Maureen Child - The Ashtons - Cole, Abigail and Megan

“What an image.” She grinned as they reached the bottom floor. “She reminds me of my third-grade teacher. The woman terrified me.”

“You weren’t showing any signs of fear.”

“Oh, I decided a long time ago that it’s easier to like people, and you know how I hate to waste energy. It’s also much more interesting.”

And that, he understood, was the root of her charm. It wasn’t about getting people to like her. It was about liking them. Which might be what had gone wrong with them—there’d been too much she hadn’t really liked about him.

The flash of anger surprised him. He squelched it. Old news. “Some people aren’t easy to like.”

“True. And a few aren’t worth the effort, but you can’t know that until you’ve tried.” She opened the door to the tasting room. “I’d better get the rest of my stuff unloaded. I’m not sure where to put it, though.”

“Mother has you in the carriage house. You’ll remember it.”

She stopped with the door open and aimed a glance over her shoulder at him, her face quite blank. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Yes, I do.”

The carriage house was set away from the main house—not far, but enough to offer some privacy. On that long-ago summer, he’d been living in the big house still; Dixie had moved in with her mother after graduating while she looked for work. She’d come to visit Mercedes one day.

By that night, she and Cole had been lovers. They’d met at the carriage house often. Made love there.

She gave a little shake of her head, half of a smile settling on her mouth without touching her eyes. He couldn’t decipher the emotion there. “You going to give me a hand with my things, or do you need to get back to work? I warn you—I don’t travel light.”

“No problem. I love to flex my muscles for the girls.”

Her gaze wandered over him, head to toe, a spark of mischief replacing the unknown emotion. “Got a tank top? It would be so much more fun to watch you flex in one of those.”

The rolling rise of heat didn’t surprise him. She was a woman who’d always provoke a response in a man, and when she looked at him like that he’d have to be dead not to respond. But the strength of it was unwelcome. “Still playing with matches, Dixie?” he asked softly.

“I run with scissors sometimes, too.”

She was far too amused. For now, he’d let her get away with that. Later, though…Dixie wasn’t a woman for the long haul. He knew that, and he knew why. But she was hell on wheels for the short term. “Let’s go exercise my muscles,” he said lightly, leaving it up to her to decide what kind of exercise he had in mind.

“You’re driving an SUV.”

“I prefer to call it a suvvy.” Dixie did not care for the look of unholy delight on Cole’s face. She opened the door on the driver’s side. “Were you going to ride to the carriage house with me, or would you prefer to tote and flex over there on foot?”

He climbed in, looking around. “I could have pictured you in a Ferrari. Or something tiny and fuel efficient with a bumper sticker asking if I’ve hugged a tree today. But an SUV?” He shook his head, grinning. “It’s so soccer mom.”

“Nothing wrong with soccer moms.” She hit the accelerator a little too hard. “I do a fair amount of work on location. I needed to be able to haul around my equipment, not to mention the Hulk, and this is the most fuel efficient suvvy on the market.” And why was she so defensive, anyway? “So what are you driving these days? A shiny new Beamer or a Benz?”

“A five-year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee, eight cylinders, standard,” he answered promptly.

“An SUV.”

“Yep.”

She glanced at him—and they both burst out laughing. “Were we really that shallow before?” she asked. “Arguing about cars as if it mattered.” She shook her head, remembering.

“Speak for yourself. I wasn’t shallow. Just stupid.”

Not stupid, she thought. Obsessed, maybe. Ambitious, certainly. Grimly determined to outdo the father who’d walked out on him, to prove that he and his family didn’t need Spencer Ashton in any way—definitely. Dixie had understood that. She just hadn’t been able to live with it.

The carriage house was located just behind and to the east of the main house, but to get there by car they had to drive well past the house and circle back, passing through a portion of the vineyards and a small grove of olive trees. Even in January, the trees were picturesque with their knotty limbs and graygreen foliage, and the hummingbird sage and licorice plants beneath them were green.

The grove was even prettier in the summer, surrounded by rows and rows of lush vines, Dixie remembered wistfully. But perhaps it was just as well she was here in January.

“So why a suvvy?” she asked lightly as she came to a stop in front of the small stucco building. “You can’t need to haul things around that often.”

“Not as much these days, no. But for a while I was. I bought a small cabin a few years ago and have been working on it ever since.”

“A fixer-upper?” she asked, surprised. The Cole she’d known had wanted the newest and best of everything.

“You could call it that, if you’re feeling generous.” He opened the door.

She got out. “What would you call it?”

“Pretty decent now. Uninhabitable when I bought it. I wanted the land, the view, and planned to tear down the cabin and put up something new and shiny. Somewhere along the line, though, I got hooked on power tools. The cabin’s been my excuse to use them. Do you need all of that carried in?” He gestured at the piles in the back.

She grinned. “I warned you.”

“So you did.”

Dixie carried the smaller suitcase and the tote with her paints. Cole grabbed the other suitcase and the huge roll of untreated canvas. This diminished but didn’t empty the pile in her suvvy.

The door to the carriage house was unlocked. Dixie pushed it open and stopped a foot inside.

Nothing had changed. From the pine paneling to the white curtains to the simple furniture, everything looked just as it had eleven years ago.

Cole nudged her. “Sightsee later. This is heavy. Are you sure you don’t have a body rolled up inside?”

“Of course not. The blood would make a mess of my canvas.”

“Your weights, then? Move, Dixie.”

She moved, stopping beside the battered leather couch. The last time she’d seen that couch, she’d been naked. “Isn’t this the same Navajo blanket on the back of the couch?” A bit worn now, but the colors were as beautiful faded as they had been new. Bemused, she ran a hand over it.

“I remember how it looked wrapped around you.”

Her hand remained on the blanket. Her gaze flew to Cole’s—and the past crashed into the present, smashing itself all over her, making a mess of her mind and her heartbeat.

At that moment she wanted him. Wanted him badly.

Twenty-two fuzzy pounds thumped against her leg, nearly knocking her over and making a noise like a chain saw.

Cole’s eyes widened. “What in the world—?”

“Meet Hulk.” Thank you, Hulk, she told him silently, bending to pick him up. He sprawled, limp with pleasure, over her shoulder while she ran a hand over cowlicky gray fur. Hulk loved attention.

“As in The Incredible?” Cole looked dubious. “He is a cat, right?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“I’d better let my mother know about him.”

“She’s not allergic or something, is she? Mercedes said it was okay to bring him.” She rubbed him under the chin the way he liked, and his motor revved loudly. “He always travels with me.”