Penmort Castle

Chapter Four The Phone Call and the Picture

Abby heard the phone on her bedside table ring, ripping her from a deep, fitful sleep and Zee made a mew of disapproval as he stretched his four legs out, arching his back into Abby’s belly.

She peered at the clock and saw it was just after eight in the morning.

Cash had her home before ten with no necking, likely much to the disappointment of Mrs. Truman who Abby saw peering through her draperies at them when they arrived. Though he walked her to the door, he didn’t attempt to come in, didn’t attempt to give her a goodnight kiss but also didn’t leave until she’d made her way safely inside, closed the door and had turned on the light in her bedroom.

Still, even though she was in bed early, she didn’t get to sleep until the wee hours.

This was because she spent hours tossing and turning with the realisation that she’d, again, done something thoroughly and completely stupid.

Although there were other stupid things she’d done in the last thirty hours (many, many of them), her Latest Stupid Abby Act Obsession currently centred around that kiss.

When she’d kissed him the day before at the pub it had been to make a point and it was under her control.

However, wiping her lip gloss from his mouth had been habitual. It was something she’d done for Ben countless times. She was, of course, a girl who liked her lip gloss.

She didn’t know why she did it to Cash. She just had and she’d kicked herself for it before burying the memory deep in the recesses of her mind.

But she couldn’t bury that kiss. It was right at the surface.

The smell of Cash, the feel of his body against hers, his hard mouth and, finally, the sweet touch of his tongue.

He tasted of brandy which he’d drunk after dinner. Brandy and the rich chocolate torte with clotted cream he’d had for dessert.

Good God, but he tasted good.

She’d felt the touch of his tongue from her mouth, through her body, to the tips of her curled toes.

She’d never felt anything that luscious or that strong.

Not even with Ben and Ben had been a fabulous kisser.

And that meant her exasperation with herself was mingled with the guilt she felt at betraying her dead husband.

She shoved these thoughts aside. These weren’t waking-up thoughts. These were beating-yourself-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night thoughts and she reached to the phone and pulled it out of its receiver.

She was not big on mornings, though she was usually up well before now. Exacerbating her usual morning mood was the weight of her current predicament.

Therefore, when she said, “Hello?” into the receiver, her fresh-from-sleep voice sounded peeved.

“Abby.”

It was Cash.

What was with this guy?

Could he not leave her alone for even a moment?

“Cash,” she said, her voice sounding breathy.

There was heavy silence before he said softly, his burr trilling deliciously in her ear sending an uncontrollable shiver down her spine, “I’ve woken you.”

She tried (and failed) to ignore the shiver and then tried to decide what to say.

She couldn’t tell him she had trouble sleeping that would expose too much.

She also couldn’t lie and say she hadn’t been asleep, her voice made it obvious.

“I like my sleep,” she said instead, something which was not a lie.

There was more silence and this was heavier.

When he didn’t break it, she called, “Cash? Is there something you want?”

“Yes,” came his immediate reply.

She got up on an elbow and Zee looked up at her, blinking (Zee, being feline, liked his sleep too).

When Cash didn’t expand on his answer, Abby was forced to ask, “Well? What is it?”

There was a hesitation, then, “Do you cook?”

She blinked at Zee and repeated stupidly, “Cook?”

“Yes. Pots. Pans. Spoons. Ovens. Cook,” he spoke in one word sentences, sounding like he was trying not to laugh.

Abby felt her blood pressure rising.

This was not because he seemed to be amused at her expense.

This was because him seeming amused made her feel funny and not in a bad way. It was a good way. It was a way that put her vow to be faithful to her dead husband in heart, mind and soul (if not in deed, obviously) until the she day she died in peril.

With effort she controlled it. She knew she let on way too much last night. Somehow she had to keep her distance without being unfriendly.

How she was going to manage that, though, she had no earthly clue.

“I know what cooking is,” Abby answered. “What I’d like to know is, why are you calling me at eight o’clock in the morning and asking me if I know how to do it?”

“Because, if you do, you’re cooking for me tonight at my place,” he replied.

Abby’s heart lurched at the very idea of cooking a meal for him at his home. The lurch was both fear and excitement, something else with effort she controlled.

“I fail to see how that’s going to get our picture in the paper,” she returned.

“What will be seen, and perhaps photographed, is you coming in my front door,” Cash explained, though she could tell he was no longer amused but attempting to be patient.

She had to admit he was right and Abby pushed up to rest her back against the headboard as Zee got to his feet and stretched.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we went out?” she queried.

“Abby, if we always go out, they’re going to think we’re dating. If you’re at my place, they’re going to think we’re together. The object of this is to make them think they missed the first part and that we’re well into the second part,” he informed her and again, annoyingly, he was right. He went on, “Now, do you cook?”

She gave in ungraciously on a sigh, “I cook.”

When he spoke again, he was back to sounding amused. “My assistant will call you and make certain whatever you need is at the house.”

“Fine,” Abby replied, deciding that giving in also had the additional benefit of bringing her closer to the end of this weirdly intimate conversation.

Her anticipated relief was short-lived when Cash said, “Bring a bag.”

Abby’s lungs seized.

“Pardon?” she wheezed into the phone.

“A bag,” Cash repeated.

“Why?”

“You’re spending the night.”

Oh my Lord, she thought.

“What do you mean, spending the night?” she asked, the breath coming back into her lungs with a burning whoosh.

There was a pause before he asked, this time back to sounding like he was attempting patience, “I’m not certain which part of ‘spending the night’ you need me to explain.”

Her blood pressure rose again, this time for a different reason and she failed at controlling it. “The part, Mr. Fraser, where you don’t remember that the deal is I don’t sleep with you until we go to the castle.”

His voice was low, rough, vibrating and unbelievably effective when he replied softly, “Darling, the deal is I don’t fuck you until we go to the castle. I can sleep with you whenever the hell I want. And tonight you’re spending the night.”

Was that the deal?

The preliminary deal was, she pretended to be his girlfriend including sleeping in the same bed with him. The point was that she’d share a room with him at the castle, thus proving to his uncle that she was, indeed, his very attached and devoted girlfriend.

However, there were no restrictions noted on that and she’d stupid, stupid, stupidly not made any.

He’d amended the deal with the sex part, which she’d only restricted to after they went to the castle, not getting into the sleeping-in-the-same-bed-with-him part.

Which meant, yet again, he was right.

But why would he want to sleep with her?

What, she asked herself again, was with this guy?

“Bring a bag,” he repeated.

“Fine,” she snapped.

“Enough to leave things you may need there,” he demanded.

Oh dear Lord in heaven above, she cried in her head.

“Fine,” through her teeth she gritted out loud.

“Moira will give you my address and make sure you get in,” he told her.

“Who’s Moira?” she clipped.

“My assistant,” he answered.

For some reason, that took the wind out of her sails.

“Oh,” she said softly.

More silence, then she heard his voice, far less authoritarian, much gentler and definitely sexy, say, “What are you making me for dinner?”

“Fillet steak marinated in arsenic,” she returned acidly.

She heard his quick bark of laughter, it was nearly as delicious as his soft burr sounding in her ear and she knew she’d done it again. Unconsciously, she meant to make him laugh.

“Are you done with me?” she continued, far angrier with herself than she was with him and wondering if she could find a hypnotist who could stop her from being funny and charming.

While she was contemplating her first move of the morning (directly to the phonebook to look up hypnotists), the soft burr was back, trilling lushly through the phone and throughout her system, when he answered, “Not even close.”

Then she heard the disconnect and he was gone.

Zee stared at her, likely wondering about breakfast.

Abby stared back and muttered, “Bloody, bloody hell.”

“What is with this guy?” Jenny exclaimed as she snapped hangers across the rails of a clothing display at Harvey Nichols.

It was early afternoon, they were shopping and Abby had shared her plans for the evening.

“I’m learning that during negotiations I should be very detailed in what I will, and will not, do as an escort,” Abby replied, snapping her own hangers.

Jenny stopped snapping hangers and stared in disbelief at Abby.

“What?” Abby asked her friend on raised brows.

“Do not even joke about the possibility that this will become your profession,” Jenny hissed.

“That’s not what I meant,” Abby replied, and it wasn’t.

“Well, it sounded that way,” Jenny went back to snapping. “This whole situation is flipping me out. I’ve got a perpetual headache. Kieran’s not getting his usual servicing, which is flipping him out and pissing him off. I’m not sleeping, I’m on edge, I hate this and I hate it more because it was my idea in the first place.”

“Jenny –” Abby started, her heart going out to her friend, the depths of her guilty feelings digging to new lows.

Abby had a lot of friends, a lot of very good friends, but Jenny was the best by a mile.

Jenny had been there when Abby’s Mom got cancer. Even though she and Kieran lived in Amsterdam at the time, until the bitter end (and it was bitter, ugly and painful for everyone, especially Abby’s Mom), Jenny came to Virginia every few months and stayed weeks, not only for Abby but for Abby’s Mom who was known as “Mom Deux” to Jenny.

Two years later, when Abby’s Dad had the heart attack that killed him, she and Kieran (living in California then), had dropped everything and flown to DC.

Abby had been inconsolable and Ben had all he could do to take care of her, cope with his own grief and deal with a situation at work that was demanding his attention. Jenny and Kieran had arranged everything, the funeral, the memorial service, the food and drink for the gathering at Ben and Abby’s afterward.

A year after that, one minute after Abby woodenly closed the door on the police officer who stood in her foyer telling her that Ben had been killed instantly “at the scene” of a car crash, she’d picked up the phone and called Jenny.

Again, Jenny had dropped everything, flew out and stayed with Abby for two months, even going so far as sitting on her knees beside Abby in the bath and washing her hair when Abby was too exhausted from grief to bathe herself. Jenny cooked and she cleaned. Jenny held her when Abby sobbed. She poured the tequila when they sat around and got drunk while remembering all the many, wonderful things about Ben. In the middle of the night, she crawled into Ben and Abby’s big bed and held Abby tightly while she rocked, trying to get to sleep without her husband at her side. And before she left, she helped Abby pack up his belongings, tucking away the precious mementos and sending away the things she didn’t need.

When Kieran and Jenny moved to England, Kieran’s promotion and transfer took him to Bristol, a city close to Gram. Gram had grown a bit unsteady on her feet, far weaker and definitely in need of routine visits. So Jenny and Kieran bought a house in the same seaside town so Jenny could look after her grandmother.

And when Gram died, it had become clear after three years facing a mountain of debt, on her salary, that Abby could not, and had not for a very long time, maintain the home she shared with Ben.

Jenny came out and helped her get Ben and Abby’s house ready for the market. She helped her pack, she helped her arrange the shipping, she helped Abby close down the tattered remnants of the life she’d loved and then Jenny had helped her leave it behind.

At Harvey Nicks, Jenny kept on snapping hangers and ignored Abby’s pleading tone.

Without looking at Abby, she asked, “Did you see the picture?”

Abby knew exactly what she was referring to and she had. One of the workmen who came in that morning to work on her bathroom had looked at her strangely and when she’d asked in a teasing way why, he’d showed the paper to her.

Seeing the picture had been a shock.

She had hundreds of pictures of her and Ben. Ben had been tall too, though not as tall as Cash.

But he’d been blond, like Abby (but darker), blond and blue-eyed with the big stocky body. Jenny said Ben gave the best bear hugs because he was a human bear, and Jenny was right.

Abby had not seen herself with another man since Ben because there were no other men since him. She’d never expected to see herself with another man. She hadn’t anticipated the pain she’d feel when the pictures of her and Cash started appearing.

She hadn’t anticipated a lot.

Including the fact that she thought, somehow weirdly detached, that she and Cash looked good together. It was almost as if she was looking at two other people, not herself and Cash.

Her Mom, Dad, Gram, Ben, Kieran and Jenny had, for years, teased her that she was some kind of bizarre mutant.

She’d not been a very pretty baby (to say the least) or a darling little girl.

She’d been passably pretty in high school, not ugly enough to get bullied, not pretty enough to get many dates.

In college, though, as she matured and let her wild nature loose (or, looser, as her father would say), things changed.

A few years after college, she met Ben and she didn’t think about it much until later, until they all started commenting on it.

Even the day before he died, Ben had mentioned it.

“I married a pretty lady,” he’d whispered in her ear that morning, his voice husky because it was right after they’d made love, “what’d you do with her?”

Abby had twisted her head and kissed his neck.

“What do you mean? She’s right here,” she’d whispered back, tightening her arms which were wrapped around him.

He’d lifted his big body up on his elbows and framed her face with his hands.

“No. What I got right here isn’t a pretty lady,” his face was serious, then his mouth descended to touch hers and against her lips, he said, “she’s a beauty.”

He hadn’t been joking and to that day, standing in Harvey Nichols with Jenny and knowing it was one of the last things he ever said to her, Abby treasured that memory and equally treasured knowing, before he died, that her husband thought he’d been married to a beauty.

But the picture with Cash was something else.

After Ben, Abby really didn’t think of the way she looked. She couldn’t care less.

But wearing her “Smoky Evening” look and her expensive shoes and her grandmother’s elegant cape, she looked like she belonged on movie-star-gorgeous Cash Fraser’s arm.

And if Jenny was flipping out, Abby was freaking out.

“It’s a good picture,” Jenny whispered and Abby felt her throat get tight.

“Yeah,” Abby agreed.

Jenny cleared her own throat and commented, “He’s hot.”

Her friend didn’t know the half of it.

And for the first time in their friendship, Abby didn’t share.

She was terrified of what Jenny would say if she knew the confused, illicit, guilt-ridden feelings she had about Cash.

Feelings she shouldn’t have.

Feelings she wasn’t entitled to have.

Feelings that would lead nowhere because firstly, her heart belonged to a dead man and secondly, she was the other man’s whore.

And Jenny, who adored Ben, would never forgive her for betraying him.

Maybe with someone she met in some normal way, at a pub, at a party, walking down the street.

Not with Cash Fraser.

Instead, Abby asked, “Okay, so what does a girl wear to make dinner for an international, hot guy, spy hunter?”

Jenny kept slapping hangers, staring down at the clothes with a discerning, determined eye, clearly on a mission, and muttered, “No clue.”

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

And they would.

Because they always did.