Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (20 page)

He smiled at her, cocking his head to the side. “You’re going to help me, right?”

“Sure. I’m solid like that.”

“Then I’ll go get a bottle for you.”

“Oh, stop.”

They sat on the couch in their accustomed spaces, close enough for conversation, not right next to each other, not touching.

They laughed through the show, just like normal, and the thought insinuated itself into Rox’s head that maybe they could just go back to normal. All the sexy stuff and his depression were just aberrations, just a bad night, and now they were back to their usual routine of hanging out and joking around.

See? Everything was fine. Maybe Cash would actually make it to some of those client meetings, and then he would really be back to normal.

Maybe he would take that bandage off his cheek soon.

As their shows finished, Cash said, “Look, about last night—”

“It’s okay,” Rox said. “Whatever you’re going to say, it’s okay. It was just a slip.”

A smile played around the edges of his mouth. “That’s not what you said about the first time that we ‘slipped.’”

“You were obviously upset that we slipped this time, and I don’t want to lose you as a friend. You were the only person who was there for me when the beasts and I had nowhere else to go. You can rely on me to hang around when you’re hurt. No matter what happens, let’s keep this, okay?”

He cocked his head to the side, his gaze a little soft from the wine he had drunk. “But you’re married. It could never have been anything more.”

Oh, yeah. That.
“That, too.”

“It was just a rough day, yesterday. Nothing more. We’re just friends.”

“That sounds about right to me.”

He stuck out his hand. “Deal.”

His palm was warm in hers, and he kept smiling the whole time they shook on it.

They watched television for a few more minutes, and then they went to their respective bedrooms.

In her own room, Rox paused, still wearing the expensive black silk bra and panty set that she’d bought online. It had been delivered that afternoon.

Yeah, she had been wearing lingerie again, just in case Cash had made some sort of a move.

Buying lingerie when she wasn’t even in a relationship was stupid, especially when the guy was so far out of her league.

And it hadn’t mattered that she had shaved her legs that afternoon, either.

She didn’t even want Cash to make a move, she reminded herself. She wanted to keep her job and work with him, be buddies, and be the one woman that Cash wouldn’t fuck and chuck.

That had been her goal all along.

Just because she fantasized about him sometimes, that didn’t mean that she really wanted to sleep with him. He was gorgeous and ripped. Every woman around him probably fantasized about him.

But she put her pajamas on over the lingerie because it made her feel like some guy, somewhere, wouldn’t mind that she was chubby and wouldn’t fall into a massive depression just because a fat chick had made a move on him.

Man, she had really hoped that Cash would make some kind of a move, even though she didn’t want him to.

MOONLIGHT

Casimir paced the hallway, looking at the framed paintings of pottery and landscapes but not really seeing them.

From the first moment he had met her, he had always known that Rox was married.

The first time she had walked into his office to discuss a contract, he had seen the rings on her left hand, and so he had known that he had to leave her alone. To not leave her alone would be to cause heartache.

But he hadn’t.

Casimir unlocked the French doors and walked out onto the deck, shutting the door behind him lest the cats get out. A wedge of moonlight sparkled on the ocean waves. The surf roared and pounded its fury on the rocks far below.

He had let himself get too attached to her, first depending on her at work, then becoming too friendly, too open with her, then insisting on rescuing her and her cats when just finding them a hotel would have been the more professional option, and then asking her to stay with him while he recovered because he couldn’t fathom letting even anonymous nurses see him when he was hurt, and now this.

He was an idiot who had fallen in love with a married woman.

Years ago.

Of course, she had rejected him.

It had nothing to do with the fact that his face was all twisted up again.

Except that the echoes in his head made it all about that.

He had been shoving those whispers down all day.

Somehow, at night, in the dark and the silence when everyone around for miles was asleep, everything seemed worse.
 

The bandage itched on his face where his beard was growing out. Once the five o’clock shadow poked out of his skin, that stupid gauze pad scratched at him. Before that, the tape itched when he smiled, or talked, or twitched, or anything.

He peeled the bandage from his face and crumpled it up, dropping it in a flowerpot that he used as a trashcan out there. Cool air touched his face, and he ran his fingers over the tight skin. The stiff scar tissue felt hauntingly familiar.

Behind him in the night, the French door clicked and scraped, discernible even over the ocean crashing against the shore.

He heard Rox ask, “Cash?”

Ah, crap.
Right when he had ripped off the damn bandage. That gnarled skin on his cheek itched, and he pressed his hand over the monstrous scar.

It was too dark for her to see him, and he would just keep that side of his face turned away from her. “I’m just looking at the moon.”

In the ghostly moonlight, he could just see the outline of her as she leaned on the railing beside him. “I know. I trust you.”

He almost laughed aloud.
Well played.

He said, “I think we should find you a house tomorrow. I can help with a down payment or whatever you need. I appreciate that you stayed here while I needed someone to take care of me.”

“Anytime, buddy. I can find a place. Don’t worry yourself.”

He looked over the dark sea, the roaring wavelets crested with silver glimmers. His house would echo with her and the cats gone. Maybe he could convince her to leave Pirate with him. “I think we managed to behave admirably, when you think about it. Two healthy adults, cooped up in a house. It’s a good thing you’re married. Otherwise, unspeakable things might have happened.”

“Yeah.” Moonlight touched her hair, drifting tendrils around her face in the night sea breeze.

He said, “I apologize for the unspeakable things that did happen.”

“Cash, nothing happened. It was just a little slip.”

“Your husband travels a lot. We’re together a great deal.”

“That’s true.”

He gripped the deck’s safety rail. “I have a question. Please don’t take offense. I haven’t.”

“Man, Cash. That sounds ominous.” Her light voice sounded like she was joking.

His hands tensed on the thick wood railing. “Are you trying to create a reason to divorce him? Women have used me for this before. An affair is a perfect excuse to divorce someone whom you desperately want to.”

Her sharp gasp shamed him. “No! Good Lord, I would never do something like that.”

He hadn’t thought that she would, and yet, something was tangibly different between them. “We’ve been friends for a long time, three years. We’ve never ‘slipped’ before.”

“We’ve never been cooped up together like this before.”

“We travel together all the time. This is different.”

Rox fidgeted, shifting from one foot to the other and scratching at the wood on the rail.

She said, “I’m not married.”

A blast of cold, night air shoved him backward, and he straightened, holding onto the rail in case his knees failed him.

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see or feel the rail under his hands.

He didn’t care if she was lying now.

Carefully, in case he had misheard and to keep his voice from shaking, he asked, “I beg your pardon?”

CHANGE OF HEART

Rox stared at the cubic zirconia and plastic rings on her hand, seeing just a pale glitter in the dark night. The clear crystal caught a scattering of the moon’s rays. The rest of the night was dark around them except for a few dim lights shining out of the French doors from inside the house.

Cash had turned toward her.

It actually felt good to get it off her chest. She wasn’t a cheater. She didn’t like that Cash must have thought she was cheating on her fictional husband.

She said, “I’m not married. Never been married. I bought these at a department store for twenty bucks the first day I was hired at the law firm.”

“You’re not
married?”
he asked.

“Nope.”

“Then who is Grant?”

She pulled out her cell phone and squinted against the sudden glare, flipping through her links until she found the one for her friend’s talent agency. She held it out to Cash, who had stepped back and away from her, away from the light shining from the screen. “A figment of my imagination and some headshots. I think his name is Lorenzo something.”
Lancaster Knox, actually.
It was written on the bottom of his headshot. She might have googled him once or twice. And found the gossip sites that talked about whom he was really dating and maybe followed him on Twitter, where he posted mostly naked selfies daily.

Cash stared at her phone. The light glared off the underside of his face in the night, and he angled his body and face away from her. He must be hiding that bandage again. “He’s a model.”

“Yeah. If you’re going to be fake-married, you might as well be fake-married to someone hot.”

“And the pictures of the two of you on vacation?

“Photoshop. Took ten minutes.”

“Are you poking fun at me?”

“Nope.” She dragged the rings off her finger and threw them into the surf far below. “Just cheap fakes.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not for about ten months.”

“Then
why?”
His voice rose.

“So that we could work together. So that you wouldn’t bump and dump me like all the others. Because then I’d crawl off into a hole somewhere.”

“And you did all that because you wanted to prevent any possibility of a relationship with me.”

“It doesn’t really matter, anyway. You’re a heartbreaker, not a chubby chaser.”

“A
what?”
His voice actually cracked that time.

“A chubby chaser. You can have any girl you want, and you certainly have
every
girl that you want. But you don’t have to feel guilty or ashamed about what happened between us. It was just once, it doesn’t mean that you’re stuck with me, and it wasn’t cheating because
I’m not married.
But don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll tell people that you were a perfect gentleman the whole time I was here.”

She saw Cash moving out of the corner of her eye before he grabbed her arm and spun her toward him.

He wrapped his arm around her waist. In the near-total blackness of the night, she thought that he might have taken that bandage off his face.

He growled, “You swear that you’re not married.”

“I’m not married,” she said. “I have never been married.”

“Do I revolt you? Am I so hideous that you can’t stand to touch me? Is that why you don’t want anyone to know about us?”

He sounded so angry that Rox couldn’t even laugh, even though that question was patently insane. “Are you kidding me? You,
hideous?
You’re
Cash Amsberg.
Wren wrote a sonnet to your abs. People take pictures when you’re playing volleyball without a shirt on and pass them around. You have a fan page on the internet.”

“I do not,” he said.

“Uh, yeah you do. ‘Cash on Demand.’ You have twenty thousand likes.”

Pale moonlight touched his cheekbone and jaw line. “You didn’t answer the question. What about
you?”

Rox tried to stare at him, but so little starlight filtered down to him that she could just see the faint outline of his face.

Was he being serious?

So much emotion choked his voice that he must be.

Rox reached down deep and told him the truth. “Cash, I can’t think straight when I look at you sometimes because my ovaries go into overdrive, but you’re also smart, and you’re ethical, and you’re funny. And you’re kind to my cats, even if you do spoil the crap out of them. Yes, you’re gorgeous, you’re so gorgeous that I catch my breath when I look at you, but you were there for me when I needed someone. That’s so much more important to me.”

“Then this was all so that we could work together.”

“It was so you wouldn’t screw me and break my heart.”

While she spoke, his other arm sneaked around her, and he held her tightly against his body.

She should push him away. She shouldn’t do this.

Rox ran her hands up his firm chest. “I couldn’t stand it, if we slept together and then you ghosted on me, just dumping me over the side like that.”

“And if I promise not to?”

“Oh, Cash. I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

“You are not ‘all the girls.’ You took care of me when I needed someone. You are the only person I can rely on at the office, especially now while I’m trying to figure out if Valerie has been selling out our clients.”

“I’m glad we’re friends.”

He bent, whispering, “Working with you every day has been a temptation. I stop myself a dozen times a day from reaching out to touch your hair, to bend and kiss your neck, to slam you up against a wall and rip your clothes off. Why did you tell me now that you aren’t married?”

Oh, yeah. This wasn’t fraught with all the feels or anything. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

Think of something.
“I didn’t want to lie anymore.”

“Why tonight? Why not tomorrow or in the office sometime?” His hand stroked over her hair. “Why in my house, near midnight, in the dark, when we’re both a little drunk?”

Rox slid her arms around his waist, feeling the strong muscles around his middle and back. “Because I liked it when we ‘slipped’ last night.”

His voice was even lower, huskier. “Me, too.”

“And I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re alone. At the office, I’m the plainest, chubbiest girl in the room.”