“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.
Chapter Five
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.