Penmort Castle (8 page)

Abby started to
move to another rail. “We’ll figure it out.”

And they
would.

Because they
always did.

Sleeping with
Cash

Upon opening
the door to his home, Cash smelled the food and it was instantly
apparent that Abby could cook.

He also heard
the music.

It was hard not
to. The neighbours could likely hear the music.

This was
because it was loud.

He threw his
overcoat around the newel post and headed to the back of the
stairs, rounded the wall and then down the backstairs toward the
kitchen which was at garden level.

He was late,
tied up at work. He’d called and told her this fact. She was
already at his house when he’d phoned and she didn’t seem to mind
that he’d be home at nine rather than seven, as he’d told Moira to
tell her he’d be.

He did
mind.

Further, he
minded that she obviously didn’t.

Now it was a
quarter after nine and it sounded like she was having a blowout
party attended by rock stars, groupies and their various and
assorted roadies and hangers on.

He made it to
the garden level of his three-story townhouse to see, thankfully,
she was not having a party.

Instead she was
reading a magazine.

When he bought
his house in Bath and started renovations, he’d had this level torn
out so most of it was open plan. Then he’d hired an interior
designer who designed the space for him.

Against the
back wall there was a modern, black, chrome and stainless steel,
state-of-the-art kitchen that several women he’d brought to his
home had been in gales of ecstasy about but Cash, himself, rarely
used.

At the foot of
the stairs separated from the kitchen area by a wide counter with
tall stools was a comfortable seating area he never used.

Across from the
stairs and extending from the kitchen there was a modern,
black-lacquered dining table that seated twelve that he sometimes
wondered why he’d purchased because he’d never sat there.

There was a
cloakroom under the stairs and the only interior door, off the
dining area, led to a workout room with a rowing machine,
elliptical machine, weights and weight bench that, outside of his
bedroom, was the room he used most in the house.

The wall to the
garden shared by the kitchen and seating area had been fitted
almost entirely with floor-to-ceiling windows including a set of
French doors.

Abby was lying
on her stomach on his enormous, scarlet red couch.

She was, he was
surprised to see, wearing a pair of bottom-hugging jeans,
high-heeled shoes with what looked like a number of thin, sexy
straps at the ankle and a taupe jumper woven in such a way that it
was see-through and visible underneath was a creamy camisole.

Her back was to
him and her hair was in a ponytail at the back of her head. She had
her knees bent, ankles crossed, feet swaying in the air and she was
flipping through the pages of a magazine.

She looked like
the stereotypical American teenager and if he heard her snap some
gum in her mouth, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

His hand went
to the knot in his tie and pulled while he called, “Abby.”

He watched as
her body jerked.

Then her head
twisted around, ponytail flipping over her shoulder, and her eyes
locked on him in stunned surprise.

She regarded
him as if she was house sitting and expected him at that moment to
be in a business meeting halfway around the world, not in his house
as he told her he’d be.

“You’re home,”
she announced unnecessarily.

“That and I’m
starving,” he replied.

“You’re late,”
she told him, not moving from her position.

“I called,” he
informed her, yanking off his tie, walking deeper into the room and
tossing it on the large grey chair that sat perpendicular to the
couch.

“You called and
said you’d be here at nine. It’s not nine. It’s
after
nine,”
she returned.

Cash shrugged
off his suit jacket, it joined his tie and he unbuttoned the top
three buttons of his shirt.

He was not in
the mood for this.

He planned to
have been there the last two and a quarter hours, eating the food
she’d cooked for him and exploring the sexual boundaries of their
arrangement.

He had not
planned to be as tired as he was as hungry as he was and as late as
he was. Further, he had not planned to come home to smell something
nearly as enticing as her ass in those jeans, enter into a loud
conversation with her so he could be heard over her music and have
her behave like she was his actual girlfriend, something which, for
many years, he avoided having.

This was one of
the reasons he did not approach any of the women of his
acquaintance to perform the duties he was paying Abby for as he had
no desire to give them any ideas. And they’d get them, he was
certain.

“Abby,” Cash
stated wearily, “I’m shattered. I need a drink, food and bed in
that order.”

She studied him
calmly for a moment then put her hands in the couch and lifted in a
push up, twisting her hips into a sitting position. She rose to her
feet and went to the stereo, turning down the music to a decibel
level that was almost, but not quite, normal.

“What do you
drink?” she asked, her spiked heels sounding on the wood floors as
she walked to the kitchen.

“Tonight,
whisky,” he answered, watching her move through his house.

She went
directly to the cabinet where his housekeeper stored the liquor and
opened the door.

Obviously she’d
become acquainted with his kitchen.

“Water?” she
asked.

“No.”

“Ice?”

“No.”

“How many
fingers?”

She was also
obviously acquainted with whisky.

“Two,” he
answered.

She took down
the whisky and a squat glass and poured two fingers while he went
to the stereo and turned the music down passed normal straight to
old woman.

When he turned
away from the stereo, she was in front of him with his glass.

“I think it
might be illegal in a few countries to play Foreigner that low,”
she declared in her soft voice.

“I doubt
England is one of those countries,” Cash returned.

“I bet Scotland
isn’t,” she replied and seeing her mischievous grin, suddenly, he
wanted to kiss her.

Not touch his
tongue briefly to hers but kiss her so hard, so long and so
thoroughly he could smell her sex mingled with her perfume.

She didn’t read
his mind instead, she went on to tease, “Though, considering your
people brought us the Bay City Rollers, maybe not.”

It was deeply
unfortunate, Cash thought, that she’d teased him.

That
made him want to kiss her even more.

He didn’t
because he knew if he did, at that moment, he might not be able to
stop.

He took the
whisky from her and lifted it to his lips, his eyes watching her
over the rim of the glass. Even dressed casually with very little
makeup, she was stunning.

Before taking a
drink, he returned, “My people also brought you Nazareth.”

He watched her
warm hazel eyes grow even warmer.

“Touché,” she
replied softly.

Good
Christ,
he thought, taking in her warm eyes and soft tone and
he found it took a supreme effort of will not to reach for her.

She seemed
oblivious to his rampaging thoughts and turned, again heading
toward the kitchen.

“I ate
already,” she informed him as she moved and he followed.

This did not
please him.

He didn’t
respond. He leaned a hip against the counter and saw the kitchen
was clean and tidy, only a glass half-filled with red wine sat on
one of the counters.

Abby took down
a plate.

“If I eat late,
I don’t sleep. My body doesn’t like it,” she shared.

He knew she
liked her sleep, she’d told him that morning when he’d woken her to
hear her sweet, soft voice sounding husky, irate and adorable.

He watched her
pull out cutlery and set it beside the plate she’d retrieved and
while he did so he found that he didn’t like that he knew exactly
eight pertinent facts about her. These being she sold her body for
money, couldn’t sleep if she ate late, lived in her grandmother’s
house, had a dead husband, liked loud music, red wine and sleep
and, most importantly, she sounded unbelievably fuckable in the
morning.

“I would have
preferred you waited for me,” he told her honestly.

Her gaze
shifted to him as she pulled on oven mitts.

“Sorry,” she
murmured, sounding like she actually was, and turned away to open
the oven door.

The tantalising
smell came out in a wave and she extricated an earthenware pan
filled with what looked like pasta shells overstuffed with meat and
sauce and covered in cheese.

“Stuffed pasta
shells, garlic bread and salad,” she announced, setting the pan on
a pad, she threw off the mitts with an expert flick of her wrists
and her eyes went back to him. “Baked pears with cream and
chocolate sauce for dessert,” she told him, reaching to pull open
the drawer by his hip. “I ate my dessert too,” she admitted.

“If that’s as
good as it smells, I’ll forgive you,” he told her.

“It is,” she
smiled then bent her head, grabbed a serving spoon and shut the
drawer.

“Who taught you
to cook?” he asked as she served up the shells.

“Mom,” she
replied.

“Is your mother
close?” he enquired.

“I like to
think so,” was her strange and, Cash thought, evasive answer.

Cash didn’t let
it go.

She might wish
to remain distant but he didn’t want that and he bloody well paid
enough to have her as close as he wanted her.

Which was
exactly what he was going to get if he had to tie her down and
interrogate her.

Shaking off
that altogether too stimulating thought, he pressed, “Is she in
England?”

“No,” Abby
replied.

“America,” he
stated.

“Yes.”

“That’s not
exactly close,” Cash remarked.

She’d finished
serving up the shells and was returning to the oven for the bread.
“Well, she’s not exactly in America,” she came back to the counter
with the bread, gracefully flipping the oven door closed with her
foot before she did. Her eyes stayed on her task as she went on,
“It’s more like she is and she isn’t.”

“That sounds
difficult to do,” Cash observed.

She tore off an
enormous chunk of what looked like homemade garlic bread and put it
on his plate before her eyes met his.

“She’s dead,
Cash.”

Her quiet words
felt like a blow to the belly.

Fucking hell
but he was a bastard.

“Abby,” he said
softly by way of an apology.

“It’s okay. It
was a long time ago,” she told him, putting his fork on the plate
and handing it to him then she moved to the fridge.

Cash carried
on, he shouldn’t have but he didn’t know that so he did. “Is your
father still in America?”

“Yep,” she said
casually, head in the fridge, “lying beside Mom.”

When she turned
around, hands holding a big salad bowl, her gaze came to his. He
saw her eyes were carefully guarded. His eyes were on her, his fork
suspended halfway to his mouth.

She went on
matter-of-factly, “Heart attack. Dad. Cancer. Mom. Mom went first.
Two years apart.”

With some
effort, he started to eat.

The food was,
incidentally, better than it smelled.

She put his
salad in another bowl, dressed it and slid it along the counter to
where he was eating and watching her.

She was busying
herself putting away the food when he remarked, “That must have
been rough.”

“It
happens.”

“It does, Abby,
that doesn’t mean it isn’t rough.”

She finished
with wrapping foil around the shells and, head bent to the pan, she
replied quietly, “Miss them every day.”

He felt her
four words settle heavily somewhere in his gut.

He decided to
let her be and as she put the food into the fridge he told her,
“That may be the first time anyone used that oven.”

She closed the
refrigerator door and came back to the counter saying, “I wondered
why it was sparkling clean. I thought you might be obsessive
compulsive.”

“I have a
housekeeper,” he looked pointedly around the pristine room then
back to Abby. “The jury’s out on if she’s obsessive
compulsive.”

He heard her
soft laughter as she jumped up to sit on the counter and grabbed
her wineglass.

“My verdict,
yes,” she said to him with a grin and he was experiencing the
strong desire to put his food aside and kiss her when he watched an
unusual look cross her face.

She was, Cash
realised, struggling with something.

He didn’t wait
for her to win her struggle because her winning, he thought
(correctly) would mean him losing.

“What is it,
Abby?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she
promptly replied.

“Say it,” he
demanded.

“Cash –”

“Abby, what is
it?” he sounded just as impatient and annoyed as he was getting
with her cagey behaviour.

“I just
wondered…” she hesitated then lifted her hand as if to pull her
hair out of her face but then she encountered it tied back and
looked endearingly confused for a moment before her hand drifted
down to her lap.

He waited.

She took a sip
of wine.

He finished his
pasta and salad and prompted, “You wondered what?”

Her eyes came
to him. “About your folks,” she cleared her throat, “I wondered
about your folks.”

Cash didn’t
hesitate. “My father’s dead, no one knows how. Mysterious
circumstances.”