Rox huffed up. “I beg your pardon!”
“The other admins and paralegals here—Wren, Melanie, and all the rest—they deserve our honesty. They deserve to know what we’ve done.”
“Val and Josie tried to kill us! Several times!”
“They won’t do it themselves. The rest of them deserve to know the truth.” He sighed again. “I have to stay and tell them what we did and what’s coming.”
“You can’t stand up there and tell them that you just burned down the law firm and got them all fired.”
“I can tell them that Val and Josie have been cheating the clients, and they need to look for other employment. Full disclosure is the most ethical path, here. Also, I’ll be passing out my phone number in case they need a reference.”
Rox rolled her eyes at him. “They’re not going to like it. They-all might try to tear you limb from limb.”
He shrugged. “I doubt it will come to that, but you should go to the plane.”
Rox rolled her eyes harder at him. “I’m not leaving you here with those animals.”
He pushed up his sleeves, baring the dark, fiery tattoos on his left arm and the tatt with the three shields just above the inside of his right wrist. “They should be here in a few hours.”
PLEADING WITH THE ANGELS
Rox and Casimir dozed in her wide office chair for a few hours. They had only slept a little before they had broken into the office in the wee hours of the morning, staying up to write the email and strategize.
Before that, one of Brandy’s husbands had cooked a proper Italian meal that had taken five courses and four hours to eat. Rox had done her best to do justice to the homemade pasta and tender chicken piccata.
Brandy had leaned over to her, gesturing with a glass of red wine toward the solidly built man, who wore jeans and a red tee shirt with the name of some Italian soccer team printed on it. He and Casimir had immediately started talking international football. She said to Rox, “Now you know why I keep Antonio around.”
Rox nodded and slurped a string of spaghetti into her mouth. The subtle herbs and savory meat sauce on it lingered on her tongue, and she hummed with happiness.
Dang, Rox would keep a guy who could cook like that chained to the stove, too.
Maybe not as literally as Brandy did.
She was still dreaming of the lemon sauce on the chicken piccata.
In the chair, dozing on Casimir’s lap, Rox snuggled farther into his arms. He adjusted, wrapping her up more tightly, and he nuzzled her hair for a second before leaning his head back and going to sleep.
It still didn’t feel real, holding him like this. Every now and then, a wisp of jealousy ran through her that other women from the office, a lot of them, might have lain in his arms like this, but she stopped herself.
First of all, Rox had been supposedly married and hadn’t wanted to deal with The Randy Tomcat of Los Angeles.
Secondly, the relationships that he had had with other women had just been about the sex and the adventure, and only about the sex and the adventure. She held on tightly to the thought that they had been friends for years.
Thirdly, both Wren and Melanie had said that Casimir wasn’t all lovey-dovey with them. He had been fun and other things, but not affectionate, and he never mentioned the future or pretended like they had had a real relationship.
Casimir sighed in his sleep, his muscular chest rising and falling under her hand.
Maybe this time, or maybe with her, maybe he would be different.
Maybe he wouldn’t ghost on her.
Casimir had been down on one knee and proposed to her with her whole name right before the bomb had gone off.
Maybe he hadn’t been screwing around.
His eyes hadn’t looked like he was screwing around. His brilliant green eyes had looked seriously at her, maybe with just a touch of longing in his breathless voice.
She hadn’t said yes to him yet, and she fully intended to string him along as long as she could. That heartbreaker was going to suffer.
Her whole body vibrated, hoping, pleading with the angels, that he wasn’t kidding her.
She rested her head against his shoulder, his whole body wrapped around her, and closed her eyes.
SPEECH
Rox and Casimir were standing inside her darkened office, leaning against the wall.
They had stood there, quietly talking, holding hands, out of the lines of sight of the people slowly filling the main floor. His hand wasn’t tight around hers, but his fingers held hers firmly, like he was holding on.
She asked, “What are you going to say?”
“I’m not sure,” he mused.
“Going to let the Blind Spirit of Justice move you?”
“Maybe. And hoping that certain ancestors were also demagogues, in addition to whatever else they did in life, and that it’s genetic.”