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

“I’d love to make for Louret, but Eli’s got that covered. Then there’s Mason waiting in the wings.”

Matter-of-fact, no bitterness, but just a hint of yearning in her eyes. Not for the first time, Seth considered the family dynamics and what it must be like to work in such an environment. Yeah, there was a lot of love and support, but tough for the youngest to prove herself with such dominant forces as Eli and Cole Ashton running the show.

“You have the resources to hand-make a small batch under your own name.”

“Yes and no.” A small frown creased her brow as she swirled the contents of her glass. “I would need to source the grapes.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Getting the right grapes is. They’re low yielding, high cost. Difficult, temperamental, risky. And, Lord knows, I’ve had enough of those things to last the rest of my life!”

“Some risks are worth taking.”

“And some definitely aren’t.” Her gaze swung up from her glass, serious, intense, troubled. “How does a person distinguish which is which?”

Was she talking about wine making? Her low-yielding, high-cost, difficult, temperamental ex-husband? Or about the risk involved in, say, a knee-jerk “okay”? The risk that it wouldn’t be about sex, that once wouldn’t be enough, that there’d be no delineation between fantasy and reality…

“You trust your instincts. Go with your gut or with storybook philosophy—whatever works.” What else could he say? What advice could he give from his own sorry state of flux? “Sometimes they’re all screaming ‘too risky’ and you’ve got to do it anyway. The passion’s got your throat in a choke hold and won’t let go.”

“Maybe I’m not passionate enough.”

“Maybe you just need a gentle shove to remember the passion.”

“Good response,” she said softly after a contemplative pause. Her gaze drifted down to his mouth and then back to his eyes. “You are good with those gentle shoves, aren’t you?”

“They have their uses.”

He placed his hands palms down on the table, and after a moment’s hesitation, she—God help him—spread one of her hands over his. Her left hand, bare of jewelry, and despite those long, elegant bones it looked tiny in contrast.

Pale, tiny and incredibly erotic.

“Big hands,” she said, low and husky, “have their uses.”

Seth picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. More civilized, he decided, than putting it where he wanted it. Then someone—probably Robert, although Seth didn’t bother checking—chimed silver against crystal until the cacophony of conversations and the loud, hammering pulse in his head and between his legs dimmed to a low hum. Amazing. All these other people in the restaurant—at the same table, even—and his focus had narrowed to one. For how long they’d been immersed in their own sensual vacuum, he had no clue.

He turned now, pretended to listen as his friend formally launched Casinelli’s 2001 pinot noir. Robert kept it short and sweet, ending with “let the wine speak for itself.” Much applause then a hundred-odd enophiles reached for their glasses.

Seth watched Jillian go through the motions. Nose in glass, the long inhalation, the longer moment of reflection before she lifted the glass to her mouth. She took her first taste and her eyes drifted shut as she held it in her mouth. The heat of her rapt expression, the subtle movement of her throat as she swallowed, the ruby sheen on her lips: they all combined to create a moment of near-violent longing in Seth.

To generate such passion, to watch those lips part so softly, to see that same rapture when his mouth was on her, tasting her, driving her wild with pleasure.

“As good as anticipated?” he asked, and his voice sounded about how his body felt. Hot, gruff, hard.

“Mmm, better, although that may be partly due to anticipation. ” She sipped again, contemplated, her eyes focused somewhere deep within herself. “Silkier than last year. Big hit of fruit. Rich cherries, some raspberry. And there’s a floral note that reminds me of the ninety-seven.”

Seth picked up his own glass, sniffed. “You can tell the vintages apart?”

“I’ve scored a hundred percent on blind horizontals and verticals.” She frowned. “Does that sound conceited?”

“It sounds…interesting.” And erotic. Jillian, blindfolded and horizontal.

“Interesting in what way?”

He smiled slowly as the idea took form. “Interesting, as in, would you like to prove it?”

She looked up from her glass, a stillness in her eyes, her face, her body. “How?”

“I have a pretty decent collection.”

“Of pinots? Of Sophia’s pinots? How?”

Seth shrugged. “I told you the Neumanns were friends.”

“And, what, they just send over a bottle each Christmas?” Her gaze swung toward their hosts and back at him. She coughed out a strangled laugh. “They do, don’t they? They actually send you bottles as gifts.”

What could he say? She was right.

Slowly, disbelievingly, she shook her head. “And you made out as if you were a complete philistine. You encouraged me to rabbit on about pinot noirs and about Sophia’s wine.”

“I have the wines. Doesn’t mean I know a blessed thing about them.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“It’s a cliché, but I know what I like to drink and that’s my only interest in wine.”

Apart from this fantasy of licking the stuff from your body.

“So.” He turned the glass through his fingers. “Are you up for the challenge?”

“A blind tasting of Casinelli pinots? You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“You told me not to mess with you over these wines.”

She moistened her lips. “When?”

“Tonight.”

Seth savored the spun-out moment as he waited for her answer, the anticipation, the expectation, the certainty of what she would say.

“Okay.”

Nine

“Oh, no, Seth. No, no, no!” Jillian held up both hands in combination denial and horror. “You are not going to open all those bottles.”

“Backing down?”

After growing up with brothers, Jillian could pick a taunt a country mile away. Even when delivered in a deceptively soft and silky tone. She lifted her chin. “I’m trying to stop you doing something completely crazy.”