Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (6 page)

Rox had heard that the partners had tried to have the security software’s firewall altered so that partners could remotely access any file—just the partners, not the peons—but the security firm wouldn’t do it.
 

Cash turned off the road and halted in front of a gate. He pushed a button, and the black bars slid aside.

The private development looked very high-end, far beyond what Rox could have even imagined.

Behind the gate, the asphalt road wound up and between the hills. Lush autumnal wildflowers waved on the hillsides.

This expanse of unused land bordered on obscene in the space-hungry city.

Rox glanced over at him, but Cash seemed more intent on driving and chewing on his lower lip, still considering their options for how to outfox Monty. “There’s something more to this.”

“Yeah. It’s weird, right?”

He nodded. “Certainly.”

And he kept driving, up the hill, around the back, winding up more hills, and switchbacks up to a house that spread around a cobblestoned courtyard with a fountain at the center.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

Rox tried not to look like a gaping redneck.

He pushed another button near the rearview mirror, and a garage door over on the other side of the fountain retracted. After he parked inside, the garage door behind them still gaped open.

Rox stepped out of the car, walking away from Midnight’s constant yowling, and looked out of the garage door. Mountains flowed away from his house, and the air smelled so much fresher than in downtown L.A. The cool breeze of fresh water mist wafted from the fountain.

His house was on the highest hill, and it was the biggest.
“Wow.”

“Wow, what?” Cash said, getting out from behind the wheel and opening the back door.

“I—” What should she say? That she was really flabbergasted by how much money he must have spent on his house? “You have a beautiful home.”

He dropped one eyebrow at her. “Perhaps next time you’re homeless, you’ll remember that.”

Touché.

He stooped into the back of the car and came up with two cat carriers. “I’ll go back for the other one. Come on. I’ll show you to your room.”

They walked in the side door, which didn’t open into a kitchen like Rox would have expected but to a living room decorated in Spanish Colonial. Dark, exposed beams lined the white plaster ceiling. White and pale gold furniture was grouped around dark wood tables. Honey-colored walls looked like a sunset was glowing on them. Spanish-style art was framed on the walls, vibrant still-life paintings of pots and landscapes.

Brick red, lush draperies framed huge French doors that opened onto a balcony that overlooked the ocean.

The ocean?

It was so much cooler up here in the hills that the doors stood open. A light breeze drifted through the mountains and ruffled her hair, carrying the freshness of the sea far below, cooling her nose and bringing the taste of salt to the back of her tongue. She hadn’t realized that they had driven up the back of the highest hill, that Cash’s enormous house perched on the very top of the development, or that they were so near the sea. Sunlight glittered on the rippled wave tops far below.

Cash strode over and started closing the doors. “We’ll turn the air conditioning on.”

“I don’t think they’d go out there,” Rox said. “They’re all pretty old and lazy.”

“The coyotes might come in after them.”

“Oh. Good point.”

They carried in her few things—just a suitcase full of clothes and some shopping bags with framed pictures of her cats, her friends, and her father—and the last cat. Cash showed Rox a large half-bathroom off the main rooms where she could set up a litter box and food bowls, and then they released the beasts and took back off for the city and their meeting with Monty.

They strategized all the way there, ranting and laughing in equal parts, with Rox taking notes on her phone while Cash drove.

The two of them were a well-oiled legal machine. They complemented each other, and they had each others’ backs. One time, when they had been negotiating a contract in Moscow, opposing counsel had sent a hooker to Cash’s hotel room. Cash had escaped to Rox’s room, his shirt half-torn off, and insisted that Rox get rid of the woman because the hooker would not take no for an answer. Rox had explained to the mortified woman that Cash didn’t need her services that evening because he preferred men, and the woman had left.

The other lawyers had looked sheepish the next day. Cash had used that embarrassment to negotiate an extra twenty thousand for their client. He had even camped it up a little, if badly. Cash Amsberg would do anything to give his clients the best representation he could because that was the ethical thing for a lawyer to do.

All lawyers may be scumbags, he had told her, except for
your
lawyer, who was
your
scumbag.

On the way back into the city, the waving grasses gave way to strip malls, then to tall buildings, but heavy traffic on the freeway delayed them. The drunken idiots were out in full force that day, and Rox saw not one but two people who had put their cars into the wall. One van still spouted fire, and the paramedics were lifting a stretcher into an ambulance. The standstill around the accidents stretched for miles, damn rubberneckers.

Cash drove carefully, never with aggression nor emotion, and they broke free of the jam with little time to spare.

When Rox and Cash finally reached the other law firm’s building, they raced to the elevator, laughing and panting, right up until the elevator doors parted on the opposing firm’s floor.

And they both put on their bitch faces.

An admin showed them to a conference room at Singh, Proctor, and Evans, where Monty Evans was already sitting with the contract stacked on the table.

He scowled at them, his wrinkled forehead gathering yet more folds. “Valerie is supposed to handle your side.”

Rox didn’t let her eyebrows rise at that rudeness. This might not be the South, but it was at least California. It wasn’t like they were in New York.

“Good afternoon to you, too, Monty.” Cash’s dry tone wasn’t a surprise. They were practically psychic twins these days.

Rox dropped the annotated contract on their side of the table with a nice, loud
thwack.

Monty scowled harder. “Where’s Valerie?”

Cash said, “She’s in hospital. She had a stroke a few days ago and will be incapacitated for several more days or weeks, at the very least.”

“But
she
was supposed to go over this contract,” Monty insisted.

Cash glanced at Rox, one eyebrow lower than the other, and turned back. “She’s not available. We will negotiate this contract on behalf of Ms. Watson.”

Monty looked between the two of them, his head swiveling back and forth, his cottony hair swaying in the breeze from the air conditioner. “When will Valerie be back?”

Cash sighed, repeating, “Not for at least a week, perhaps a month. Watson’s representatives need this contract returned by Friday, so you’re stuck with us.”

Monty’s mouth set in a hard line like he was grinding his teeth, and then he said, “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

They started with the first clause on the first page, but Monty dug in and argued every damn item that Rox and Cash had brought up for negotiation. He argued about the time frame for payment, which was far outside the usual window, and all of them knew it. Monty insisted that each item had already been negotiated, and they knew that they hadn’t been, and everything they brought up was tabled for the next session.

After three pages of getting exactly nothing done, Rox started keeping an eye on Cash. He never exploded at other attorneys. His rants were reserved for the office where they were effective tools and amused Rox and where he and Rox could do something about the underlying problem.

However, on the third page, when Monty insisted that the production studio retaining autobiography rights was normal and customary, Cash’s negotiating slowed. He blinked languidly, his dark eyelashes fluttering over his emerald green eyes before he answered Monty’s attacks, and he leaned back in his chair. Bulges appeared at the sides of his square jaw as he chewed a pen.

Lawyers argue, yes, but they have a specific way that they argue.

If you can argue the law, then you argue the law.

If you can’t argue the law, then you argue the facts.

If you can’t argue the facts, then you just argue.

Monty was just arguing.

Something was terribly wrong.

Rox stood and announced, “I shall use the powder room, if you gentlemen will excuse me.”

Cash glanced up at her. They both had the bladders of camels and could negotiate for hours if needed. He told Monty, “We’ll take a break until she returns. Call for coffee, if you would be so kind. Rox, would you like some?”

“Yes, please,” she said and walked out of the room.

Monty still glared across the table at Cash as she left.

The admin showed Rox where the ladies’ room was, and Rox sat on the closed lid of the toilet and texted Cash,
He’s not arguing law and he’s not arguing facts. He’s just arguing. Something is going on. Let’s go back to the office where we can get some dang work done.

Rox flushed the toilet and washed her hands, just in case anyone was listening and just anyway, and went back to the conference room.

Inside, Cash had zero expression on his face, his jaw tight, while he doodled on the contract. Monty dropped his pen on the contract like a falling missile, picked it up, and did it again.

Both had untouched cups of coffee in front of them, and another cup steamed in front of Rox’s chair.

They argued one more clause, and then Cash checked his phone. Rox saw over his shoulder that he was reading her text. He couldn’t have read it immediately, of course. That would have been too obvious: the paralegal goes to the bathroom and then the attorney receives a text.
Doy.

Cash nodded. That was for her. He said, “The office has called us back. There’s a problem with one of Valerie’s other contracts. It seems that there is another negotiation that needs to be handled.”

Monty dropped the pen one more time and then glared at them. He waited, taking a slow breath, before he said, “Oh?”

“Absolutely,” Rox chimed in. “Our whole office is running itself ragged trying to deal with Valerie’s contracts. We may have to hire some temps.”

“You’re going to hire outside people?” Monty placed his spread hand over the contract.

“We may have to,” Rox nattered on, scooping the too-few pages of the document together. “Valerie has so many outstanding contracts. She’s such a whiz. She can just whip through them. The whole office is struggling, but she can’t come back for a while. The doctors are adamant, no matter how much she argues with them, and you know how Valerie can
argue.
Cash and I are working night and day, going through
all
her contracts.”

“You’re going to go through all of them,” Monty said.
“All
of them.”

“Oh, yes,” Cash said, watching the other lawyer closely. “We will review
all
of Valerie’s contracts, and we need to leave now for the office.”

Monty stared at the Watson contract. “Thank you for your time. I look forward to completing this negotiation. My admin will see you out.”

He stood and walked out, taking his notes with him.

Cash watched him go and pushed the last few pages of notes over to Rox. “Let’s go.”

“That was weird, don’t you think?” she asked him.

He turned and looked straight at her like he was trying to beam something directly into her head. “Let’s go.”

Okee-dokee, then.

Cash collected the portfolio case from her and carried it to his car in the parking garage. He was as conscientious about carrying bags for ladies as any Citadel cadet, and he reminded Rox of her cousin who had gone to college there, the gentlemanly one, more often than not.

Rox trotted. Cash had long, long legs, but he usually ambled so she could keep up. Now, though, he breezed through the garage, smacking his heels down on the cement, the hard footfalls from his dress shoes echoing off the concrete and cars.

At his car, Cash tossed the portfolio bag into the back seat as he slid behind the wheel, watching Rox over the top of the car as she hopped in the passenger side and closed her door.

“Cash, I don’t know what is going on—”

He slammed his door, jabbed the ignition button, and reversed out of the space, cranking himself around to look out the back window. “You were right,” he said. “Monty wasn’t negotiating. He was stalling. We were wasting our time with him.”

Rox buckled her seat belt as he sped out of the parking garage. “So, what now?”

“Looking over Valerie’s other contracts is now our top priority. We’re going back to work.”

GOING DUTCH

Rox and Cash sat opposite each other on the couches in Cash’s corner office with their laptops on their knees, just scratching the surface of Valerie’s many, many contracts that she had been working on. Rox’s laptop battery was getting hot on her left thigh.

The sun was drooping in the sky, glaring reddening light on the glass over Cash’s law school diploma bolted to the wall.

Rox glanced at the sheepskin, even though she had seen it hundreds of times, but scanning the contracts was getting boring. Everything she had seen for hours was dead boilerplate standard.

The name on his diploma read:
Casimir Friso van Amsberg.

She asked, “Where does ‘Friso’ come from?”

“I beg your pardon?” Cash glanced up from his laptop, which he had balanced on his knee crossed over his other leg. Even typing, he looked athletic.

“Your middle name, Friso. Is that an old English name or something?”

He leaned back and spread his arms across the back of the couch, smiling at her over the top of his laptop. “It’s Dutch.”

“Like tulips?” The sunlight drew glowing orange streaks on the glass over the diploma and warmed the dish of fruit in the middle of the table. The apples gave off their scent.

His smile grew wider. “Yes, like tulips.”