The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte. Bronwyn Jameson

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t think Lucas could have checked the fence, too? Seeing as he was here?”

      She’d started fussing with the duvet and a baby blanket, folding them, smoothing them, but his snippy tone brought her head up slowly. “Yes, but I thought you’d do a better job, since you’ve probably faced the same toddler-proofing problems with Rachel.”

      “It’s not rocket science.”

      “If you didn’t want to help me,” she said, her tone frostier with each carefully delivered word, “you should have said so.”

      She was right, but why waste her snooty mood? Why not slap a few more bricks on the wall?

      “I’m not doing this to help you, Jillian.” He crossed to the living-room window and checked the catch. “I’m helping Anna. Seems like she can use all the help she can get.”

      As he moved to the kitchen, he felt her gaze shadowing him every step of the way. Felt it in every tense muscle of his body, every wired nerve. In every brain cell that urged him to stop acting like a jerk and admit what he wanted, straight-up and honest.

      Except what would be the point? He wanted her, but how could he have her?

      “I’m glad you see it that way,” she said finally. “Anna can use a friend or two.”

      “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t have felt the same way about her sister.”

      “Why is that?”

      Slowly he turned from the window and met her puzzled gaze. “She had an affair with a married man.”

      He brushed by her on his way out of the kitchen, left her standing there in stunned silence, while he moved from room to room, systematically noting the locks that needed changing, the latches he could shore up. Work, system, routine: the props that had kept him functioning through his short and troubled marriage, and through his discovery of Karen’s infidelity.

      Jason hadn’t cared that she wore a wedding band or that she was married to his own brother, but he wasn’t like his brother. He would never sleep with another man’s wife…or widow while she still wore that ring.

      Why the hell did she still wear it?

       Why the hell don’t you ask her?

      Seth huffed out a breath. Yeah, it was time to talk. It was past time.

      He walked to the last room and saw that she’d spread the brightly patterned duvet over a single bed and draped the baby’s blanket over the side of a cot. Jillian herself stood with her back to the door, holding a framed picture to the wall, and the sight of her there, amidst all the trappings of family, hit him hard.

      Same as the day at the Vines when she’d taken Rachel to check out her pony collection. Same as Sunday evening, in Caroline’s garden, with Rachel’s pigtails mushed trustingly against her shoulder.

      Damn, but this was supposed to be physical. The sweet ache of lust, the slow throb of sexual need. That’s all he wanted. No emotion, no happy families. None of that phony fantasy.

      “You want that picture hung?” he asked, his voice as surly as his mood.

      “Yes, but I can manage.” Cool, so very cool. And she didn’t even turn around. “Have you finished out there?”

      “Checking the locks, yes.” He stalked over and took the picture out of her hands. “Center of this wall?”

      For a second he thought she would argue—for a second he hoped she would—but then she nodded stiffly. “Where you have it is fine.”

      Not a picture, he noticed after he’d positioned the small whitewood frame, but a message done in some kind of fancy stitching.

       You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think.

      “Yours?” he asked.

      “My mother made it for me.” Then she said, “It’s from Winnie-the Pooh.”

      “Huh.” He straightened the frame and stepped back from the wall, his ragged mood soothed by the simple task of hammering a nail. And by her softly voiced explanation. “I didn’t know the bear was such a philosopher.”

      “Christopher Robin said it to Pooh.”

      “Not sage advice from mother to daughter?” he asked as he moved forward and thumbed the frame up a tenth on the left. He edged back and surveyed it through narrowed eyes. Gave a small grunt of satisfaction. Waited for Jillian’s response.

      She couldn’t answer right away. She’d been so ready to show him the door, to slam it on his moody brooding back, but that quiet question turned her around all over again. The affirming message, stitched by her mother’s hand so many years ago, resounded through her with an escalating rhythm, reminding her of the decision she’d made two days before.

      A decision made and put on hold.

       Well, Christopher Robin, let’s see how brave and strong and smart I am.

      Drawing a deep give-me-courage breath, she turned to face Seth. The hand she extended trembled like a newborn colt, but she still managed to hold her shoulders straight as she splayed the naked fingers of her left hand.

      “It feels very strange after wearing it for so long.” She wriggled her fingers. Yes, it felt strange in several ways. Strange unfamiliar, strange scary, and strangely liberating now she’d finally taken this positive step forward, out of the shadows of the past.

      “Why did you keep wearing it?” he asked after one long beat of intense silence.

      “Not because I still felt married or bound to Jason.” And since her hand wouldn’t stop shaking, she tucked it in the pocket of her jeans. Then she lifted her chin and looked right at him. “I wore it as a reminder of all that marriage cost me. I’m ready to put that behind me, now. To move on.”

      “What are you telling me?”

      “I’m not telling, Seth, I’m asking.” Jillian paused to moisten her suddenly dry mouth. “What now, Seth? Now that I’m not wearing the ring?”

      Eight

      Still and silent, he stared back at her, but today that intensity didn’t make Jillian uncomfortable. The fact she’d obviously read him wrong did. She’d thought that Seth wanted her, but then she’d believed the same of Jason.

      Could she be any worse a judge of men and their motives?

      “I’m sorry,” she said briskly, avoiding Seth’s eyes in case she detected any—Lord help her—pity. That would be the last straw. “I’ve overstepped and put you in an awkward situation. Forget I said anything.”

      She swung away and would have kept on walking, except his harsh expulsion of breath brought her gaze back around. And what she saw there halted her in her tracks. Her limbs, her thoughts, her heart all seized in that one second of sizzling heat.

      “Why would СКАЧАТЬ