Bronwyn Jameson - The Ashtons - Jillian, Eli & Charlotte

“I was trying to picture you throwing a tantrum.” He shook his head again, put the truck into gear and swung onto the road. “And not succeeding.”

Chastened because—let’s face it—a temper tantrum is not a pretty image, Jillian wriggled in her seat. “If it’s any consolation, this is a rare occurrence.”

He cut her a look. “I hope riding in the dark is also a rare occurrence.”

“I intended being out and back a lot earlier, but…” She shrugged, and in that absent little gesture felt the tension of the afternoon return tenfold and then some.

“But…?”

“But I wasn’t.” She waved a hand dismissively, then sat up straight because he wasn’t slowing. “The turn’s coming up. To the stables. You’d better slow down.”

“I’m taking you home.”

“There’s no need to do that.”

“You’ve just fallen off your horse.”

“I didn’t hurt myself, Seth.” She reached across and put her hand on his arm, forcing him to look at her, since he’d developed that rigid steel-jawed, I’m-in-charge look she recognized. Her brothers had turned it into an art form. “I have a horse to attend to, and then I will take myself home.”

He didn’t answer, although he did pull over to the side of the road. Carefully she took her hand away and folded her fingers into her palm, enclosing the delicious warm charge from that contact. Sad, but she couldn’t stop herself anymore than she could stop herself continuing on her theme.

“I don’t need you or anyone to make decisions for me, Seth. I know I admitted to a minor tantrum before, but I’m not a child.”

“I know that, Jillian.” He turned to face her, a movement so deliberate and measured it could have been slow-mo. “Believe me, I know.”

Suddenly the space in his cab seemed to shrink, or perhaps the air just thickened with a meaning that sucked up all the spare oxygen. He was talking about seeing her as a woman. He was looking at her as a woman, and her body responded with an embarrassing lack of restraint.

Her heartbeat ran amok, heat rioted through her blood, her hormones went completely ape.

It had been a long, long time since she’d experienced anything so involving and exciting and terrifying all at once. The terrifying part came from the notion that he wanted her, and that changed everything. Her own one-sided crush she could handle, but Seth Bennedict? An unrestrained shiver raced through her blood.

She did not know if she could handle a man like Seth, or even if she had the courage to try.

Nervous and panicky, she straightened her backbone and pushed her chin up, in full defensive mode. “Will you take me to the stables or will I get out and walk?”

“Sure I’ll take you to the stables,” he said without moving a muscle.

Jillian’s pulse thudded in her ears. She knew there was a proviso coming; knew he wouldn’t give in so easily.

“After you tell me why you were out riding so late.”

That was it? No tricky questions about the simmering tension between them? About whether she still saw him as Jason’s scary big brother or as a man?

“I’ll tell you why I was out riding,” she said, mimicking his even tone. “After you tell me why you were at the stables tonight.”

He huffed out a breath. “Search and rescue mission.”

“What?”

“Rachel left that pony toy of hers at the stables last night.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, his frown turning introspective. “She refused to go to bed tonight without the damn thing.”

“Pinky Pony?”

“Yeah. I don’t suppose you know where I can put my hands on it?”

“No, but I will help you look after I put Marsanne away. I’m sorry to have held you up with this second search and rescue mission.”

“Find that pony and you’re forgiven,” he said with an unexpected quirk of humor.

Attractive, so deadly attractive, especially on top of all this tenderhearted concern. Not only for her, but for his daughter. Jillian’s chest felt tight, dangerously constricted and breathless.

“Worse comes to worst,” she said, forcing herself to concentrate on the conversation. On Rachel. “I have a whole collection in my bedroom. If we can’t find Pinky I happen to know which would work best as a substitute.”

“Substitutes don’t cut it with Rachel.” His gaze seared into hers, so dark and hot and intense she swore her heart stalled in her chest. “They’re never the same as the real thing.”

Pinky Pony wasn’t at the stables, it turned out. After returning to the Vines for a substitute, Jillian had found Rachel’s toy amongst the others in her bedroom. Of course, being Jillian, she’d insisted on sending the surrogate home with Seth, too.

Of course, being Rachel, his daughter insisted that Pinky should visit Aunt Jellie to express his gratitude for the new playmate. She’d been at Seth since breakfast and now, fresh from an after-lunch nap, she climbed onto his knee and started in again. “You said saying thank you is good manners, Daddy. You said I should always wemember to say thank you. You said…”

And so it went, wearing into the fabric of his patience with unrelenting and finely tuned precision. His own three-year-old version of the power sander. Finally, to buy some Sunday afternoon peace, he agreed to an over-the-phone thank you. “But Jillian’s working today. We can’t call until she’s finished,” he cautioned.

“I call you at work.”

“I have a cell phone. Jillian does not.”

Rachel’s brow puckered. Seth sighed and prepared himself for the next…“Why?”

“Because I have a chatterbox daughter who likes to call me at work.” He tweaked one of her pigtails, already askew from her nap. “That’s why I have a cell phone.”

“Aunt Jellie doesn’t.”

He thought Rachel was talking about cells, until she fixed him with her big, solemn eyes—the look that did him in every time—and said, “That’s why she lets me share her ponies. She hasn’t got a daughter of her own.”

Okay. He did not need to know if that insight parroted Jillian or came directly from a fertile three-year-old mind. And he did not need his fertile imagination fostering notions of Jillian and babies and activities for making babies. Bad enough that it infiltrated his nights without seeping into his days.

He set Rachel off his knee and onto her feet in front of him. He fixed her with his best I-mean-business face. “Let’s make a compromise.”

“What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

“A deal. If you promise to quit nagging me, I’ll call Caroline and find out when Jillian finishes work. Then we’ll know what time to call her and say thank you. Deal?”

“Can we call her now?”

“We can call Caroline now.”

His daughter shook hands on the deal like a pro, and skipped off to fetch the phone and the pony friends who “might want to listen, Daddy.”

While he waited for Rachel’s return—and she could take a while, given the audience she was assembling—he recalled his other recent deal with a female. Last night, in return for his lift to the stables, Jillian had promised to tell him why she’d been out riding so late.

No handshake, but a deal just the same, and one she’d welshed on.

In the distraction of finding Pinky Pony, he’d let it slide. Today it nagged at his sense of fair play with a persistency rivaled only by his daughter…and the temptation to give in so he could visit Jillian.

Problem was he wanted to see her a little too much. Hell, and that was a straight-out lie. He wanted to see her a lot too much. He ached to test the sexual energy he’d felt between them last night. He needed confirmation that the buzz of attraction didn’t exist only in his mind and his blood and his too-long-without flesh.