“Eli was preoccupied.”
“He has a lot on his mind.”
“Cole was in a hurry to get away.”
“Newlywed.”
“Mercedes likes chocolate-chip cookies.”
“Mercedes skipped lunch.” She laughed, a soft and husky contrast to their rat-at-at nail gun exchange of lines. Then she shook her head and met his eyes with narrowed consideration. “I didn’t know you were so observant.”
“You don’t know me that well,” he said slowly, and in one heartbeat the mood changed shape, gathering a new intimacy in the deep quiet of the unlit foyer.
“No, I don’t. And I suspect you have the better of me there.”
“You think I know you?” Hell, this week she’d turned everything he thought he knew about cool and prissy Jillian Ashton upside down. Sauvignon blanc. Cabernet sauvignon. Pinot noir. Sparkling rosé. She was a complete cellar full of diverse moods and he couldn’t help enjoying every one.
“You know more about me than I would like.” Chin lifted, she held his gaze. “More than anyone outside my family, actually.”
“You’re talking about the past, Jillian, about Jason and the mess he made of his life and his marriage. Not you.”
She dismissed that with an adamant shake of her head. “You know I was too gullible and naive to see any hint of reality. You know I believed him when he said that he’d been conned, that he had nothing to do with the investment scam. You know I actually believed he would get my money back, that he would stop cheating and lying and playing me for a thousand kinds of fool!”
Yeah, because she loved him. Because she was loyal and faithful and committed, and—dammit—he admired her because she had stood by her husband and partner.
So unlike his own wife.
“You were his wife, Jillian. I’ve never judged you for that.”
Something shifted in her expression, and in the deep evening shadows he couldn’t tell if it was acceptance or surprise or disbelief. She hitched her shoulders in a tense little shrug that echoed through him, tight in his chest and his gut and his head.
“I don’t know what to say to that except thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for the lack of judgment and thank you for sorting out that mess of my past.”
What could he say but, “You’re welcome.”
“And especially thank you for helping me now.” Her gaze fixed on his, so serious and earnest that his heart fisted in his chest. “This job means so much to me, and you taking it has lifted a weight off my shoulders.”
Not just rhetoric, Seth knew. She’d come to him, she’d asked for his help, she’d thanked him already the day she offered to lend a hand with Rachel. And now she felt a need to repeat those thanks.
“Why is this project so important to you?” he asked.
“Work’s my life,” she answered with simple sincerity. “And my bliss.”
Yeah, he understood the first, and the second he’d noticed that day at the tasting room. Except it wasn’t that simple, he knew. During the meeting he’d studied her much more closely than any of her siblings.
This wasn’t only about work, it was personal and somehow it was driving her.
“What are you trying to prove, Jillian?” he asked, studying her closely now. Seeing the giveaway flicker deep in her eyes and knowing he’d guessed right. Not that he needed any psych degree to figure out her motivation, but he didn’t want to put words in her mouth. He knew patience—he had a three-year-old. He waited while the pause spun out between them, silent but for the rhythmic ticktock of the wall clock behind him.
Five ticks and four tocks before she drew an audible breath and made one of those expressive here’s-how-it-is gestures with her hands.
“I have a lot of mistakes to make up for, Seth, a lot to prove. The way I walked away from Louret because I didn’t think they respected me as a professional—”
“When you took the job over in Sonoma?”
“Yes.”
And that’s where she’d met Jason, his baby brother, the spoiled, smooth talking sales manager who’d wanted Jillian because of her surname and her connections. An Ashton, Jason had figured, could take him places he didn’t work hard enough to make on his own.
“My family didn’t want me to leave but I thought I knew better,” she said evenly. “I thought I needed to prove I was all grown up and could make my own decisions.”
“And now you think you need to—what?—make a big impact on Louret to prove your worth?”
“No, I just need to do something positive. For myself, mostly, and to put the past behind me.”
“There’s something to be said for knocking down old walls and rebuilding.”
A smile ghosted across her lips, as if she appreciated the metaphor, although her eyes remained serious. “Sometimes when the old walls collapse around you, it takes a while to clear the rubble.”
“Sometimes that clearing is more than one person can handle.”
“And sometimes the only person avail—” She stopped abruptly and pressed her lips together.
No way was she getting away with that! Eyes narrowed, Seth leaned closer. “The only person available…what? Spit it out, Jillian.”
“Charges into the rubble and stirs up a whole lot more dust!”
“I don’t get your point,” he said heavily. “A couple of minutes ago you were thanking me for clearing up Jason’s mess.”
“Yes, and my thanks weren’t insincere. It’s just…how your efficiency made me feel. The way you took over and cleared everything so effortlessly when I was still operating in this fog. You made me feel insignificant and useless.”
All he’d done was take matters out of her hands so she wouldn’t have to deal with the whole nasty truth—so he could protect her from the nastiest of those truths. She’d been operating in a fog. Her words. Yet he’d made her feel—
Seth rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Hell, he couldn’t repeat the words she’d used, they were so much bunk. “Do I still make you feel the same way?”
“No.”
He stared at her, probably scowling, still struggling with what she’d revealed. And not believing her quick answer.
After a couple of seconds she sighed and her shoulders slumped a little, relenting. “Okay, you don’t make me feel insignificant and whatever else I said. You just make me feel…uncomfortable. Sometimes.”
“Because I’m Jason’s brother?”
“Yes. That’s one thing.”
“And the other?” he prompted, thinking about that knowledge in her eyes earlier. Feeling his whole body tighten with expectation.
“You’re so serious. And intense.” She paused, the frown between her brows drawing tight with concentration as if she were unsure of what to say or how to say it. “You have this way of looking at me and I have no idea what you’re thinking.”
So much for bedroom awareness.
She did not have a clue, and for one barely constrained moment Seth felt like shocking that frown of concentration right off her face. He ached to tell her all about what he was thinking when the heat seared his veins and the tension burned in every cell of his body.