The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte

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.