The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte. Bronwyn Jameson

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      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.’

      Jillian’s stomach churned with anxiety. “Why is she here? What does she want?”

      “I have no idea.” Mercedes hiked up the tray. “But if you grab yourself a cup, we can go find out together.”

      Seth drove out to the Vines with one intention. To find his daughter’s precious pink pony, inadvertently left behind the previous night. Apparently she’d been so entranced by the real thing she’d discarded Pinky without a second thought. Imagine that?

      Except tonight she had remembered. Tonight she refused to go to bed without her favorite toy. And at the end of a hellish day packed floor to ceiling with work snafus, all he’d wanted to do was kick back and enjoy his sister’s company. Dinner, a glass or two of wine, some relaxed conversation that didn’t include anything connected with Jillian Ashton.

      When Rachel whined and pouted, he didn’t bother negotiating. Sometimes it was easier to concede defeat. “Yes, I will go find Pinky.” Even if I have to get down on my hands and knees and look under every individual strand of straw.

      As he pulled up outside the stables, he noticed the absence of vehicles. The big white barn slumbered in the encroaching darkness, seemingly empty of all but its equine residents. Good. Although help might shorten the needle-in-a-haystack search, he wasn’t in the mood for polite chitchat with Caroline Sheppard or for pretending to lighten up around her daughter.

      Not tonight.

      “We’re not that good,” he muttered as he strode into the barn…through doors slung wide open.

      No lights, no activity save the rustle of straw beneath hooves and a distinctive pony snicker, yet those doors had to be open for a reason. Seth ignored Ed, his narrowed gaze fixing on the adjacent empty stall. A quick head tally confirmed the absence of the gray she’d been riding on Monday.

      It was too late for riding, too dark for safety, too dangerous for the speed she’d favored that morning. He retraced his steps outside and halted, hands on hips and head lifted, all his senses on high alert. First he felt it, the rumbling in the ground under his feet, and then he heard the thunder of hooves.

      Déjà vu.

      The horse appeared like a gray ghost in the twilight, galloping at breakneck speed. Not controlled this time, no way, and everything inside Seth roiled in a volatile mix of fear and fury.

      “You reckless fool,” he muttered. “If you don’t break your neck, I will wring—”

      The threat caught in his throat, choked by pure dread, as he realized why the horse approached at such helter-skelter speed. This time it was out of control, the reins dangling uselessly around its forelegs, the saddle on its back empty.

      Fear clenched deep in Seth’s gut as he raced to his truck and wrenched open the door. Without pausing to close it, he fired the engine and sent the back wheels spinning and spitting up gravel. The door slammed shut when he swung into the driveway at bone-jarring speed, spinning his back СКАЧАТЬ