“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.