Bronwyn Jameson - The Ashtons - Jillian, Eli & Charlotte

She flung her arms, boots and all, around her neck and held on tight.

“What’s this for?” Caroline managed to gasp around that constrictive hug.

“Just because.” Jillian’s smile wavered and her vision misted for a second before she blinked the gathering moisture away. “And I haven’t had enough sleep to do emotion real well at the moment.”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother gathered her into an even tighter hug, then saved the moment and both their tears by suddenly pulling clear. “You know what you need?”

Jillian shook her head, her emotional state too rocky to chance words.

“A good bracing gallop to clear your head.”

Oh, yes. That sounded perfect. She and Marsanne both needed a rousing blowout.

Instantly enthused, she dropped down on the bottom step and pulled on her boots. Then was struck by an even better idea. “Why don’t you come too, Mom? We haven’t been out riding together in ages.”

They’d galloped, a little more sedately than Jillian’s long-legged thoroughbred would have liked, but she’d held Marsanne back in deference to her mother’s elderly mount.

Now, with that initial burst of energy spent, both horses were content to walk on a loose rein. Their elevated breathing puffed clouds of steam into the air, adding warmth to the cool ribbons of mist that wisped off the lake.

A perfect spring morning, Jillian decided, breathing the commingled scents of warm horse and fresh growth and the crisp chill of the dawn air. Perfect both from her own perspective and that of the vines that stretched in flawlessly drilled lines to their left and right.

The frost alarms had remained silent last night. Good news for the sensitive new growth that grew apace with the warmer, lengthening days. Good news too for the vineyard staff, including Jillian, who bounded out of bed to turn on overhead sprinklers at the first shrill of those temperature-triggered alarms.

“That smile looks good on you,” her mother commented.

“Well, it feels good, too.” Jillian’s smile turned into a laugh of pure and simple pleasure. “Thank you for suggesting this, Mom. You always have the best ideas.”

Something changed in her mother’s expression, the tiniest hint that she didn’t agree. Jillian felt it as much as she saw it, and her ebullient mood faltered. Caught up in her own troubles, she hadn’t considered her mother’s state of mind. And an awful lot had happened in the last months—the last week, even—to trouble Caroline’s mind.

“You haven’t told me,” Jillian commenced in a casual, reflective tone that matched their ambling progress through the vineyards, “why you were wandering around the house at the crack of dawn.”

“I woke early.” Her mother smiled, but the effort didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Lord knows I love the man, but Lucas snores loud enough to rattle bottles in the cellar.”

“You’re stewing over this Spencer ruckus, aren’t you?”

“This Spencer ruckus” had blown up in January, when they’d discovered a whole unknown chapter in Spencer Ashton’s past. Another family in Nebraska. An earlier wedding that made his vows to Caroline bigamous.

It hadn’t only blown up within their family circle, either. Every sordid note had played, loud and embellished, through both the tabloid and mainstream media. Ashton-Lattimer shares had hit an all time low after the latest revelation: an illegitimate child born from an affair with his former secretary.

Was that particular association disturbing her mother’s sleep?

“I hope you’re not worried about us, Mom. About us thinking we’re illegitimate or something.” To reinforce the concern she felt tight in her chest, Jillian leaned across and rested a hand atop her mother’s. Just for a second. “I mean, it doesn’t matter whether you were married to Spencer or not as far as I’m concerned. We all think of Lucas as our father.”

“I know, honey. But I can’t help wishing he were your father in the eyes of the law. I wish he could have adopted you, that you all could have taken his name.” Regret coated Caroline’s words, but then she shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Just listen to me, bemoaning what I can’t change.”

“If wishes were horses…?”

Their gazes connected, mother and daughter, and a whole world of understanding flowed from one to the other and back again. A sharing of present strife and past misgivings, some unspoken but none forgotten.

Then, with uncanny timing, Marsanne snorted and jiggled her head, breaking the gravity of the moment and surprising a bark of laughter from Jillian—perhaps simply to release some of her pent-up tension.

“Was that a laugh?” she asked her horse, leaning forward to stroke the gray silk of her neck. “Or a suggestion that it’s past your breakfast time?”

Marsanne didn’t answer, although her ears pricked and her stride lengthened as they turned by the lake to head back to the stables.

“I have been thinking a lot,” Caroline said, after they’d walked in silence for several minutes. Silent but for the hwark of a wood duck they startled from its nest by the water. “And, yes, a lot of it while I should have been sleeping.”

Jillian smiled her acknowledgment.

“But not over the legality of my marriage to Spencer. I said my vows before God and I stood by them. In my mind and my heart, it will never be anything but a real marriage since it gave me four of my greatest gifts.”

Eli, Cole, Mercedes and Jillian.

They had both reined their horses to a halt, as if tacitly acknowledging the significance of this conversation. Too important to continue while idling along on horseback.

“I no longer care how it started or why it ended,” Caroline continued, her voice as soft as the morning light. “But I am so very glad that it did end. Otherwise I would not have found Lucas. I would not have all this.”

And although she waved one hand in a delicately expansive gesture, Jillian knew she referred to more than the rich physical landscape and the boutique winery she had fashioned into one of Napa’s finest.

“All this” encompassed the solid strength of love she’d found with Lucas and the happiness she’d forged for herself and her family.

This is what worried her sleep—the threat of further disharmony within her family due to Spencer Ashton. Caroline had lost out badly in the divorce settlement, and finally they’d agreed to seek legal counsel. Since there’d been no marriage, there could be no divorce settlement, right?

“You don’t want to pursue legal action, do you?” Jillian asked.

“I’m afraid it will cause more hurt, more bitter words, and for what? What will it achieve? I have everything I want right here.” Caroline waved that same hand around, this time with more vigor. “Already this brouhaha has sent Cole and Dixie running off to elope.”

Because they hadn’t thought it an appropriate time to arrange and celebrate a wedding, with all that was going on. Of course that bothered Caroline. She’d married Spencer quickie-Vegas-style, and Jillian had followed suit.

Not exactly happy precedents.

“Selfish, I know,” she said softly, “but I wanted to be there.”

Jillian leaned across and took one of her mother’s hands in her own. “No, not selfish. A mother’s right.”

One they all should have recognized earlier, one they’d lost sight of in all the acrimony. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to make amends…

“You know what I’m thinking?” she said, a smile brimming as the idea gathered momentum.

“Please, Jillian, if it is anywhere near as wicked as that glint in your eyes, you can stop thinking it right now.”

“Wicked? I don’t think so.” She tipped her head to the side, considering. “Unless we make it a surprise party—and that would serve them right, seeing as they surprised us all by running off to tie the knot.”