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.
Except he’d shaken hands with her brothers ten minutes earlier. They had a deal to work together, for better, for worse. And he’d made a deal with himself to keep business and personal apart.
“Is working together on this project going to be a problem?” he asked.
“I thought it would be, that day I came to see you at Villa Firenze. But after this week and especially after today—” She blew out a breath and straightened her shoulders, although her eyes still looked troubled. “Yes, Seth. I can work with you.”
“Especially if I lighten up?”
“That would help.” Relief chased some of the uncertainty from her expression. “Are we good, then?”
Not that good, Seth thought, but she sounded so hopeful, what could he do but lie? “Yeah, we’re good.”
His reward was her smile. Big and open and warm, it streamed over him and through him, stirring something rich and deep in his very core. Something he wasn’t used to feeling—and damn sure wasn’t comfortable feeling—from any source other than his daughter.
His daughter. Damn. Frowning he shot back his sleeve to study his watch. How could he have forgotten about Rachel? “I need to get going, to pick up Rachel, or my sister will beat us home.”
Her eyes widened a trace, as if she too had forgotten. “If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes, I’ll change into my riding gear and come down to the stables with you.”
“You’re going riding? Now?”
With her hand on the banister and one foot on the bottom step, she paused and cut him a look across her shoulder. “If I have time before dark, but mostly I need to help you pry your daughter off Monty. I won’t take more than a minute to change into my jodhpurs.”
“Only a minute?” he muttered as he watched her ascend the stairs at full speed. Her skirt fluttered around her legs and he thought about her stretching those skintight riding breeches all the way up those long limbs and over her hips. “I’ve seen how tight those jodhpurs are.”
Five
Surely he hadn’t meant her to hear that muttered closing quip…had he?
Jillian kicked aside her work skirt and flopped onto her bed, jodhpurs clutched in her fingers. Heat flared with the vivid and visceral memory of how he’d come to see—and feel—exactly how tight her jodhpurs were. Talk about your over-the-top fireworks response! At the time she’d put it down to her after-gallop high, her euphoric mood, her adrenaline-revved senses.
Now she knew better.
It was time to come clean with herself, something she hadn’t done downstairs. Yes, he made her uncomfortable, much more often than she’d admitted to, and only in part because of that serious, intense thing he had down pat.
It didn’t matter if he lightened up or not. She was attracted to him. Physically, irrationally, but there it was.
Her hormones had stretched and yawned and fluttered back to life, reminding her that once upon a time she’d enjoyed the heat of flirtation and the intimacy of man-woman contact. Back when she’d had a sex life. Back when she’d thought her husband loved her and cherished her and wanted to make a life and a family and a home with her.
Back when she’d been a naive, love-struck fool.
And now her poor deprived hormones wanted to play with a complete non-candidate. One, he had just signed on to work for her. Two, he was her brother-in-law and father of her niece. Three, he was serious and intense and intimidating when she craved warm and comfortable and safe.
When
