Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (15 page)

“Yeah, I’m staying with a friend. Call my cell.”

Brandy glared at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I kind of got evicted from my apartment because of the cats.”

“And you didn’t call
me?”

“You have five slavering pit bulls.”

“They are harmless little boo-boo puppies.”

No, they weren’t, but at least Rox never worried about Brandy being a victim of a home invasion. They would find nothing but torn pieces of any guy who tried to hurt Brandy, assuming that the dogs didn’t just eat the body entirely. “I really am staying with a friend. He’s got a really nice house. The motley crew is having a great time exploring.”

“Friend,
huh?” Brandy wiggled her barely-there eyebrows.

“Just a friend. He was in a car accident, so I’m just making sure that he’s okay. But I think he may be trying to steal my cats when I move out in a couple of weeks.”

“Tell him that we’ve got dozens here that he can have his pick of.”

“I think he wants mine.”

“You into him?”

“He seems like a nice guy, but I don’t know.”

“Like what?” Brandy dusted off her hands.

“He just seems like the type to take off, you know? To leave? I’ve known him for three years, and he’s ghosted on a couple girlfriends since then.”

Brandy fixed Rox with her huge, liquid brown eyes. “That must be hard for you.”

Rox said, “I’m all right with it.”

“Yeah?” Brandy didn’t look away.

“Yeah. Of course.”

Brandy was still staring at her. They had spent too many weekends in there, scrubbing kitty litter boxes side-by-side and talking. They had talked about everything.

Everything.

Even things that absolutely no one else knew, things they both were trying to run away from.

Rox said, “I mean it. It doesn’t bother me. I’m not dating him.”

Brandy nodded. “But it bothers you anyway.”

“I didn’t like seeing those other women get hurt. I don’t like what it says about him. He seems like a great guy in every other way. It’s just the disappearing act.”

“Yeah,” Brandy said.

Rox shrugged. “It’s like he drops off the face of the Earth for these women.”

“Yeah,” Brandy said. “It’s like he—” She waited, batting her eyelashes.

“Fine,”
Rox said. “It’s like he
dies.
It’s like he doesn’t care about what he does to those people he leaves behind.”

“There it is.” Brandy took one step over and hugged her, her skinny little arms wrapping around Rox’s chubbiness like ribbons.

Rox hugged her back.

Brandy said, “You tell him he can’t have any of my cats. If he isn’t willing to give them a forever home, I’ll just keep them here until I find someone worthwhile.”

Later, Rox crouched beside the open door of one of the kennels. The stainless steel multiplex of kennels rose five doors high and eight across. Inside, each had a litter box, a bed, food and water bowls, and one or two sleeping cats.

“Here, kitty,” she whispered.

The gray cat flattened herself against the back of the kennel, spitting. Her matted and clumped fur stuck out all over her, and other patches were raw skin where she had been chewing it and pulling it out.

“Come on, baby. It’s okay.”

The name on the cage read “Fairy Dust, possibly feral.”

“It’s okay, sugar. I won’t hurt you,” she said.

The cat’s ragged fur stood all on end like an electric current of hate ran through her.

Rox knew better than to put her hand in the cage.

After a few minutes, she closed the cage and went to work with a cat, Jubilee, who had been abused and was understandably terrified of people. In five minutes, Rox had that kitty sitting in her lap and leaning against her chest, purring with relief.

LIKE A PARTNER

The next morning, the morning of Gina Watson’s contract discussion, Rox padded through Cash’s house, swinging her pumps in her fingers and dressed in her best business chic suit. Her laptop and cell phone were charged. The contract was heavily annotated and the notes had been approved by both Cash and Josie Silverman, the middle partner of Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg.

They were ready to rock this thing.

She and Cash were going to walk in that office and explicate the crap out this contract. The agents could then negotiate the final terms with the studio, and they could go over the final draft one more time and then sign that puppy. Watson could be filming in a week.

“Cash!” she called, walking through the house.

The three cats trailed her in a small herd. Every time she yelled, Speedbump whined. He didn’t like it when she raised her voice.

He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room.

“Cash!”

Speedbump whimpered.

“Hey Cash!”

Speedbump’s grumble turned into a yowl.

“Cash, where are you!”

“Out here.” His voice wasn’t a yell, just a comment spoken loud enough for her to hear it.

The French doors to the deck were open, and the ocean breeze filled the house through the screen doors.

Cash was leaning over the deck railing, wearing jeans and a loose white tee shirt.

Those were
not
lawyer clothes.

“Hey,” she called, walking out onto the deck. “Why aren’t you dressed?”

“I have an idea,” he said, turning and resting his elbows on the rail behind himself.

“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head. “You go put a suit on. You’re going to the office.”

“You can set up your cell phone so that I can see Watson’s people.”

She walked over to him in case she needed to shake her finger in his face and leaned on the railing beside him. “You’re going to video chat this conference? They are not going to like that. They paid for Cash Amsberg to work on their contract, not video chat because you’re too busy surfing and lying on the beach.”

Not that he was surfing or doing anything remotely recreational, either.

He said, “I’m not going to video chat. You’re going to go in for me and do all the talking.”

No way.
“I wouldn’t know what to say!”

“I’ll watch and listen over your phone, and I’ll give you notes through the Bluetooth.”

“It is
so
rude to wear a Bluetooth into a conference. I would
never.”

He gestured to her head, nearly brushing her shoulder. “Just don’t tie your hair back in one of those headache-inducing buns, and no one will be able to see it.”

He started taking pins out of her twisted-up hair, standing far too close to her and reaching around to the back of her head.

She just had to raise her hands to slide them up his chest and around his neck, but she didn’t. “I am
not
a lawyer. I’m a damn fine paralegal, but I didn’t go to law school.”

“You’ve just been made partner.” He pulled the brown scrunchie at the base of the bun out and unfurled her hair.

“I can’t be a partner. I’m just a paralegal. I’m nothing but paid help.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Rox.”

“You guys gonna
pay
me like a partner?” She’d have her down payment for a house in about a week.

A smile played around the corners of his mouth as he lifted her hair, laying it around her shoulders. His fingers brushed her ear, and a tremor shivered down her spine. “We might be able to work something out. I could pay you my salary, and you could do my job for me.”

“You can’t bankrupt yourself so that you don’t have to go into the office.”

This time, he laughed. “Oh, Rox. Paying you that salary wouldn’t bankrupt me.”

“How so?”

He winked at her, just a quick flick of one of his dark green eyes. “I’m a professional poker player in my spare time. Just set your phone up, and I’ll tell you what to say.”

CYRANO ON THE CELL PHONE
 

Rox sat in the center of the long table in Conference Room A, which was one of the few conference rooms in the office that had solid walls.

Some of their celebrity clients actually cared about how their contracts were written and came in with their lawyers for the discussion, and so they used these private conference rooms for those times.

Rox had booked it because she didn’t want anyone to see that Cash wasn’t there.

Wren sat beside her, her long, blond hair cascading over her shoulders. After Rox had shown Wren the Woods contract with the egregious clauses in it, Wren wanted to see all the contracts in the office. She had found another bizarre clause in a contract for a shock comedienne, signed six months ago, that could cause the actress to have to pay royalties to Tigersblood Production Company to use her own standup material that had preexisted before she had signed the contract. Rox had nearly flipped her ever-lovin’ lid on that one.

Wren tossed her blond hair behind her shoulders. “Everybody ready?”

The lawyers on the other side of the table, one woman and two men, nodded and flipped open their portfolios. The Japanese man held his pen pinched with both his hands, looking very ready to do battle. These were Gina Watson’s personal lawyer and accounting team who handled all aspects of her finances. Cash and his firm were intellectual property contract attorneys, hired guns brought in to inspect this particular contract.

“Let’s go,” Rox said. “We’ll start with the first page.”

At least Cash didn’t need to cue her for the basic procedure. She had done at least a couple hundred of these contract discussions with him over the last three years.

It was really weird to do this without him there.

In her ear, Cash whispered, “Can you still hear me?”

Rox’s laptop was open in front of her, supposedly to take notes on the contract. It was small enough that she could see over the top to talk to the other lawyers.

In a side chat window, she typed,
Yes.

Cash whispered, “Good. The first problem doesn’t come up until page three.”

Rox lifted her chin and said in her best professional voice, “The first problematic clause is on page three, but let’s discuss the first few pages to make sure we concur.”

They dissected every page, every clause. Any time Rox was unsure, she typed a question mark in her chat, and Cash told her what to say. She repeated everything verbatim.

Cash whispered in her ear, “This means that principal photography must be completed by September fifteenth, which is two weeks beyond the customary three-month shoot, or else the studio will incur a ten percent penalty. That protects your client from penalties for the Ridley Scott project that she’s already signed for in the fall, should there be an overrun.”

Rox repeated it as he spoke. Screw Watson, Rox deserved an Oscar for her performance in the role of a top-notch lawyer.

While the other lawyers conferred about a note to add in, she typed in her chat window,
You don’t have to whisper. Just back up a little and talk like normal.

Cash paused. “I’m just making sure they don’t hear me. All right, let’s go back to work.”

She smiled in a professional manner, she hoped, at the team of lawyers on the other side of the table. “There is a clause on page three that must be struck out. We consider it a deal-breaker. If Ms. Watson were to write an autobiography and include any material from the time period when the film was in production or in theatrical release, so over the period of several years, Ms. Watson would have to split her royalties with the studio and producers, eighty-twenty, with her getting twenty percent.”

“What!” the woman lawyer Jan on the other side of the table leapt to her feet. “That’s outrageous!” She had a South Boston accent so strong that she dropped her R’s entirely, turning that last word into
outwageous.
Her blond bun flopped on her head and threatened to fall apart. “I will never let her sign that!”

“As well you shouldn’t,” Rox told her. “We’ve begun to discuss the clause with the studio’s attorney, Monty Evans. Unfortunately, he stonewalled, and then one of our partners was in a major car accident that afternoon.”

Watson’s team murmured to each other, real quiet-like, far too low for Rox to hear.

When she glanced at Wren, the other woman was looking back at her, one eyebrow cocked down. Her knife-edge eyeliner perfectly delineated her eyes, tilted from her Chinese ancestors, and accentuated just how confused she was.

Jan finally looked up at Rox. “Had the other driver been drinking?”

“Nope. Blew a flat line on the breathalyzer. He was cited for changing lanes without a blinker, but it was just an accident. He had really good insurance, though.”

In Rox’s ear, Cash whispered, “Don’t tell them anything else.”

Jan frowned harder. “Really.”
Weally.

There wasn’t a question mark at the end of Jan’s comment at all.

Rox said, “Yeah.”

Jan turned and leaned on her elbows. “Is he all right?”

She said, “He was hurt pretty badly.”

Cash hissed,
“Rox!”

“But he’s alive,” Jan said, confirming that.

“Yeah.”

Jan sat back. “You heard about Pym over at Pym, Copeland, Jackson, and Garcia, right?”

“Yeah.” When his car had gone over a rail and exploded a year ago, they’d identified the charred skeleton from his dental work. “I guess it’s just Copeland, Jackson, and Garcia now.”

Jan said, “He was butting heads with Monty Evans on a weird contract clause. A sober driver with good insurance got a stupid little citation because it was just an accident.”

Cold sweat popped on Rox’s back. “I’ll take that under advisement.”

In her ear, Cash whispered, “I’m sure it’s not related.”

Rox said, “Um, I suppose we need to get back to this.”

In her ear, Cash whispered, “It’s a coincidence. That was a year ago. Monty has negotiated dozens, if not hundreds, of contracts for the studio in the meantime.”

Rox bit her lip and typed,
K.

In another hour, she had convinced herself that it was just an accident, that it was stupid to be paranoid. Movie studios didn’t kill people. They
sued
them. Lawsuits were far more destructive than killing someone, which was quick and easy compared to what industry lawyers could do to a person.

For four more hours, with occasional bathroom and coffee breaks, Cash spoke, and Rox repeated the legalese.