“Well, yes,” Abby replied as if it was perfectly natural to name your beloved pet after the Lord of Hellfire and Damnation and watched as Cash did a very slow blink which forced her to defend her choice. “You don’t know him. Trust me, he’s aptly named. He can be a little devil.”
He watched her a moment then his face grew warm and soft and Abby struggled with her instinctive, highly pleasant reaction to that look.
He smiled and turned away, shaking his head. Then he slammed the ice in the tea towel against the counter, twice.
“I’ve tried that, it doesn’t work. You have to use a rolling pin or a meat tenderiser,” she informed him helpfully but watched as he upended the perfectly crushed ice into her drink then she muttered, “Okay, well, if you have the strength of He-Man, it works.”
She heard his chuckle as he handed her the drink, tossed the tea towel into the sink and went back to the martini.
“Can you get someone to look after your cat?” he enquired.
She could. Jenny would do it. Pete would do it too. Hell, Mrs. Truman would probably do it.
“Yes,” she replied and tried not to sigh.
He poured the martini from the shaker into a stemmed glass, saying softly, “Make the call.”
Abby blinked.
Then she asked, “Now?”
He turned to her, took a sip, his eyes on her over the rim of the glass.
Her brain noted Cash looked very sexy drinking from a martini glass.
Her emotional warrior trotted over to her brain and slapped it upside its head.
“Now,” he replied after his hand lowered. “We leave from Bristol Airport at half ten.”
Abby’s eyes bugged out. “Ten thirty! But I have to pack.”
“I’ll take you home tomorrow morning to pack,” he told her.
“But, I need time to pack,” she blurted, horrified. “We’re going to be gone for three days. That’s six outfits. Day time and night time. Plus accessories. Plus toiletries. Plus I need to strategise makeup. I have to be prepared for anything. That might take hours. Under normal circumstances, that would take days.”
“We’ll be at your house by seven. We have to be at the airport by nine. You have an hour and a half.”
“Seven?” she breathed, beyond horrified straight to distraught.
Seven meant she had to be up, showered, dressed and made up to leave Cash’s at six. That meant she’d have to be out of bed by four thirty.
Abby’s headache started pounding but she didn’t have time to worry about it because she’d started to hyperventilate.
The only times she remembered being up and out of bed of her own accord that early were Christmas mornings when she was a kid and the time her parents took her to Disneyland.
Abby didn’t do mornings, especially not super-early ones where only nurses, doctors and criminals were awake and functioning.
Cash saw her dismay and tried to calm her with promises.
“You can sleep in the car,” he said.
“But –” she started.
“And on the plane,” he went on.
“But –”
He came close, mouth smiling (like she was amusing him), and he put his hand to her neck, effectively silencing her with a gentle, affectionate squeeze.
“Abby, make the call,” he demanded.
She gave it a moment, ever-hopeful he would relent.
He didn’t.
Abby sighed.
Then she made the call.
* * * * *
Abby was lying on the sofa off the kitchen, her temple resting on Cash’s thigh, her eyes unseeing on the book in front of her.
She didn’t want to be in that position (well she did but she didn’t).
But she was.
After dinner, when Cash told her he had a few things to read through before going to bed, she’d joined him on the sofa and he’d manoeuvred her into that position.
Skilfully.
He was sitting upright, feet on the table, ankles crossed, reading glasses on, going over papers while his fingers idly played with her hair.
This felt nice.
All of it did.
So Abby was concentrating on anything but how nice it felt.
She decided to concentrate on dinner, which was weird. After they sat down to eat, her headache had begun hammering and her mind inventoried her belongings in a failed effort to decide what to take to Germany.
Conversation was short and stilted but not intentionally. Abby was miles away namely, in Germany, wondering what the weather was like.
She didn’t figure Cash noted this because halfway through dinner he took a call with a murmured, “Sorry, darling, this is important,” and then was on the phone the rest of the time they ate.
At his side, watching him sitting at the head of the dining table and talking business while eating was when she realised he worked like a demon.
He got up early, got home late, read through papers at night and worked weekends.
Abby asked herself, what kind of life was that?
As far as she could tell, outside of working out and the time he spent with her, he had no life away from work. There were no photos around his house, no mementos from travels, no blinking answering machine with messages from mates who wanted him to meet them at the pub.
Nothing.
This worried her. Then she got worried because she was worried. Then she told herself to stop thinking about it.
He was off the phone by the time she’d done the dishes and put the food away only for him to tell her he had more work to do.
Now she was on her side on the couch, head resting on his thigh, legs curled into her belly, trying to read but there was so much in her head, she hadn’t turned a page in ages.
His fingers moved to her hairline, tracing it from temple to behind her ear, then the tips drifted down the length of her neck to her collarbone.
Abby’s attention moved from her thoughts and focused on his fingers.
Then she heard his rough brogue say, “You’re angry with me.”
In surprise she rolled to her back and looked up at him. “Pardon?”
He studied her from behind his sexy glasses.
Then he tossed his papers to the side, his eyes came back to hers and he repeated, “You’re angry with me.”
She stared at him a moment then placed her book on the table, rolled back around, put her hand to the couch and pushed up to face him.
Then she said, “I’m not angry with you.”
His hands went under her armpits and hauled her closer so she was almost sitting in his lap. She put both her palms on his chest as one of his hands dropped from under her arm, the other one came to rest on her hip.