Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (43 page)

A voice called out of the crowd, “Where will you be, Cash?”

Cash?
Oh, yeah.
Cash.
Rox shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around all the names.

He said, “I’ll be overseas for few days. I will email Wren and Melanie with my phone number, and they will disseminate it.”

The glass doors at the front of the office slammed open.

Rox spun, her fists up and ready to commit mayhem on whomever was coming to attack her and Casimir. Time to fight fire with fire and salt the Earth.

Two columns of men in black fatigues marched in and drove a wedge through the crowd toward Casimir and Rox. Bulky belts circled their waists, providing them with multiple deadly options. They didn’t have their guns drawn, but they all wore snapped holsters on their hips.

So many of them. Better to run.

She shrank closer to Casimir’s legs, ready to push him toward the fire exits.

Casimir hopped down from the table and stood beside her. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “The cavalry has arrived.”

Rox recognized one of the dark-clad guys leading the twenty or so men as Hugo Faure, Maxence’s head of security who had been in charge when they had flown to The Devilhouse, and she blew out a pent-up breath.

For a second there, that battalion of men had looked like the government’s men in black had shown up to kidnap them for knowing too much about certain unidentified aircraft.

Hugo Faure stood next to Casimir, his back toward him, facing out at the crowd. “How bad is this situation?”

“Just a group of friends.” Casimir shoved his phone into his pocket.

“I’ve seen friendlier people behind a rifle,” Hugo said, watching the crowd.

“They’ve had some bad news,” Casimir told him, his voice low, “and they’re about to have a very bad day.”

Rox stood close to him, and one of the men in black gave her a quick side-eye from behind his dark sunglasses and then continued to examine the law firm’s staff around him.

Hugo touched his ear. “Let’s go.”

The security men condensed their formation around Rox and Casimir, and the phalanx moved as a single group toward the doors. The crowd of admins and paralegals parted as the security men stiff-armed them aside, and Rox hurried to keep up with the long-legged men.

She walked out the glass doors of the law office just as Hugo muttered to Casimir, “Mr. Grimaldi said that you had extensive security at your compound.”

Casimir smirked. “Maxence might have been mistaken.”

“Damn it. He does that all the time. It drives his uncle and myself mad.”

Casimir laughed out loud at that.

Hugo grumbled, “So His Highness has not had proper security the whole time that he was in California.”

Rox stopped in the hallway leading to the elevator and whirled around. “What did you call Maxence?”

Surely Hugo was being sarcastic.

Surely he was calling Maxence an entitled little prince-jerk because he was a spoiled rich kid.

Yeah, that made sense.

Of course, the security guy would disparage the man who had built a school with his own hands in an African war-ravaged village and was too skinny when he came back because he gave his food to little girls. There was lots of privileged, entitled attitude to mock there.

Yeah, that made no sense at all.

“Mr. Faure!” Rox called out because she was a proper little Southern girl. “What did you call Maxence?”

But Hugo had stepped back, one of his arms spread wide and the other resting on the butt of his gun, as the security men bustled her and Casimir into the elevator and out of the building, to where black SUVs idled at the curb, waiting.

Casimir held her elbow and led her toward the cars.

Another of the security men said to Casimir, “This way, Your Highness.”

Rox stopped dead in her tracks.

One of the other security guys danced around her, his arms raised, rather than run her over.

Casimir stood, staring at her, his green eyes wary, looking to see if she had heard.

Oh, she had
heard
all right.

She braced her fists on her hips. “And what did he just call
you?”

CODENAME: LUMBERJACK PRIME

In the SUV, Rox and Casimir sat on the very ends of the seat, as far away from each other as they could get. She rolled the hem of Brandy’s faded workout shirt between her fingers.

Casimir looked out the window of the SUV. The morning sun shone on the hard angles and planes of his face, glinting in the auburn scruff of his growing beard. He wouldn’t even look at her, and he was wearing his impassive bitch face, repressing all emotion, as if they were in an enemy lawyer’s office.

She said, “That guy wasn’t serious. That guy was just joking around because suddenly you need all this security, right? That’s why he called you ‘Your Highness.’”

“Rox, we should discuss this in private.” His reserved, cultured English accent sounded very foreign to her.

She cracked her knuckles, and her shoulders relaxed. Just because he was filthy rich didn’t mean that he was actually royalty. “You’re just screwing with me, right. Of course, you are. I’m the Queen of Sheba, too.”

Casimir didn’t reply. Even though the back seat of the SUV had a lot of legroom, his long legs still folded like a grasshopper behind the seat in front of him.

Rox looked at him,
really
looked at him. With his slim, elegant build, confident bearing, and the sweet and subtle scent of oodles and oodles of money, it kind of made sense that someone had called him Your Highness.

Her head boggled.

Just then, her phone buzzed in her purse, indicating an incoming text.

Probably someone from the office.

Probably
everyone
from the office.

She paused in her internal tirade.

Rox called her phone’s voice prompt “Phone Chick.”

And her phone called her “Your Imperial Majesty.”

Like a code name.

These men were security guys, like the Secret Service.

One of these guys had called Casimir “Your Highness.” Another one of the guys had called Maxence “His Highness,”
exactly the same thing.

Or, you know,
really close.

Didn’t the Secret Service give the President of the United States a nickname like Bald Eagle One or Lumberjack Prime or something?

Of course. That must be it.

It was a security guy codename thing.

See? Easy answer.

Rox said, “So, ‘Your Highness’ is what these security guys call the person that they’re protecting, isn’t it? It’s just a code word or something. So that the bad guys won’t know who they’re talking about. Whoever the bad guys are. Because there are always bad guys.”

Casimir continued to stare out the window of the SUV, the morning sunlight glowing on his face, and didn’t agree with that obvious explanation.

Rox crossed her legs away from him and watched the city slip behind the SUV as they traveled.

The caravan stopped at Brandy’s house. Rox unlocked her door and began to open it.

Casimir touched her arm. “Don’t.”

She looked around the perfectly normal neighborhood. Short chain-link fences bounded the properties’ gravel front yards, and some of the houses could use a fresh coat of paint over the peeling bits, but it was fine. “What?”

“The security detail will get the cats,” he told her.

The neighborhood around Brandy’s house was a perfectly normal suburban neighborhood. It was a little on the old and cheap side when compared to the nicer part of Los Angeles, and some of the folks were sitting on their porches and peering at the caravan of tinted-window black SUVs, probably because their air-conditioning was broken again. It wasn’t a gang neighborhood. Rox always felt perfectly safe coming here, except for Brandy’s hellhound-variety pit bulls. No one felt safe around those rabid monsters except Brandy.

“What?” she asked. “I’ll grab my cats. It’s fine.”

“This is how things are done. When we’re in Amsterdam, you’ll need to get used to it.”

“We can’t take the cats to Amsterdam,” she exclaimed.

Casimir flipped his hand in the air, brushing off her concerns. “My nieces and nephews will love them.”

Rox grabbed her purse. “Don’t you need, like, a veterinary passport and a whole bunch of paperwork to take cats on an airplane and travel internationally?”

“Sometimes. Not this time.” Casimir just continued to look at the window, watching.

More tremors started in Rox’s stomach. “Why not?”

Casimir continued to stare out the window. “We’ll talk about it later, in private.”

THE HUGGER

The cats hid under the seats of the SUV and yowled all the way to the airport, which was a mercifully short trip.

The last time Rox had flown through the private terminal, just a day and a little bit before, she had been so flustered at the idea of flying on a private jet and had been peering out the enormous wall of glass on the back side of the terminal at all the private planes coming and going that she hadn’t really looked around the building.

On the way back, she had been too shell-shocked to look around.

The terminal was nice.

Have you ever seen a movie that takes place in the 1800s, maybe in Africa, where the whole point of the ostentatious, sumptuous, disgusting setting is obviously social commentary to emphasize that the imperial empire in the movie is so decadent, so morally failing, that they must be raping the land and enslaving the people to make it look like that?

Yeah.
That.

In the movie, shining and soft leather upholsters every chair and couch. Cut crystal glasses and stemware sparkle in the tropical sun, which must have been packed in straw and tissue and imported from somewhere far away at great expense. The waiters, who are bowing obsequiously while they bring people drinks that cost a hundred dollars a glass, are all beautiful specimens of humanity, as decorative as the real art on the walls, and huge vases of riotous flowers bloom on every table, and the thick rugs cushion your feet.

Yep.

Rox didn’t move her head, just her eyeballs, as she scanned the luxury that the rich people indulged in before they went out to their private jets.

She was torn between wanting it all for herself and wanting to burn it all down. People were starving. Dang, that champagne that the waiter offered her from a tray was delicious.

Hugo said, “This way, please.”

Casimir held her elbow and steered her through the airport terminal as if Rox didn’t know where to go.

The slim jet waiting outside the windows shone silver in the sunlight except for its tail, which was a grayed federal blue and emblazoned with three gold crowns. She hadn’t noticed the paint job the other night.

She didn’t even need to look at Casimir’s tattoo on his right forearm to see if the tail fin matched one of the three shields. It totally did.

They crossed the tarmac, Casimir’s hand still guiding her elbow, and climbed the stairway to the plane.

Inside, two security guys saw them and stood back, relaxing.

Maxence was sitting in one of the white leather recliners, his hands on his knees, eyes closed.

Arthur was standing in the aisle, bracing himself on two chairs, his back to them.

When they ducked to come in the doorway, Arthur’s head whipped around, and he strode down the aisle and grabbed them both around their necks in a headlock, dragging Casimir against his shoulder and short little Rox against his side.

Her face was smashed against Arthur’s dark blue suit and his ribs underneath.

She tried to push away, pressing her hand against his side, but Arthur’s elbow was cinched around her neck. Even though the fine fabric of his suit and shirt separated her palm from his body, muscles bulged under her hand. Yep, Arthur was ripped under there.

She pushed away a little harder because he was really hanging onto her.

Arthur whispered, his voice hoarse,
“What the hell is going on with you two?”

From the other side of Arthur, Casimir said, his voice slightly strangled, “Rox, I forgot to mention that Arthur cannot keep it British when he’s upset. He becomes a
hugger.”

Arthur shook them both, rattling them with his arms around their necks. “You two will stay in Amsterdam or London. You aren’t coming back to this hellhole. If you need security, Caz, I will supply it.
Do you understand me?”

Casimir pounded Arthur on the back. “I assure you, once we get home to Amsterdam, my sister won’t let me take a piss without a team securing the facilities.”

Beyond Arthur’s arm, back in the seats, Maxence had opened his eyes and was staring at them. He blew out a very deliberate breath and slumped in his chair.

“You scared me shitless, you assholes.” Arthur jiggled them some more, as if ensuring they were real. “A sniper and firebombs in
one damn day.”

Rox gave up and wrapped her arms around Arthur’s waist, hugging him back.

His arm loosened around her neck, and his hand relaxed down to the middle of her back. “I saw the footage. It looked like a coordinated terrorist attack. That’s what they’re calling it, you know. They’re denying that it was aimed at one person and are bringing in federal authorities.”

“But we’re fine,” Casimir told him, pounding him on the back. “We’re fine, and we’re here now.”

Arthur released them, almost throwing himself backward, and straightened his shirt cuffs under his suit jacket.

Rox stumbled but grabbed a seatback to steady herself.

“Jackasses,” Arthur muttered.

Casimir reached over the seats, extending his hand to Maxence, who stood and calmly shook his hand.

Maxence said, his voice low and cultured, “I’m very pleased to see you.”

“And you. Thank you for the use of your men.”

Maxence waved it off. “I was gratified to hear that they had secured you and that you were en route to the plane.”

Arthur edged past them and walked up to the front of the airplane, leaning into the cockpit. He told the pilot, “Get us out of here.”

The engines whined, winding up.

Rox found a seat and stowed her purse that held, as far as she knew, everything that remained of all her possessions in the world. Her other possessions were supposed to be in storage, moved there by the property company that owned her apartment building, but she hadn’t been able to take that key and look, yet. Everything that she had taken with her had probably burned up or been soaked in the fire at Casimir’s house.