Penmort Castle (14 page)

Slowly, he
smiled. Abby’s stomach did that queer thrilling dip again.

In his throaty
brogue, he ordered, “Come here.”

Her stomach did
the dip yet again. She ignored the dip and headed to her side of
the bed.

Cash stopped
her by saying, “No, Abby, this side.”

She did a
stutter-step, confused. Her eyes went to him and saw he was
watching her. While she stood frozen and undecided, he patted the
area on the bed beside him.

She changed
directions and went to his side of the bed. He put the papers in
his lap, leaned up and his fingers curled around her wrist. He
pulled her down to seated on the bed then settled her at his side,
her body resting the length of his, her head on his chest, his arm
around her, her hand on his bare midriff.

“I have to go
through this before the morning,” he muttered, his fingers curving
around her shoulder. “It won’t take long.”

She was a
little surprised, a little disappointed and a lot relieved.

“Okay,” she
replied quietly.

It felt weird,
lying beside him while he read in bed. Weird and wonderful and warm
and sweet and comfortable and a lot of other things it shouldn’t
feel.

Moments ticked
passed as he read and she lay there.

For a bit, she
tried to read the papers. Then she realised what little she read
made no sense to her.

He shifted
papers around, dropped some, picked up others, somehow never
disturbing her.

More moments
passed and he started stroking her shoulder.

This made her
realise she was tense and her body, of its own volition, began to
relax.

More moments
passed and the tips of his fingers slid up her shoulder, up her
neck and his fingers started to play absent-mindedly with her
hair.

She’d always
liked it when anyone played with her hair.

Lying in Cash’s
bed, his warm, strong body against hers, made it all the
better.

In fact, she
thought dreamily, it was
the best
.

More moments
passed and she fell asleep.

Cash’s
Reason

Somewhere in a
dream, Abby heard, “Abby, I have to get ready for work.”

To this, her
response was to curl her limbs more tightly around the dream Cash
Fraser’s body. This had the added benefit of the front of her dream
body pressing deeper into the front of Cash’s.

“Darling,” his
low, deep brogue was husky and sounded, weirdly to Abby considering
it was a dream, vaguely disappointed.

Then her body,
not of its own volition, moved and the heat of Cash was gone.

Abby curled
into his pillow and fell back to sleep.

* * * * *

Abby felt her
hair slide off her neck and then the words, “Abby, I’m leaving,”
semi-penetrated her unconsciousness.

Her eyes
fluttered open and focused on Cash who in the dark she could see
(just barely) was sitting, fully dressed, in the crook of her
lap.

“What?” she
asked sleepily.

“I’m going to
work,” he replied softly.

“Oh.”

“I’ll be at
your house just before seven,” he told her.

“Okay,” she
said, settling deeper into his pillow then mumbled, “Will you call
me today?”

“I’ll call,” he
answered.

She snuggled
into the pillow and whispered, “Good,” but before he could move she
kept talking, “Last night, I thought we were going to begin.”

“Begin
what?”

She let out a
soft sigh and said, “You know,
begin
.”

His voice held
a smile when he replied, “We did, Abby. Couldn’t you tell?”

She pulled his
pillow to her chest and whispered, “Not really.”

“Then you
weren’t paying much attention,” he muttered.

She was still
not paying much attention. She’d started to drift back to sleep
when she felt the covers pulled up over her shoulder and, after
that, fingers trailed softly down her jaw.

Then out of
nowhere something hit her and panic seized her chest in an angry
claw.

As Cash’s hand
moved away, her own shot out and caught his wrist in a vice-like
grip.

She quickly got
up on an elbow and her eyes flew to his shadowed form.

“Abby –” Cash
started, sounding surprised and pulling at his wrist but before her
mind kicked into gear and she could think what she was saying (or
doing, or
feeling
), she interrupted him.

“You be careful
in that car of yours,” she demanded, her voice hoarse with sleep
and emotion.

She couldn’t
see it but she felt Cash’s body go completely still.

She knew his
eyes were on her but since she was having trouble breathing
(oxygen, she felt, took priority), she didn’t care.

His other hand
came up and he pried her fingers loose from his wrist. After he
succeeded in his task, he took her hand in his, palm cupped to
palm, and brought the backs of her fingers to his lips.

She felt him
kiss her lightly there before he murmured, “Abby, nothing’s going
to happen to me.”

“Just promise
you’ll be careful,” she whispered.

“Darling, I
promise,” he replied, his voice lower, deeper, throatier and she
felt it glide through her system, calming her bizarre panic before
he went on. “Go back to sleep.”

She nodded and
settled back into the pillows as he kissed her hand again and let
it go.

Then he was
gone.

And Abby lay in
his bed and wondered what just happened, why it happened, how she
let it happen and what he thought about it.

Even though she
considered all of this for a very long time, she never came up with
any answers.

* * * * *

Cash Fraser was
in a good mood.

This wasn’t
entirely unusual but it wasn’t commonplace either.

One of the
reasons for his good mood was that he had a call from his uncle
that afternoon.

Normally a call
from his uncle would have the opposite effect on Cash’s mood.

But the call
meant that Alistair Beaumaris had seen the most recent picture of
Abby and himself in the papers. The picture of Abby and Cash
walking the dim, street-lit pavements of Bath, his arm around her,
her body folded neatly into his side.

Since the idiot
who leaked the story about Cash being the man behind the movie,
Cash had many pictures of himself with women printed in various
publications.

Not in one of
them was he taking a romantic moonlit stroll.

Alistair, not
being one for common niceties, hadn’t led into it or danced around
it. He simply proclaimed to Cash that he was aware there was a
woman in his life and, as the head of the family, he wanted to meet
her.

Alistair
invited them for dinner next week.

Normally a
decree like this from his uncle would lead to Cash attempting to
find a diplomatic way to tell Alistair to go fuck himself.

This time, Cash
accepted.

He liked the
idea of Alistair Beaumaris, his oddly sweet wife and her remarkably
tedious daughters sitting down to dinner with Abby.

And he didn’t
care which Abby was in attendance, the cool, sophisticated Abby or
the delightful, hilarious Abby.

Either Abby
would be perfect.

Cash saw this
as an advantageous turn of events.

In their minds
it would solidify Abby’s place in his life even before he and Abby
arrived at Penmort Castle for the anniversary celebrations.

It might even
have the added bonus that he would stop getting e-mails, texts and
drop-in visits from his annoying step-cousins.

Or, to be
precise, it might stop the aggressive, relentless pursuit of one of
his infinitely more tiresome step-cousins (for the other two were
simply just tedious and tended to leave him alone, when he wasn’t
at the castle that was).

Further, Cash
very much liked the idea that he’d get the opportunity to rub his
revolting uncle’s nose in his frustration.

Just over a
year ago, Alistair Beaumaris approached Cash Fraser in an attempt,
Alistair said at the time, to heal “the family breach”.

Cash had never
had any relationship with his father’s family. Except, of course,
when Cash was in his teens and Alistair’s wife, Nicola, asked Cash
to stay at Penmort a couple of times; and when she’d sent him
birthday and Christmas cards, all of them he received when he was
younger and far less affluent, all of them containing monetary
presents, however, Cash suspected, Alistair knew nothing of the
latter.

Further, Cash
had never wanted any relationship with his father’s family.

Even further,
Cash had no desire to heal the breach.

Until he
discovered the true reasons behind his uncle’s advances.

And after that,
he discovered other things about his uncle.

And after
that
, Cash formed a plan.

Cash had now
spent months stringing his uncle along with the ambiguous
possibility that he, as a Beaumaris by blood, if not in name, might
help his uncle save Penmort from the creditors to whom Alistair had
foolishly fallen into debt.

Cash had also
spent months being purposefully vague about the idea of marriage to
one of Alistair’s stepdaughters. A marriage Alistair wanted because
it came with Cash’s money. However, mostly, it was a marriage that
came with the undeniable fact that any offspring (offspring that
would inherit Penmort Castle) would be a true Beaumaris.

And that was
most important of all to Alistair Charles Beaumaris.

However, Cash
had no intention of doing either of those.

Instead, he
intended to walk away from Penmort after the silver wedding
anniversary of his aunt and uncle telling them, and their
daughters, that they had exactly one month to remove their personal
belongings.

Cash would be
moving in.

He already
owned it or he owned the notes against it.

In three weeks,
he was going to foreclose.

Abby was just a
distraction.

The addition of
stunning, sultry, stylish, sophisticated, smart Abby was callous
and even cruel, but Cash didn’t care.

Alistair
Beaumaris had made his mother suffer. And the bastard had murdered
his father.

And he was
going to pay.

The other
reason Cash Fraser was in a good mood was Abby.

If he’d been a
mad scientist and could build from scratch a woman to be on his arm
when he walked into Penmort Castle for the first time as its true
owner, both as a privilege of his birth (which had always been the
case) and legally, he couldn’t have done better than Abby.

And Abby, Cash
decided the minute he heard the door open upstairs heralding her
safe arrival last night, had ended her career as a paid escort.

He would be the
first client she sold her body to and her last client, period.

He would make
it worth her while to retire and they would remain as they were for
as long as that lasted. When he moved on (some time from then, Cash
imagined), he would leave her in circumstances where she could live
in comfort
and
the style which she obviously enjoyed without
her going back to her now-former occupation.

The only thing
which could darken Cash Fraser’s mood that day was Abby’s behaviour
that morning.

Not
when, in semi-sleep, she’d trapped his body with her long limbs so
he couldn’t get out of bed without carefully extricating himself
from her.

Not
when
she’d engaged him in drowsy conversation which included making sure
he’d phone.

No, it was when
she’d panicked about him driving his car.

One second she
was adorably somnolent, the next her fear hit the room like a
thunderclap.

It didn’t take
a clairvoyant to read a car accident was how she lost her
husband.

On the one hand
it had been a very long time since Cash had anyone who gave a damn
if he arrived where he was going safely. Her demanding he be
careful made him feel something he’d not felt since his grandfather
had been alive. It was a time before Cash fully understood his
mother was ill, for Hamish Fraser, his mother’s father, had
shielded him from it. But when his grandfather had died when Cash
was nine, Cash learned swiftly his new role was a caregiver, not
one to be cared for.

Abby’s anxious
demand had brought those long-dead feelings of safety and nurture
back and they were far from unpleasant.

On the other
hand, there were three things he did not like.

At all.

First, he
didn’t like the feeling behind her outburst. It was embedded in
pain and Cash didn’t like the thought of Abby experiencing
pain.

Second, he
didn’t like what her pain meant. It meant she’d once had a man in
her life that she deeply cared for and Cash found he disliked that
idea intensely. Further to this second point, Cash found the
concept of being jealous of a dead man both ridiculous and
abhorrent. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny he was.

Third, he
didn’t want her to form an attachment to him.

What they had,
even though they hadn’t known each other long, Cash knew was good.
And if the kisses they’d shared were anything to go by, it was
going to get better, much better.

But it wasn’t
going to last.

He liked coming
home to her. He liked being home knowing she was going to come to
him (although he did
not
like waiting for her).

He liked her
energy. He liked her company. He liked all that she embodied.

Abby was the
kind of woman that Cash Fraser, forgotten and denied bastard son of
an aristocrat, lived his life knowing he was neither entitled to
nor could he expect to be by his side.

Like everything
else in Cash’s life, he’d had to earn such an opportunity.