The Ashtons: Cole, Abigail and Megan. Maureen Child
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for pictures of the vineyard.”
“But I’m not painting the vineyard. I’m painting the people.”
“She said something about that, but I don’t see how a picture of Eli fondling the grapes will sell wine.”
“She also said you don’t listen to her.” Dixie shook her head. Her hair swayed gently with the motion. “There are thousands of good wines out there. Yours may be the best, but how do you show that in an image?”
“Wine, grapes, the vines themselves—they’re strong images. A good artist could make them memorable.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I could paint you a picture of grapes that would make teetotalers weep for what they’re missing. But everyone’s seen beautiful pictures of grapes. One more, no matter how well done, won’t identify what’s unique about Louret. Your ads shouldn’t sell wine. They should sell Louret.”
“I’m familiar with the idea of branding,” he said dryly. “But why pictures of people?” He’d heard Mercedes’ reasons—and they were good, or he wouldn’t have signed off on the idea. He wanted to hear Dixie’s take on it.
“Because with a boutique winery, it’s all about the people. You’ve established yourself with your pinot noir and merlot. Your cabernet sauvignon wins awards routinely. But the reds come from your grapes, your soil, unlike the new chardonnay. You want people to understand that they aren’t just buying great grapes when they buy a bottle of Louret wine. They’re buying Eli’s nose and a sip of your mother’s heritage.”
His eyebrows lifted. This didn’t sound like the passionately impractical rebel he’d once known. “Either you’ve gotten into wine or you’ve done some research.”
“Wine does come up when Mercedes and I talk, but yes, I’ve done research. I paint quickly, but I spend a good deal of time researching my subject before I start.”
“What happened to your art?” he asked, suddenly curious. “The noncommercial stuff, I mean.”
She shrugged. “The art world is intensely parochial. If you aren’t playing in whatever stream is fashionable, you aren’t doing ‘significant work’—which means being part of the dialogue between artists, other artists and art critics.”
“You used to like the avant-garde stuff.”
“I still do. I just don’t want to play in that stream myself. I want to do representational art—which is only slightly less damning than doing commercial art. Which I also do, obviously.” She chuckled. “An instructor once told me that I have the soul of an illustrator. He did not mean it as a compliment.”
“Some bastards shouldn’t be allowed to teach.”
“No, he was right. Of course, I think of Rembrandt as a superb illustrator, too.” She grinned. “I’ve never been accused of false modesty.”
Or any other kind, he thought, amused. Pity he found that so attractive. “You don’t find it, ah, stifling to your creativity to work on the commercial end of the spectrum?”
“I’m in a position to pick and choose my jobs these days. I have a good deal of artistic control, and I don’t take work that doesn’t excite me.”
Yet she’d accepted this job…and for less money, he suspected, than she usually charged. A favor for a friend? “You’re excited about wine?”
She leveled a long, thoughtful look at him. “Are you going to give me that tour, or not?”
“By all means.” He pushed open the nearest door. “This is the bottling room. Randy handles things here.”
Dixie hadn’t changed much. She still had a body that could make a man beg, and a smile that suggested she’d like it if he did. And she still drew people to her, male and female alike. For the next hour, Cole watched her charm everyone she met.
Randy fell easily, but he was young and born to flirt. Russ, who was foreman at the vineyards, wasn’t much more of a test—he was older, but he was still male. The real challenge came when she met Mrs. McKillup. The crotchety old bookkeeper actually smiled. Cole didn’t think he’d seen her do that over anything less important than a new spreadsheet program.
And none of it bothered him. That realization gusted in while he was watching her twist Russ around her little finger. Jealousy wasn’t even a smudge on the horizon. It wasn’t there at all.
The lightness around his heart grew with each introduction. He hadn’t needed proof that he was over her. Once he knew she’d really left him he’d set out to forget her, and had done a damn fine job of it. Some men enjoyed sighing over a lost love. Not him.
But he hadn’t known for sure he was past the jealousy, not until today. He could stand back and watch her flirt, appreciate her body and her easy laugh, without sinking into that old swamp.
Maybe he wouldn’t kill his sister.
“You let me have a look at your laptop,” Mrs. McKillup was saying as they prepared to leave her to her numbers. “I suspect you just need more memory. Very easy to install, if so.”
“Thanks.” Dixie smiled ruefully. “I’d really appreciate help from someone with a functioning left brain. I think mine gave up on me years ago in disgust.”
“Not much doubt about the health of Mrs. McKillup’s left brain,” Cole said when they were on the stairs, headed down. “You could cut yourself on it.”
“What an image.” She grinned as they reached the bottom floor. “She reminds me of my third-grade teacher. The woman terrified me.”
“You weren’t showing any signs of fear.”
“Oh, I decided a long time ago that it’s easier to like people, and you know how I hate to waste energy. It’s also much more interesting.”
And that, he understood, was the root of her charm. It wasn’t about getting people to like her. It was about liking them. Which might be what had gone wrong with them—there’d been too much she hadn’t really liked about him.
The flash of anger surprised him. He squelched it. Old news. “Some people aren’t easy to like.”
“True. And a few aren’t worth the effort, but you can’t know that until you’ve tried.” She opened the door to the tasting room. “I’d better get the rest of my stuff unloaded. I’m not sure where to put it, though.”
“Mother has you in the carriage house. You’ll remember it.”
She stopped with the door open and aimed a glance over her shoulder at him, her face quite blank. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, I do.”
The carriage house was set away from the main house—not far, but enough to offer some privacy. On that long-ago summer, he’d been living in the big house still; Dixie had moved in with her mother after graduating while she looked for work. She’d come to visit Mercedes one day.
By that night, she and Cole had been lovers. They’d met at the carriage house often. Made love there.
She gave a little shake of her head, half of a smile settling on her mouth without touching her eyes. He couldn’t decipher the emotion there. “You going to give me a hand with my things, or do you need to get back to work? I warn you—I don’t travel light.”
“No problem. I love to flex my muscles for the girls.”
Her gaze wandered over him, head to toe, a spark of mischief replacing the unknown emotion. “Got a tank top? It would be so much more fun to watch you flex in one of those.”
The rolling rise of heat didn’t surprise him. She was a woman who’d always provoke a response in a man, and when she looked at him like that he’d have to be dead not to respond. But the strength of it was unwelcome. “Still playing with matches, Dixie?” he asked softly.
“I