“Abby, I’ll repeat, I was not groping Suzanne,” Cash returned.
“Whatever!” Abby shouted, beside herself, experiencing a layering of freak outs that she couldn’t quite overcome. “How would you feel if you came home and saw me in the arms of another man?”
Cash’s eyes narrowed and his hands went to his hips. “I wouldn’t fucking like it but I would also give you the chance to fucking explain.”
“Right,” Abby snorted with disbelief. “You’d freak.”
And he would.
“I would. Then I’d give you the chance to fucking explain,” he fired back.
Abby shook her head and walked to him with the intent to walk right by him and get her coat. “I’m not talking about this. I’m going home.”
Cash’s fingers curled around her upper arm firmly, effectively halting her and when she looked up at him, he stated, “You are home.”
“My home,” she snapped back.
“Yes, darling,” he returned calmly, “your home,” then he jerked her purse out of her hand again and threw it on a chair, making his point.
She looked at her purse and something came over her, something she couldn’t control.
She had an excuse, of course.
Her whole life, within weeks, had been turned on its head. And that included living with an impossibly rich, incredibly handsome, very famous International Hot Guy. And that also included going head-to-head with a ghost.
So, Abby thought, it was really only a matter of time before she lost her mind completely.
Which was exactly what she did.
In slow motion, her eyes moved from their perusal of her bag to Cash.
Then she shrieked, “Stop throwing my stuff!”
Cash pulled her close and his arm started to slide around her as he said, “Abby, you need to calm down.”
“Calm?” she asked. “Calm!” she screeched. “You be calm!” She yanked out of his arms and took two steps back, he came for her but she lifted her hand, pointed a finger at him and he stopped. “You be calm in the face of what I’ve seen, and done, and then seen tonight. A ghost, Cash, I came face-to-face with a fucking ghost!”
Distractedly she noticed his whole body jerked as if he’d been punched in the stomach but she just kept right on ranting.
“And let me tell you ghosts are scary!” she shouted then started pacing. “They scream and you… would not… believe how awful it sounds. They melt through walls. They melt back through walls. They float. And they attack!”
She stopped ranting and glared at him.
Quietly, looking like he was fighting the urge to check her temperature, he said, “Abby, there are no such things as ghosts.”
“I would have said the same thing a few weeks ago, but believe me, there are ghosts. They’re mean and they’re nasty and this one particularly,” Abby returned as if she had any authority on ghosts (although she felt, at that moment, she did).
“Maybe I should get you a drink,” he suggested.
“I don’t want a drink,” she retorted.
“Then maybe I should call Tim,” he replied softly.
“You are not going to call Tim!” Abby shouted.
He took a step toward her, saying, “Abby, you have to calm down.”
“Have you heard of Vivianna Wainwright?” Abby asked suddenly and Cash halted and watched her a moment
Then he murmured, “I see. Fenella has been –”
Abby cut him off. “No, Cash. Fenella has been nothing.”
“Darling –” he started again and Abby interrupted again.
“I didn’t slip in the bathroom,” she announced and watched as his body went still. “Your hand doesn’t slam through a mirror when you slip. It slams through a mirror when you’re shoved.”
Cash stared at her a moment then said softly, “Darling, you’ve been going through a lot lately.”
“Yes,” Abby agreed on a toss of her hair, “I have, including becoming the target of a ghost.”
“Abby –”
“Cash, listen to me!” she yelled. “I’m not crazy. I know what I saw. I know what I felt. I was standing at the sink, looking in the mirror and there she was behind me. She came at me, shoved me between the shoulders and I slammed forward, my hand going up to shield my fall, it went through the mirror. Only then did I slip and hit my head on the basin. And tonight, it was worse.”
His gaze was locked on hers, his jaw clamped and she saw a muscle working in his cheek.
Then his eyes moved over her face then down to her sweater where they stopped and narrowed.
“What happened to your jumper?” he asked and Abby looked down to see there was a burn mark on her sweater, just like the one on Vivianna’s dress, where Cassandra’s amulet had sparked.
She hadn’t noticed it until now.
“Cassandra’s protection amulet,” Abby explained, “it kind of… exploded when Vivianna and I clashed.”
Cash’s eyes jerked to hers and he repeated, “Cassandra’s protection amulet.”
“Yes.”
She watched as something dawned on him and his mouth tightened as his eyes went to the ceiling.
Finally he muttered, “I don’t fucking believe this shit.”
“Believe it,” Abby returned.
He looked at her again. “Abby, no matter what these people are telling you, I promise you, there are no such things as ghosts.”
“There are,” Abby retorted.
“No, there aren’t.”
“You felt it yourself,” she told him.
“I felt what?” he asked.
“The minute we walked into the castle, the entry swayed. You were there, you said you felt it!”
“That wasn’t a ghost,” he said.
“Then what was it?” Abby queried.
His face now held a hint of soft concern. “I don’t know, darling, but it wasn’t a fucking ghost.”
Abby stared at him then she had an idea and asked, “Did you pick up the diaries?”
At her swift change of subject, Cash’s head cocked to the side. “Diaries?”
“Your grandmother’s diaries,” Abby prompted.
He watched her a moment then said, “Emma went to get them today.”
Immediately Abby enquired, “Do you have them here at the house?”
“They’re in the study,” he answered and Abby was on the move.
Walking around him, she went to his study, flipped on the light and saw his briefcase opened on his desk. A stack of several, slim, elegant, leather-bound books sat beside it.
Abby walked up to the desk, grabbed the first one off the stack and started sifting through it, randomly picking pages and skimming. She found nothing so she threw that diary down and picked up the next, doing the same.
“Abby, what the fuck?” Cash muttered but then Abby saw it.
She immediately started reading, “My favourite brooch is missing. The one Richard gave me. I can’t find it anywhere and Richard is asking where it is. I know she took it, she knows how much I love it. It’s just the kind of thing she’d do. Especially since Richard is getting annoyed that I haven’t been wearing it. I was searching for it on my hands and knees beside the bed when I heard Vivianna laugh.”
Abby looked at Cash and saw his eyes were on the diary and his jaw was again clenched but he didn’t say anything so Abby persevered.