Penmort Castle (7 page)

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.”