The Ashtons: Cole, Abigail and Megan. Maureen Child

it.” There was a hint of the devil in his sidelong glance. “Maybe I should borrow his technique. As I recall, you’re a great cook. If I show up demanding dinner—”

      She laughed. “You won’t get in the door. I suspect your priorities are different from Hulk’s.”

      “You’re right.” His voice dropped as he stroked her arm. “I’d want to go straight to the petting.”

      Just that light touch, and her system hummed happily. She wanted more, and there was no one around but herself to warn her of the dangers. “Hands off. I can’t defend myself with my arms full of Hulk.”

      “I know. I like you helpless.”

      “You’ve never seen me helpless,” she retorted. They’d reached the carriage house. “Open the door, will you, so I can put my monster back where he belongs.”

      Instead he leaned against the door, smiling. “Bribe me.”

      “Oh, come on, Cole—”

      “Just a kiss. I’ll even promise to keep my hands to myself.” But he wasn’t. He’d reached for a strand of her hair and was tickling her with it—under her chin, along her throat. “One kiss…or don’t you dare?”

      She raised an eyebrow even as a shiver touched her spine. “You think I’m juvenile enough to jump at that bait?”

      “I can hope.” He moved even closer, stopping with scant inches between them. The heat of his body seemed to set the air between them ashimmer with possibilities. “Why not, Dixie? It’s not as if you don’t want to kiss me.”

      Her heart was pounding. “Your neck ever get tired from holding up that swollen head of yours?”

      He just smiled. “It’s only a kiss. What could it hurt?”

      All kinds of things—me, you…but apparently she wasn’t very good at listening to herself, because she went up on tiptoe, pausing with her lips a breath away from his. “No hands,” she murmured. And she kissed him. Slowly. Just a skimming of lips at first…

      “Uh-uh,” she said when he tried to take over. “This one’s mine.”

      Hulk was between them, so their bodies didn’t touch. Just their mouths. The scent of him was a heady intimacy as she tickled his bottom lip with her tongue, then touched it to each corner of his mouth, and arousal was pure pleasure. The ache grew, gradually focusing like a perspective drawing, when all lines lead to a single point.

      Dixie opened her mouth over his and took his breath inside her—which was just as well, for she didn’t seem to have enough of her own. For a moment they met fully, lips, tongues, breath.

      Then she eased back, smiling. And was pleased by the stunned look on his face.

      He reached for her. She stepped back, shaking her head. “No hands, remember? Open the door, Cole.”

      “The door.” He blinked. “Right. Anything you say. Sure you wouldn’t like all my worldly goods instead?”

      “Not just now, thanks.” She sauntered inside, still holding her cat…with her heart pounding and pounding, and a little voice inside asking if she’d lost her mind.

      This had to be about the stupidest thing he’d ever done, Grant thought as he gunned his pickup in order to keep up with the shiny blue Mercedes half a block ahead on the busy highway. He was acting like some two-bit private eye, for crying out loud.

      But Grant didn’t give up easily. Some called him pigheaded. He preferred to think of himself as determined. And so far, Spencer Ashton had refused to see him, leaving Grant only two options: give up and go home, or somehow force the bastard to talk to him.

      The bastard who’d fathered him. His father. Grant forced himself to use the word, though it went down about as well as ground glass.

      Looked as if they were heading out of the city. Spencer owned a big, fancy mansion near Napa. If that’s where he was going, Grant was out of luck. He’d already been turned away from that door. From the high-rise office building here in San Francisco where Spencer went most mornings, too.

      Which is why Grant was playing P.I. Sooner or later the man would go someplace where none of his servants or employees manned the gates.

      Sooner or later his father would have to speak to him.

      Grant scowled. More than once he’d wished he’d never seen that damn TV show. He’d come in from working on the older of his two tractors, showered and settled down with a cold beer. The game hadn’t started yet, so he’d been thinking about the weather while some documentary about winemaking finished up. A perky young reporter had been interviewing Spencer Ashton of Ashton-Lattimer, a corporation that owned vineyards and a large commercial winery.

      Ashton Estate Winery. The name had snagged Grant’s attention, naturally, since it matched his own surname. But it was the face that had riveted him.

      Spencer Ashton’s face looked like the one he saw in the mirror every day. Not in any one feature, maybe, but something about the way they were grouped. That had been spooky, but it hadn’t occurred to Grant the man might be his father. Even though the names were the same, he’d known it was impossible. His father had died when he was barely a year old.

      Then the interviewer had mentioned Spencer’s Nebraska upbringing. They’d flashed a picture of him as a young man—and the man in that photo had been identical to the one standing beside Grant’s mother in the yellowed wedding photo she’d kept by her bed until the day she died.

      Two weeks later, Grant had climbed in his pickup and started for San Francisco, leaving Ford in charge at the farm.

      Ford had asked what he expected to accomplish. Grant had told his nephew he wanted to meet the half brothers and half sisters he’d never known existed. That was true, if only a partial truth.

      So far he hadn’t mustered the nerve. He’d driven out to The Vines one morning, but hadn’t been able to bring himself to ring the doorbell. It was weird to walk up to a bunch of strangers and say, “Hi, I’m your brother.” Their money complicated matters. They were likely to think he wanted something from them.

      He did, but it had nothing to do with money. Family mattered. These strangers were family. He needed to know what they were like.

      What he hadn’t told Ford was that he also needed to look the man who’d fathered him in the eye and say, “You can’t pretend I don’t exist. I do.”

      What good that would do, he couldn’t say. But he was going to do it. Maybe today, maybe later, but he wasn’t leaving California until he did.

      On Friday, Cole took Dixie to Charley’s restaurant in Yountville for lunch.

      “I can’t believe I let you finagle me into this,” Dixie said, sliding out of Cole’s suvvy.

      “You lost the bet.” Cole was entirely too pleased with himself.

      “That part I understand. How I let you talk me into making such a dumb bet, I don’t.”

      “Maybe you didn’t really want to win.” He held the door for her.

      “I knew you were going to say that. The fact is, Hulk’s gone over to the Dark Side. He conspired with you.”

      “You’re talking about a cat, Dixie.”

      “I’m talking about Hulk.”

      “I get your point. Table for two,” he told the hostess. “I have a reservation.”

      “Of course, Mr. Ashton. This way.”

      Dixie raised her eyebrows. “They know you here.”

      “We sell them wine.”

      She nodded. “And just when did you make that reservation?”

      “The same day we made the bet, of course.”