Free Penmort Castle by Kristen Ashley

and
interrogate her.
    Shaking off
that altogether too stimulating thought, he pressed, “Is she in
England?”
    “No,” Abby
replied.
    “America,” he
stated.
    “Yes.”
    “That’s not
exactly close,” Cash remarked.
    She’d finished
serving up the shells and was returning to the oven for the bread.
“Well, she’s not exactly in America,” she came back to the counter
with the bread, gracefully flipping the oven door closed with her
foot before she did. Her eyes stayed on her task as she went on,
“It’s more like she is and she isn’t.”
    “That sounds
difficult to do,” Cash observed.
    She tore off an
enormous chunk of what looked like homemade garlic bread and put it
on his plate before her eyes met his.
    “She’s dead,
Cash.”
    Her quiet words
felt like a blow to the belly.
    Fucking hell
but he was a bastard.
    “Abby,” he said
softly by way of an apology.
    “It’s okay. It
was a long time ago,” she told him, putting his fork on the plate
and handing it to him then she moved to the fridge.
    Cash carried
on, he shouldn’t have but he didn’t know that so he did. “Is your
father still in America?”
    “Yep,” she said
casually, head in the fridge, “lying beside Mom.”
    When she turned
around, hands holding a big salad bowl, her gaze came to his. He
saw her eyes were carefully guarded. His eyes were on her, his fork
suspended halfway to his mouth.
    She went on
matter-of-factly, “Heart attack. Dad. Cancer. Mom. Mom went first.
Two years apart.”
    With some
effort, he started to eat.
    The food was,
incidentally, better than it smelled.
    She put his
salad in another bowl, dressed it and slid it along the counter to
where he was eating and watching her.
    She was busying
herself putting away the food when he remarked, “That must have
been rough.”
    “It
happens.”
    “It does, Abby,
that doesn’t mean it isn’t rough.”
    She finished
with wrapping foil around the shells and, head bent to the pan, she
replied quietly, “Miss them every day.”
    He felt her
four words settle heavily somewhere in his gut.
    He decided to
let her be and as she put the food into the fridge he told her,
“That may be the first time anyone used that oven.”
    She closed the
refrigerator door and came back to the counter saying, “I wondered
why it was sparkling clean. I thought you might be obsessive
compulsive.”
    “I have a
housekeeper,” he looked pointedly around the pristine room then
back to Abby. “The jury’s out on if she’s obsessive
compulsive.”
    He heard her
soft laughter as she jumped up to sit on the counter and grabbed
her wineglass.
    “My verdict,
yes,” she said to him with a grin and he was experiencing the
strong desire to put his food aside and kiss her when he watched an
unusual look cross her face.
    She was, Cash
realised, struggling with something.
    He didn’t wait
for her to win her struggle because her winning, he thought
(correctly) would mean him losing.
    “What is it,
Abby?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” she
promptly replied.
    “Say it,” he
demanded.
    “Cash –”
    “Abby, what is
it?” he sounded just as impatient and annoyed as he was getting
with her cagey behaviour.
    “I just
wondered…” she hesitated then lifted her hand as if to pull her
hair out of her face but then she encountered it tied back and
looked endearingly confused for a moment before her hand drifted
down to her lap.
    He waited.
    She took a sip
of wine.
    He finished his
pasta and salad and prompted, “You wondered what?”
    Her eyes came
to him. “About your folks,” she cleared her throat, “I wondered
about your folks.”
    Cash didn’t
hesitate. “My father’s dead, no one knows how. Mysterious
circumstances.”
    Her face
gentled. “I’m sorry, Cash.”
    “Don’t be, I
never knew him.”
    He saw surprise
flash in her eyes before she said, “I’m sorry about that too.”
    He moved to put
his dishes in the sink. “Don’t be sorry about that either, from
what I know, he was