Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (30 page)

He strolled through the office, smiling and talking to people while his mind whirled.

Valerie Arbeitman was lying to him about everything.

HIS HOLINESS POPE FUCKITALL

After Cash had untangled himself and left her office, citing that he needed to talk to someone, Rox swallowed hard to dispel any remaining heebee-jeebees and was holding her cell phone to her ear while it rang, calling Cash’s house phone.

A man answered, “Casimir van Amsberg’s residence. Good afternoon, Roxanne.”

Arthur’s rich baritone didn’t even sound sleepy, and his British accent was as sharp as cut crystal.

She said, “Hey, Arthur. I was seeing if Maxence was up?” Because she had assumed that Arthur would be sleeping off his drunk for hours yet.

“Oh, no. His Holiness Pope Fuckitall is still asleep.”

“You sound, um,
okay?”

“Of course. Slept it off like a champ, as usual.”

“That’s impressive,” she said.

“I deeply appreciate the water and salts this morning. That helped a lot.”

“If I had been that wasted, I would have needed an I.V. and an exorcist.”

Arthur laughed. “How is our lad doing on his first day back at work?”

“Fine. He’s alpha-maling everyone else in the office, as usual.”

“He’s going after other women?” Arthur sounded confused.

“Oh, no. He’s just reestablishing his place in the pecking order. He’s already challenged two other guys to a game of basketball on the parking structure’s roof after work. Do you and Maxence want to meet us for a late supper?”

“He’s challenged
two
blokes? Does he play two-on-one?”

“Oh, no. He and Draven play two-on-two against the other guys.”

“Tell Draven to switch teams. I’ll roust Sleeping Moody out of bed, and we’ll play three-on-three, just like old times.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him.”

And then she would tell all the women in the office to get their butts up to the roof.

This was going to be
epic.

FUN AND GAMES

Oh, and it was.

Rox and the other women and a few of the gay men stood around the makeshift basketball court and watched the glorious display of manflesh in the setting sun.

Because all that is holy was smiling that day, Cash lost the coin toss, and so Cash, Arthur, and Maxence were the “skins” team.

As the three men stripped off their shirts, revealing rippling muscle stacked upon rippling muscle, Rox thought that several of the women in the audience were close to having seizures.

Cash and the other guys played hard, sweat glistening on their bodies. Tattoos flashed. The ball slammed into the asphalt and through hands and swished down the hoops as the men turned and jumped, blocking and ducking, for an hour.

Every striation of muscle was visible on Maxence. He had truly burned down to zero percent body fat. Maybe he still had a few cells’ worth far deep inside, but none was showing.

The onlookers were relatively sure that Cash and his guys won the game, but the scorekeeper got distracted and lost count twice, so no one really knew for sure.

And no one cared.

Rox was distracted as heck because every time that Cash, Maxence, or Arthur raised their hands over their heads to shoot, she could see the matching tattoo that they all had on the insides of their right arms: three shields joined at the tops around a Celtic knot.

She had to corner Cash and ask about that.

And other things.
Man.

Afterward, Cash, Arthur, and Maxence went to Cash’s gym around the corner to shower, and Rox waited at the office for them to come back so they could go out to supper.

About fifteen minutes later, Rox spotted Wren walking back to her cubicle, and she herded Wren into the ladies’ room, whispering, “I need to talk to you.”

“I can’t believe you guys kicked Valerie Arbeitman out of a meeting,” Wren whispered and started to reapply her cherry lip gloss. “She fumed all the way to her office and slammed the door.”

“I need to ask you about Cash,” Rox said.

“Oh?” Wren’s gaze turned wary.

“When you were going out with Cash—”

“Why?”
Wren asked, holding her lip gloss aside.

“Just a question. No reason.”

“Are you involved with him?”

“Maybe a little,” Rox admitted.

Wren dropped her lip gloss and scrambled to grab it before it dropped off the counter. “But you’re married!”

“I’m actually not. I kind of made that whole thing up.”

“What do you mean,
kind of
made that whole thing up?”

Wren was a damn good paralegal. Rox should have known that she would define the terms before anything else. “It means that I totally made Grant up. The pictures are headshots from a friend of mine who’s an agent. The vacation pics were photoshopped. I’m not married. I’ve never been married. Grant doesn’t exist.”

“But I met him!” Wren exclaimed.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did! At the barbecue last summer!”

“Nope. Must have been someone else.” Rox had never brought a date to anything.

“I met him, and he told me about auditioning for something.”

“Yeah, that could have been anyone in California.”

“I could swear that I met him,” Wren said, her long, blond hair swishing as she shook her head.

“I guarantee you didn’t. I’ve never brought any guys to any events because Grant doesn’t exist.”

“Huh. I wonder who I met, then. Maybe Brochelle’s fiancé.”

“Yeah, maybe. Look, about Cash—”

“I can’t believe that you’re finally having your fling with him. We all thought that you were immune or something.” She batted her eyelashes at herself, checking for mascara flakes. “Well, we all thought you were married.”

“Did he ever call you anything while you guys were going out? Like a pet name?”

Wren frowned. “Like what?”

Like
lieveke.
“I don’t know, like sweetheart or honey? Or something in Dutch?”

Wren’s frown slipped to the side, uncomprehending. “Why would he call anybody something in Dutch?”

“Or whatever? Something British or German or something?”

Wren’s gaze rose toward the white stripes of the ceiling lights. “I don’t think so. How come?”

“He’s—” Rox searched her own eyes in the mirror. Her eyes looked afraid, overly large and dirt brown. “It seems like he’s coming on strong.”

“Is he pressuring you to do things that you don’t want to?” Wren asked, her hand moving across the counter to touch Rox’s wrist.

“No, no. Not like that.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t
have
to pressure anyone,” she smirked.

“Did he make you believe that he was in love with you? Is that why everyone walks around all mopey and with a broken heart afterward?”

“He never did anything like that,” Wren mused. “He never said that he loved me, that’s for sure, and I’ve never heard anyone else talk about love with him, either. He’s not a lovey-dovey duck, you know? He never talks about himself. Never told me anything about his childhood or growing up in London or what England was like.”

Evidently, Cash had never told her that he was Dutch.

“We never went out with anyone else, either. It was always just him and me, and it was more intense that way.”

“So you never met his friends or anything.”

“Oh, Lord, no. We always went to hotels. Who were those guys, playing basketball with him?”

“Just some guys he knows. So you never went back to his house?”

“No. Never his house. But we didn’t hang out much in L.A., either. Either we flew somewhere or he drove us somewhere. I have a theory that he doesn’t even have a house, that he spends all his salary on that car, his clothes, and dates.”

Oh, that wasn’t true, either.

“If anything,” Wren continued, “I was very conscious the whole time that it was just fun and games, and nothing that intense and shallow could last very long. He’s like a laser that way, intense light, but it only touches the surface and bounces off anything hard, and it has no mass, no gravity.”

Rox curled her hands into fists. “Then why is everyone so miserable when he ghosts on them?”

“He’s like catnip, you know? He’s fun and a little freaky, and you have a great time laughing with him. Hanging out with him is
wild.
I never got into the office before ten-thirty. Sometimes eleven. It does feel like a game when you’re with him. Not a winner-loser type of game. A non-zero-sum game where you both win, but it’s definitely a game. And the dates! I didn’t even have a passport when we started dating, and he got one expedited for me so we could go see a symphony in Milan that first weekend. And it was fashion week there, too, so he bought me a bunch of clothes.”

“So, that’s it? It’s just that he buys girls a bunch of stuff and takes them on expensive dates?”

“It’s more like getting on a roller coaster for a couple of weeks or months. When you get off, your legs feel funny for a while, and you want to ride it again because you were laughing and screaming the whole time.”

“So you just liked riding him.”

Wren laughed. “Yeah, there was that, too. He’s a fun ride.”

Rox flinched.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to talk about him like that to you. While you’re in the moment, it’s a rush, and you should enjoy the game while it lasts.”

She bit her lower lip. “What did he do before he ghosted on you? How did you know that he was going to?”

Wren glanced at her from the sides of her dark eyes. Her voice tightened. “I didn’t. He blindsided me. He blindsides everyone, every time. He just closes up.”

“But he must have given you some clue. There must have been something,” Rox insisted.

“Nope.” Wren fluffed her blond curls.

“He didn’t meet someone else? He didn’t start getting mysterious texts or phone calls or have other places that he had to go?”

“Not at all. I don’t think he had anyone else lined up. Everything was light and laughter, and then he was gone. It was like any other day, until it wasn’t.”

“Yeah,” Rox said, staring at her own brown, haunted eyes in the mirror. “It’s always like that, just like any other day, and then they’re gone.”

EUROTRASH

After Rox and Cash abused Maxence and Arthur with nuclear-hot Thai food during an early supper, they sat around the table, and Arthur announced that he and Maxence were catching a cab for the airport and they would be back in the morning.

“How come?” Rox asked before she saw Cash waving her off. “Not that it matters. You’re big boys. You don’t have to report to me.”

Arthur laughed. “Did you warn her, Caz?”

Cash glared at him. “Warn her of what?”

Arthur laughed again.

Maxence, however, was staring at his empty plate and rearranging his used silverware slanted across it, not making any eye contact.

Okay, they were obviously up to something truly sordid.

Sometimes, Rox was not a nice person. “So, are you going, too,
Maxence?”

He looked up, his dark eyes wary. “Someone has to make sure Arthur isn’t face-down in a gutter after he’s been in his cups.”

Cash snorted something that almost sounded like a laugh.

“Someone has to take care of him. You know how he is,” he told Cash.

Cash said, “You could send one of your minders with him. They’re still holed up at the airport, right?”

Maxence pursed his full lips. “They won’t leave me here. If I want them to go, then I have to.”

Rox said, “That’s right charitable of you.”

Maxence glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, a sexy squint, like he was unsure whether he was being made fun of.

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, Maxence. That’s ‘right charitable’ of you, walking through Hell itself to ensure that I don’t end up face-down in a puddle of my own vomit at The Devilhouse.”

Now Rox suspected that she was being made fun of.

Maxence’s black eyebrows pinched together, and he frowned. “I’m not a priest yet.”

Arthur cracked up and pounded him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, Maxence. And with my steadying influence and a little luck, you never will be.”

Cash’s voice dropped in a warning.
“Arthur.”

Maxence shook his head, his black hair falling over his forehead. His dark eyes creased in pain. “You’re right. I shouldn’t go. That den of iniquity—”

“Oh, come now. It isn’t that bad!” Arthur insisted.

“—is a symbol of everything that I should leave behind. The decadence. Using people as pawns and playthings. We should be better than that.”

Arthur grabbed his chest. “Maxence, you’ll hurt my feelings if you keep this up.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur—”

“I’m fucking with you. I drowned all my feelings in thirty-year-old scotch years ago. I think you might have been there, but you were probably engaged in something worse than I was, considering those years.”

Rox leaned back in her chair, unsure whose side she should be arguing for. Cash caught her eye, and even though he was wearing his blank court face, Rox could see that he was upset.

Maxence said, “Let’s not go, Arthur. Surely, we can resist this temptation.”

“Oh, I succumb to temptation every chance that it is offered. I’m going.”

Maxence glanced at Cash. “You could go with him.”

Cash shook his head. “I’m not going to The Devilhouse.”

“It’s Monday night,” Rox piped up. “We have to go to the office tomorrow.”

Cash looked down at his plate as if she had said something gauche. Well, to heck with him. She was a hard-working Southern girl and wasn’t going to crawl into the office reeking of liquor.

“We’ll be back in time for work tomorrow,” Arthur said. “It’s only an hour flight, if that. We could be back in plenty of time to shower and get to ‘work’ by ten.”

She could hear his quotation marks around the word ‘work’ as if that were an unfamiliar concept to him. Yeah, Rox just bet that it was. “Office opens at nine. Not ten.”

“We could have the pilot flap those wings faster. However, if you do not have the tolerance to handle even a drink or two and function at your office the next day, perhaps it would be better to leave you three here. Such an adventure might be too rigorous for you.”