Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (27 page)

At the door, Maxence had pushed it half-open and was grappling with Arthur, who was nearly limp and slipping on the steps that led up from the garage. His eyes were closed, and he was hanging onto the small railing, trying to help hold himself up.

Cash slipped through the door and ducked under Arthur’s arm to lay it over his shoulders. He held Arthur’s wrist to trap his arm and grabbed Arthur’s waist.

Rox asked, “Is he all right? Were you in a car accident or something?” Though she didn’t see any bruises on him.

“He’s just dead drunk,” Maxence said.

“It’s nine in the morning,” she said, stating the obvious like an idiot.

“And I finally dragged him out of the nightclub an hour ago. Even with my phone, I got lost twice getting back here. I’m not used to driving in cities anymore.”

Cash said, “I thought you guys must have gotten back late, but I thought you were here. Should we take him directly to bed?”

“Let’s pour some water down him first,” Maxence said.

“Yes,” Arthur mumbled. “Water.”

“You’re too kind, Maxence,” Cash said. “I think we should teach him a lesson.”

So Rox led the way, opening doors for them, while Arthur stumbled between Maxence and Cash, and they dumped him in a chair at the kitchen table. Rox poured a glass of water with ice and found a straw leftover from one on their many takeout suppers. “I think we’ve got some sports drinks around here somewhere, too.”

“Water first. Then salts.” Arthur laid his head on the table, his cheek pressed against the wood. “Someone kill me, please.”

“He said please,” Maxence smirked, falling into a chair beside him. “It would be impolite not to kill him now.”

Rox sat beside him and held the straw for him to drink. “Poor baby.”

Arthur sipped water from the straw she pointed at him and muttered, “Thank you. Will you marry me?”

Rox chuckled at him and held the straw for him to suck some more.

“I have a castle in England,” he told her, drunkenly, between sucks of water. “You can live in my castle with me. You’ll love it. It has a moat. And dungeons.”

On the other side of Arthur, Cash was watching her taking care of him. While he wasn’t exactly frowning, his blank expression reminded her of the time an opposing counsel had tried to convince Cash that he should sign a contract for his client without reading it. They had picked up the sheaf of paper and thumb drives and walked out without another word. This blankness was a rage too blinding to be spoken aloud.

She smiled at Cash, and his mouth curved up a little, slightly mollified.

“How much did you drink last night?” Cash whispered to Arthur, bending to talk to his face mashed against the table.

He groaned, “God only knows. Ask Maxence.”

“An impressive amount. His tolerance has increased,” Maxence said.

Cash grimaced. “And how much did you
spend?”

From where his face was mashed against the table, Arthur mumbled, “Thirty, I think. Maxence, did you keep track?”

“At least thirty. Perhaps thirty-five.” Maxence’s disdain for this number flattened his voice.

“That’s not so bad,” Rox said, poking the straw between Arthur’s lips again. “What, did the pretty boy get the girls to buy his drinks?”

“No,” Arthur muttered from the table, his lips around the straw.

“I’m afraid not,” Cash said, shaking his head.

“Then how did he spend only thirty-five dollars?” Rox asked.

“Thousand,”
Maxence said. “He spent at least thirty, perhaps thirty-five,
thousand
last night.”

“Thousand?” Rox asked, her voice rising in horror. “You spent thirty-five thousand dollars in one
night?”

“Euros,” Arthur muttered, straining to push himself up from the table. “I think in Euros.”

“That’s more like forty thousand dollars,” Maxence supplied. “And we stayed in town.”

“My ever-loving God, Arthur! That could have funded the animal shelter for six months! What did you do?”

“Not even his usual bender,” Maxence told her. “I talked him out of powering up his jet and flying a bunch of women to Las Vegas for the night. You should have seen him in London last year, flying women all over the continent.”

Arthur growled at him.

Rox asked him, “You were hanging out with the women, too? Aren’t you supposed to be a priest someday?”

“Oh, I didn’t partake,” Maxence said, his hands in the air, innocent palms out. “I had a few drinks, just enough to be social, and then I dragged his sorry carcass home so that he wouldn’t be lost in a foreign city. I didn’t indulge in even a fraction of the debauchery that he financed.”

Cash patted Arthur’s shoulder gently. “You know that this only gives your brother fuel for the fire.”

“I know,” Arthur moaned.

“Were there pictures?” Cash asked.

“Of course, there were,” Maxence said, grimacing. “I tried to keep him in private rooms, but the Earl of Givesnofucks insisted on buying rounds and drinking with the common people, usually while dancing with a couple of young women on the bar.”

“It makes them so happy,” Arthur muttered.

Rox shoved the straw back between his lips, and he drained the rest of the water out of the glass. Rox went and refilled it with green sports drink.

“Promise me that you’ll be more discreet,” Cash said. “I’m not even defending you, and this pains me beyond belief. You’re going to lose everything.”

Rox sat beside him and made him drink some of the green stuff.

“Fuck it,” Arthur growled. “I am going to lose it all, so I might as well spend it so that Christopher doesn’t get it.” He reached with his lips for the straw and sucked the sports drink from the glass that Rox held. He got about half of it before he sputtered.

Cash stroked Arthur’s hair like he was trying to soothe a suffering cat. “We’ll talk about this later, Arthur. Don’t think that we won’t. But for now, let’s get you to bed. Maxence, could you take his other arm?”

They half-dragged Arthur out of the kitchen, though he managed to stumble a few steps.

Cash glanced back at her. “I’ll be right back. We’ll just get him settled.”

Rox stacked their breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, shaking her head the whole time.

He returned a few minutes later, alone. “Maxence is going to sleep for a few hours, too.”

Rox swallowed hard and broached the subject. “So, Cash, we have that meeting with the DiCaprio people at one o’clock.”

“Yeah,” he said. “About that—”

She jumped on whatever excuse he was going to make. “So it’ll be the first time that we’ll be in the office, together, since—you know.”

Since they started fooling around.

Cash smiled, and a certain gleam appeared in his green, green eyes. “Imagine that.”

“Yeah,” Rox said, biting her lip and smiling at the same time. “Imagine that. And I bought something special for it.”

“You did?” The gleam in his eyes sharpened to a green laser-like focus.

“Uh-huh.” Rox maintained eye contact with him, and she smiled.

“I’d better go see what suits I have that are pressed.”

“I’ll meet you here in half an hour to drive in.”

She had better open a particular box that had been delivered yesterday afternoon. Expedited shipping labels plastered the outside of the very light cardboard box, so light that it felt like nothing was in the box.

And indeed, the lingerie in the box was very close to nothing at all.

FIRST DAY BACK

In the garage, Rox stood in front of the hood of Cash’s rented SUV.

The black skirt suit she wore felt tight over her shoulders and thighs, and the skirt cinched around her waist. Wearing mostly jeans and khakis the whole time she had been taking care of Cash had spoiled her.

At least she wasn’t wearing panty hose. Those itched, now.

But the high heels were cramping her toes.

She held the keys to the SUV. “It hasn’t quite been six weeks yet.”

Cash shrugged. “I’m fine.”

She tossed him the keys, and he snatched them out of the air. Indeed, his reflexes seemed normal.

The drive into Los Angeles was light traffic and high speeds, and after a few minutes of smooth sailing, Rox leaned her head back against the headrest and relaxed.

Cash watched the road. A white bandage was still plastered to the other side of his face, near the driver’s side window.

Damn, but she wished that he would take that off.

She pulled her phone out of her briefcase and slid her thumb over the letters on the screen, sending a mass text to everyone at the office that Cash was on his way in for the first time and to keep it casual. The day that Josie had come back from a quick plastic surgery job had been a chaotic scene like the frickin’ Rose Parade. Someone had whipped up margaritas in the break room. It said something about the office environment that the break room had such a fully stocked bar, including a blender for whipping up impromptu margaritas.

That mass text group that she had set up to disseminate information quickly when Cash had been in his accident now was coming in handy, she had to admit. Maybe she should set up mass texts for the animal shelter volunteers and her common cadre of lunch buddies. She thumbed the send button, and eighty-two people in the office got the ping, she hoped. If there was a huge brouhaha, Cash might not go back, and she wanted to avoid that.

Casual, she had told them all. Don’t make a huge scene. Say hello and let him pass.

Cash parked his rented SUV in the garage, and they got on the elevator to ride it up to the office’s floor.

As soon as the doors touched closed, Cash crowded her to the back corner of the elevator and braced his hands on the walls around her head. “This is going to be interesting.”

“Oh?” Rox glanced at the black eye-in-the-sky stuck to the ceiling, but she slid her hands over his strong chest and up to his neck. “Security is watching.”

“I know.” He ducked his head and captured her lips, kissing her thoroughly. His tongue slid into her mouth, and his hard body pressed her into the corner.

The elevator bounced, stopping, and Cash backed up, his emerald eyes still lit with desire. “This could be very interesting.”

By the time the elevator jiggled to a standstill, they were standing apart, hands clasped in front of them, practically wearing their bitch faces as if they were going to an appointment with opposing counsel.

The elevator doors opened.

Bedlam.

Everyone
in the office had crowded the elevator doors, applauding and cheering.

A hundred people swarmed at them, grabbing them out of the elevator, and were talking and questioning and jabbering and yanking at their clothes.

Cash laughed aloud, his laugh ringing above the fray.

Rox swatted at the hands clinging to her clothes and stumbled toward the edge of the scrum. When you’re short, crowds close in, jostling and bumping, a claustrophobic clusterfuck. She popped out the side.

Because Cash was six-feet-four, however, his head stuck out of the bobbing crowd of office workers who were mostly in the medium range. He looked down, a grin on his face that wrinkled the bandage on his cheek, and talked to everyone, shaking hands, slapping backs, and hugging women who flung themselves at his chest.

He caught Rox’s eye at one point and smiled at her, but he kept pressing the flesh and talking.

Indeed, he was pressing a lot of flesh.

A lot of
female
flesh.

Pretty much every woman in the company wanted a
hug,
a big, long, full-frontal
hug.
They were frickin’ climbing all over him like creeper vines up a tall tree that got plenty of sunshine. He wrapped his arms perfunctorily around each one, patted their shoulders, and set them back, but Rox felt her own chin jutting forward with each molestation.

Seriously, they were slobbering all over his dark blue suit that Rox had picked up at the dry cleaners just a few days ago. The label said Armani. The jacket was going to be all wrinkled after they finished dry-humping him like a pack of stray dogs.

Cash caught her eye again and took a long look this time.

He turned back to the crowd, raising his open hands in the air. “I appreciate it, guys, but I’m a little sore, still.” He grabbed his ribs where the pink surgical scar creased his skin under his clothes. “Let’s hold it to handshakes, shall we?”

Mel bobbed up in front of him, giggling, and pumped his hand. “It’s
so
good to have you back. We were all
so worried
about you.”

Lixa and Perry chorused the same thing.

Cash smiled at them, spreading his hands apart. “You’re making it very difficult to keep it British, here. I appreciate your concern. It warms my heart, or whatever lawyers have instead of a heart.”

Rox practically heard a thud as a hundred pairs of panties dropped to the floor.

She refrained from rolling her eyes. Because she hadn’t been to the office on a regular basis for weeks, she was out of practice at repressing her eye-rolling.

Cash started to swim out of the crowd toward her, but Rox continued to scan the room.

Over on the other side of the room, the two senior partners, Josie Silverman and Valerie Arbeitman, leaned against the wall with their arms knotted over their chests. They were both smiling, but their smiles seemed forced, perhaps as they watched billable hours being frittered away.

Rox pushed off the desk and raised her hand, waving, because she hadn’t seen Valerie since she had gotten back from her medical leave for her stroke.

Valerie tipped her head toward Josie and muttered something. Josie’s grin grew more square, more forced. She noticed Rox watching them and her grin curved into a more genuine smile, and she waved.

Before Rox could leave to go over and see how Val was, Cash had pushed through the crowd to where she stood, and he turned her by the shoulder toward his office. “We need to confer before the DiCaprio meeting.”

“Of course.” She walked with him through the rabbit warren of cubicles toward his corner office.

When she glanced back, Valerie and Josie were gone, and Valerie’s office door was closed. The wooden horizontal blinds in the window beside the door were folded shut, too.