The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte. Bronwyn Jameson
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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.’