Just a Taste Read online

  “Sorry.” And, dammit, she really did look sorry. “I should have remembered.”

  Seth tried but he couldn’t stop himself asking, “And if you had?”

  “I’d have at least brought you a card. Or maybe even a cake.”

  “With candles?”

  “Wouldn’t that constitute a fire hazard?”

  Only to Seth’s imagination.

  Somewhere during their birthday-cake banter, he’d started to picture Jillian wearing nothing but teeny tassels and those sexy high heels, bursting from the top of a tacky surprise cake. The kind his buddy Lou might have arranged had he not been out sick. The kind he had no right placing in the same fantasy as Jillian, the sister-in-law he had no right lusting after. But since he’d done so from the first moment he laid eyes on her, and since she’d never shown any sign of being anything other than uncomfortable in his company, he figured he’d keep right on lusting from afar.

  Part of the ongoing penance for coveting his brother’s wife.

  She looked uncomfortable now, no doubt because he couldn’t help staring—yeah, and lusting—and because the silence between them had stretched into the realms of long and awkward.

  “I called in at your office,” she said, bridging that conversational gap while casually widening the gap between them. “Mel told me you were working out here. She didn’t say you were destroying Villa Firenze.”

  To indicate the scene of carnage, she did this little gesture thing with her hands. They were elegant and eloquent, Jillian’s hands, and one of the many, many things he’d noticed that first time he met her as Jason’s new bride.

  One of the many, many things that turned him on.

  “The Maldinis are converting the ground floor into a restaurant.”

  “Ahh.” Pivoting on her high heels, she took in the whole scene through thoughtfully narrowed eyes, as if picturing the completed renovation. “It looks like a big job.”

  “A satisfying one.”

  And not only because he’d lucked out and gotten the chance to wield tools today. He followed her gaze around the Italian-style villa, solid and structurally sound, yet with the soul of its century-long history alive in the cellars and gardens and kitchens.

  “I hope they’ll go with Tuscan food,” she said.

  “They will.”

  Jillian nodded, satisfied with his assurance. Seth Bennedict had that way about him. He said; you believed. And she grabbed at the perfect segue into her reason for being here. “That’s what I want to talk to you about, Seth.”

  One thick dark brow lifted in surprise. “You’re starting a restaurant?”

  “No. Oh, no.” She loved good food, which meant someone else needed to cook it. “But I am extending and remodeling our tasting room. I’d like you to quote.”

  There, that hadn’t been so difficult. Not once she’d gotten past the unsettling sight of Seth looking so rough and, well, uncivilized. Although she wished she’d known about his birthday. A card, a cake, a gift of wine would not have been inappropriate.

  Staring at the tiny snagged tear in his T-shirt, at the teeny sliver of dark skin and darker chest hair…now that was inappropriate.

  “Is this not a good time?” she said, looking away. Rattled because she’d been staring, and just a bit giddy with a sense of airless heat. “To talk about this?”

  “You’re here now. We can talk, but let’s take it outside.”

  He wore a hard hat. He’d already mentioned the fact that she didn’t. “I guess I’m breaking all kinds of safety regulations.”

  “Yeah.” He met her eyes, his as dark and intense and disquieting as always. “You are.”

  “So. How extensive is this job of yours?”

  This question she could answer, now that Seth had removed himself from her breathing space. With an extremely disconcerting hand at her back—not quite touching, but hovering thereabouts—he’d shepherded her away from the curious sidelong glances of Tony and his coworkers and into a stand of olive trees beside the villa.

  Leaning against the gnarled trunk of one old tree, arms crossed over his chest, he looked relaxed and receptive.

  Reassured, Jillian waved a hand toward the villa. “Not very extensive compared with your present job. A lot of the work is remodeling and refitting, but there is a storage room that has to go so I can expand the tasting room space.”

  “Business is good, then?”

  “Busier than ever. Easter weekend was complete madness and we’re anticipating even more traffic over the summer, since we’re doing a national marketing push.”

  His brows rose a little. “I thought boutique wineries like yours were all about word of mouth and competition medals.”

  “Yes, but we’re releasing our first chardonnay. Plus with the economy tight the gap between premium wines like ours and the average bottle is narrowing.”

  “You’re losing market share?”

  With Cole at the helm? Oh, no, her brother would so not allow any market to get away from him! “Our sales are still growing, but we’re not resting on our laurels.”

  “What’s your schedule for the renovation?”

  “I really need this to be quick and hassle-free. I don’t want to close tastings, so I’ll be setting up a temporary area in the cellar.” Which Eli was going to hate. “As for starting time—” She drew a breath and looked right at him. “That will depend on you.”

  He stared back at her for a long minute, those dark eyes even harder to read than usual in the mottled pattern of light and shade. “I haven’t said I’ll do it, Jillian.”

  “Are you saying you won’t?”

  “Not won’t. Can’t. Not if you want it done in the next month or two.”

  Jillian’s stomach plummeted. “You’re that busy?”

  “Signed contracts on two new jobs last week, and that’s on top of a heavy schedule.”

  All the emotional energy she’d spent worrying over coming to see him and asking for his help, and he couldn’t do it? Why hadn’t she considered this outcome? Why hadn’t she realized that his reputation would always keep him booked way ahead of time?

  Well…blast!

  Except right on the heels of that initial sense of anticlimax, came a subtle easing of tension in her shoulders and limbs. It felt almost like relief. She had identified Seth as number one on her best-builder list; she’d driven over here and done the asking; he’d said no.

  Now she could carry on as before, not exactly avoiding him but not needing to seek him out. She wouldn’t have to deal with his macho intensity or her reaction to it. Truth be told, the man scared her, unsettled her, made her too aware of herself. And she neither liked nor trusted any of those reactions.

  With her thumb she touched the back of the wedding band she still wore on her left hand, not to remember, but as a caution against repeating the mistakes of her past.

  A caution to proceed slowly and with care, especially when it came to men.

  Yet this man—this builder—had brought her out here, encouraged her to talk about her plans. What was that about? “If you weren’t interested,” she began slowly, frowning, “why didn’t you say so before, inside?”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested.” Something shifted in his gaze, deep and dark, making her feel as breathlessly off-kilter as when his hand had hovered at her back. “I said I can’t fit your time frame.”

  Semantics. Jillian dismissed the whole conversation with a frustrated little shrug. She didn’t have time for this…for this bandying of words or for her body’s rogue responses.

  Whatever the reason, he wasn’t interested in quoting for her tasting room renovation. Discussion closed.

  Seth watched her press her lips together and straighten that long, elegant backbone. Gathering her poise and dignity after copping another blow on the chin. He’d seen her go through the same motions many times before, and knew she wouldn’t try and change his mind.

  And, damn, just once he wished she would beg a favor of him.


  Exasperated with himself—for wanting something that would never happen, something so out of character for Jillian—Seth straightened from his slouch against the tree and rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.

  “Just a minute.” He wasn’t going to change his answer, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help in a smaller way. “I hear Terry Mancini’s finding retirement tough. He might be interested in a job like yours. Or I can call around and see who’s—”

  “There’s no need to do that,” she interrupted. “I can manage to find someone else on my own.”

  Posture straight and her shoulders all stiff with pride, she turned to leave. And wasn’t that just like Jillian, going all cool and haughty and knocking back his offer of assistance?

  Once she had accepted his help, eventually, but not because she had wanted to. She’d had no choice. And oh how she’d resented that lack of choice, his intervention, and the inevitable slam to her dignity when the truth about Jason’s affairs unraveled.

  Seth felt his own shoulder muscles bunch with tension. “I’m sure you can find any number of builders who’ll jump at the work, Jillian. But will they do a good job?”

  She had already started to turn, preparing to leave, but she paused to look back across her shoulder. “I don’t know, Seth. That’s why I came to you first.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help.”

  “So am I.” She looked right at him then, her gaze clear and direct. “I wanted the best.”

  Well, damn.

  Two

  T he sun was still sleeping when Jillian rose. She tiptoed from her second-story bedroom and down the winding staircase without missing a step in the near-dark. She’d taken the same path so many times she imagined she could do it blindfolded. This was her family home, where she’d grown up and lived into her twenties, and she’d moved back after Jason’s death.

  She didn’t mind living with her parents. It wasn’t as if she had a social life—or, Lord help her, a sex life—to consider. Safe, secure and nonthreatening, her life at The Vines was everything she’d rushed to escape in her early twenties and everything she wanted in her future.

  At the foot of the stairs, she swung toward the kitchen…and barreled right into her mother.

  The solid impact drove a whoomph of breath from Caroline Sheppard’s lungs. Surprise startled a squeak from Jillian’s. With one hand flattened over her wildly thumping heart, she peered through the wan predawn light into her mother’s face.

  “Good grief, Mom, you scared a year off my life! What are you doing skulking around at this hour?”

  “I might ask the same of you.”

  “As it happens, I do have a reason.” Jillian held the riding boots she carried aloft. “I’m on stable duty this morning and I have to be finished before eight.”

  “Another builder?”

  “Yes.” Unfortunately.

  The sigh in her answer must have sounded as weary as she felt because her mother’s hands came up to gently squeeze her shoulders. “Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, Jillie. There’s no rush.”

  “After dealing with the crush over Easter?” She shook her head ruefully. “The remodel needs to be done before summer, Mom, and the sooner the better.”

  Yesterday seemed about perfect to Jillian.

  After a week of calling and chasing and calling again, she had exhausted her A-list of builders. Every morning she woke with nothing more concrete than, “I’ll do a quote and get back to you.” And today she faced Louret’s weekly business meeting with no solid quotes and only one builder of questionable reputation showing any solid interest. Cole might well decide that he should be overseeing the job.

  “I can do this, Mom,” she said, straightening her shoulders. And she would, once she found a builder who wasn’t booked solid right through summer. Or who didn’t think he knew better than she how her tasting room should look and function.

  “I know you can do it, hon.” Her mother gave another reassuring squeeze. “So, who is it this morning?”

  “Travis Carmody.”

  Caroline frowned. “I can’t say I know him.”

  “He hasn’t been in California long.”

  “Is he any good?”

  “He’s available.” Which, somehow, had moved way up Jillian’s priority list. She bit her bottom lip, worried all over again. “Or at least he says he is.”

  “You don’t trust his word? Isn’t that telling you something?”

  “That I have deep-seated trust issues?”

  Caroline smiled at her wry attempt at humor, but it was a small smile tempered with maternal concern. “Or perhaps he’s not the right man to hire. Have you tried Seth Bennedict?”

  “He gave me a straight ‘can’t do it.’”

  Her mother’s finely shaped brows arched expressively. “Well, I am surprised that Seth wouldn’t help you out.”

  “I didn’t want him to help me out, Mom. I wanted him to quote the same as anyone else. A business deal. No special favors.”

  She met Caroline’s eyes, and the circumstances of her previous dealings with Seth Bennedict arced between them. They had never discussed the nitty-gritty of Jillian’s marriage, and her mother, God bless her, had never asked for explanations. She’d simply offered her love, the sanctuary of her childhood home and a shoulder to cry on.

  Yet Caroline had been in a similar place herself after the crushing demise of her marriage to Spencer Ashton. Jillian saw that empathy in her mother’s eyes now, and her throat tightened with emotion.

  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.