.”

“Ah.” Not that he would ever think of the animal as anything other than Mini Ed. The name suited him too well, as did the current easy, teasing mood that accompanied them into the foyer.

He hadn’t forgotten his earlier unease, rather he’d shoved it aside in favor of a more rational reaction. In the future, he would keep his business and personal lives apart. For now he knew Rachel was in good hands and he…well, he couldn’t resist the temptation to stall and prolong the moment or the mood.

“It all started with that pink pony,” he teased.

“By ‘it all’ do you mean the fact she’s a little keen on horses?”

“A little?” Seth shook his head with mock gravity. “You created a monster.”

“Obviously you can’t be referring to a certain three-year-old who does not have an ounce of monster in her sweet little bones.”

“Obviously you haven’t spent time with any three-year-old who is tired and crabby and not getting her own way.”

“No, I haven’t.” A trace of emotion flitted across her face, swift and ephemeral, chased away by a rueful smile. “Although I’m assured by my brothers that I was a perfect monster at that age.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“If I did indulge in any monster-like behavior—not that I’m admitting culpability, you understand—” She cut him a look from under her lashes, which his body completely misunderstood. “But if I did then Eli and Cole would have provoked it. They’ve always taken great delight in razzing Mercedes and me.”

“I noticed.” In the meeting there’d been much to notice in the family dynamics and Jillian’s responses. Especially those she tried to hide. “You don’t much like being called Jellie, do you?”

She all but shuddered. “God, no!”

“Yet you let Rachel get away with it.”

“Aunt Jellie from a three-year-old is cute. From my brothers in a business meeting? Let’s just say cute is not a desirable workplace image.”

Seth bit his tongue. He figured it wasn’t Kosher to mention how desirable he found the contrast between elegant, ladylike Jillian Ashton and this Jellie who got all flushed with restrained aggravation every time one of her brothers needled her.

She released some of that latent frustration on a sigh and folded her arms across her chest. “Dare I ask what else you noticed in the meeting?”

“Eli was preoccupied.”

“He has a lot on his mind.”

“Cole was in a hurry to get away.”

“Newlywed.”

“Mercedes likes chocolate-chip cookies.”

“Mercedes skipped lunch.” She laughed, a soft and husky contrast to their rat-at-at nail gun exchange of lines. Then she shook her head and met his eyes with narrowed consideration. “I didn’t know you were so observant.”

“You don’t know me that well,” he said slowly, and in one heartbeat the mood changed shape, gathering a new intimacy in the deep quiet of the unlit foyer.

“No, I don’t. And I suspect you have the better of me there.”

“You think I know you?” Hell, this week she’d turned everything he thought he knew about cool and prissy Jillian Ashton upside down. Sauvignon blanc. Cabernet sauvignon. Pinot noir. Sparkling rosé. She was a complete cellar full of diverse moods and he couldn’t help enjoying every one.

“You know more about me than I would like.” Chin lifted, she held his gaze. “More than anyone outside my family, actually.”

“You’re talking about the past, Jillian, about Jason and the mess he made of his life and his marriage. Not you.”

She dismissed that with an adamant shake of her head. “You know I was too gullible and naive to see any hint of reality. You know I believed him when he said that he’d been conned, that he had nothing to do with the investment scam. You know I actually believed he would get my money back, that he would stop cheating and lying and playing me for a thousand kinds of fool!”

Yeah, because she loved him. Because she was loyal and faithful and committed, and—dammit—he admired her because she had stood by her husband and partner.

So unlike his own wife.

“You were his wife, Jillian. I’ve never judged you for that.”

Something shifted in her expression, and in the deep evening shadows he couldn’t tell if it was acceptance or surprise or disbelief. She hitched her shoulders in a tense little shrug that echoed through him, tight in his chest and his gut and his head.

“I don’t know what to say to that except thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for the lack of judgment and thank you for sorting out that mess of my past.”

What could he say but, “You’re welcome.”

“And especially thank you for helping me now.” Her gaze fixed on his, so serious and earnest that his heart fisted in his chest. “This job means so much to me, and you taking it has lifted a weight off my shoulders.”

Not just rhetoric, Seth knew. She’d come to him, she’d asked for his help, she’d thanked him already the day she offered to lend a hand with Rachel. And now she felt a need to repeat those thanks.

“Why is this project so important to you?” he asked.

“Work’s my life,” she answered with simple sincerity. “And my bliss.”

Yeah, he understood the first, and the second he’d noticed that day at the tasting room. Except it wasn’t that simple, he knew. During the meeting he’d studied her much more closely than any of her siblings.

This wasn’t only about work, it was personal and somehow it was driving her.

“What are you trying to prove, Jillian?” he asked, studying her closely now. Seeing the giveaway flicker deep in her eyes and knowing he’d guessed right. Not that he needed any psych degree to figure out her motivation, but he didn’t want to put words in her mouth. He knew patience—he had a three-year-old. He waited while the pause spun out between them, silent but for the rhythmic ticktock of the wall clock behind him.

Five ticks and four tocks before she drew an audible breath and made one of those expressive here’s-how-it-is gestures with her hands.

“I have a lot of mistakes to make up for, Seth, a lot to prove. The way I walked away from Louret because I didn’t think they respected me as a professional—”

“When you took the job over in Sonoma?”

“Yes.”

And that’s where she’d met Jason, his baby brother, the spoiled, smooth talking sales manager who’d wanted Jillian because of her surname and her connections. An Ashton, Jason had figured, could take him places he didn’t work hard enough to make on his own.

“My family didn’t want me to leave but I thought I knew better,” she said evenly. “I thought I needed to prove I was all grown up and could make my own decisions.”

“And now you think you need to—what?—make a big impact on Louret to prove your worth?”

“No, I just need to do something positive. For myself, mostly, and to put the past behind me.”

“There’s something to be said for knocking down old walls and rebuilding.”

A smile ghosted across her lips, as if she appreciated the metaphor, although her eyes remained serious. “Sometimes when the old walls collapse around you, it takes a while to clear the rubble.”

“Sometimes that clearing is more than one person can handle.”

“And sometimes the only person avail—” She stopped abruptly and pressed her lips together.

No way was she getting away with that! Eyes narrowed, Seth leaned closer. “The only person available…what? Spit it out, Jillian.”

“Charges into the rubble and stirs up a whole lot more dust!”

“I don’t get your point,” he said heavily. “A couple of minutes ago you were thanking me for clearing up Jason’s mess.”

“Yes, and my thanks weren’t insincere. It’s just…how your efficiency made me feel. The way you took over and cleared everything so effortlessly when I was still operating in this fog. You made me feel insignificant and useless.”

All he’d done was take matters out of her hands so she wouldn’t have to deal with the whole nasty truth—so he could protect her from the nastiest of those truths. She’d been operating in a fog. Her words. Yet he’d made her feel—

Seth rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Hell, he couldn’t repeat the words she’d used, they were so much bunk. “Do I still make you feel the same way?”

“No.”

He stared at her, probably scowling, still struggling with what she’d revealed. And not believing her quick answer.

After a couple of seconds she sighed and her shoulders slumped a little, relenting. “Okay, you don’t make me feel insignificant and whatever else I said. You just make me feel…uncomfortable. Sometimes.”

“Because I’m Jason’s brother?”

“Yes. That’s one thing.”

“And the other?” he prompted, thinking about that knowledge in her eyes earlier. Feeling his whole body tighten with expectation.

“You’re so serious. And intense.” She paused, the frown between her brows drawing tight with concentration as if she were unsure of what to say or how to say it. “You have this way of looking at me and I have no idea what you’re thinking.”

So much for bedroom awareness.

She did not have a clue, and for one barely constrained moment Seth felt like shocking that frown of concentration right off her face. He ached to tell her all about what he was thinking when the heat seared his veins and the tension burned in every cell of his body.

Except he’d shaken hands with her brothers ten minutes earlier. They had a deal to work together, for better, for worse. And he’d made a deal with himself to keep business and personal apart.

“Is working together on this project going to be a problem?” he asked.

“I thought it would be, that day I came to see you at Villa Firenze. But after this week and especially after today—” She blew out a breath and straightened her shoulders, although her eyes still looked troubled. “Yes, Seth. I can work with you.”

“Especially if I lighten up?”

“That would help.” Relief chased some of the uncertainty from her expression. “Are we good, then?”

Not that good, Seth thought, but she sounded so hopeful, what could he do but lie? “Yeah, we’re good.”

His reward was her smile. Big and open and warm, it streamed over him and through him, stirring something rich and deep in his very core. Something he wasn’t used to feeling—and damn sure wasn’t comfortable feeling—from any source other than his daughter.

His daughter. Damn. Frowning he shot back his sleeve to study his watch. How could he have forgotten about Rachel? “I need to get going, to pick up Rachel, or my sister will beat us home.”

Her eyes widened a trace, as if she too had forgotten. “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll change into my riding gear and come down to the stables with you.”

“You’re going riding? Now?”

With her hand on the banister and one foot on the bottom step, she paused and cut him a look across her shoulder. “If I have time before dark, but mostly I need to help you pry your daughter off Monty. I won’t take more than a minute to change into my jodhpurs.”

“Only a minute?” he muttered as he watched her ascend the stairs at full speed. Her skirt fluttered around her legs and he thought about her stretching those skintight riding breeches all the way up those long limbs and over her hips. “I’ve seen how tight those jodhpurs are.”

Five

Surely he hadn’t meant her to hear that muttered closing quip…had he?

Jillian kicked aside her work skirt and flopped onto her bed, jodhpurs clutched in her fingers. Heat flared with the vivid and visceral memory of how he’d come to see—and feel—exactly how tight her jodhpurs were. Talk about your over-the-top fireworks response! At the time she’d put it down to her after-gallop high, her euphoric mood, her adrenaline-revved senses.

Now she knew better.

It was time to come clean with herself, something she hadn’t done downstairs. Yes, he made her uncomfortable, much more often than she’d admitted to, and only in part because of that serious, intense thing he had down pat.

It didn’t matter if he lightened up or not. She was attracted to him. Physically, irrationally, but there it was.

Her hormones had stretched and yawned and fluttered back to life, reminding her that once upon a time she’d enjoyed the heat of flirtation and the intimacy of man-woman contact. Back when she’d had a sex life. Back when she’d thought her husband loved her and cherished her and wanted to make a life and a family and a home with her.

Back when she’d been a naive, love-struck fool.

And now her poor deprived hormones wanted to play with a complete non-candidate. One, he had just signed on to work for her. Two, he was her brother-in-law and father of her niece. Three, he was serious and intense and intimidating when she craved warm and comfortable and safe.

When she was ready for another relationship, she wanted what Caroline and Lucas shared. That deep bond that had nothing to do with hormones and everything to do with trust and respect.

She groaned and buried her face in her hands for a second. Then she dropped her hands away to stare fixedly at the ceiling. She was not Jellie, the shy and self-conscious teenager. She wasn’t Jillie Ashton, rebellious twenty-something striking out for independence, either. Nor was she Jillian Ashton-Bennedict, demoralized wife and disabused widow.

She was Jillian Ashton, grown woman and graduate wine expert. She needed to win back the respect she’d lost during her marriage and its dusty, rubble-filled aftermath. She needed to maintain a working relationship with Seth and hopefully, somewhere along the way, she might also earn his respect. After that day in the tasting room, when he’d complimented her work, she thought she was on the right track. Lying here worrying about the man’s view of her backside was not forwarding that cause.

She propelled herself upright and struggled into her skintight jodhpurs. So, she’d put on a few pounds since her competitive days in the saddle. That was ten years ago and she refused to make apologies. Shoulders straight, she marched to the door and pulled it open, balancing on one leg to pull on the first of her riding boots.

Voices drifted up from the foyer and her heartbeat went into instant overdrive, thudding loud and heavy in her ears—most inconvenient for a person trying to eavesdrop. On one socked foot she hopped down the hall closer to the staircase, where she could hear the exchange between Seth and her mother.

Rachel, she surmised from the soft-voiced conversation, had nodded off during the short drive back from the stables.

The chicken in Jillian suggested she hang back a minute longer and they would be gone. She wouldn’t have to face Seth with the brand new recognition of sexual attraction still warm in her face and swirling in her belly.

No need to see him cradling his sleeping daughter in his arms. No need to watch them drive away, her chest aching with what she didn’t have, with all that her marriage had not provided.

Then courage grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and gave her a big old-fashioned wake-up-to-yourself shake. She tugged on her second boot and headed down the stairs. Just before the curve that would bring the foyer into view, she paused to suck in a deep breath, to stiffen her spine and school her features into cool composure. Her heart still beat fast and hard but that wouldn’t show.

She rounded that last spiraling curve as the front door closed, leaving the house empty and silent and Jillian straddling the chasm between intense relief and disappointment.

She’d desperately needed a head-clearing, emotion-leveling, spirit-lifting ride after Seth and Rachel left—it would have been her first since Monday morning—but when she arrived at the stables, the sun was already kissing the Mayacamas Mountains good-night. Tomorrow, she’d promised herself, and as soon as she cleaned up the tasting room after Saturday closing, she rushed back to the Vines with that promise in mind.

Grab a quick snack, change clothes, then straight to the stables.

The old car parked in front of the house gave her a second’s pause, but she shrugged her curiosity aside and hit the kitchen at a near run. Luckily it wasn’t a full run or she would have collided with Mercedes. Since her sister carried a tray set with Caroline’s best crockery, the result would not have been pretty.

“Where’s the fire?” Mercedes asked.

“Where’s the tea party?” Jillian retorted, before she took a close look at her sister’s face. Not smiling, even more serious than usual, the creases between her brows tight with worry. “What’s the matter?”

“Mom has a visitor.”

“A lawyer?” she asked automatically, thinking of Cole’s many meetings these past weeks, then rejecting her ready assumption just as quickly. Lawyers did not drive the kind of beat-up small sedan she’d seen outside.

“Worse.” Mercedes grimaced. “Anna Sheridan.”

Good thing Jillian wasn’t holding the tray. Its contents would now be strewn all over the kitchen floor. “The woman? With the baby?”

“That’s the one. And she has the kid with her.”

The kid who happened to be their half brother. One of their many half brothers, all unmet, sired by the man she refused to call ‘her father.’

Jillian’s stomach churned with anxiety. “Why is she here? What does she want?”

“I have no idea.” Mercedes hiked up the tray. “But if you grab yourself a cup, we can go find out together.”

Seth drove out to the Vines with one intention. To find his daughter’s precious pink pony, inadvertently left behind the previous night. Apparently she’d been so entranced by the real thing she’d discarded Pinky without a second thought. Imagine that?

Except tonight she had remembered. Tonight she refused to go to bed without her favorite toy. And at the end of a hellish day packed floor to ceiling with work snafus, all he’d wanted to do was kick back and enjoy his sister’s company. Dinner, a glass or two of wine, some relaxed conversation that didn’t include anything connected with Jillian Ashton.

When Rachel whined and pouted, he didn’t bother negotiating. Sometimes it was easier to concede defeat. “Yes, I will go find Pinky.” Even if I have to get down on my hands and knees and look under every individual strand of straw.

As he pulled up outside the stables, he noticed the absence of vehicles. The big white barn slumbered in the encroaching darkness, seemingly empty of all but its equine residents. Good. Although help might shorten the needle-in-a-haystack search, he wasn’t in the mood for polite chitchat with Caroline Sheppard or for pretending to lighten up around her daughter.

Not tonight.

“We’re not that good,” he muttered as he strode into the barn…through doors slung wide open.

No lights, no activity save the rustle of straw beneath hooves and a distinctive pony snicker, yet those doors had to be open for a reason. Seth ignored Ed, his narrowed gaze fixing on the adjacent empty stall. A quick head tally confirmed the absence of the gray she’d been riding on Monday.

It was too late for riding, too dark for safety, too dangerous for the speed she’d favored that morning. He retraced his steps outside and halted, hands on hips and head lifted, all his senses on high alert. First he felt it, the rumbling in the ground under his feet, and then he heard the thunder of hooves.

Déjà vu.

The horse appeared like a gray ghost in the twilight, galloping at breakneck speed. Not controlled this time, no way, and everything inside Seth roiled in a volatile mix of fear and fury.

“You reckless fool,” he muttered. “If you don’t break your neck, I will wring—”

The threat caught in his throat, choked by pure dread, as he realized why the horse approached at such helter-skelter speed. This time it was out of control, the reins dangling uselessly around its forelegs, the saddle on its back empty.

Fear clenched deep in Seth’s gut as he raced to his truck and wrenched open the door. Without pausing to close it, he fired the engine and sent the back wheels spinning and spitting up gravel. The door slammed shut when he swung into the driveway at bone-jarring speed, spinning his back end so far out he almost collected a gatepost. His headlights sliced through the dusk and bounced off the white railing fence that bordered the lane, close—too close—to his right-hand fender, warning him to get a grip.

He needed to slow down, to think about where the horse had come from, to search with more method and less foolhardy haste.

Ahead he thought he saw a dark shape beside the road, and an image of Jillian’s unmoving body jammed his mind with dread. But it was nothing. A shadow, perhaps, or a darker patch in the roadside vegetation. He sucked in a deep breath, eased his foot off the accelerator and loosened his punishing grip on the wheel. His breath, he realized, was still ratcheting in his lungs from that short, sharp sprint through the stable yard.

Or simply from the adrenaline shock of fear.

On a mental flip of the coin—Left? Right? No, left—he turned and followed the dirt road all the way to the cottage at its end. No lights, no sign of life, but whichever Louret worker lived here could be out or away for the weekend. Vaguely he remembered a time when Saturday night meant something besides fewer work calls. More clearly he remembered this end of Louret from driving by on Route 29. He’d noticed the cottage and beyond it an artificial lake, postcard pretty in the blue-skied daylight, now an eerie hole of darkness as night stole over the land.

And there was no way of knowing if Jillian had taken a tumble into that eerie darkness.

Realistically, she could have been riding anywhere on the acreage, in any of the vineyards or down one of the many tracks cut for machinery access. He needed help. Cursing the frustrated speed of his departure from the stables and the cell phone left back in Napa, he turned his truck in a slow circle, scanning the wide arc of his headlights one last time as he prepared to head back to the Vines.

And there she was, a slender silhouette shading her eyes from the blinding glare of the high beams. Relief surged through Seth, overpowering in its intensity. Then he sucked it up and got moving, switching his lights to low before bursting from the truck and striding forward to meet her.

She was frowning—scowling even—but he didn’t give her time for more than, “Seth? What are you—” before his hands skated over her shoulders, down her arms and back again, tipping her face up and into the light.

“What are you do—”

“I’m checking you’re all right,” he cut in. Abruptly, harshly, but he had cause.

“Doing here?” She finished her question on a lame note, then drew an audible breath as he cradled her face between his hands.

“Are you hurt?” He dipped down closer, scouring her face and her eyes for any sign of injury.

“No.” But she must have sensed his lingering doubt because she lifted her hands to his and pried them from her face. “Apart from my bruised pride, I’m fine. See?”

Yeah, he saw. And he let his breath, his fear, his earlier crazed worry go in one solid exhalation. She was fine. She was standing there frowning up at him with a peculiar expression on her face, but since he’d turned his grip around, trapping her hands in his, she was probably trying to work out how to free herself without an undignified arm wrestle.

Right now it’d likely take that.

If he let go of her hands, he might yield to the real temptation of hauling her into his arms and holding her tight against his body. Of kissing her brow and her face and her mouth in a combination of repressed need and thank-you-God relief.

He figured he’d better keep holding her hands.

“What are you doing here, Seth?”

“Performing search and rescue, apparently.” Seth tried for levity but failed. Light humor, he decided, is a hard task when your heart’s still pounding with a crazy, dark dread.

Jillian shook her head slowly. “I don’t understand.”

“I was up at the stables when your horse came in.”

“Is she all right?” Her fingers clutched at his, suddenly tense and agitated. “Marsanne? My horse? She wasn’t lame?”

“Not that I noticed. She came galloping up the hill on all four legs.”

That seemed to offer the reassurance she needed. Her heavy sigh sounded a little shaky, but her posture eased from poker-backed alarm to a relieved slump. When her fingers relaxed their grip on his, Seth couldn’t help stroking his thumbs over the back of her hands. He felt her tremble and knew she was shaken up, no doubt more than her bruised pride would allow her to admit.

“I trust you didn’t come off at that speed?”

“No, and I shouldn’t have come off at all!” With a sound of disgust, she tugged her hands free. It seemed she couldn’t continue her explanation without their contribution. “I was lollygagging, not paying attention, and she shied at a quail in the grass. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if my carelessness injured Marsanne.”

“What about injuring yourself? Did you spare a thought in that direction?”

“I told you—I only bruised my pride.” She dragged her hands over her backside and feigned a wince. “Or mostly only my pride.”

Okay. He was not going there. Not thinking about checking out that part of her anatomy for injury. Instead he brushed a thumb along her cheekbone, touching what looked like a smudge of dirt. “Looks more like you landed face first.”

“Perhaps I bounced.”

“Perhaps,” he said, and with a will of its own, his hand continued to stroke her face, down over her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw and the point of her chin. Her acceptance of that simple touch, the warmth of her skin, the subtle rhythm of her pulse in her throat—they all combined to stir a deep response, something beyond the usual lust.

He should stop, get his hands the hell back where they belonged, but he couldn’t make himself respond. He didn’t want to respond. Not yet.

“Lucky I was wearing a helmet,” Jillian managed to say in a husky whisper of breath, a perfect match for Seth’s caress, as tender and tantalizing as the stroke of velvet.

Then her words must have registered, because he gripped her chin firmly between thumb and fingers. His eyes locked on hers. “You’re not, you know.”

Not…what? Not covered in dirt? Not being stroked by velvet? Not about to be kissed—

“You’re not wearing a helmet,” he pointed out with indisputable logic. Even more annoyingly, he let her go and it felt as if her whole body sighed with disappointment.

“I was.”

“Did you lose it when you fell off?”

So, okay, she had fallen off, but did he have to remind her? Did he have to douse the lovely ripple of pleasure his touch had stirred in her veins? And did he have to stand there, looking as if no explanation but the complete truth would suffice?

“No, the helmet did its job when I became unseated.” Which, Jillian decided, was a more dignified description than ‘fell off.’ “I lost it afterwards.”

“While you were walking back here?”

“Does it matter? I’ll find it tomorrow. I know exactly where I tossed it.”

Hands on hips, he stared down at her until she caved.

Until she threw her hands in the air and admitted, “Yes, okay, I had this minor temper attack. I don’t like being dumped at the farthest point of my ride, especially when it’s my own fault.”

She should not have mentioned the temper fit. In retrospect, her honest admission sounded childish and apparently it had rendered Seth speechless. So much for her efforts to earn his respect!

Feeling a peculiar sense of letdown, she gestured toward his truck. “I wasn’t looking forward to the long walk. I’ll grab a lift back to the stables, if that’s all right.”

As soon as she climbed into the passenger seat and Seth closed the door on the enclosed intimacy of the cab, she knew it wasn’t all right. Her emotions teetered all over the place, her skin tingled everywhere he’d touched, and now she was drawing his earthy, masculine scent into her body with every breath.

And they weren’t moving, weren’t going anywhere.

Frowning, she turned his way and found him watching her, intently yes, but with a strange expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He shook his head and murmured something that sounded like graciano but couldn’t have been, since that made no sense. Unless she’d landed face first in wine-colored earth.

Self-consciously she lifted a hand and scrubbed at her cheek. “Is my face coated in dirt? Is that what you’re staring at?”

“I was trying to picture you throwing a tantrum.” He shook his head again, put the truck into gear and swung onto the road. “And not succeeding.”

Chastened because—let’s face it—a temper tantrum is not a pretty image, Jillian wriggled in her seat. “If it’s any consolation, this is a rare occurrence.”

He cut her a look. “I hope riding in the dark is also a rare occurrence.”

“I intended being out and back a lot earlier, but…” She shrugged, and in that absent little gesture felt the tension of the afternoon return tenfold and then some.

“But…?”

“But I wasn’t.” She waved a hand dismissively, then sat up straight because he wasn’t slowing. “The turn’s coming up. To the stables. You’d better slow down.”

“I’m taking you home.”

“There’s no need to do that.”

“You’ve just fallen off your horse.”

“I didn’t hurt myself, Seth.” She reached across and put her hand on his arm, forcing him to look at her, since he’d developed that rigid steel-jawed, I’m-in-charge look she recognized. Her brothers had turned it into an art form. “I have a horse to attend to, and then I will take myself home.”

He didn’t answer, although he did pull over to the side of the road. Carefully she took her hand away and folded her fingers into her palm, enclosing the delicious warm charge from that contact. Sad, but she couldn’t stop herself anymore than she could stop herself continuing on her theme.

“I don’t need you or anyone to make decisions for me, Seth. I know I admitted to a minor tantrum before, but I’m not a child.”

“I know that, Jillian.” He turned to face her, a movement so deliberate and measured it could have been slow-mo. “Believe me, I know.”

Suddenly the space in his cab seemed to shrink, or perhaps the air just thickened with a meaning that sucked up all the spare oxygen. He was talking about seeing her as a woman. He was looking at her as a woman, and her body responded with an embarrassing lack of restraint.

Her heartbeat ran amok, heat rioted through her blood, her hormones went completely ape.

It had been a long, long time since she’d experienced anything so involving and exciting and terrifying all at once. The terrifying part came from the notion that he wanted her, and that changed everything. Her own one-sided crush she could handle, but Seth Bennedict? An unrestrained shiver raced through her blood.

She did not know if she could handle a man like Seth, or even if she had the courage to try.

Nervous and panicky, she straightened her backbone and pushed her chin up, in full defensive mode. “Will you take me to the stables or will I get out and walk?”

“Sure I’ll take you to the stables,” he said without moving a muscle.

Jillian’s pulse thudded in her ears. She knew there was a proviso coming; knew he wouldn’t give in so easily.

“After you tell me why you were out riding so late.”

That was it? No tricky questions about the simmering tension between them? About whether she still saw him as Jason’s scary big brother or as a man?

“I’ll tell you why I was out riding,” she said, mimicking his even tone. “After you tell me why you were at the stables tonight.”

He huffed out a breath. “Search and rescue mission.”

“What?”

“Rachel left that pony toy of hers at the stables last night.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, his frown turning introspective. “She refused to go to bed tonight without the damn thing.”

“Pinky Pony?”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose you know where I can put my hands on it?”

“No, but I will help you look after I put Marsanne away. I’m sorry to have held you up with this second search and rescue mission.”

“Find that pony and you’re forgiven,” he said with an unexpected quirk of humor.

Attractive, so deadly attractive, especially on top of all this tenderhearted concern. Not only for her, but for his daughter. Jillian’s chest felt tight, dangerously constricted and breathless.

“Worse comes to worst,” she said, forcing herself to concentrate on the conversation. On Rachel. “I have a whole collection in my bedroom. If we can’t find Pinky I happen to know which would work best as a substitute.”

“Substitutes don’t cut it with Rachel.” His gaze seared into hers, so dark and hot and intense she swore her heart stalled in her chest. “They’re never the same as the real thing.”

Six

Pinky Pony wasn’t at the stables, it turned out. After returning to the Vines for a substitute, Jillian had found Rachel’s toy amongst the others in her bedroom. Of course, being Jillian, she’d insisted on sending the surrogate home with Seth, too.

Of course, being Rachel, his daughter insisted that Pinky should visit Aunt Jellie to express his gratitude for the new playmate. She’d been at Seth since breakfast and now, fresh from an after-lunch nap, she climbed onto his knee and started in again. “You said saying thank you is good manners, Daddy. You said I should always wemember to say thank you. You said…”

And so it went, wearing into the fabric of his patience with unrelenting and finely tuned precision. His own three-year-old version of the power sander. Finally, to buy some Sunday afternoon peace, he agreed to an over-the-phone thank you. “But Jillian’s working today. We can’t call until she’s finished,” he cautioned.

“I call you at work.”

“I have a cell phone. Jillian does not.”

Rachel’s brow puckered. Seth sighed and prepared himself for the next…“Why?”

“Because I have a chatterbox daughter who likes to call me at work.” He tweaked one of her pigtails, already askew from her nap. “That’s why I have a cell phone.”

“Aunt Jellie doesn’t.”

He thought Rachel was talking about cells, until she fixed him with her big, solemn eyes—the look that did him in every time—and said, “That’s why she lets me share her ponies. She hasn’t got a daughter of her own.”

Okay. He did not need to know if that insight parroted Jillian or came directly from a fertile three-year-old mind. And he did not need his fertile imagination fostering notions of Jillian and babies and activities for making babies. Bad enough that it infiltrated his nights without seeping into his days.

He set Rachel off his knee and onto her feet in front of him. He fixed her with his best I-mean-business face. “Let’s make a compromise.”

“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

“A deal. If you promise to quit nagging me, I’ll call Caroline and find out when Jillian finishes work. Then we’ll know what time to call her and say thank you. Deal?”

“Can we call her now?”

“We can call Caroline now.”

His daughter shook hands on the deal like a pro, and skipped off to fetch the phone and the pony friends who “might want to listen, Daddy.”

While he waited for Rachel’s return—and she could take a while, given the audience she was assembling—he recalled his other recent deal with a female. Last night, in return for his lift to the stables, Jillian had promised to tell him why she’d been out riding so late.

No handshake, but a deal just the same, and one she’d welshed on.

In the distraction of finding Pinky Pony, he’d let it slide. Today it nagged at his sense of fair play with a persistency rivaled only by his daughter…and the temptation to give in so he could visit Jillian.

Problem was he wanted to see her a little too much. Hell, and that was a straight-out lie. He wanted to see her a lot too much. He ached to test the sexual energy he’d felt between them last night. He needed confirmation that the buzz of attraction didn’t exist only in his mind and his blood and his too-long-without flesh.

He wanted her, but he knew the ferocity of that want would scare her off as quick as look at her. Send her scurrying back behind that cool, aloof facade that for years he’d assumed was the real Jillian Ashton. Well, now he knew otherwise and he wanted the otherwise.

He wanted the woman who slid from horseback into his hands, hot with the thrill of the ride. He wanted to taste her teasing smile and sink into her warmth while she hummed with passion for her wines. He even wanted her stormyeyed with pique after she’d kissed the earth and hurled her helmet at some innocent bystanding vine.

Oh, yeah, he could almost taste the pleasure of taking her, right there on the soft spring earth, with only the vines and the moon and his own driving desire as their witness.

Of course that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet.

Late last night, long after Eve had left him alone with his turbulent emotions and a second bottle of Australian Shiraz, he’d determined to take it slow. To foster Jillian’s trust through their working relationship and not to compromise that trust. The job meant too much to her. And he’d wanted her for too long to blow it—as it were—with his body’s impatient need to make up for lost time and for all the substitutes that never proved any substitute.

That’s why he hadn’t caved to temptation today. The next few weeks in her proximity would test him seriously, he knew. Lucky his wells of willpower and endurance ran deep.

Standing by that arms-length decision sounded all well and good in theory…until Caroline Sheppard’s gentle method of persuasion turned it on its ear.

Half an hour later, Seth was still shaking his head with rueful how-did-that-happen bafflement as he took the turn off Route 29 and headed toward Louret for the third time in three days.

“We’re only saying a quick thank you,” he reminded Rachel, who was already wriggling with impatience in her car seat.

“And saying hullo to Monty.”

“A quick hello.”

This prompted a chorus of hellos, at various speeds, as Rachel attempted to settle on his meaning of “quick.” Seth shook his head again, but this time with a slow grin.

How had he gotten so lucky? What had he done right to end up with such a crackerjack kid? And what would his life be without her sudden spurts of insight and humor, or these sudden kicks of chest-squeezing love that reminded him of what really mattered?

“I’ll just say hi,” Rachel announced finally, “’stead of hullo.”

“That should work.” Although he didn’t know how anything else would work this afternoon.

He drove between the stone gateposts and open iron gates at the entrance to the Vines and saw Caroline and a redheaded stranger bending over a flower bed. They both straightened when they heard his vehicle, Caroline waving and smiling as she pulled off her gardening gloves.

No, despite his quick-hello warnings to Rachel, he didn’t know how this visit would pan out. He turned off the engine and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he tracked Caroline Sheppard’s smiling approach. He had a strong suspicion that the outcome was about to be neatly charmed out of his hands.

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.

“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?”

Irritated with her enthusiasm, and more with the whole situation of wanting a woman and not being able to say right, let’s just do it, he leveled a piercing gaze at her shiny-eyed face. “What is it you want, Jillian? An introduction? A job reference?”

He might as well have slapped her, she recoiled so sharply. “Of course I don’t want anything like that.”

Cool tone, haughty expression, hurt eyes. And Seth realized what he’d accused her of and how that would sit. Jason had used her that way. He’d pursued her and married her for a shot at the Ashton name and money and connections with the wine industry.

And that’s exactly why Seth had never broadcast his close friendship with the couple behind the world-famous Casinelli label. Jason would have used that, too. Jillian wouldn’t—she had too much class, too much pride, too much self-respect.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was way out of line.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yeah, I do.” And he also needed to do something to repair the damage of his thoughtless words, to wipe away the cool detachment that he knew was her defense. To bring back the sass and the heat of the cab sav woman. He bent down and touched her shoulder. “Hey. I really am sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have pried. I just got carried away by the notion of the Casinelli dinner.” A wry smile quirked her lips. “I guess I poured the enthusiasm with a heavy hand.”

Don’t do it, Seth. You don’t want a date; you don’t even know if you want to risk the complications of uncomplicated sex with this woman. “You’d like to go?”

She went very still. “Don’t mess with me, Seth.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Sophia Neumann is a goddess. I worship the grapes she walks upon.”

“But?”

Slowly she shook her head. “But I feel as if I’ve finagled this invitation and that’s—”

“Do you want to go or not?” He looked into her face and saw the suppressed gleam of longing. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

She opened her mouth, probably to object, then closed it again. Smart girl. He’d made up his mind—she was going. And right now he had to be going. He’d stayed far longer than intended and Rachel would be testing Rosa’s considerable patience with her heavy-duty where’s Daddy nagging.

Later he would deal with Jillian’s okay, I want to do it bolt from the blue. Because for all his big talk about how many ways he wanted to make her come, the notion of booking a room for a sexual tryst didn’t sit right. She was his sister-in-law, his daughter’s Aunt Jellie, his seven-year fantasy, his—

“Wait.”

Scowling, Seth stopped in the doorway and turned back.

“What will I wear on Saturday night? I mean, what’s the dress code?”

“Black tie,” he said, amused by her very female reaction despite himself. “There’ll be plenty of serious money on show, so don’t be afraid to knock yourself out.”

Knock yourself out? Man, she knocked him out when she came down the winding staircase at The Vines, looking like his idea of a goddess in a dress that draped around her body and flowed with her long legs. It was red, as in the cherry-rich hue of a young cabernet. Red, as in the color of passion. Red, as in, the blood hurtling through his veins and the haze that clouded his vision.

When he whistled through his teeth, she stopped a couple of stairs from the bottom, her brows pinched together. “Is it too much? Too ‘look-at-me?’”

“Take off the wrap and turn around.”

After only a beat of hesitation she did. And, yeah, with the one shoulder strap and a low-cut back that bared about an acre of silky skin and with whatever the hell she’d done with her hair to draw attention to the elegant length of her neck—

How could she look so cool and classy and so damn hot at the same time?

“Well?” she asked, still frowning.

“Yeah, it’s ‘look-at-me,’” he said slowly. “But not too much.”

That seemed to please her, or at least to reassure her. She relaxed enough to almost smile—and to give him a covert once-over through her lashes—as she came down those last steps.

“Do I pass muster?” he asked.

A delicate flush climbed her cheeks. “I haven’t ever seen you in a tux. It’s…well, it’s a change from the jeans and toolbelt I last saw you wearing.”

At the cottage.

Reference to that place and time weighted the mood as he took the wrap from her hands and moved around her, draping it over her shoulders as he went.

“I like your hair.” Better, he liked the way it curled around her ears and exposed that sexy bite-me neck. He traced its silky length with the knuckles of one hand and leaned closer to breathe the warm scent of her skin. “And the way you smell.”

“I’m not wearing any perfume. I never do. It interferes with the tasting.”

“I know.” He stepped back. “Ready?”

A pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, but she lifted her chin and met his eyes. “Ready as I’m ever going to be.”

Yeah, but was he?

Seth rarely enjoyed this kind of function, no matter how lauded the chef or the wines. He’d accepted the invitation because it was a charity fundraiser and because Robert had caught him at a weak moment. He didn’t expect to enjoy himself, yet that’s exactly what he was doing.

How could he not get a kick out of watching Jillian?

Surrounded by winemakers and wine lovers and, yeah, the wine snobs these events attracted like ants to a picnic, she was in her element. Seth sat back and watched as the tension from their taxi drive up to Oakville unraveled in a shimmering ribbon of wine talk.

Sure, it helped knowing he was responsible for bringing her here and for the animated pleasure in her eyes and the glow of heat in her skin. Because while she seemed riveted to the conversation that flowed across the table and back, she was also very aware of Seth at her side. Without words, without more than a fleeting touch and a momentary sizzle of eye contact, he knew she was as finely attuned to his presence as he was to hers. And, in a warped kind of way, he was enjoying the torture of a body already turned on by anticipation.

She was, after all, going home with him.

A waiter appeared at her elbow to clear away the second course, disrupting her discussion with an intense-looking vintner on her right.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

Her response, a guttural mmmm of pleasure, played nasty games with his state of semi-arousal. “Only one bad moment so far.”

Seth lifted a brow.

“That French winemaker we met earlier? He works for my—” Her brows came together in a half frown. “For Spencer. For Ashton Estates.”

“And?”

“I had a moment, a tiny panic, thinking this is exactly the sort of function Spencer might be at.” She huffed out a soft sound of derision. “Ridiculous, since even if he were here, I wouldn’t need worry my cheeks about it.”

“He avoids you?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say ‘avoids.’ That would denote action when he just doesn’t notice we exist. Anyway—” she waved a dismissive hand and her tone turned upbeat “—I am enjoying myself, immensely, so let’s forget I mentioned it.”

Seth wouldn’t forget, not when the vulnerability behind her remark caught hard in his chest, but he could pretend. The last thing he wanted was for the mood to turn serious and intense. The second-last thing he wanted was the shadow of Spencer Ashton—the man she took such pains not to describe as “my father”—darkening her enjoyment.

“Forgotten,” he lied, and she rewarded him with a wide smile.

“Thank you for inviting me, Seth.”

“My pleasure.”

He met her eyes and didn’t bother hiding that pleasure was, indeed, front and center in his mind. Heat sparked in that knowledge and smoldered between them until a waiter risked third-degree burns by leaning in to pour the next wine. Jillian thanked him and the waiter departed, his job done.

Seth touched the back of her hand with his knuckles and inclined his head toward the newly poured wine, left to breathe as they awaited the next course of food. “Well, there it is. Your reason for coming tonight.”

“Not the only reason.” She moved her hand against his—just a brush of contact but it sizzled through his knuckles like hot solder. “Not the only reason, but a nice incentive.”

A smile whispered over her lips as she touched her wine glass, fingertips to stem in a delicate gliding contact. Probably innocent. Probably not meant to provoke, but that’s what it did. Already he was one sorry case of aroused red corpuscles, and with three courses still to go. He swallowed hard. Better than groaning out loud, he figured.

“I’m like a child at Christmas,” she said softly, “waiting to open my Santa present.”

Yeah, he agreed silently. Same. He inclined his head toward the wine. “What is so special about this Santa present?”

“Everything.”

“You want to expand on that?”

“Oh, I could expand on that for hours,” she said through a smile, “but I don’t want to put you to sleep.”

Not that that was a remote possibility, but Seth played along. “Give me the abridged version and I’ll take my chances.”

“Okay.” She tilted her head, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Everyone’s trying to make a pinot noir these days. It’s like the wine of the moment, the new chardonnay, but pinot’s an unforgiving little beggar. It’s not only a matter of vinifying the grapes—which Sophia does better than anyone on this side of the world—but in growing them right, since it’s a terroir wine.”

“Meaning?”

“It expresses the vineyard conditions more than other varieties. If you can find the right soil and microclimate, and you can plant your vines thick enough, and if you can get into that pocket of hell-dirt to tend and pick the grapes, then you stand a chance of making a pinot like this.”

She picked up her glass by the stem, tilted it so the color stood out in stark contrast to the white tablecloth. Like the cherry-red silk of her dress against porcelain pale skin.

“Look at that,” she said in raw reverence. “Beautiful.”

Yeah. Beautiful.

“This is the wine I want to make one day.” Gently she swirled her glass, and the set of her mouth turned rueful. “Well, not this wine, precisely, since Sophia has already made it. But my own thing of divine beauty.”

“Louret makes a decent pinot.”

“Eli does,” she corrected, “and he’d thank you not to refer to it as merely decent.”

So, she wanted to make her own wine, and not just any wine, but a great wine. From what sounded like the fussiest grapes. “Your own label?” he asked, “Or for Louret?”

“I’d love to make for Louret, but Eli’s got that covered. Then there’s Mason waiting in the wings.”

Matter-of-fact, no bitterness, but just a hint of yearning in her eyes. Not for the first time, Seth considered the family dynamics and what it must be like to work in such an environment. Yeah, there was a lot of love and support, but tough for the youngest to prove herself with such dominant forces as Eli and Cole Ashton running the show.

“You have the resources to hand-make a small batch under your own name.”

“Yes and no.” A small frown creased her brow as she swirled the contents of her glass. “I would need to source the grapes.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Getting the right grapes is. They’re low yielding, high cost. Difficult, temperamental, risky. And, Lord knows, I’ve had enough of those things to last the rest of my life!”

“Some risks are worth taking.”

“And some definitely aren’t.” Her gaze swung up from her glass, serious, intense, troubled. “How does a person distinguish which is which?”

Was she talking about wine making? Her low-yielding, high-cost, difficult, temperamental ex-husband? Or about the risk involved in, say, a knee-jerk “okay”? The risk that it wouldn’t be about sex, that once wouldn’t be enough, that there’d be no delineation between fantasy and reality…

“You trust your instincts. Go with your gut or with storybook philosophy—whatever works.” What else could he say? What advice could he give from his own sorry state of flux? “Sometimes they’re all screaming ‘too risky’ and you’ve got to do it anyway. The passion’s got your throat in a choke hold and won’t let go.”

“Maybe I’m not passionate enough.”

“Maybe you just need a gentle shove to remember the passion.”

“Good response,” she said softly after a contemplative pause. Her gaze drifted down to his mouth and then back to his eyes. “You are good with those gentle shoves, aren’t you?”

“They have their uses.”

He placed his hands palms down on the table, and after a moment’s hesitation, she—God help him—spread one of her hands over his. Her left hand, bare of jewelry, and despite those long, elegant bones it looked tiny in contrast.

Pale, tiny and incredibly erotic.

“Big hands,” she said, low and husky, “have their uses.”

Seth picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. More civilized, he decided, than putting it where he wanted it. Then someone—probably Robert, although Seth didn’t bother checking—chimed silver against crystal until the cacophony of conversations and the loud, hammering pulse in his head and between his legs dimmed to a low hum. Amazing. All these other people in the restaurant—at the same table, even—and his focus had narrowed to one. For how long they’d been immersed in their own sensual vacuum, he had no clue.

He turned now, pretended to listen as his friend formally launched Casinelli’s 2001 pinot noir. Robert kept it short and sweet, ending with “let the wine speak for itself.” Much applause then a hundred-odd enophiles reached for their glasses.

Seth watched Jillian go through the motions. Nose in glass, the long inhalation, the longer moment of reflection before she lifted the glass to her mouth. She took her first taste and her eyes drifted shut as she held it in her mouth. The heat of her rapt expression, the subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed, the ruby sheen on her lips: they all combined to create a moment of near-violent longing in Seth.

To generate such passion, to watch those lips part so softly, to see that same rapture when his mouth was on her, tasting her, driving her wild with pleasure.

“As good as anticipated?” he asked, and his voice sounded about how his body felt. Hot, gruff, hard.

“Mmm, better, although that may be partly due to anticipation. ” She sipped again, contemplated, her eyes focused somewhere deep within herself. “Silkier than last year. Big hit of fruit. Rich cherries, some raspberry. And there’s a floral note that reminds me of the ninety-seven.”

Seth picked up his own glass, sniffed. “You can tell the vintages apart?”

“I’ve scored a hundred percent on blind horizontals and verticals.” She frowned. “Does that sound conceited?”

“It sounds…interesting.” And erotic. Jillian, blindfolded and horizontal.

“Interesting in what way?”

He smiled slowly as the idea took form. “Interesting, as in, would you like to prove it?”

She looked up from her glass, a stillness in her eyes, her face, her body. “How?”

“I have a pretty decent collection.”

“Of pinots? Of Sophia’s pinots? How?”

Seth shrugged. “I told you the Neumanns were friends.”

“And, what, they just send over a bottle each Christmas?” Her gaze swung toward their hosts and back at him. She coughed out a strangled laugh. “They do, don’t they? They actually send you bottles as gifts.”

What could he say? She was right.

Slowly, disbelievingly, she shook her head. “And you made out as if you were a complete philistine. You encouraged me to rabbit on about pinot noirs and about Sophia’s wine.”

“I have the wines. Doesn’t mean I know a blessed thing about them.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“It’s a cliché, but I know what I like to drink and that’s my only interest in wine.”

Apart from this fantasy of licking the stuff from your body.

“So.” He turned the glass through his fingers. “Are you up for the challenge?”

“A blind tasting of Casinelli pinots? You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“You told me not to mess with you over these wines.”

She moistened her lips. “When?”

“Tonight.”

Seth savored the spun-out moment as he waited for her answer, the anticipation, the expectation, the certainty of what she would say.

“Okay.”

Nine

“Oh, no, Seth. No, no, no!” Jillian held up both hands in combination denial and horror. “You are not going to open all those bottles.”

“Backing down?”

After growing up with brothers, Jillian could pick a taunt a country mile away. Even when delivered in a deceptively soft and silky tone. She lifted her chin. “I’m trying to stop you doing something completely crazy.”

Seth gathered up the half dozen bottles he’d selected from the mind-blowing collection in his cellar and tilted his head toward the stairs. “After you…Chicken little.”

Jillian only moved to narrow her eyes. “I won’t let you waste thousands of dollars on testing my palate.”

“This—” he lifted the bottles of red gold in his hands “—didn’t cost me a dime.”

“Be that as it may, they’re worth big money. I won’t let you open them.”

Amusement flickered over his face. “How do you plan to stop me? Are you going to confiscate my corkscrew?”

She threw her hands in the air and marched to the stairs. “Your wine. Your money. Your loss.”

“No,” he said softly as she brushed past him. “Not my loss.”

A stinging retort in the making, Jillian paused on the bottom step and looked over her shoulder and into his eyes. Not a glimmer of laughter remained in their deep, dark depths. Only heat and a stunning predatory intent. The breath caught in her lungs, caught and hitched and shifted her mood from foot-stomping aggravation to heart-thumping awareness in one stalled second.

“And on the crazy front—” He leaned in close and shocked her with an open-mouthed kiss to the back of her neck. “Too late.”

By using very specific instructions—left, right, up, up again—she managed to coax her legs into carrying her up the steep staircase.

Too late? Oh, yes, much too late to stop the slide into complete sensual thrall with this man.

Crazy? Oh, yes, crazy to know without a backward glance that he watched her, all the way up those stairs and into his huge open-plan living area, every step of the way. That knowledge emanated from the base of her back and shivered up the length of her spine. Then, like the spill of wine from an upset glass, it spread through her body in red ripples of heat.

Crazy, too, that his watchful intensity no longer made her uncomfortable. All through that wonderful dinner she’d felt his attention with a mixture of quiet nerves and deep self-awareness and secret delight. It had been so long since she’d been on a first date that she’d forgotten the thrill of anticipation.

The not knowing how the night might end.

Well, she still didn’t know. She had come home with him, but this was a family home, shared with a daughter and a housekeeper. She had no reason to believe there’d be anything beyond the wine-tasting test, no grounds for the weird sense of their aloneness as she watched Seth deposit bottles and corkscrew and glasses on a low glass table.

No reason, either, for the leap of her pulse as he reached up to slide his loosened bow tie from his neck. In the taxi they’d shared on the drive back to Napa, he’d shed his jacket and untied the tie. “Feels like I’m trussed and bound,” he’d said.

But now—

“What are you doing?” she asked, her stomach jumping with nerves as he stretched the length of fabric between his hands and started toward her.

“You did say a blind tasting?”

“Yes, but—”

“This is your blindfold.” He stopped in front of her. “If you still want to do this.”

“Yes, I just—” Her gaze skittered toward the staircase and back. “What if someone comes downstairs?”

“Rachel is sleeping over at Rosa’s. We’re all alone.”

Jillian’s pulse raced. Was she ready for this? For being alone with this man and doing all the things he’d told her he wanted to do with her? She sucked in a slow breath. One step at a time, she told herself, starting with the tasting test. This she could do. Blindfolded, she would be better able to concentrate on the wine and not on Seth with his crisp white shirtsleeves and dark male aura.

With an accepting shrug, she turned around. Her belly swam with nerves and anticipation as he moved close behind her and covered her eyes with the slice of black silk.

Oh, how wrong could one girl be?

Instead of blocking him out, the darkness intensified Seth’s nearness. The tie carried his scent—nothing artificial, just earthy, sexy man. And he stood so close that their bodies brushed with charges of electric friction as he worked to fasten the tie.

The task seemed to be taking an extraordinarily long time, between the slippery fabric with its undulating widths and his big hands trying not to catch her flyaway curls in the knot. Her chest constricted, tight with the knowledge that he would take the same care of her, with her, in his bed.

Oh, yes, she could do this. In the dark, with her senses filled with Seth, anything was possible. Anything, except standing here passively while he fiddled and diddled…

“To get the wide part over my eyes, you need to tie it here—” she found his fingers and moved them to her temple “—instead of at the back.”

“Right.”

The word was low and thick; his breath fanned the side of her face; her body gravitated toward the source of heat. Could he be any slower? Any more of a tease?

“Stand still,” he growled. “I’m nearly done.”

Yes, and so am I, she almost growled back. But then his big hands were on her bare shoulders, turning her to face him. “Can you see me?”

I can feel you, smell you, all but taste you in my blood, but…

She shook her head. “No.”

His grip on her shoulders tightened for one long, dizzy moment when she thought he might bend down and kiss her—please, yes!—but then his hands dropped away. “Do you want to sit down?”

“Standing’s fine.” I think.

A low grunt of acknowledgment and he moved away. To the table, she imagined, to the expensive bottles of pinot that waited. A dozen thick, thudding heartbeats later she heard the distinctive suctioning sound of decorking, and that jarred her out of her sensual stupor.

“Please, just start with the one.” She pressed her hands together in entreaty. “I can’t stand to see you waste those.”

No answer, except a clunk—metal corkscrew against glass?—and the liquid slush of pouring. Then the sense of movement, the whisper of fabric, the shift of air, the scent of man in her nostrils.

The sweet tremble of desire deep in her belly.

He pressed a glass into her hand. Wine, Jillian thought, as her fingers folded around the stem, grounding her in a familiar world.

“We’ll start with one,” he said. “Seeing as you asked so nicely.”

Jillian smiled her thanks, for that consideration and for the several steps he took back out of her space. Now she could at least try to concentrate on the wine. Normally she would have let it breathe, but this wasn’t normal. She swirled the wine in her glass, wished she could—

“You need help getting the glass to your mouth?”

“I’m sure I can find my mouth, even in the dark,” she said, surprising herself with her prim tone. She swirled some more. “Since this beauty hasn’t breathed sufficiently, I’m helping release the aroma.” She lifted the glass, surprising herself again, this time with the steadiness of her hand. “And holding it to the light to check the color.”

His low smoky laughter slid through her. “Would you like me to do the honors, seeing as you’re at a disadvantage?”

“Please.”

He didn’t touch her, but she felt his nearness, the nudge to the base of her glass, lifting and tilting it for his inspection.

“Well?” she prompted. “What color do you see?”

“Red.”

Laughter exploded from her throat, laughter and backed-up breath and tension. A whole big barrel full of tension. “You don’t want to try for a more specific description? Like, which shade of red?”

“Like your dress.” Fingertips brushed over the one shoulder strap. “Pinot noir.”

The soft touch shivered through her skin, and the weight of his words echoed through her memory chords. Frowning, she searched for the time he’d said those words in that exact tone. In the tasting room. Yes. “That afternoon with the Red Hat ladies, you described my mood as pinot noir. What did you mean?”

“If you were a wine, that would’ve been my pick. That day, pinot noir.”

“And other days?”

“A cool white, a summer sparkly, a bold red. But as I said, I don’t know wines. Only what I like.”

Jillian pictured the hitch of his shoulders, felt a similar hitch in the region of her heart. He’d really seen that many facets of her personality?

“You’re a bit like a blind tasting.” He fingered the blindfold at her temple. “I never know what’s in store.”

Oh, my.

“So, we’ve established you’re holding a pinot noir,” he said, steering her attention back to the glass that remained steady in her hand. Amazing given the fine tremor in her blood and her flesh. “What else?”

She swirled that glass, the familiar, the anchor, but her senses were jarred, her perception askew. Amazing that he hadn’t completely floored her with those seemingly casual comments. Amazing that she hadn’t seen this coming, given how often he’d slayed her in these past few weeks.

This…wow, she did not know what to call it, did not want to put a name to it. Deeper than infatuation, richer than lust, scarier than sexual fascination. And, blast it, she liked him.

Momentarily rattled, she stuck her nose in the glass and sniffed deeply. Again, until the aromas filled her senses and drove out the disturbing sense that she’d strapped herself into a roller coaster. She sipped and tasted until her world rocked back on its axis. Safe and steady again, she felt the texture in her mouth, chewed on the flavors, and her confidence skyrocketed as the complex layers revealed themselves.

Too easy. This wine she would pick through a head cold. In the middle of a roller coaster ride.

“This is the ninety-nine,” she declared with a satisfied smile. “The nose is knock-your-socks-off intense—a distinctive personality you can’t mistake. Earthy and brooding. Robust. There’s a bigger structure, more complex than the ninety-eight, but still the Casinelli mouthfeel.”

No confirmation needed, she knew she was right. That knowledge danced through her like a cocky Travolta two-step.

“If you were a wine—” she lifted the glass in a smiling salute “—then this one is you.”

“An expensive pinot?” he asked after a thick beat of pause. “Are you sure about that?”

Was she? That day in the tasting room, he’d struck her as a big, bold, full-bodied cabernet. Other days he seemed so centered and together and confident, like a perfectly balanced Shiraz. Tonight at that dinner, the smoky chocolate notes of a merlot.

She moistened her lips as the possibilities shivered through her body. Too tempting, this chance to compare and contrast, with her senses primed by black silk and one of the valley’s finest wines. “Perhaps my call was premature. Perhaps I do need to reassess.”

Silence, when she’d expected a teasing comeback. Silence that ached in her breasts and tightened in her nipples as she felt him move closer, felt him take the glass from her hand. Oh, no. Her humming senses, her aroused body, her soaring confidence all took immediate umbrage.

If she was doing this, she was doing it.

Before he could react, she ducked under his arm and around behind him, using his big, solid body to anchor herself in the darkness. Her hands were on his sides, just below his waist and spanning the fine sleek fabrics of his shirt and pants.

Through both, his body heat scorched.

Jillian inhaled deeply, for strength and to control a sudden attack of lightheadedness. Then she commenced her analysis. “Appearance is tough to call, given I can’t see a thing, but I’m guessing this is a big red.” She slid both hands higher and spread them against his back. “Surprisingly fine texture, although…”

It was only his shirt, and she wanted to feel skin.

Emboldened by the dark, by the guise of the “wine-tasting” experiment, and by the way he stood still and compliant beneath her hands, she fisted her fingers in the fabric and tugged it clear of his trousers. Using her hands on his body for guidance, she worked her way around to the front and started unfastening.

“What are you doing?” he asked, low and throaty.

“The first step is opening the bottle. Letting it breathe.” With a side of his open shirt in each hand, she leaned in until her nose all but touched his throat. “Aroma is the most important part.”

“Why is that?” Deep, close, his voice seemed to rumble from his chest. Fortuitous that she didn’t need to think to answer because Jillian had ceased thinking. Now she operated on senses, on a purely visceral level.

“A good wine has its own distinct aroma. Very recognizable.” Like Seth, she decided. She would recognize him anywhere, purely by her body’s reaction to his scent. She breathed deeply, her senses so heightened by his nearness that they quivered. “The nose picks up so much more than the palate, so while the aromas are still in your nose, you take your first sip.”

She thought about tasting the hot skin of his neck, right there where she had sniffed, but at the last second suffered an attack of temerity. Instead, she stretched up on her toes and tasted his mouth. A slow sip from his lips that stirred her blood like the first juice from the presses.

“White pepper, a little heat,” she whispered. “Rich, velvety mouthfeel.”

“Mouthfeel. Is that what it sounds like?”

“Mmm.” She rubbed her lips against his, purred somewhere deep inside, then ducked back for another slow taste. “It’s all about how the…wine…feels in your mouth. As opposed to body, which is the weight on your tongue.”

She stroked his bottom lip with her tongue, and that was it. No more games, no more teasing, no more lessons in the art of wine. Strong, bold, assertive, he took her face in his hands and her mouth with his tongue. Just a meeting of mouths and bodies and a desire that shuddered through them both. She couldn’t get enough of his kiss, of his hands on her face, in her hair, and—thank you, finally!—on her body.

Even when that first swell of fever abated and the mating of their mouths turned less frantic, less carnal, she could not stop kissing him. She nibbled at his lips, along the whiskery harshness of his jaw and dipped down to the vulnerable spot at the base of his throat where life beat hard and fast.

No shyness now, when she nuzzled the hair-rough texture of his chest and licked one hardened nipple. His hands fisted in her hair and he muttered a caution about slowing down, something that urged her to, yes, slow it down and savor every moment before it slipped away. She slid her hands up and inside the sleeves of his shirt, peeling away each side until she could curl her fingers around the smooth, hot skin of his biceps.

A work of art, those muscles, to be explored and appreciated by hands and mouth and tongue.

Vaguely, his gravelly sound of frustration registered and she knew that his fastened cuffs had caught on his hands, holding him captive to his own shirt and her exploring mouth. Empowered, she smiled against his skin and carried on…until a loud bump and a low curse and the clink of glass against glass brought her head up.

Blinking, she realized the blindfold was gone—when had that happened?—and that he’d backed into the table. In another time, another mood, the situation might have struck a funny note, but now the only chords twanging were off-tune and awkward and terrifyingly serious.

Terrifying enough to rock her back on her new two-inch ruby-red heels as she broke an intense moment of eye contact. She waved a hand at his predicament. “Here, let me help.”

Surprisingly, he accepted, and she managed to fumble the cuffs undone and his hands free and it struck her hard—fist in chest, hard—exactly what she’d been doing.

Tasting him, undressing him, seducing him.

And now what?

They faced each other, hotly aware that the next step had to be taken, honestly, without the camouflage of darkness and the teasing game of tasting. Jillian’s heart pounded. Her tongue, she feared, had fused to the roof of her mouth and her knees started to wobble. She sank down onto the leather sofa and picked up the glass that had rolled to the floor—the empty one, thankfully—and sat it back on the table. Next to the open bottle of ninety-nine Casinelli pinot noir.

That she picked up, too, a solid prop for her nervous hands and a topic to get her tongue unstuck and working again. “So, I did get the ninety-nine right.”

“Was there any doubt?”

“No.”

Her heart bounded when his black pants moved into her line of vision. Right in front on her. He reached down, took the bottle from her hand and carefully placed it on the table. “Now it’s my turn.”

She looked up and her eyes snagged first on his thighs. Because they were so close and broad and imposing. Because she didn’t want to stare higher, where those pants jutted with his arousal.

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