The Ashtons: Cole, Abigail and Megan. Maureen Child
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She was moving faster than usual, he noted. “You’re passing up the chance to throw a great temper fit.”
“I don’t throw fits. Or anything else.” “Lost that artistic temperament, have you? I seem to recall a plate that came sailing my way once. I could have sworn you were mad.”
Her lips thinned—but it looked more like an effort to hold back a smile than real temper. “Tell me, Cole. Is this your version of dipping my pigtails in the ink to get my attention? Or are you really spoiling for a fight?”
“Want to watch me turn somersaults? Or I could do chin-ups. They’re more macho.”
The smile won. She paused. “Push-ups. There’s something so manly about push-ups.”
He promptly dropped to the ground and began doing push-ups.
She laughed in delight and sat smack-dab on the cold ground to watch, propping her chin on her hand. “Ooh, look at those muscles. You’re so strong.”
“Don’t forget—” he managed one more “—manly. Strong and manly.” He stopped before he could embarrass himself, rolling onto his back and sitting up. Maybe he needed to add more upperbody training to his routine. His arms felt rubbery. “That was harder than it looked,” he assured her.
“I can’t believe you did it—and in dress slacks, yet.”
He was surprised, too. “It worked. You quit running away.”
“I wasn’t running.” She drew up her legs and hugged her knees.
“Okay, walking away.” He wished she’d stretch her legs out again. Dixie had great legs—firm calves, narrow ankles. He wanted to run a hand up one of them.
“Quit staring at my legs.”
“I’m checking for goose bumps. What did you do—get up and say, ‘I’m in California, therefore I must wear shorts?’”
Her mouth twitched reluctantly. “Something like that. It’s almost warm enough for them.”
He leaned back on one hand. “Why the evasive tactics, Dixie? Do you really want me to go away?”
She shrugged, not looking at him. “When I decided to take this job, I wasn’t expecting you to put on a full-court press. I tried not to have any expectations at all, but in the back of my mind I guess I thought you’d be in your chill zone with me.”
Cole didn’t want to hear about how cold she thought he was. “I keep telling you I’m not twentyfour anymore.”
“It’s damned disconcerting, too.” She plucked a blade of grass and ran it up her bare leg. “Like going home after years away and seeing old buildings gone, new ones put up. You turn a corner expecting to see the Wilson’s frame house, but they’re long gone and the new people have stuccoed the exterior and cut down the big oak tree. So much is the same, but I keep tripping over the differences.”
“You’ve been home for visits, though, haven’t you?”
She slid him an amused look. “I was speaking metaphorically.”
“I got that. I just wondered if you’d avoided California altogether.” And why she’d returned.
“I come back once or twice a year to see Mom and Aunt Jody.” She pulled up some more grass and let it sift through her fingers. “Mom’s getting married again.”
“Yeah?” He tried to sound as if this was a good idea.
Her wry look told him he hadn’t pulled it off. “This time it might work. Mike’s a good guy.”
Cole could barely call up an image of Helen McCord Lynchfield. He’d only met Dixie’s mother once…and that seemed odd, now that he thought about it.
Of course, their affair had only lasted a little over three months, though they’d known each other off and on ever since Mercedes went off to college. Merry and Dixie had been roommates, and Dixie had come home with her several times during breaks. There’d been trouble at home. The man who’d been her stepfather at the time had been a grade-A bastard.
Dixie’s mother had finally left the bastard a month before Dixie graduated. And a month after that, the Valley had sweated under a record-setting heat wave. Cole and Dixie had claimed responsibility for that.
“I imagine your mom is glad to have you nearby. And your aunt, too. She’s still in L.A.?” In some ways, Dixie was closer to her mother’s sister, an award-winning reporter, than to her mother. While Cole could understand why, it had always made him wary. Jody Belleview was a funny, fiercely independent woman with a finely developed scorn for marriage.
“Aunt Jody’s not in L.A. anymore.”
Something in Dixie’s voice caught his attention. She was looking down at a small patch of ground she’d absentmindedly denuded of grass. “What is it, Dix?”
“She’s the reason I moved back here. Mom couldn’t take care of her by herself anymore.”
A quick squeeze of hurt for her had him covering her hand with his. “That sounds bad.”
“Pretty bad, yeah. She has Alzheimer’s.”
Stunned, Cole just sat there. He’d met Dixie’s aunt just once, at the same time he met her mother. But Jody Belleview was the kind of woman who left an impression. He remembered her laugh and her quick, restless intelligence. “I can’t imagine…isn’t she younger than your mother? Only fifty or so?”
“Fifty-four. I’m still in denial. Which is not as easy to do on this coast as it was while I was across the country.” She gave him a brittle smile, then gathered herself and rose to her feet.
He stood, too. “Dixie—”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about it.”
When she walked away she was moving fast, not strolling, her back straight and stiff. And Cole just stood there and let her go, feeling as if the earth had shifted under him.
She couldn’t talk about it? That didn’t sound like Dixie. Maybe she meant she couldn’t talk about it with him…but that wasn’t what she’d said. It wasn’t what he’d felt radiating from her with the kind of buried intensity he knew only too well.
He was the one who stuffed things into compartments, banged the lid shut and sat on it to keep them there. Dixie had always possessed a terrifying honesty, with herself as well as others. She lifted lids and peeked inside. She didn’t turn away from painful truths.
At least, that’s how he remembered her.
Cole stood there a few moments longer, frowning at the path she’d vanished down. Then he went looking for his sister.
Chapter Four
At ten o’clock that night, Dixie stood on a drop cloth in the center of her temporary living room, slashing color across a canvas. The light was lousy for painting, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t really painting. She was venting. No one but her would ever see this.
Red roiled with brown in a muddy whirlpool at the lower right, while a mountain of black and gray reared over a pale green center like a granite wave about to crash. It was lousy art, she thought, stepping back to look it over. But damn satisfying.
The knock on her door brought a frown to her face. On the couch, Hulk lifted his head, lazily contemplating the possibility of company. To Hulk, company meant someone who could be cozened into rubbing his jaw or chin. To Dixie, it meant conversation.
She didn’t want to talk. She considered not answering, but it probably wouldn’t work. Scowling, she snapped, “Just a minute,” then poked her brush into the wire loop that held it in the cleaner. She grabbed a rag and wiped some of the paint