Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (22 page)

“Howdy, there,” she said, sauntering over as if she met Cash’s non-work friends every day.

The three of them together were gorgeous enough to make her fall on her face on the cold Spanish tile at their feet.

Seeing Cash Amsberg every day had kind of gotten her used to him so that her eyes weren’t burned by his insanely handsome good looks.

But now, with the other two, it hit her all over again how very sexy he was, standing there with that tight blue tee shirt snug on his broad shoulders and muscular arms.

The other two men were wearing suits, and she could tell from their inverted-triangle silhouettes that if she chewed those suits off of them with her teeth, they would be just as ripped as Cash was.

It was a masculine smorgasbord, and Rox was inexplicably ravenous.

“Rox, these are my old friends,” Cash said, “Arthur Finch-Hatten and Maxence Grimaldi. They’re old chums from school.”

“Watch that,” one of them said. “You’ve said ‘old’ twice, there.”

“Arthur,” Cash said, gesturing to the one who had spoken. Arthur had dark hair, but his eyes were such a light blue-gray that they were almost silvery.

“And this is Maxence,” Cash said, opening his hand to the other one. Maxence was, if anything, the most classically handsome of the trio, his bone structure flawless and strong, and he had black hair and dark eyes. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt, which he wore open at the collar. He looked thinner than the other two, almost gaunt around his hard cheekbones and triangular jaw, but he seemed pale under his tanned skin.

“Gentlemen,” Cash said. Arthur raised his eyebrows. “May I present Roxanne Neil, my girlfriend.”

Girlfriend?
Damn, that was quick. She wasn’t sure what she thought about that, but they would discuss terminology sometime when the
old school chums
weren’t around.

“Pleased to meet you,” Rox said and walked over to stand beside him. She didn’t duck under his arm. Too much, too soon. “Cash and I have worked together for three years, now. And how long are y’all able to stay?”

“Well, that depends on Casimir, here,” Arthur said. He tilted his head, looking at the bandage. “His sister seemed to think he needed houseguests.”

“Ana set you two on me?” he asked. “I should have known.”

“His sister meddles,” Arthur explained, “and believes that she has his best interests at heart. She used to try to boss him around when we were at school, even though she lived in The Hague and we were in Switzerland.”

“I should have known you two would have all the dirt on Cash,” she said. “Let’s go to the kitchen to have a cup of coffee and
talk.”

Arthur perked up and smiled. “Coffee sounds divine. Doesn’t it, Maxence?”

The other man sent a sharp glance toward Arthur, but then relented. “Yes, thank you. Just black, please.”

Arthur said, “God forbid you enjoy anything, Max. Come on, let’s get to know Casimir’s
girlfriend.”
His frank look raked Rox from her face to her toes and back up. His eyes lingered on her bosom, and he smiled.

“Hey, Arthur,” Rox said and pointed with two fingers to her face. “Eyes up here, buddy.”

He did meet her gaze then, but his pale silver eyes narrowed as his smile grew more mischievous.

Cash stepped between them, cutting off their eye contact, and said something quietly to Arthur. When he stepped aside, Arthur was gazing up at the ceiling, but he was still smiling.

Maxence was staring at his phone like he wasn’t taking part in the skirmish.

Cash said to him, “At least I shouldn’t have to worry about you anymore, eh, Maxence?”

“Certainly not,” Maxence said, and he tugged at his collar.

“Let’s have some coffee, shall we?” Rox offered.

Cash led the way to the kitchen.

Maxence was one step behind him, walking with his hands held in front of himself, the perfect posture of self-control.

Rox wasn’t sure how she had ended up last but suspected that her spirit animal, a herding shepherd dog, was at work somehow.

Arthur strode in front of her, and he slowed, letting Cash and Maxence get farther ahead of them.

As Maxence and Cash went through the door to the kitchen, Arthur turned, grabbed Rox’s wrist, and dragged her two steps to the side.

She yanked her wrist back. “What the fuck!”

He turned her by her shoulders and shoved her up against the wall.

“What
the
hell
do you
think
you’re—”

“The bandage on Casimir’s face,” Arthur hissed. His eyes, which looked more baby blue because they were practically nose-to-nose, widened and were dead serious. “What’s under it? How bad is it?”

Oh.

“I don’t know,” she stammered. “He won’t let me see. Ever since the accident, he’s kept a bandage on it. He even puts a towel over his head before he gets out of the shower. I don’t know how bad it is.”

Arthur scowled, and she heard grinding from his jaw. “We need to find out how bad it is and what he intends to do about it. Has he left the house?”

Rox wasn’t sure whether to shove Arthur off of her or not. They did need to be close enough to whisper. “Only for doctor appointments, and not at all since the last one a couple weeks ago.”

“Damn it. He holes up like that. We’ve got to get him out of here.”

Arthur stepped back and let her pass, and they were walking toward the kitchen just as Cash pushed the door open and glared at Arthur, and then he held out his hand to Rox to guide her into the kitchen.

On the way in, Arthur told him, “You need a haircut. I have a man here who makes house calls. I’ll see if he’s free this afternoon.”

Dang.
Rox had kind of liked Cash’s shaggy, surfer look.

SANCTIMONIOUS BULLSHIT

That night, the four of them had French food delivered from a small bistro rather than drive an entire block to the very same restaurant. They ate in Cash’s formal dining room instead of the television room, sitting in chairs like medieval Spanish thrones at the dark wood table.

Cash sat on her left, at the head of the table, while Arthur had seated himself right beside her and thus out of Cash’s reach. Maxence sat on the other side of the table, across from Rox.

Arthur’s barber had indeed shown up with a toolbox full of scissors and combs, and he’d given Cash a haircut right in his own bathroom. Good God, the extravagance of these rich people astonished her.

He did look more like himself, though.

Arthur and Maxence caught Cash up on news of friends of theirs.

Rox smiled, nodded a lot, and ate her coq au vin, chicken and vegetables in a thick sauce. She had never heard of the people they were discussing, and they tended to only use first names, anyway. Cash kept giving her one-sentence backgrounds on the old school friends they were talking about—youngest kid from a French banking family and likes to ski, Saudi minor royalty with a fetish for long-haired cats and flying his own plane, and a guy with a talent and obsession for computers that had turned out rather well for him despite that he had to hide his involvement in his own company—but she wouldn’t remember anything from the rapid-fire gossip and soundbites.

She had checked on the cats earlier. Traumatized by all the new humans and loud talking in the house, all three were crouching under her bed, huddled together, and wouldn’t look at her. She filled their food bowls and closed her door so they could get some sleep.

Arthur gestured across the table. “But Maxence here is almost out of the woods, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Hopefully within a few years. They won’t have children too soon, though. Pierre hates it when people talk.”

Cash leaned over to Rox. “Maxence’s older brother was engaged a few months ago. He’ll be married next spring. There has been a rash of high-profile engagements and weddings lately.”

“God, yes,” Arthur sneered, though he was grinning. “It’s like it’s contagious.”

“Arthur was at that engagement party that I went to in Dubai a few weeks before the car accident, and we were both at the one in Madrid in March. Maxence wasn’t there for either one of them. He has managed to dodge every social event for over a year, even his own brother’s engagement party in Paris a few weeks ago.”

“You skipped your own brother’s engagement party?” Rox asked him. Maxence sat directly across from her, on Cash’s left.

Maxence didn’t smile. He didn’t look angry, just solemn. “I was on a mission in Africa, building a school and digging wells for a town that had been nearly wiped out by a civil war.”

“Good Lord, why didn’t you say so?” Rox turned to Cash. “And here you had me thinking that he was just shirking his duty.”

“Oh, he was,” Cash said, grinning at Maxence, who still did not crack a smile. If anything, his unearthly physical beauty increased when he was so solemn. It was unnerving.

Cash was grinning so hard that the bandage on his cheek wrinkled. “Maxence should have been there. Everyone remarked on it. Pierre and Flicka won’t be married for over a year, though, not until next June.”

“If they marry,” Arthur said.

“You think they won’t even make it to the altar?” Maxence asked him, his voice sharp.

“Not if Flicka has any sense.” Arthur looked up at him. “And not that you should start wasting away over her again.”

Maxence looked down at his hands in his lap. “I don’t want to see her hurt.”

Cash told Rox, “Flicka broke a lot of hearts when she decided to marry Pierre.”

Maxence grimaced. “She didn’t ‘break my heart.’” He looked back to Rox. “We dated for a short while last year. It was never serious. Within days, I knew that she was still in love with my older brother, even though she didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to break it off because I thought I could win her over, so it dragged on for a few months. It was an indecent cliché.” He looked at Arthur. “But you don’t think she’ll marry him?”

“Not if he can’t keep it in his pants.”

Rox asked Cash, “Is that a problem?”

Cash frowned. “Pierre earned his nickname ‘The Rat Bastard’ by screwing around on every woman he ever dated. It was his preferred method of breaking things off—”

Maxence cleared his throat around a bite of food.

“—but we never call him that because Pierre is Maxence’s brother,” Cash finished.

Arthur told Rox, “If Pierre screws around on her, she’ll kill him. Perhaps quite literally. That family is a bit bloodthirsty.”

Rox nodded. “Down South, we have severe penalties for men who stray, usually the same methods as one employs to keep tomcats from running around.”

Maxence flinched and edged away from her. “A bullet might be kinder than that. If she doesn’t kill him, though, her brother will.”

“Girl after my own heart,” Rox said.

Cash raised one eyebrow at her.

Arthur said to him, “You’d better watch out for this one.”

Cash shrugged, seemingly unconcerned.

Maxence continued, “Flicka’s brother Wulf was two years ahead of us in school, but we saw a bit of him because my brother was her brother’s roommate for several years in primary and middle school and such. They’re the same age. So that’s how we knew Flicka, even though she’s quite a bit younger than we are. And social events, of course. We all ran with the same crowd.”

Cash told her, “Wulf asked me to look over the pre-nup when they’ve got it ready. I think I’m attorney number six to go over it, and I don’t think I’m the last one. I’ve heard that they’re writing in some draconian clauses if he cheats on her. It’s going to be
painful.”

“Did he officially retain you?” Arthur asked. “Is he
paying
you for it?”

“God, no. Wulf saves my ass every few years by texting me two weeks before the stock market tanks. I wouldn’t dare take his money. He might lose my number.”

“I’m surprised that Flicka or Wulf haven’t caught him dicking around already,” Arthur mused, “considering that whole business debacle that Pierre left Wulf with.” His smile broadened. “Speaking of which, we’re in the Southwestern US, aren’t we?”

Maxence thumped his wine glass on the table. “You won’t. Tell me you won’t.”

“It would be unfriendly to have come all this way and not visit our old school chum,” Arthur protested.

Cash rolled his eyes. “And, I suppose, you’ll visit The Devilhouse while you’re there.”

“Now that you mention it—”

Rox ate her coq au vin, not getting involved in whatever this was.

Maxence snorted. “And now we discover your real reason for coming to the US.”

Arthur laughed. “You’ve caught me out. And you’re coming with me.”

“I will not. In any case, we’ve only just arrived, and I have no desire to board your plane again.”

Arthur leaned his head toward Rox and hung on the back of her chair to steady himself. He stage-whispered, “Again, Maxence has been mortifying his flesh. He flew
commercial
to New York. I picked him up there.”

She frowned at him, irritated at his snobbishness.

Maxence rolled his eyes. “You say that as if it was a lapse of judgment.”

“At least he flew premium first-class.” He fixed his silvery eyes on Maxence. “Didn’t you?”

Maxence glared at him. “Yes.”

Arthur said to Rox, “So he’s not entirely given up hedonism. He took the airline where first-class includes private rooms with beds, a lounge for those who deserve it, and a bathroom with a shower.”

She looked at Cash, her eyes wide. “I thought first class was just those pods on international flights.”

“Not on some airlines,” Cash said. “On some, first class can get quite lavish.”

Maxence frowned at him. “You know very well that there are security considerations.”

Cash turned to Maxence, and his one eyebrow dipped as if he were concerned. “Did you book one of the suites?”

“It was necessary for security.” He adjusted his napkin on his lap.

Cash pressed him, “Did you book
two
of the suites so the stewards could combine them and you could sleep in a queen-sized bed?”

“Security reasons,” Maxence muttered.

“Are they still strewing the sheets with rose petals?”

He flinched. “I didn’t ask them to.”