Читать книгу The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte - Bronwyn Jameson - Страница 16

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.