“The bloke who played Cash in the movie didn’t kiss that good,” Honor noted blandly.
Regardless of their onlookers and the conversation they were holding, Cash’s focus was entirely on Abby. He kept kissing her as if they were the only ones in the room and she kissed him back the same way.
“Honor, shush,” Nicola snapped quietly, “let’s go.”
“We can’t go. Abby’s going to town with me,” Fenella said and on that, with disappointment at the brevity of their kiss (and the fact they had an audience who wouldn’t shut the f**k up and get the hell out) Cash’s head came up. Instead of pulling away, he slid his nose alongside Abby’s.
“I said, let’s go,” Cash heard that Nicola’s voice was now getting sharper, if not louder.
“Are you okay?” Abby repeated in a whisper, her eyes on his.
“Yes,” Cash replied, his voice vibrating low, “I’m very okay.”
And this was true. Regardless of their current circumstances, he’d never felt so f**king okay in his life.
Abby’s brows drew together and her mouth twitched in a way that it looked like she wasn’t sure whether to smile or to frown.
“Abby, are we going to town?” Fenella called and Cash’s hand flexed where it still held Abby’s jaw, not in a demonstration of affection, instead in a reflexive action denoting his restrained desire to wring Fenella’s neck.
“Um…” Abby muttered, her mouth deciding it wanted to smile which it did, “we were coming to tell you that we’re going to town. We need your car.”
That got Cash’s full attention.
“My car?” he asked as he dropped his hand from her jaw.
“Yes, your car,” Abby answered.
“Town is a two minute walk away,” Cash told her.
“I know,” Abby replied.
“Why do you need my car?” Cash enquired.
Her smile turned mischievous. “Because I want to drive it.”
Cash burst out laughing and both his arms went around her, pulling her into his body.
“Does that mean we’re going to town?” Fenella semi-yelled like they were three rooms down, not fifteen feet away.
Once he’d sobered, Cash looked at his cousin. “You’re going to town.”
Abby’s body melted into his and her head tipped back further to smile at him.
Then she whispered, “You’re going to have to walk me down to the car.”
“I know,” he whispered back.
“Now can I get to the business of preparing for one hundred guests to descend tonight, or do you girls want me to go into town with you, just in case Abby gets lost?” Nicola asked but for the first time since they arrived last night, she looked cheerful if not her normal cheerful.
“You go, Mummy. We’ll be fine,” Fenella assured Nicola as Cash started to lead Abby to the door.
“I’m glad to hear that since you’ve lived two minutes from town since you were ten years old,” Nicola mumbled as she headed busily out the door, casting a smile back at Abby and Cash before she disappeared.
Honor gave them a small wave and followed her mother. Cash walked Abby and Fenella to his and Abby’s room to get his keys.
However when his fingers closed around the keys on the bureau, the warm draught he’d forgotten with the arrival of Abby and her entourage came back. It was stronger this time, almost insistent, and it felt like it was trying to prevent him from picking up the ring.
It disappeared again when his fingers closed around the keys and Cash’s hand moved away from the bureau.
He shook off the bizarre feeling thinking it was just the castle. The place was centuries old, it likely had hot and cold draughts everywhere.
He escorted Abby and Fenella down to the old stables. The stables were now a five car garage where Alistair and his family kept their (far too expensive for Alistair’s circumstances) cars and where Cash had parked the Maserati last night.
Fenella folded her body into the passenger seat and Cash stood in the driver’s open door with Abby.
She tipped her head back to look up at him and he could see the excitement on her face at the prospect of driving his car.
“Thanks for letting me drive your car,” she murmured.
He put his hand to her neck and teased, “I’m thinking maybe I should have asked you if you were a good driver before giving you my keys.”
She grinned and leaned into him before she replied, “I’m not only a good driver, I’m a granny driver.”
Cash smiled at her amusing description of her driving style and squeezed her neck before asking, “Do you know how to drive a stick?”
Her grin turned playful as she exclaimed, “Of course! I’m half-American, you know.”
“That’s why I’m asking,” he retorted.
She shook her head, her soft hair sliding on his hand, her face telling him she wasn’t going to stoop to a response.
Cash went on. “Call me when you’re heading back, I’ll meet you at the gate.”
She nodded, got up on her toes, hand to his stomach and touched her mouth to his.
He felt her touch, the warmth of her body and the excitement in her eyes all with a heady intensity that was not unusual with Abby, however it was, in that moment, significantly more profound.
When her mouth moved away, her eyes caught his and her soft, tender look told him she’d felt the same.
Any vestiges of Cash’s earlier dark mood melted away.
With effort (for he vastly preferred spending the morning in other pursuits with Abby, say, sexually christening another room in the castle), he dropped his hand.
She got in, he slammed the door and returned her wave. He nodded to Fenella, left the garage and headed up the steep hill to the gate.
As he climbed, he heard his car start and he turned to watch her roar out of the garage, not like a granny driver, but instead like an Indy car driver.
Then he stood watching as the car turned on a screech of tires into the long, steep, winding lane that led through the wood to the main road that skirted the town.
And he continued to watch, body now frozen, as she raced down the lane, nearly missing the hairpin turn at the bottom, two tires in the turf at the side of the lane.
And he still watched from his high vantage point as she negotiated the lane, brake lights blazing the entire way. Even so, it seemed she was picking up speed as the high performance sports car hurtled down the hill and she was, clearly, just keeping it on the road.
A feeling of foreboding swept over him and before his mind made the conscious decision to do so, he started running. He didn’t keep to the lane but took the more direct path, sprinting through the trees on the hill at the side of the castle, his eyes on the car as he went.