The Bridal Path: Ashley (7 page)

“I have to admit, I’d feel better if there was at least some sign of a trail underfoot.”

He winked. “There is. You just have to have a trained eye to spot it.”

Ashley regarded him skeptically. That didn’t sound at all like the boy she’d known, who’d always struck her as someone who’d be more at home in an urban jungle than some dark tangle of weeds, trees and underbrush. She’d always assumed she knew exactly how he spent his spare time back then, but maybe there were aspects of his past not even she knew.

“Did you get some sort of wilderness training I don’t know about?”

“Surely you’re not asking if I was ever a Boy Scout?” he replied, looking as appalled as if she’d suggested he’d secretly taken home economics.

Ashley chuckled. “No, believe me, that thought never once crossed my mind. They would probably have thrown you out by the time you turned twelve.”

“I was ten, actually.”

He said it with a contradictory mix of pride and chagrin. The glint in his eyes suggested pride was winning. He always had seemed to relish his reputation as a bad boy.

“Did you enjoy turning the troop upside down?” she asked.

“Immensely,” he admitted with a grin. “My father was appalled. He thought the troop would straighten me out, give me a sense of direction, teach me some values. Unfortunately, they never gave patches for the sort of things I was interested in.”

“Such as?”

“I’m sure you can imagine.”

“You were interested in girls at the age of ten?” she asked incredulously.

“I think maybe I’ll plead the Fifth on that one.” He eyed her curiously. “So, what were you really asking a minute ago when you mentioned wilderness training?”

“I just thought perhaps you’d been through the Trent Wilde school of wilderness adventures.”

“Uh-oh,” he said, looking fascinated. “You don’t say that fondly.”

“Actually, I missed the worst of it. Daddy wanted sons. He expected sons. Three girls were a surprise, but he remained undaunted,” she said. “He put Dani through his own brand of survival training in the wilds. She hasn’t set foot in the cabin since. She won’t even build a fire in her fireplace. And she absolutely shudders at the mention of rabbit stew and venison steak.”

Dillon laughed. “I’m surprised Trent hasn’t disowned her.”

“Believe me, the thought probably crossed his mind a time or two. On the other hand,” Ashley continued. “Sara loved it so much she ran off and spent days on end hiding out somewhere up here when Daddy threatened to send her off to finishing school. She turned everything he’d taught her against him.”

Dillon’s grin broadened. “He told me about that.”

“He told everyone about it,” Ashley said dryly. “It was hard to tell if he was furious or pleased, but after that, he pretty much gave up. I guess he figured he was no match for our individual preferences and stubbornness, or else he just accepted the fact that girls would never love the same things that sons might have.”

“He let you off the hook? That doesn’t sound like him.”

“Actually, by the time he dragged me up here, he just handed me a fishing pole and pointed me in the direction of the stream. He didn’t even complain when I tossed back everything I caught.”

“Oh, but what a disappointment you must have been to him,” Dillon teased.

“It was no laughing matter, I’ll have you know. But that was the least of the ways I disappointed him, actually,” she said with an air of resignation. “My determination to move to New York was the real biggie.”

Dillon’s expression sobered at once. “No, it wasn’t,” he said adamantly. He regarded her curiously. “Don’t you know how proud he is of you? My God, Ashley, he has drawers filled with every magazine you’ve ever appeared in. He has framed pictures on the wall in his office.”

“You’ve been to Three-Stars?” For some reason that startled her even more than his familiarity with the cabin or his apparent understanding of her father’s thoughts about the life she’d chosen.

The cabin was her father’s private sanctuary, but Three-Stars was as public as a governor’s mansion, a place where Trent showed off his wealth and power. That Dillon had been invited there showed a level of acceptance, a certain depth of male bonding and respect between the two men that she hadn’t guessed existed, despite Dillon’s claims that the two were friends.

“It’s not Buckingham Palace, sweetheart. It doesn’t require an invitation from the Queen.”

Naturally, she thought, Dillon had managed to totally misunderstand and find an insult where none had been intended. “You know what I mean,” she said.

“No, I don’t. Your father’s not the snob you seem to think he is. Or is it just that you can’t imagine anyone inviting me into their home?”

Ashley could feel a dull red flush creeping up her neck. “That isn’t what I meant at all. It’s just that I’m still struggling with the idea that you and my father are friends. He’s so…”

“Respectable,” Dillon offered.

She didn’t like the stiff, cool way he said it, but she nodded. “Okay, yes. Trent Wilde is the epitome of respectability.”

A warning spark flashed in Dillon’s eyes. “And I am…?”

Ashley wouldn’t have answered that if all the hounds of hell had been nipping at her heels. Dillon’s expression demanded a diplomatic answer, and she couldn’t think of anything remotely tactful. Respectability had never been a word she would have applied to the Dillon of old.

“Trouble?” he suggested, filling in the blank for her. “A grown-up version of a juvenile delinquent? Have I hit it yet or should I keep going?”

Ashley swallowed hard at the sudden anger blazing in his eyes. “The truth is I don’t know you at all,” she admitted softly.

“That’s right, you don’t. So maybe you should reserve judgment on whether or not your father’s a fool for befriending me.”

His anger was palpable and, she felt, unjustified. “I never said that,” she said indignantly.

“Maybe not in those precise words, but the message was clear enough.”

“Or maybe you just have a giant-size chip on your shoulder.”

“If I do, people like you put it there.” With that he whipped off his backpack and dropped it on the ground at her feet. “Enjoy your picnic, sweetheart. Suddenly I’m not very hungry.”

He was gone before Ashley could gather her wits to chase after him. Mouth open, she watched as he vanished into the woods. She had two choices. She could try to catch up to him and apologize or she could retreat and make her way to the cabin, where he was bound to turn up eventually.

She decided on the latter. Maybe it was cowardice or maybe it was just the certain knowledge that Dillon needed time to cool down before he would hear any apology she offered. Obviously, she had inadvertently touched a raw nerve. Perhaps, for all the enjoyment he seemed to take in bucking the establishment, he didn’t like being labeled an outcast, after all.

And the truth was, just as she had admitted to him, she had no idea what kind of man he’d become. All she really knew was that she was deeply attracted to him, no matter what grievous sins he might have committed.

* * *

Dillon couldn’t imagine what had gotten into him back there. Surely after all these years he should have developed a thick skin when it came to disparaging looks or unwarranted comments. Growing up in Riverton, where judgments were quick and lasting, had been good training. And in fact, only a couple of days before he’d exalted at being thought of once again as a rebel, a bad boy or whatever particular label had stuck in Ashley’s head.

Maybe it wasn’t the label so much that bothered him. Maybe it was some subtle difference he’d detected in her attitude.

From the moment of his arrival, there’d been no mistaking the sexual tension blazing between the two of them. She wanted him just as badly as he wanted her.

But just now, as they’d hiked through the woods, she’d hinted that while he might be good enough to sleep with, exciting enough for a quick roll in the sack, he might not be decent enough to be friends with the lofty likes of Trent Wilde.

Ironically, of course, that was far from Trent’s view. And, even more ironically, it hurt worse coming from Ashley, a woman who by her own admission didn’t really know him at all.

The fact that it was based on a misapprehension on her part didn’t seem to matter. She’d judged him and found him wanting based on absolutely nothing but the past, and half of that she only knew because she’d heard it repeated a thousand times.

That told him quite a lot about the woman she was. He’d joked before about her being a snob, but he’d just discovered it was no laughing matter when he was on the receiving end of her unspoken disdain.

Of course, none of that kept him from wanting her. His hunger for her nagged at him like a persistent mosquito and, under the circumstances, was a hundred times more infuriating. How could he want a woman who thought so little of him?

All the way to the cabin, Dillon told himself he ought to cut his losses and find some other place to hide out for the remainder of his self-imposed exile from the L.A. rat race. But he knew he wouldn’t. He had something to prove, to himself, if not to Ashley.

He was going to win her over and he was going to do it on his own terms, without revealing that he was no longer an outsider, but a part of the establishment. Maybe in the process he’d discover why all the success he’d achieved didn’t matter nearly as much as he’d once expected it to.

Or maybe the real truth was that all the respect in the world couldn’t make up for his inability to impress the one woman who’d ever really mattered to him.

* * *

She was gone! Dillon called out to Ashley from the front porch, then again from the living room. She didn’t answer. A search of the cabin turned up no sign of her.

Acid churned in the pit of his stomach. What if she’d simply taken off? What if he never saw her again?

Well, that wouldn’t happen, he vowed. He was no longer an adolescent, forced to leave home in order to have any hope of a future. He had almost unlimited financial resources and a large staff of very savvy private eyes working for him. He could find her even if she never again appeared on the cover of a magazine, even if she took to hiding out in the most remote corner of the earth.

And of course, he had a single ace up his sleeve–her father. Wherever Ashley disappeared to, sooner or later she’d be in touch with Trent. Dillon was confident he could persuade his friend to share that information.

And he would do just that, he promised himself. It wasn’t over between him and Ashley. Not by a long shot.

Just as he was working himself into a genuine frenzy of anticipation over the impending search for the elusive Ashley Wilde, the woman herself turned into the driveway at a speed more suited to a raceway. Gravel flew as she screeched to a halt. Dillon stood on the front porch and watched her approach with a wild mix of relief and irritation that her return mattered so damned much. A few hours earlier he’d been furious with her, insulted by her, and now he was practically jubilant at her return.

It would never do, though, to let her see that he’d been worried for a minute by her absence. He forced himself into a chair, propped his feet on the railing and leaned back as if he couldn’t possibly be any more relaxed or unconcerned. He regretted with all his heart that he didn’t have a beer to sip or a cigarette to smoke.

Fortunately, his sunglasses kept her from spotting the avid way he observed her exit from the car, one exquisite, bare leg after the other. Those shorts she wore ought to be outlawed, he thought, swallowing hard as they inched up her thigh.

As she crossed to the porch, she smiled tentatively. “Cooled off yet?”

Not by a long shot,
Dillon thought, though he doubted they meant the same thing. “Some,” he said.

“I’m sorry if I offended you earlier. I didn’t mean to.”

“People never do,” he observed coolly.

Temper flared in her eyes. “I’m not
people,
” she retorted. “And if you can’t accept a sincere apology when it’s offered, then you’re the one with the real problem.”

“Could be,” he conceded.

That seemed to stop whatever she’d been about to say next. She stared at him warily.

“You’re admitting what happened up there was your fault as much as mine?” she asked.

He shrugged. “More or less.”

Her lips twitched ever so slightly. “Am I to assume that’s as close to an apology as I’m likely to get?”

“You can assume whatever you like, sweetheart. You usually do.”

“Dillon, that is not the way to go about making peace,” she chided. “You’re starting the war all over again.”

“So sorry. I surrender.”

She shook her head. “I doubt that.”

Dillon decided to move on to what he really wanted to know. “Where have you been, anyway?” He actually managed to sound only casually interested, he thought with satisfaction. An observer–or more important, Ashley herself–would never guess how much the answer mattered.

“Did you miss me?” she asked.

Okay, so she was onto him. He didn’t have to admit to anything.

“Like a toothache,” he said. “Who wouldn’t miss this scintillating war of words? I asked a simple question. If you don’t want to answer, just say so.”

“I went for a drive. You stalk off in a huff when you’re angry. I drive.”

He found the revelation illuminating. “In that case, it must have been frustrating living in New York all those years. Or did jumping into a taxi work just as well?”

“Very funny.”

“No, seriously, what did you do to relieve stress? As competitive as modeling is, there had to have been a lot of tension.”

“Enough,” she said succinctly. “I meditated.”

“Did it work?”

“Not nearly as well as sparring for an hour with a punching bag.”

Dillon chuckled despite himself. “You boxed?”

Her expression turned sheepish. “Well, I never got into a ring, exactly, but yes. I put a mental image of whoever was driving me nuts onto that bag and slugged away. It was very satisfying. I mentally bloodied the noses of a lot of very important people in the business.”

“I’ll bet. I suppose my face would have been on there this afternoon.”