Dynasties: The Ashtons

“Oh, my,” Caroline said softly, taking the pad. “You’ve made it difficult for me to pry the way I’d intended. May I have this?”

“Of course.” Dixie accepted the return of her sketch pad with a silent, fervent wish that Caroline would continue to find it difficult to pry.

“I don’t know what you charge, but—”

“You’ll insult me if you offer to pay. The paintings are business. This isn’t.”

“Then I’ll just thank you. I’d like to frame it and give it to Lucas for our anniversary.” Her cheeks were a little pinker than usual. “Perhaps it’s vain, giving him a likeness of myself, but I think he’d like it.”

Dixie smiled. “You’ll be giving him a picture of someone at the center of his life. Of course he’ll like it.” She closed the pad. “I’ll need to hang on to it until I’ve finished the painting, though.”

“Our anniversary isn’t for another two months. No rush.” Caroline stood. “I take it you’re through with me?”

“For now,” Dixie said cheerfully. “I’ll be starting the paintings soon, and I may need to stare at you some more then. Or not. First I’m going to pester your vineyard foreman for a day or two.”

“I suspect Russ won’t mind,” Caroline said dryly. “Dixie?”

She slid her pad into her tote. “Yes?”

“My son was deeply hurt when you left him. I’m concerned about your reappearance in his life.”

Dixie froze. Déjà vu, all over again, she thought. First Eli, now Caroline.

And what could she say? That Cole was the one doing the pursuing? It was true, but if she was honest, she’d have to admit she enjoyed the game they were playing. “I don’t know what to tell you. He isn’t serious.”

“Isn’t he?” Caroline let that question dangle a moment, then smiled. “You probably want to suggest I mind my own business. I understand. We’ll change the subject. I’m having a small dinner party Friday, mostly family. I’d like it if you could join us.”

“Thank you,” Dixie said, wary.

Caroline shook her head ruefully. “I’m not usually so maladroit. The dinner invitation has nothing to do with the question I didn’t quite ask you. Truly, I would like to have you join us.”

“And I’m not usually so prickly.” Dixie’s smile warmed. “I’d love to come.”

“Head over any time after six, then. Casual dress. We’ll eat around seven-thirty.”

Dixie was frowning as she headed for the carriage house. She didn’t resent Caroline’s delicate prying. Mothers were allowed to worry—it was in the contract. They were also entitled to think the best of their offspring. Dixie couldn’t very well tell Cole’s mother that all he was after was a quick roll in the hay.

Well…maybe not quick. Her lips curved. That had never been one of Cole’s faults.

Her smile didn’t last. She suspected his pursuit rose, in part, from the desire to prove that he was over her. If that thought pinched a bit, she could understand it. Because Caroline had been right about the other. Dixie was sure she’d hurt Cole.

He’d hurt her, too. But his had been sins of omission, not commission. He hadn’t lied or cheated. He just hadn’t been there enough. Business had come first, second and sometimes third with Cole. All too often, Dixie had been an afterthought.

She’d been so desperately in love. And he…he’d been halfway in love. In the end, she hadn’t been able to handle that.

Dixie rounded the corner of the house—and almost walked right into Cole. And her cat, who was purring madly in Cole’s arms.

“Good grief.” She shook her head, disgusted. “He got out again?”

“I was working on a budget projection and turned away to get a file. When I turned back, there he was, sitting on top of a stack of quarterly reports, cleaning his face and looking smug. Tilly’s still hiding under my desk. Hey.” He touched her arm lightly with his free hand. “Is something wrong?”

“Just thinking deep, philosophical thoughts. It interferes with my digestion.” She started walking again. He fell into step beside her. “Is Tilly okay?”

“She’s fine, now that I removed her tormenter.” He smiled. “That’s three, Dixie. And still two days to go.”

“I know, I know.” She and Cole had a bet on. Cole had bet that Hulk would escape at least half a dozen times before Friday.

It should have been an easy win for her. Not because she fooled herself that she controlled Hulk, but she did know his ways. She’d figured her cat would escape once a day, no matter what she did—but if she let him stay out long enough to get his outside fix, he’d be content to stay in the rest of the time.

She hadn’t counted on his obsession with Cole’s dog. “I think you’re sneaking him out,” she said darkly.

“Would I do that? He may be teleporting. Here.” Cole dumped the cat into her arms. “Where did you find Cattila the Hun, anyway?”

Had Cole always had this deliciously wry sense of humor, and she’d forgotten? “He just showed up one day, sitting outside my apartment as if he’d been waiting for me. I opened the door and he strolled in, demanded dinner, then curled up in my lap and informed me it was time to pet him.”

Cole nodded. “I can see where you wouldn’t want to argue with him.”

“He was half-starved.”

“He’s made up for it.” There was a hint of the devil in his sidelong glance. “Maybe I should borrow his technique. As I recall, you’re a great cook. If I show up demanding dinner—”

She laughed. “You won’t get in the door. I suspect your priorities are different from Hulk’s.”

“You’re right.” His voice dropped as he stroked her arm. “I’d want to go straight to the petting.”

Just that light touch, and her system hummed happily. She wanted more, and there was no one around but herself to warn her of the dangers. “Hands off. I can’t defend myself with my arms full of Hulk.”

“I know. I like you helpless.”

“You’ve never seen me helpless,” she retorted. They’d reached the carriage house. “Open the door, will you, so I can put my monster back where he belongs.”

Instead he leaned against the door, smiling. “Bribe me.”

“Oh, come on, Cole—”

“Just a kiss. I’ll even promise to keep my hands to myself.” But he wasn’t. He’d reached for a strand of her hair and was tickling her with it—under her chin, along her throat. “One kiss…or don’t you dare?”

She raised an eyebrow even as a shiver touched her spine. “You think I’m juvenile enough to jump at that bait?”

“I can hope.” He moved even closer, stopping with scant inches between them. The heat of his body seemed to set the air between them ashimmer with possibilities. “Why not, Dixie? It’s not as if you don’t want to kiss me.”

Her heart was pounding. “Your neck ever get tired from holding up that swollen head of yours?”

He just smiled. “It’s only a kiss. What could it hurt?”

All kinds of things—me, you…but apparently she wasn’t very good at listening to herself, because she went up on tiptoe, pausing with her lips a breath away from his. “No hands,” she murmured. And she kissed him. Slowly. Just a skimming of lips at first…

“Uh-uh,” she said when he tried to take over. “This one’s mine.”

Hulk was between them, so their bodies didn’t touch. Just their mouths. The scent of him was a heady intimacy as she tickled his bottom lip with her tongue, then touched it to each corner of his mouth, and arousal was pure pleasure. The ache grew, gradually focusing like a perspective drawing, when all lines lead to a single point.

Dixie opened her mouth over his and took his breath inside her—which was just as well, for she didn’t seem to have enough of her own. For a moment they met fully, lips, tongues, breath.

Then she eased back, smiling. And was pleased by the stunned look on his face.

He reached for her. She stepped back, shaking her head. “No hands, remember? Open the door, Cole.”

“The door.” He blinked. “Right. Anything you say. Sure you wouldn’t like all my worldly goods instead?”

“Not just now, thanks.” She sauntered inside, still holding her cat…with her heart pounding and pounding, and a little voice inside asking if she’d lost her mind.

This had to be about the stupidest thing he’d ever done, Grant thought as he gunned his pickup in order to keep up with the shiny blue Mercedes half a block ahead on the busy highway. He was acting like some two-bit private eye, for crying out loud.

But Grant didn’t give up easily. Some called him pigheaded. He preferred to think of himself as determined. And so far, Spencer Ashton had refused to see him, leaving Grant only two options: give up and go home, or somehow force the bastard to talk to him.

The bastard who’d fathered him. His father. Grant forced himself to use the word, though it went down about as well as ground glass.

Looked as if they were heading out of the city. Spencer owned a big, fancy mansion near Napa. If that’s where he was going, Grant was out of luck. He’d already been turned away from that door. From the high-rise office building here in San Francisco where Spencer went most mornings, too.

Which is why Grant was playing P.I. Sooner or later the man would go someplace where none of his servants or employees manned the gates.

Sooner or later his father would have to speak to him.

Grant scowled. More than once he’d wished he’d never seen that damn TV show. He’d come in from working on the older of his two tractors, showered and settled down with a cold beer. The game hadn’t started yet, so he’d been thinking about the weather while some documentary about winemaking finished up. A perky young reporter had been interviewing Spencer Ashton of Ashton-Lattimer, a corporation that owned vineyards and a large commercial winery.

Ashton Estate Winery. The name had snagged Grant’s attention, naturally, since it matched his own surname. But it was the face that had riveted him.

Spencer Ashton’s face looked like the one he saw in the mirror every day. Not in any one feature, maybe, but something about the way they were grouped. That had been spooky, but it hadn’t occurred to Grant the man might be his father. Even though the names were the same, he’d known it was impossible. His father had died when he was barely a year old.

Then the interviewer had mentioned Spencer’s Nebraska upbringing. They’d flashed a picture of him as a young man—and the man in that photo had been identical to the one standing beside Grant’s mother in the yellowed wedding photo she’d kept by her bed until the day she died.

Two weeks later, Grant had climbed in his pickup and started for San Francisco, leaving Ford in charge at the farm.

Ford had asked what he expected to accomplish. Grant had told his nephew he wanted to meet the half brothers and half sisters he’d never known existed. That was true, if only a partial truth.

So far he hadn’t mustered the nerve. He’d driven out to The Vines one morning, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to ring the doorbell. It was weird to walk up to a bunch of strangers and say, “Hi, I’m your brother.” Their money complicated matters. They were likely to think he wanted something from them.

He did, but it had nothing to do with money. Family mattered. These strangers were family. He needed to know what they were like.

What he hadn’t told Ford was that he also needed to look the man who’d fathered him in the eye and say, “You can’t pretend I don’t exist. I do.”

What good that would do, he couldn’t say. But he was going to do it. Maybe today, maybe later, but he wasn’t leaving California until he did.

On Friday, Cole took Dixie to Charley’s restaurant in Yountville for lunch.

“I can’t believe I let you finagle me into this,” Dixie said, sliding out of Cole’s suvvy.

“You lost the bet.” Cole was entirely too pleased with himself.

“That part I understand. How I let you talk me into making such a dumb bet, I don’t.”

“Maybe you didn’t really want to win.” He held the door for her.

“I knew you were going to say that. The fact is, Hulk’s gone over to the Dark Side. He conspired with you.”

“You’re talking about a cat, Dixie.”

“I’m talking about Hulk.”

“I get your point. Table for two,” he told the hostess. “I have a reservation.”

“Of course, Mr. Ashton. This way.”

Dixie raised her eyebrows. “They know you here.”

“We sell them wine.”

She nodded. “And just when did you make that reservation?”

“The same day we made the bet, of course.”

Dixie wouldn’t have admitted it for anything, but she was glad she’d lost the bet. Charley’s had been around awhile, but she couldn’t afford the place back when she lived here before and somehow she’d never made it here on her visits home.

The restaurant was set on twelve acres of olive groves, vineyards and gardens brimming with seasonal flowers, herbs and vegetables. Most of the herbs and produce used in their dishes came out of the ground the same day it was cooked. Plus they had an exhibition kitchen.

Dixie considered cooking every bit as much of an art as painting. She was looking forward to watching the pros at work.

“I’ve been thinking,” Cole said after the manager stopped by to welcome them. “If I’d lost the bet, I would have had to donate money to a charity of your choice. Having won the bet, I’m still spending money. What’s wrong with this picture?”

She chuckled. “You set the terms, not me.”

He shook his head. “What was I thinking?”

As they debated their selections, Dixie admitted to herself that she wasn’t just enjoying the place. She was enjoying the man. Had she had this much pure fun with Cole before?

All week, the present had been poking holes in the preconceptions of the past. Dixie remembered an ambitious, rather grim young man who’d had little time to spare for anything except business. This Cole was intense, yes, but he possessed a keen sense of the ridiculous. Even his pursuit of her had been flavored with humor.

And that, she told herself as she placed her order, was more dangerous than a sexual buzz, however potent. She had to be on her guard…because she was beginning to hope. She was trying not to define that hope, but it fizzed around inside, a giddy effervescence that bubbled up into smiles and easy laughter.

Cole selected the wine—one from another vineyard, so he could see what the competition was up to, he said. She picked the entrées. They argued about home schooling, sushi and a recent action movie, and found themselves agreeing about reality TV, garlic and childproof safety caps.

Dixie had a wonderful time until the waiter took their desert orders and left. All at once, Cole’s face froze.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He was staring over her shoulder in a way that should have turned whoever he was looking at into a Popsicle.

She craned her head around. A small knot of people blocked the entrance. Her eyebrows rose. She recognized one of them—the Western-looking man who’d been wandering around the vineyard earlier that week. The manager seemed upset with him.

The other two she’d never seen before, yet she recognized one. Not the curvy blonde in the red power suit. The older man resting a possessive hand on her back.

He had silver hair and an impeccably tailored suit over a lean body. His eyebrows were straight, his nose strong, his small, neat ears set flat to his head. His features were symmetrical, possessing the kind of balance people call handsome in a man, beauty in a woman.

He looked exactly like Cole would in another thirty years.

“Dammit, Dixie, don’t stare.” Cole’s voice was low and angry. “He doesn’t matter.”

That was blatantly false, so she ignored it. “That’s your father, isn’t it?”

“My real dad is married to my mother. That man is nothing. Nothing at all.”

The problem, whatever it was, appeared to be resolved. The manager was escorting Western Man out of the restaurant—and one of the waiters was leading Cole’s father and the woman with him their way.

The woman’s hair woke envy in Dixie’s heart. It was long, pale blond with a hint of curl. Her situation didn’t. She looked as if she didn’t appreciate the hand resting on her back. And the man escorting her didn’t seem to know his son existed.

The waiter stopped at their table, looking flustered. “My apologies, sir. There’s been some mistake. This table is reserved.”

“I know,” Cole said in his refrigerator voice. “I reserved it.”

“But…I’m terribly sorry, sir, but this is Mr. Ashton’s table.”

“Good. I’m glad we agree.”

The poor waiter didn’t know what to say. Nothing Man was too bored and important to wrangle in public, and besides was busy pretending he didn’t see his son sitting there. The woman with him looked too uncomfortable to do anything to defuse the situation. She even took a small step away, maybe distancing herself from the looming scene, maybe ditching that possessive hand. And Cole wasn’t about to make anything easier for anyone, including himself.

So Dixie took over. She smiled at the waiter. “There’s a misunderstanding, but it’s easily cleared up. There are two Mr. Ashtons present. That, I believe, is Mr. Spencer Ashton.” She nodded at Cole’s father, eyebrows raised. “Aren’t you?”

He was faintly surprised, as if a chair had addressed him. “Yes, I am. And this is my assistant, Kerry Roarke. You are—?”

“Dixie McCord.” She turned her smile up a notch. “And this is your son, Cole Ashton.”

Cole choked and began coughing.

The manager came rushing up. “Idiot. Idiot.” That seemed to be addressed to the waiter. “Go away. I’ll handle this. I am so terribly sorry,” he said, spreading his hands to include both Mr. Ashtons in the apology. “We have your table, of course, Mr. Ashton.” A small nod indicated the older man. “It’s right over here. If you’ll follow me—?”

As soon as they were out of earshot Cole said, “If you think I’m going to thank you for that bit of interference—”

“I’m not that naive. I suppose you want to leave now that you’ve defended your territory.”

He stood and tossed his napkin on the table.

Dixie ached for him. Not one word had his father spoken to him. There hadn’t been even a glance—no curiosity, nothing. Nothing Man is a good name for him, she thought as Cole scattered a few bills on the table.

She knew better than to let Cole see how she hurt for him. Hold out a hand in sympathy right now and he’d snap it off. The walls he’d pulled behind were steep and silent—but then, he had a lot of anger for them to hold back.

It began spilling out when they got in his suvvy. “Did you see that bimbo with him? His assistant.” He made the word sound obscene. “Doesn’t look like he’s changed his habits.”

“I don’t think she’s a bimbo.” Dixie fastened her seat belt. It looked as if they were in for a rough ride.

“Bimbo, mistress, what’s the difference?” He backed out, slammed the car into Drive and stepped on the gas. “I wonder if Bimbo Number One knows about Bimbo Number Two.”

Bimbo Number One, she assumed, would be his stepmother, the woman Spencer Ashton had had an affair with. The one he’d married as soon as the divorce from Cole’s mother was final. The woman he’d raised a second family with—a family he hadn’t deserted. “There may be nothing to know. I don’t think that woman is his mistress,” Dixie repeated patiently. “The body language was wrong.”

“Oh, he’s staked a claim there, all right.” Cole swung out onto the street with barely a pause. “Trust me on that.”

“He may be staking a claim, but she hasn’t accepted it.”

“Don’t be naive. She was uncomfortable at being spotted with him by his son. Probably didn’t realize I’m from his other family—the one he doesn’t see, speak to or give two cents about.”

Dixie decided they had better things to fight about than a woman they’d never see again. “You are not like him, Cole.”

“Where did that come from?” He was cutting through traffic as if he needed to be somewhere, anywhere, other than where he was right now. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“You look like him. That doesn’t mean you’re like him.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay. We’ll save it for when you aren’t driving.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my driving.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you want to argue, fine. But you don’t get to pick the subject.”

“And you do, I suppose?”

“Yes, because you’d have us fighting about all the wrong things. What you really need to fight about—”

“I told you I don’t want to talk about him.”

At least Cole had moved close enough to the real subject to say “him” instead of “it.” Dixie decided to let him hole up inside his turbulence until he wasn’t behind the wheel, so she said nothing.

Neither did he. The silence held until she noticed which way they were heading. “This is not the way to The Vines.”

“I need to drive for a while. It clears my head.”

“You have a destination in mind, or are we just going to dodge traffic?”

“My cabin.”

Chapter Six

Cole spent the drive to his cabin caught up in a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. When would he be old enough for it to stop mattering? So what if his father was a sorry sonofabitch? Millions of people had lousy fathers. He ought to be able to shrug off the bastard’s indifference by now.

Most of the time he could. He did. Today, though…there was just something about seeing Spencer with his newest side piece, pulling the same shit that had wrecked Cole’s life all those years ago. It rubbed him raw, too, that Dixie had been there. He didn’t know why. It just did.

If he hadn’t looked up to the man so much when he was a kid, tried so hard to win his approval…

The past was a closed book, he reminded himself, pulling to a stop in front of his cabin. Put it back on the shelf and leave it alone. “Go on inside,” he told Dixie, climbing out. “I’m going to chop some wood.”

“Oh, good idea,” she said, getting out and shutting her door. “Go play with an ax while you’re too mad too see straight. I’ll get the bandages and tourniquet ready.”

He flicked one glance at her then walked away, heading for the edge.

The cabin was surrounded on three sides by oak, pine and brush, but the strip along the front was clear all the way to the drop-off. There, the land fell away in dizzying folds. The view always opened him up, made him breathe easier.

It didn’t do a damn thing for him today. He stopped a pace back from the rocky edge and shoved his hands in his pockets.

Dixie had followed him, of course. “This would be easier if you really were Sheila. I can’t help you vent in the traditional male way, by getting into a fistfight.”

“I should have known all that silence was too good to last.”

“If you wanted silence, you should have come here alone.”

Why hadn’t he? He was in no mood for company, yet it hadn’t occurred to him to take her back to The Vines before heading here. “If you wanted me to drop you off, you should have said something.”

“I’m just putting you on notice. You brought me along. Now you have to put up with me.”

“I want to show you the cabin.” There. He knew he’d had a reason for bringing her. “But I need a minute to myself first.”

“You need to do something with all the stuff churning around inside you, all right. Try talking.”

“I’m not in the mood for amateur therapy.”

“You know, people were talking—sometimes even listening—for a few thousand years before Freud called it therapy.”

He gave her an ugly look. “You won’t let it be, will you? You have to poke and prod and try to fix me.”

“I used to do that. It was a mistake.”

His eyebrows went up. “You’re admitting it?”

“Astonishing, isn’t it? But I wasn’t the only one. We both tried to fix each other. Your technique was a little different, that’s all.” She shrugged. “Young and stupid sums it up, I guess. We fell hard and immediately started trying to change each other into people it would be safer to love.”