The Ashtons: Jillian, Eli & Charlotte: Just a Taste / Awaken the Senses / Estate Affair

“Well?” she asked, still frowning.

“Yeah, it’s ‘look-at-me,’” he said slowly. “But not too much.”

That seemed to please her, or at least to reassure her. She relaxed enough to almost smile—and to give him a covert once-over through her lashes—as she came down those last steps.

“Do I pass muster?” he asked.

A delicate flush climbed her cheeks. “I haven’t ever seen you in a tux. It’s…well, it’s a change from the jeans and toolbelt I last saw you wearing.”

At the cottage.

Reference to that place and time weighted the mood as he took the wrap from her hands and moved around her, draping it over her shoulders as he went.

“I like your hair.” Better, he liked the way it curled around her ears and exposed that sexy bite-me neck. He traced its silky length with the knuckles of one hand and leaned closer to breathe the warm scent of her skin. “And the way you smell.”

“I’m not wearing any perfume. I never do. It interferes with the tasting.”

“I know.” He stepped back. “Ready?”

A pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, but she lifted her chin and met his eyes. “Ready as I’m ever going to be.”

Yeah, but was he?

Seth rarely enjoyed this kind of function, no matter how lauded the chef or the wines. He’d accepted the invitation because it was a charity fundraiser and because Robert had caught him at a weak moment. He didn’t expect to enjoy himself, yet that’s exactly what he was doing.

How could he not get a kick out of watching Jillian?

Surrounded by winemakers and wine lovers and, yeah, the wine snobs these events attracted like ants to a picnic, she was in her element. Seth sat back and watched as the tension from their taxi drive up to Oakville unraveled in a shimmering ribbon of wine talk.

Sure, it helped knowing he was responsible for bringing her here and for the animated pleasure in her eyes and the glow of heat in her skin. Because while she seemed riveted to the conversation that flowed across the table and back, she was also very aware of Seth at her side. Without words, without more than a fleeting touch and a momentary sizzle of eye contact, he knew she was as finely attuned to his presence as he was to hers. And, in a warped kind of way, he was enjoying the torture of a body already turned on by anticipation.

She was, after all, going home with him.

A waiter appeared at her elbow to clear away the second course, disrupting her discussion with an intense-looking vintner on her right.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

Her response, a guttural mmmm of pleasure, played nasty games with his state of semi-arousal. “Only one bad moment so far.”

Seth lifted a brow.

“That French winemaker we met earlier? He works for my—” Her brows came together in a half frown. “For Spencer. For Ashton Estates.”

“And?”

“I had a moment, a tiny panic, thinking this is exactly the sort of function Spencer might be at.” She huffed out a soft sound of derision. “Ridiculous, since even if he were here, I wouldn’t need worry my cheeks about it.”

“He avoids you?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say ‘avoids.’ That would denote action when he just doesn’t notice we exist. Anyway—” she waved a dismissive hand and her tone turned upbeat “—I am enjoying myself, immensely, so let’s forget I mentioned it.”

Seth wouldn’t forget, not when the vulnerability behind her remark caught hard in his chest, but he could pretend. The last thing he wanted was for the mood to turn serious and intense. The second-last thing he wanted was the shadow of Spencer Ashton—the man she took such pains not to describe as “my father”—darkening her enjoyment.

“Forgotten,” he lied, and she rewarded him with a wide smile.

“Thank you for inviting me, Seth.”

“My pleasure.”

He met her eyes and didn’t bother hiding that pleasure was, indeed, front and center in his mind. Heat sparked in that knowledge and smoldered between them until a waiter risked third-degree burns by leaning in to pour the next wine. Jillian thanked him and the waiter departed, his job done.

Seth touched the back of her hand with his knuckles and inclined his head toward the newly poured wine, left to breathe as they awaited the next course of food. “Well, there it is. Your reason for coming tonight.”

“Not the only reason.” She moved her hand against his—just a brush of contact but it sizzled through his knuckles like hot solder. “Not the only reason, but a nice incentive.”

A smile whispered over her lips as she touched her wine glass, fingertips to stem in a delicate gliding contact. Probably innocent. Probably not meant to provoke, but that’s what it did. Already he was one sorry case of aroused red corpuscles, and with three courses still to go. He swallowed hard. Better than groaning out loud, he figured.

“I’m like a child at Christmas,” she said softly, “waiting to open my Santa present.”

Yeah, he agreed silently. Same. He inclined his head toward the wine. “What is so special about this Santa present?”

“Everything.”

“You want to expand on that?”

“Oh, I could expand on that for hours,” she said through a smile, “but I don’t want to put you to sleep.”

Not that that was a remote possibility, but Seth played along. “Give me the abridged version and I’ll take my chances.”

“Okay.” She tilted her head, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Everyone’s trying to make a pinot noir these days. It’s like the wine of the moment, the new chardonnay, but pinot’s an unforgiving little beggar. It’s not only a matter of vinifying the grapes—which Sophia does better than anyone on this side of the world—but in growing them right, since it’s a terroir wine.”

“Meaning?”

“It expresses the vineyard conditions more than other varieties. If you can find the right soil and microclimate, and you can plant your vines thick enough, and if you can get into that pocket of hell-dirt to tend and pick the grapes, then you stand a chance of making a pinot like this.”

She picked up her glass by the stem, tilted it so the color stood out in stark contrast to the white tablecloth. Like the cherry-red silk of her dress against porcelain pale skin.

“Look at that,” she said in raw reverence. “Beautiful.”

Yeah. Beautiful.

“This is the wine I want to make one day.” Gently she swirled her glass, and the set of her mouth turned rueful. “Well, not this wine, precisely, since Sophia has already made it. But my own thing of divine beauty.”

“Louret makes a decent pinot.”

“Eli does,” she corrected, “and he’d thank you not to refer to it as merely decent.”

So, she wanted to make her own wine, and not just any wine, but a great wine. From what sounded like the fussiest grapes. “Your own label?” he asked, “Or for Louret?”