Penmort Castle (31 page)

They were
nothing of the sort (even though it felt like they were).

Three days was
a godsend. Three days meant she could shore up her defences and
have her head screwed on properly. Three days was a
miracle
.

Her miracle
lasted two seconds because Cash went on. “I want you with me.”

Abby’s body
jerked at his words.

“In Germany?”
she breathed.

He dumped the
ice in a tea towel but turned his head to her and she saw he was
smiling. “No, darling, I thought you could go to Capri. We’ll meet
back here.”

Even though he
was amusing, Abby didn’t laugh. She was busy searching blindly for
a way out.

Germany meant
all Cash and nothing but Cash except when Cash was working, which
would be time she was alone, without workmen, paint pots, Jenny,
Mrs. Truman and her spaniels, which would be time she’d be doing
nothing but
thinking
about Cash which meant zero time to get
her head on straight.

She came up
with a solution.

“What’ll I do
with Zee?” she tried.

His brows went
up. “Zee?”

“My cat.”

“You named your
cat Zee?”

“His name is
Beelzebub but that’s hard to say all the time, especially when
you’re yelling at him,” Abby explained.

Cash stared at
her then asked, “You’re telling me you essentially named your cat
Satan?”

“Well, yes,”
Abby replied as if it was perfectly natural to name your beloved
pet after the Lord of Hellfire and Damnation and watched as Cash
did a very slow blink which forced her to defend her choice. “You
don’t know him. Trust me, he’s aptly named. He can be a little
devil.”

He watched her
a moment then his face grew warm and soft and Abby struggled with
her instinctive, highly pleasant reaction to that look.

He smiled and
turned away, shaking his head. Then he slammed the ice in the tea
towel against the counter, twice.

“I’ve tried
that, it doesn’t work. You have to use a rolling pin or a meat
tenderiser,” she informed him helpfully but watched as he upended
the perfectly crushed ice into her drink then she muttered, “Okay,
well, if you have the strength of He-Man, it works.”

She heard his
chuckle as he handed her the drink, tossed the tea towel into the
sink and went back to the martini.

“Can you get
someone to look after your cat?” he enquired.

She could.
Jenny would do it. Pete would do it too. Hell, Mrs. Truman would
probably do it.

“Yes,” she
replied and tried not to sigh.

He poured the
martini from the shaker into a stemmed glass, saying softly, “Make
the call.”

Abby
blinked.

Then she asked,
“Now?”

He turned to
her, took a sip, his eyes on her over the rim of the glass.

Her brain noted
Cash looked very sexy drinking from a martini glass.

Her emotional
warrior trotted over to her brain and slapped it upside its
head.

“Now,” he
replied after his hand lowered. “We leave from Bristol Airport at
half ten.”

Abby’s eyes
bugged out. “Ten thirty! But I have to pack.”

“I’ll take you
home tomorrow morning to pack,” he told her.

“But, I need
time
to pack,” she blurted, horrified. “We’re going to be
gone for three days. That’s six outfits. Day time and night time.
Plus accessories. Plus toiletries. Plus I need to strategise
makeup. I have to be prepared for anything. That might take hours.
Under normal circumstances, that would take days.”

“We’ll be at
your house by seven. We have to be at the airport by nine. You have
an hour and a half.”

“Seven?” she
breathed, beyond horrified straight to distraught.

Seven meant she
had to be up, showered, dressed and made up to leave Cash’s at six.
That meant she’d have to be out of bed by four thirty.

Abby’s headache
started pounding but she didn’t have time to worry about it because
she’d started to hyperventilate.

The only times
she remembered being up and out of bed of her own accord that early
were Christmas mornings when she was a kid and the time her parents
took her to Disneyland.

Abby didn’t do
mornings, especially not super-early ones where only nurses,
doctors and criminals were awake and functioning.

Cash saw her
dismay and tried to calm her with promises.

“You can sleep
in the car,” he said.

“But –” she
started.

“And on the
plane,” he went on.

“But –”

He came close,
mouth smiling (like she was
amusing
him), and he put his
hand to her neck, effectively silencing her with a gentle,
affectionate squeeze.

“Abby, make the
call,” he demanded.

She gave it a
moment, ever-hopeful he would relent.

He didn’t.

Abby
sighed.

Then she made
the call.

* * * * *

Abby was lying
on the sofa off the kitchen, her temple resting on Cash’s thigh,
her eyes unseeing on the book in front of her.

She didn’t
want
to be in that position (well she did but she
didn’t).

But she
was.

After dinner,
when Cash told her he had a few things to read through before going
to bed, she’d joined him on the sofa and he’d manoeuvred her into
that position.

Skilfully.

He was sitting
upright, feet on the table, ankles crossed, reading glasses on,
going over papers while his fingers idly played with her hair.

This felt
nice.

All
of
it did.

So Abby was
concentrating on anything but how nice it felt.

She decided to
concentrate on dinner, which was weird. After they sat down to eat,
her headache had begun hammering and her mind inventoried her
belongings in a failed effort to decide what to take to
Germany.

Conversation
was short and stilted but not intentionally. Abby was miles away
namely, in Germany, wondering what the weather was like.

She didn’t
figure Cash noted this because halfway through dinner he took a
call with a murmured, “Sorry, darling, this is important,” and then
was on the phone the rest of the time they ate.

At his side,
watching him sitting at the head of the dining table and talking
business while eating was when she realised he worked like a
demon.

He got up
early, got home late, read through papers at night and worked
weekends.

Abby asked
herself, what kind of life was that?

As far as she
could tell, outside of working out and the time he spent with her,
he had no life away from work. There were no photos around his
house, no mementos from travels, no blinking answering machine with
messages from mates who wanted him to meet them at the pub.

Nothing.

This worried
her. Then she got worried because she was worried. Then she told
herself to stop thinking about it.

He was off the
phone by the time she’d done the dishes and put the food away only
for him to tell her he had
more
work to do.

Now she was on
her side on the couch, head resting on his thigh, legs curled into
her belly, trying to read but there was so much in her head, she
hadn’t turned a page in ages.

His fingers
moved to her hairline, tracing it from temple to behind her ear,
then the tips drifted down the length of her neck to her
collarbone.

Abby’s
attention moved from her thoughts and focused on his fingers.

Then she heard
his rough brogue say, “You’re angry with me.”

In surprise she
rolled to her back and looked up at him. “Pardon?”

He studied her
from behind his sexy glasses.

Then he tossed
his papers to the side, his eyes came back to hers and he repeated,
“You’re angry with me.”

She stared at
him a moment then placed her book on the table, rolled back around,
put her hand to the couch and pushed up to face him.

Then she said,
“I’m not angry with you.”

His hands went
under her armpits and hauled her closer so she was almost sitting
in his lap. She put both her palms on his chest as one of his hands
dropped from under her arm, the other one came to rest on her
hip.

“Abby, don’t
lie to me,” he said, but softly, taking the sting out of his words.
“You haven’t been yourself all night.”

She felt her
brows go up and started, “I –” but he cut her off.

“It’s the
house.”

Her brows
lowered significantly, registering her confusion. “The house?”

“I’ll not have
you living in that house the way it is,” he stated firmly.

It dawned on
her that he meant
her
house.

“Cash –” she
began again only to be cut off again.

“I know I told
you I wouldn’t get involved but, darling, it’s taking too long. I
don’t like the thought of you there without the bare necessities.
Simon’s report indicated there are other significant issues. They
have to be seen to promptly and I’m going to see that they
are.”

“Cash, I –” she
began
again
only to be interrupted
again
.

“I’m not
discussing this,” he declared.

Abby sighed and
she did this deeply and loudly.

Then she asked,
“Can I speak now?”

“Only if you
don’t intend to argue with me,” he answered.

She didn’t know
whether to laugh or yell.

She wanted to
laugh because it felt nice, him taking care of her, seeing to her
“issues”. She hadn’t had anyone (but Jenny) to help her along the
journey of life for so long she forgot how good it felt to share
the burden.

She wanted to
yell because he was way, too, damned bossy.

Instead, she
did neither. Partly because she had a headache but partly because
escorts didn’t argue, girlfriends did.

She was, she
told herself firmly, the former, not the latter.

“I can’t say I
wasn’t a bit,” she hesitated then found the word she was looking
for, “
peeved
when Simon and Nigel showed up today. But I got
over it.”

His lips tipped
up at the word “peeved” but he replied, “If that’s the case, can
you explain why you’ve been distant all night?”

She answered
immediately, “Yes. I have a headache. I’ve been fighting it all
day. I –” she stopped talking because she saw his eyes narrow
dangerously and she knew from experience that was not a good
sign.

His hand came
up and pulled off his glasses.

“You have a
headache?” he asked, his voice had dipped low, toward the scary
zone where it went when he was irate.

“Yes,” she told
him cautiously then went on. “It’s not a big deal. I get them
sometimes.”

“Why didn’t you
tell me?” he demanded to know and she could tell by the way he did
that he wasn’t irate, he’d gone beyond that.

“It’s not a big
deal,” Abby repeated, confused by his reaction.

“Normally, no.
When you’ve slammed your head against a basin and lost
consciousness, then yes, it fucking well is,” he returned, tossed
his glasses on his papers and reached for his BlackBerry.

Abby blinked
and asked, “What are you doing?”

His eyes were
on his BlackBerry and he was using his thumb to manipulate it but
he answered, “I’m calling my physician.”

Abby pulled in
a breath then said quietly, “Cash, you don’t have to do that. It’s
just a headache.”

His eyes came
to hers and pinned her to the spot.

Not that she
could go anywhere. The hand that was resting on her hip had become
fingers gripping it.

“Have you felt
nauseous?” he asked.

“No.”

“Dizzy?”

“No.”

“Problems with
balance? Vision?”

“No!” she
cried. “Cash –”

But his eyes
moved away and he said into his phone, “Tim? Cash,” and Abby stared
at him in shocked, but contradictorily pleased, horror as he
continued, “sorry for the late call but Abby had an accident last
night, hit her head and was unconscious for several minutes. She
was checked by paramedics…”

And he went on
and Abby watched him.

When it became
clear to Cash that all was well and clear to Abby, from what she
heard of their conversation, that Invisible Tim had given her the
go-ahead to live her life
and
take the flight the next day,
which was something she hadn’t considered or she would have faked a
full-blown concussion, Cash ended the call.

“Tim thinks
you’ll be okay,” Cash informed her.

“I already told
you I was okay,” she informed Cash.

“Do you have
seven years of medical training and fifteen years of practice?”
Cash asked evenly.

Abby gritted
her teeth and then replied, “No.”

He watched her
mouth as she formed the word, his own mouth forming a grin.

“All right
then,” he muttered, leaned forward, kissed her forehead and sat
back, his eyes coming to hers. “we’re agreed. We’ll take Tim’s word
for it.”

They weren’t
agreed on anything but Abby didn’t say that.

She continued
to grit her teeth and stare at him.

This made him
chuckle.

Her stare
became a glare.

His chuckle
became a laugh.

She stopped
glaring and rolled her eyes.

He pushed up to
his feet, taking her with him, announcing, “Time for bed.”

On
that
,
they were agreed.

* * * * *

After Cash gave
her more paracetamol, they turned out the lights and made their way
upstairs.

They were in
bed, Abby’s front pressed to Cash’s, his arm resting heavily on her
waist, their legs tangled and she felt his steady breathing stir
the hair at her crown.

It was then the
tears stung the backs of her eyes.

And Abby
realised it hurt, it actually physically
hurt
, to want
something, something within reach, something that was pressed tight
to you, legs tangled with yours.