Averting her eyes, she reached out to grab her mother’s deep taupe, long, wool winter coat.
Before she could swing it around, in one of his usual gallant gestures (this one, for obvious reasons, bittersweet), Cash took it from her hands and held it out for her.
She turned her back to him and slid her arms through as thoughts began to invade, feelings began to press in and Abby could feel the tears pooling in her eyes.
She took deep breaths to control them.
This effort failed.
Lifting her hand, she pulled the hair out of her collar after Cash settled the coat on her shoulders. In an effort to hide her face, she kept her gaze to the floor as she walked to the door, turned the latch and opened it.
“Abby,” Cash’s voice called.
Only her torso twisted toward him, her eyes, tears still shimmering and unshed, lifted to his.
When her gaze met his, Abby could swear she saw his nearly imperceptible flinch but this didn’t penetrate the aching fog that shrouded her.
“I’m ready,” she said softly, turned and walked out into the bitter cold.
She didn’t feel the chill.
Chapter Thirteen
Penmort Castle
Cash was furious.
He’d been furious all day.
No, strike that, he’d been furious that morning.
In the afternoon, after James spoke to him, he’d been livid.
But those feelings had been directed at Abby.
Driving his car down the dark motorway toward Penmort Castle, Abby at his side, silent and staring at nothing out the passenger window, Cash was, at present, furious with himself.
That morning after she’d accused him of making her a whore when it was she who sold her body for two hundred thousand pounds; and after she’d told him she considered the dressing gowns he’d bought her a payment for services rendered, he’d felt a fury unlike anything he’d felt in his life.
Then he’d spoken to Abby in a way he’d never spoken to a woman in his life.
Indeed, it was not lost on Cash that, over the last week, Abigail Butler had made him feel, and do, many things he’d never felt, or done, in his life.
When he’d come home on Friday night to a light burning in the hall, Billie Holliday’s voice coming at him only to walk downstairs and see candles flickering, dim lights shining and Abby in a kitchen surrounded by cutting boards topped with chopped vegetables and something on a grill pan covered with foil, he’d felt something strange.
It was something he couldn’t remember ever feeling but perhaps he’d had it once when he was a child before his grandfather died.
It was contentment.
Even though she’d appeared anxious, coming home to her still made a strange ease settle over him.
And throughout the weekend, this ease grew.
It grew when he caught her eyes on him after her nap, her gaze soft and almost awed as if he was a god not a man. It grew simply because she was sleeping, exhausted by him, na**d on his couch. It grew the next day when he’d done something he’d never done before, spent most of a day in bed with a woman. It grew as he discovered her body, was stirred by her touch, pleased that she seemed just as happy to do nothing but the same. And then she dozed while he held her and sometimes he’d slide his hands along her skin, familiarising himself with her even while she slept.
Lastly it grew the night before, when he came home and turned her into his arms and she’d muttered in sleepy relief that he was safe at home.
Cash knew it was him that she was happy was safe. It was him she looked at with awe. It was him on whose couch she slept naked. It was him whose body she put her mouth on, smiling against his skin when she made him groan.
It was him.
Not Ben.
And Cash began to feel more than content.
He felt at peace.
And he’d never, not once, felt peace in his life.
Knowing as a child does that something was not right with his mother, with his father’s family, Cash had not even felt it when his grandfather was alive.
Abby gave that to him. He felt it, he understood it and he meant to keep it.
But that morning, Abby had upset that peace.
And that afternoon, when James had come to deliver Abby’s message, she’d annihilated it.
James had seemed surprised, confused and even concerned at the message he had to deliver.
James had been at Cash’s side on the pavement when Cash made the unprecedented move to peer through a shop window and pause in his daily business to buy a diamond bracelet for a woman.
Cash had never done such a thing. Not for any woman.
James, for years a colleague and a friend, had attempted to ask tactful questions but Cash didn’t bite. James didn’t need the answers, Cash’s actions told the story.
And Cash couldn’t care less.
Abby was his. She’d given herself freely. Not just the first time, every time, all weekend, with her response to his touch, her reaction to the cashmere dressing gown, her gaze on him while he was reading.
Everything.
And as he told her, he took care of what was his.
And being Cash’s meant she’d wear cashmere and diamonds.
That was simply the way it was going to be.
But the message she relayed to James said quite plainly she wanted to end things.
And that idea, Cash found, he could not tolerate.
It was so intolerable it caused the slowly ebbing burn which had been reducing all day to re-ignite.
He’d even felt for a moment actual rage.
Therefore, by the time he stood at Abby’s door, he planned to teach her a lesson. He planned to make it perfectly clear the difference between being his and being his whore. Spurred by fury, he’d carried out his plan.
And after, at the door when she’d looked at him with deeply wounded eyes, the intensity of hurt in them caused Cash to feel a sharp pain in his gut.
It was then he realised that his plan had not been his most stellar.
He turned off the motorway and navigated the winding roads of Devon, heading for the coast.
He knew he was going to have to do something else he’d never done and he had no earthly idea how. And he was furious that he’d put himself in that position. And he was even more furious that he’d been the cause of her pain.
Over the distance, Cash considered his options.
However before he came to any conclusions, Penmort Castle loomed in front of them, its lit towers and turrets a daunting vision against the dark night.
Cash barely registered the vague thrill he normally felt when he saw Penmort.
He’d been there only two times as a teen, when Nicola had invited him to stay. Both times had been, despite her best efforts, unsatisfactory. He’d been there relatively often since Alistair had offered his artificial olive branch.