LITMIR.BIZ

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was busy pretending he didn’t see his son sitting there. The woman with him looked too uncomfortable to do anything to defuse the situation. She even took a small step away, maybe distancing herself from the looming scene, maybe ditching that possessive hand. And Cole wasn’t about to make anything easier for anyone, including himself.

      So Dixie took over. She smiled at the waiter. “There’s a misunderstanding, but it’s easily cleared up. There are two Mr. Ashtons present. That, I believe, is Mr. Spencer Ashton.” She nodded at Cole’s father, eyebrows raised. “Aren’t you?”

      He was faintly surprised, as if a chair had addressed him. “Yes, I am. And this is my assistant, Kerry Roarke. You are—?”

      “Dixie McCord.” She turned her smile up a notch. “And this is your son, Cole Ashton.”

      Cole choked and began coughing.

      The manager came rushing up. “Idiot. Idiot.” That seemed to be addressed to the waiter. “Go away. I’ll handle this. I am so terribly sorry,” he said, spreading his hands to include both Mr. Ashtons in the apology. “We have your table, of course, Mr. Ashton.” A small nod indicated the older man. “It’s right over here. If you’ll follow me—?”

      As soon as they were out of earshot Cole said, “If you think I’m going to thank you for that bit of interference—”

      “I’m not that naive. I suppose you want to leave now that you’ve defended your territory.”

      He stood and tossed his napkin on the table.

      Dixie ached for him. Not one word had his father spoken to him. There hadn’t been even a glance—no curiosity, nothing. Nothing Man is a good name for him, she thought as Cole scattered a few bills on the table.

      She knew better than to let Cole see how she hurt for him. Hold out a hand in sympathy right now and he’d snap it off. The walls he’d pulled behind were steep and silent—but then, he had a lot of anger for them to hold back.

      It began spilling out when they got in his suvvy. “Did you see that bimbo with him? His assistant.” He made the word sound obscene. “Doesn’t look like he’s changed his habits.”

      “I don’t think she’s a bimbo.” Dixie fastened her seat belt. It looked as if they were in for a rough ride.

      “Bimbo, mistress, what’s the difference?” He backed out, slammed the car into Drive and stepped on the gas. “I wonder if Bimbo Number One knows about Bimbo Number Two.”

      Bimbo Number One, she assumed, would be his stepmother, the woman Spencer Ashton had had an affair with. The one he’d married as soon as the divorce from Cole’s mother was final. The woman he’d raised a second family with—a family he hadn’t deserted. “There may be nothing to know. I don’t think that woman is his mistress,” Dixie repeated patiently. “The body language was wrong.”

      “Oh, he’s staked a claim there, all right.” Cole swung out onto the street with barely a pause. “Trust me on that.”

      “He may be staking a claim, but she hasn’t accepted it.”

      “Don’t be naive. She was uncomfortable at being spotted with him by his son. Probably didn’t realize I’m from his other family—the one he doesn’t see, speak to or give two cents about.”

      Dixie decided they had better things to fight about than a woman they’d never see again. “You are not like him, Cole.”

      “Where did that come from?” He was cutting through traffic as if he needed to be somewhere, anywhere, other than where he was right now. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

      “You look like him. That doesn’t mean you’re like him.”

      “I don’t want to talk about it.”

      “Okay. We’ll save it for when you aren’t driving.”

      “There’s nothing wrong with my driving.”

      She rolled her eyes. “If you want to argue, fine. But you don’t get to pick the subject.”

      “And you do, I suppose?”

      “Yes, because you’d have us fighting about all the wrong things. What you really need to fight about—”

      “I told you I don’t want to talk about him.”

      At least Cole had moved close enough to the real subject to say “him” instead of “it.” Dixie decided to let him hole up inside his turbulence until he wasn’t behind the wheel, so she said nothing.

      Neither did he. The silence held until she noticed which way they were heading. “This is not the way to The Vines.”

      “I need to drive for a while. It clears my head.”

      “You have a destination in mind, or are we just going to dodge traffic?”

      “My cabin.”

       Chapter Six

      Cole spent the drive to his cabin caught up in a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings. When would he be old enough for it to stop mattering? So what if his father was a sorry sonofabitch? Millions of people had lousy fathers. He ought to be able to shrug off the bastard’s indifference by now.

      Most of the time he could. He did. Today, though…there was just something about seeing Spencer with his newest side piece, pulling the same shit that had wrecked Cole’s life all those years ago. It rubbed him raw, too, that Dixie had been there. He didn’t know why. It just did.

      If he hadn’t looked up to the man so much when he was a kid, tried so hard to win his approval…

      The past was a closed book, he reminded himself, pulling to a stop in front of his cabin. Put it back on the shelf and leave it alone. “Go on inside,” he told Dixie, climbing out. “I’m going to chop some wood.”

      “Oh, good idea,” she said, getting out and shutting her door. “Go play with an ax while you’re too mad too see straight. I’ll get the bandages and tourniquet ready.”

      He flicked one glance at her then walked away, heading for the edge.

      The cabin was surrounded on three sides by oak, pine and brush, but the strip along the front was clear all the way to the drop-off. There, the land fell away in dizzying folds. The view always opened him up, made him breathe easier.

      It didn’t do a damn thing for him today. He stopped a pace back from the rocky edge and shoved his hands in his pockets.

      Dixie had followed him, of course. “This would be easier if you really were Sheila. I can’t help you vent in the traditional male way, by getting into a fistfight.”

      “I should have known all that silence was too good to last.”

      “If you wanted silence, you should have come here alone.”

      Why hadn’t he? He was in no mood for company, yet it hadn’t occurred to him to take her back to The Vines before heading here. “If you wanted me to drop you off, you should have said something.”

      “I’m just putting you on notice. You brought me along. Now you have to put up with me.”

      “I want to show you the cabin.” There. He knew he’d had a reason for bringing her. “But I need a minute to myself first.”

      “You need to do something with all the stuff churning around inside you, all right. Try talking.”

      “I’m not in the mood for amateur therapy.”

      “You know, people were talking—sometimes even listening—for a few thousand years before Freud called it therapy.”

      He

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