Read The Ashtons - Cole, Abigail & Megan for Free Online Page B

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 Jody’s not in L.A. anymore.”
    Something in Dixie’s voice caught his attention.She was looking down at a small patch of ground she’d absentmindedly denuded of grass. “What is it, Dix?”
    “She’s the reason I moved back here. Mom couldn’t take care of her by herself anymore.”
    A quick squeeze of hurt for her had him covering her hand with his. “That sounds bad.”
    “Pretty bad, yeah. She has Alzheimer’s.”
    Stunned, Cole just sat there. He’d met Dixie’s aunt just once, at the same time he met her mother. But Jody Belleview was the kind of woman who left an impression. He remembered her laugh and her quick, restless intelligence. “I can’t imagine…isn’t she younger than your mother? Only fifty or so?”
    “Fifty-four. I’m still in denial. Which is not as easy to do on this coast as it was while I was across the country.” She gave him a brittle smile, then gathered herself and rose to her feet.
    He stood, too.