Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (5 page)

He was so funny when he was outraged. Even though Rox saw it a couple times a week, it was still kind of cute.

And because it was cute, she provoked him further. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“I assure you, I am
actually
the boss of you,” Cash said, still ranting. “I
am
your boss and you will do as I say and you will not sleep in your damned
car
even one more minute.”

Cash paused, taking in the fact that she was grinning at his tirade, even though her eyes still burned a little.

He said, “Oh, I see how it is.
Fine.
Get these beasts packed up. We’ll pick up some lunch while we’re out. Have you been eating?”

Rox rolled her eyes at that. “I have money. I just couldn’t find a place to stay.”

“Then it’s settled.”

“It’s just for tonight. I’ll find someplace starting tomorrow.”

“Fine, then. I’ll be back in ten minutes to carry your things downstairs to my car.” He turned to leave.

“I can drive myself,” she insisted.

“My car is larger, and yours has been recently used as a flop for homeless people and unwashed beasts. It’s not fit transportation.”

She laughed at him that time. “You don’t have to do this. I’m really fine.”

Cash rolled his eyes, finally thoroughly exasperated. “I will brook no more arguments.
Pack up your cats.”

“Okay, boss.”

His shoulders relaxed as he finally simmered down, and she could see the snark building in him. He asked, “Also, you belong to a gym?”

Oh, a chubby crack.

Rox popped her chin up. “Yeah, I do. Where I take kickboxing, and I will pound your skinny, arrogant, lawyer butt if you make a fat joke.”

Cash chuckled. “That’s not what I meant. You should try mine. It has an excellent juice bar with very good food service. The treadmills have desks. I often look at contracts on a laptop while I’m there. You might like it.”

She rolled her eyes at that, too. “Dude, you have a serious workaholism problem. There’s gotta be a twelve-step program for that.”

CASIMIR

Casimir Amsberg—for he still thought of himself by his proper name even though everyone in California had taken to calling him “Cash”—closed his office door and leaned his back against it.

Roxanne had been in his arms. Her soft heat had soaked through his clothes until he could nearly feel her. He could have pulled her against his body, turned her face up, and kissed her, right there, in that moment.

For a blink of an eye, it hadn’t mattered to Casimir that she was married. Her husband had gone off to Thailand of all places and left her when she had needed his protection, no matter what the order of events had been.

It galled Casimir that Rox hadn’t called him when she had needed someone to help her. Anger still coursed through him, running hot in his blood, and that was why he had taken a few moments to quiet himself before they drove out to his house in the foothills.

All right,
he told himself. Yes, she was staying at his house for a night or two. It would be just like when they traveled together.

Friendly.

Platonic.

Uneventful.

There was no reason that he should think otherwise.

It made no difference that this was not a hotel but his home.

He hadn’t been shocked to discover that, when threatened with losing her home, she had chosen her pets over her apartment even though he hadn’t known she had pets. Rox was a kind woman, he knew. She was loyal. She cared for those she committed to.

And she was married. She had been married before he had met her.

Cash had never had a chance.

When Rox had begun working at the firm, he had liked her professionalism, even though he had eyed what had to be voluptuous curves under her business suits. Each day, he had found more to admire about her, more to talk with her about, and more that kept him agile in the office or in negotiations.

When she took vacation days, he emailed or texted her constantly, just to see her words coming back to him.

In the intervening years since she had been hired, every other woman Casimir had dated had been found to be lacking in some essential quality that Rox had in abundance: in humor, in presence, in intelligence, in maturity, or in gravitas.

Or in loyalty.

Rox was loyal to everyone, even to himself as a friend, and surely she was faithful to her husband.

Casimir bounced the back of his head softly against the door in time with his thoughts.

She. Was. Married.

It did not matter if Rox would be under his roof for a day or two. It did not matter that sometimes a ghost of other circumstances had flitted through the house and through Casimir’s mind, a ghost that looked suspiciously like her sumptuous dark hair spread on his pillows or her plush body sprawled on his sheets.

She. Was. Married.

Perhaps his attraction for her was merely for forbidden fruit, he consoled himself. If he’d had a chance with her, perhaps he wouldn’t feel so strongly. It was probably an illusion.

Perhaps she wouldn’t walk through his dreams, handing him contracts and then looking up through dark eyelashes with her hazel eyes that reminded him of pale caramels from home before she melted into his arms.

She would only be at his home for a day or two.

Casimir would survive a day or two of her walking around his house, drinking coffee with him in the morning or maybe a cocktail after work, perhaps watching a little late-night television on the deep couches in the media room before they retired, or perhaps, finally, she might steal into his bedroom near midnight—

She. Was. Married.

He rubbed the back of his skull. That last bonk had smarted a bit.

And if Rox did steal into his bedroom late at night, it would probably be because she was taunting him, because that’s what women always did.

All his teenage years, the girls had told him that they liked him, that he had a good personality, and he had believed them so many times. Hell, one had told him that she was just after his family’s money, and that was perfectly fine with him because he could believe that.

But they were all just screwing around with him.

Now, however, he watched the women he dated, and sooner or later, every one of them proved that they only wanted something from him, whether it was notoriety or money or travel.

There was never any genuine emotion.

If Rox did steal into his room after midnight, she would eventually turn out to be like all the others, not the paragon of virtue and sweetness that he found whenever they worked or traveled or spoke together.

The suspicion that Rox might be different, might actually have feelings for him, faded away.

No one could fool Casimir anymore.

IMPRISONMENT

Rox was crouching behind her desk, shaking the bag of shrimp treats. The fishy smell wafted out of the bag because she had probably pulverized the treats inside with her insistent shaking. “Come on, you cats! I have treats?” she begged.

Midnight had wedged himself behind the filing cabinet and latched all his claws deeply in the carpet, locking himself to the floor. Speedbump had crawled into her desk and kept slithering between the drawers no matter how she tried to catch him. Pirate just bolted away whenever she got near and hissed his worst insults at her.

Her office door rattled.

She popped up, looking over the desk.

In the tall, narrow window beside the door, Cash’s face was visible above the potted plant. One of his eyebrows was lowered.

She stood and unlocked the door for him, cracking it open a scant inch to talk.

He said, “I’ve got my car waiting downstairs.”

“I can’t get them into the carriers,” Rox admitted.

“Why not?”

“They hate the carriers. The only time that they get shoved in the carriers is to go to the vet or to go live in the car, a decision that was highly unpopular among the masses.”

“Just shove them in.”

“I can’t catch them.”

“Let me in. Animals love me.”

She glanced behind her, but all three cats were hiding in her office somewhere. When Cash had come in earlier, they had been sleepy and sluggish, but now they were riled up and might try for an escape. “Okay, come on.”

With the door just barely open, Cash turned his broad shoulders and slipped in. He stepped close to Rox, so close that she could have stepped forward into his arms again.

Pirate slammed into Rox’s leg and dodged between their legs, trying to sneak out.

She grabbed the scruff of his neck and yanked, dragging him backward.

Pirate yowled.

Outside the office in the cubicles, Mel and Daffodil poked their blond heads up over the blue-padded walls, prairie-dogging, as Rox slammed the door. “Dang.”

“Such language.” Cash stooped, looking under the chairs.

Rox still clutched a handful of cottony ginger fur and pinned Pirate to the floor. “I’ve got one. Grab that carrier.”

Cash picked up one of the plastic carriers and swung the door open.

“On the floor,” she told him, crouching beside the cat and holding the fur on his back, too.

Pirate hissed so hard that he spat.

“Hold the door open.”

Cash swung the steel bars aside.

Rox shoved the cat at the carrier.

Pirate grabbed the sides of the opening with three paws and held on with his claws, wedging himself outside as he howled his rage, an ascending screech that raked her ears. As Rox pushed, trying to shove him in, the whole carrier scooted across the carpeting.

Pirate twisted, almost getting loose.

“Hold it!” Rox said.

Cash stuck a knee behind the carrier and reached around, peeling Pirate’s paws off of the carrier.

As he picked away the second one, Pirate lost his grip, and Rox crammed him in the carrier and slammed the door just as the cat whirled and came at her, claws flying. A whiff of cat fart drifted out of the box.
That’s
how mad he was.

“Okay,” she said. “One down. Two to go.”

Cash’s startled eyes over the top of the carrier made Rox laugh.

He asked, “Are they all like this?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Pirate’s a little pussycat. Midnight has a heck of a temper.”

THE LAST NORMAL AFTERNOON

Rox had always heard that Cash Amsberg was loaded.

It was obvious from the way that his suits and shirts were precisely tailored far too well to be off the rack and from the car that he drove. The Mercedes Maybach wasn’t an ostentatious, low streak of red lightning like a Lamborghini.

No, it was more deceptive than that.

The paint on the outside was a refined charcoal gray, but the interior upholstery and finishes shimmered in a lighter shade, like sitting inside the palest of Tahitian black pearls.

It looked just like a very nice Mercedes sedan until you realized that it said
Maybach
on the back, that the leather under your butt was softer than the most buttery leather jacket you had ever felt, and that all those wood and silver finishes meant the price tag had to be around two hundred grand.

Like Cash, it was merely pretty until you saw more of it, and then there was something else, something that Rox had never quite sussed out of him, a luxurious vibe.

When Rox belted the cat carriers into the back seat, the sharp odors of fresh plastic, wood oil, and tanned leather permeated the car.

“Your car smells new,” she said to him. “Did you have it detailed? How did they do that?”

He shrugged. “I got a new one.”

She stared at it. “It’s exactly like the one you had last month.”

“Of course. The dealership kept my order on file.”

“Your new car is exactly like your old one?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

One of his eyebrows lowered, and his shrug seemed nervous. “Because I wouldn’t want people to notice.”

Rich people were weird. When Rox had bought her little black sports car, she had made all the paralegals and admins in the firm come out to the parking lot and had given them all rides in it.

Yes, she had always heard that Cash Amsberg was loaded.

But no one from the office had ever been to his house.

He held his expected social events in downtown hotel ballrooms, demurring that his house was too far out of the way for people to be expected to drive to.

And now Cash was driving them through a neighborhood of mansions.

Gates and fences cordoned off entire hills, and exactly one house perched on each hill.

One huge house per enormous hill.

Rox rode in the passenger seat as Cash drove along the meandering street. In the back seat, cat carriers lined up, each with a seat belt lashing it in place. Midnight howled his displeasure. Pirate and Speedbump flattened themselves against the floors of their carriers and suffered in silence but with glaring looks.

“I really appreciate this,” Rox said for the thousandth time.

“Don’t mention it. About the meeting with Monty this afternoon, we should strategize. Monty thought he would be dealing with Valerie. How shall we use that to our advantage?”

“Guilt?” Rox suggested. “‘Poor Valerie had a stroke. Kind of your fault, isn’t it, Monty? Shoving screwed-up contracts like this at her?’ That’ll get him.”

“Nice. I like that.”

“And then after that, I need to go back to the office. I have to drop a contract in the cloud to work on tonight. I hate that security system.”

“Everyone hates it,” he said, checking the rear view mirror.

To read a file off-site, you had to be physically in the office and check out the file with your personal security code and a random nine-digit number from one of three tokens that were forever getting lost in drawers or behind computers or in the trash cans.

Plus, the tokens were locked up at night, or they were supposed to be. Most of the time, at least one was missing. A partner had to open the safe to get them out again every morning.

It was a huge pain in the butt.

The stupid little things were constantly getting lost. Josie had threatened to put bike flags on them, but for the time being, they were just little plastic things about the size of a thumb drive that flashed a long, long number for a few seconds before they blinked and changed again and again and again.