“Oh… kay,” she replied hesitantly.
Cash didn’t delay.
“I’m in love with you,” he announced and her mouth dropped open but he went on. “We’re not over. We’re never going to be over. There isn’t going to be an end. This is it, you and me, in Penmort, you wearing diamonds and silk and having coffee delivered to our bedroom every morning.”
“Cash –” she whispered, eyes wide, face pale, expressions clashing between shock and awe.
“I’m not done,” Cash stated and pressed on, “I know you still love Ben. I’m not going to pretend I like it but I will try to live with it.”
“Cash –”
“Abby, stop interrupting me.”
“Okay,” she whispered and he felt her body start to soften in his arms and he knew he was getting somewhere.
“You were right last night, it’s early. We’ll take some time, learn more about each other. Not much but we’ll do it. Then we’ll get married, have children and live happily ever after, if you don’t annoy me too much.” She gasped but he ignored it and continued. “I’ve spoken to Nicola this morning and she and her daughters are going to give us a few months. They’ll stay in Bath then move back here. I’m sure you’ll agree they’ll be welcome here for as long as they wish to stay.”
“Of course,” Abby mumbled.
Cash kept going. “I want you to know I’m not only fine with you becoming more attached to me, I want it and you’re going to give it to me. I want you so attached you can’t imagine a life without me. I don’t give a fuck if that’s selfish, that’s what I want because, Abby, you must know, I already can’t imagine life without you.”
He stopped talking and watched as the brightness in her eyes became wetness shimmering at their edges. One tear dropped to her cheek and slid down her face.
Cash watched its progress.
Finally she whispered, “Are you done?”
Cash’s eyes went from her lone tear back to hers.
“Yes,” he replied.
She was still whispering, nearly breathless, when she asked, “Are you sure, about what you said?”
“Yes,” he answered instantly.
“I thought –” Her breath caught audibly, it sounded painful and Cash drew her yielding body closer, tucking her deep into the protective fold of his arms as another tear slid down her cheek. She sucked in air, her hands coming up to rest on his chest and with visible effort she continued. “I thought it was stupid to hope.”
“Hope for what?” he asked softly even though he knew the answer.
She didn’t give him that answer instead she whispered, “I thought it was selfish.”
“What was selfish, darling?”
“To have something so good, so wonderful, with Ben.” His body grew tight but her hand moved to rest on his face and she admitted, “It was stupid to hope, selfish to want something even better, something that felt magical, something I thought I had with you.”
An overwhelming sense of triumph coursed through him and Cash again wanted to kiss her. This time it felt like a need rather than a desire.
Instead he confirmed decisively, “You have it.”
Her face came close.
She rested her forehead against his, her nose alongside his, her eyes open and looking deeply into his, she whispered, “I know.”
It was then Cash surged out of the chair. Taking her with him, he carried her to bed.
There, he fucked her so hard it was likely she still felt him inside her on Thursday.
However, he’d never know, since he fucked her Wednesday night as well as every night in between.
And some mornings besides.
Epilogue
Edith’s Mental Snapshots
“It’s too early,” Abby, pacing the waiting room in severe agitation, announced for the seventeenth time.
Cash’s eyes went from the papers in his hands to his wife.
He knew it was the seventeenth time because after she’d said it five times in the car on the way to hospital, he’d started counting.
“Abigail, calm down,” Mrs. Truman, sitting and knitting in a chair next to Cash, demanded imperiously.
Abby whirled on Mrs. Truman, narrowed her eyes and planted her hands on her hips.
“Calm?” she asked in a deceptively light tone.
“Yes, dear, calm,” Mrs. Truman answered, her voice gentling, “let nature take its course.”
“Nature,” Abby declared, her voice beginning to tremble, exposing her not-very-controlled fear, “demands a gestation period of nine months. Jenny’s baby has only had seven.”
This wasn’t, Cash knew, exactly true.
Jenny’s baby had seven and three-quarter months of gestation.
Cash’s eyes swept Abby’s body in her form-fitting, very elegant, demurely sexy, plum-coloured dress complimented by rich suede, charcoal grey, spike-heeled boots.
She was also wearing the diamond bracelet he’d given her which she wore daily, a modest (but not too modest) diamond pendant hung from a delicate platinum chain and lay in the indentation of her throat and double-diamond drop earrings hung from her ears.
The necklace he’d bought her in France during their first holiday together on the Riviera. The earrings he’d given her during a dinner they’d shared when she’d been on a business trip with him in Rome six months previously.
Cash should probably diversify into giving her different precious jewels but he found he liked her wearing his diamonds.
His eyes stopped at her boots and distractedly he wished, as usual (however at that present time most especially, considering his wife’s condition), that she wouldn’t wear those fucking high heels.
He let go of this wish, knowing it was in vain and finally his gaze moved up and settled on the small, but becoming more noticeable by the day, baby bump at her belly.
Cash, after copious amounts of research once Abby told him she was pregnant, knew the extra three weeks Abby wasn’t declaring of Jenny’s pregnancy meant a great deal to the outcome of that afternoon’s events.
Cash also knew that for the first time in decades Abby and Jenny’s relationship had turned on its head.
Jenny’s pregnancy had been difficult from the start. She’d been tremendously ill in the beginning, incapacitated with morning sickness, crippling migraines and terrified by intermittent cramping and spotting.
These symptoms lasted well into the second trimester and there were two very legitimate scares when she’d stopped spotting and started bleeding.
Both times it was Abby who rushed her to the hospital.
Absolute bed rest was prescribed during the last trimester. This was, under Abby’s edict and Nicola’s urging both firm and forceful which brought about Kieran’s acceptance, happened at Penmort and was accompanied by Abby’s and Nicola’s near constant companionship. It was also a strategy that obviously didn’t work.
Jenny had gone into labour four hours ago.
Even though labour had begun at Penmort, Kieran had called Cash to ask for him to return from his Saturday morning in his new office in Exeter instead of telling Abby this news.
This was a kindness for which Cash was grateful. Cash didn’t want Abby anywhere near the steering wheel of a car in her present state.
As Cash watched his wife, his mind wandered over the last several months.
Jenny had been used to taking care of Abby through her many dramas. Abby had been used to being taken care of. This change in the state of affairs had altered their relationship in a way Cash didn’t quite understand.
Women, he decided some time ago, were baffling to the point where it was futile for a man even to attempt to comprehend.
So he didn’t.
What he did understand was that Jenny was a strong and capable woman who didn’t like having to be taken care of. Cash had grown to admire this greatly.