The Ashtons - Cole, Abigail & Megan

going to bed with you. And now I really need to get back to work.” She started back toward the winery.
    She was moving faster than usual, he noted. “You’re passing up the chance to throw a great temper fit.”
    “I don’t throw fits. Or anything else.” “Lost that artistic temperament, have you? I seem to recall a plate that came sailing my way once. I could have sworn you were mad.”
    Her lips thinned—but it looked more like an effort to hold back a smile than real temper. “Tell me, Cole. Is this your version of dipping my pigtails in the ink to get my attention? Or are you really spoiling for a fight?”
    “Want to watch me turn somersaults? Or I could do chin-ups. They’re more macho.”
    The smile won. She paused. “Push-ups. There’s something so manly about push-ups.”
    He promptly dropped to the ground and began doing push-ups.
    She laughed in delight and sat smack-dab on the cold ground to watch, propping her chin on her hand. “Ooh, look at those muscles. You’re so strong.”
    “Don’t forget—” he managed one more “—manly. Strong and manly.” He stopped before he could embarrass himself, rolling onto his back and sitting up. Maybe he needed to add more upperbody training to his routine. His arms felt rubbery. “That was harder than it looked,” he assured her.
    “I can’t believe you did it—and in dress slacks, yet.”
    He was surprised, too. “It worked. You quit running away.”
    “I wasn’t running.” She drew up her legs and hugged her knees.
    “Okay, walking away.” He wished she’d stretch her legs out again. Dixie had great legs—firm calves, narrow ankles. He wanted to run a hand up one of them.
    “Quit staring at my legs.”
    “I’m checking for goose bumps. What did youdo—get up and say, ‘I’m in California, therefore I must wear shorts?’”
    Her mouth twitched reluctantly. “Something like that. It’s almost warm enough for them.”
    He leaned back on one hand. “Why the evasive tactics, Dixie? Do you really want me to go away?”
    She shrugged, not looking at him. “When I decided to take this job, I wasn’t expecting you to put on a full-court press. I tried not to have any expectations at all, but in the back of my mind I guess I thought you’d be in your chill zone with me.”
    Cole didn’t want to hear about how cold she thought he was. “I keep telling you I’m not twentyfour anymore.”
    “It’s damned disconcerting, too.” She plucked a blade of grass and ran it up her bare leg. “Like going home after years away and seeing old buildings gone, new ones put up. You turn a corner expecting to see the Wilson’s frame house, but they’re long gone and the new people have stuccoed the exterior and cut down the big oak tree. So much is the same, but I keep tripping over the differences.”
    “You’ve been home for visits, though, haven’t you?”
    She slid him an amused look. “I was speaking metaphorically.”
    “I got that. I just wondered if you’d avoided California altogether.” And why she’d returned.
    “I come back once or twice a year to see Mom and Aunt Jody.” She pulled up some more grass andlet it sift through her fingers. “Mom’s getting married again.”
    “Yeah?” He tried to sound as if this was a good idea.
    Her wry look told him he hadn’t pulled it off. “This time it might work. Mike’s a good guy.”
    Cole could barely call up an image of Helen McCord Lynchfield. He’d only met Dixie’s mother once…and that seemed odd, now that he thought about it.
    Of course, their affair had only lasted a little over three months, though they’d known each other off and on ever since Mercedes went off to college. Merry and Dixie had been roommates, and Dixie had come home with her several times during breaks. There’d been trouble at home. The man who’d been her stepfather at the time had been a grade-A bastard.
    Dixie’s mother had finally left the bastard a month before Dixie graduated. And a month after that, the Valley had sweated under a record-setting heat wave. Cole and Dixie had claimed responsibility for that.
    “I imagine your mom is glad to have you nearby. And your aunt, too. She’s still in L.A.?” In some ways, Dixie was closer to her mother’s sister, an award-winning reporter, than to her mother. While Cole could understand why, it had always made him wary. Jody Belleview was a funny, fiercely independent woman with a finely developed scorn for marriage.
    “Aunt