“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.”
Her face gentled. “I’m sorry, Cash.”
“Don’t be, I never knew him.”
He saw surprise flash in her eyes before she said, “I’m sorry about that too.”
He moved to put his dishes in the sink. “Don’t be sorry about that either, from what I know, he was a twat.”
When he turned from the sink, she was watching him and, gently, she repeated, “I’m sorry about that too.”
At her words, instead of walking to her, forcing open her legs and pulling her into his arms, moulding her body to his, crotch to chest, so he could kiss her like he very much wanted to do, he leaned his hip against the sink, crossed his arms on his chest and replied, “I’m sorry about it too.”
She took another sip of wine, tilted her head and asked, “Your Mom?”
“Suicide. I was fifteen.”
Her eyes got wide and she breathed, “Bloody hell,” she shook her head and went on, “oh my God.”
“I found her,” Cash, likely suffering from guilt for forcing her to talk about her own dead parents, found himself sharing a piece of information that he rarely shared with anyone.
“Oh my God,” she repeated.
“It wasn’t a surprise. She’d tried three times before,” Cash continued.
Her back straightened and she lifted a hand that Cash saw was shaking before she demanded in a voice as shaky as her hand, “Please, stop talking.”
“She wasn’t a well woman, Abby, it was the reason my father didn’t marry her,” Cash explained because she was looking pale and for some reason in pain.
Her look intrigued him.
Women looked at him in many different ways all of which he could read. Cash knew Abby was horrified by what he’d shared but he didn’t quite understand the pain.
“Still,” she whispered, breaking him out of his thoughts, “you found her?”
“It was expected. Every time I came home, I expected something. She was manic depressive, amongst other things, and refused to take meds. When she was high, she was brilliant, funny, beautiful, smart, full of energy. When she was down, she was suicidal. It’s not as tragic as it sounds if it’s your life. It’s only tragic when it’s not,” Cash stated calmly because he was calm. He’d long since learned this lesson and he’d learned it very well. “She was the one who called me Cash, came up with it during a high. I was very young and it stuck. I don’t remember ever answering to anything else.”
Latching onto a change of topic, Abby asked, “What’s your real name?”
“Conner.”
She observed him for a moment.