Working Stiff(134)
Outside the closet, Casimir called, “She’ll have underwear and things in the drawers for you, too.”
Rox came out of the closet to find Casimir gathering clothes from drawers and heading toward another door, which she assumed was the bathroom. She asked, “How did you know what size I wear?”
“From that time that the airline lost your luggage in New York.” He flipped underwear and casual slacks in his hand. “You dragged me shopping with you so that you wouldn’t have to carry your own bags.”
She set her hands on her hips. “You said you wanted to go shopping.”
“I didn’t want you to have to carry your bags.” He raised his eyebrows at her and closed the bathroom door behind himself.
Rox was on her phone, checking her social stuff. Nothing particularly important had happened. She wasn’t sure how to write all that had happened during the last day as a social media update or even if she should. The emoticon response would be all over the place.
She was considering understatement: So, this happened: survived a sniper and firebomb, ended up in the Netherlands, and that guy I work for and am sleeping with might be the King of Holland someday. Selfie!
A PM from Brandy read: All right, who the hell are Arthur and Maxence? We just got donations that will keep the shelter afloat for five years.
She was beginning to kind of like those guys.
Casimir set the phone back in its cradle and kept his hand on it. “Willem is coming up for a few minutes to talk.”
“Isn’t he the one who wants to be the king?”
She replayed that sentence in her mind. Absurd. How did a nice little Southern girl like herself end up in The Hague, casually commenting on court intrigues?
OMG, court intrigues. She had to work that into her post somehow.
“Yes. My younger brother.” Casimir said that softly, thoughtfully.
She set the phone down. “He isn’t coming up with assassins to kill you, is he?”
Casimir’s eyebrows twitched down, and he didn’t smile. “Probably not.”
“You’re kidding around, right?”
“Ana has security personnel in the hallway. Willem might be many things, but he isn’t stupid.”
“Oh. Right. I feel all kinds of better, then. Does he have a British accent like you or a Dutch accent like Ana?”
Casimir glanced at her. “You picked that up, did you?”
She shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious.”
“My brother and sisters grew up together here in Amsterdam and The Hague, so they speak English with a Dutch accent. I grew up at Le Rosey boarding school in Switzerland, where I learned English from a British tutor.”
She had wondered how that had worked, how Casimir had met Arthur and Maxence at the Swiss boarding school, but he was Dutch. “I can’t believe your parents sent you away.”
“It was for the best. Maxence and I had already been friends since before the car accident. Once I got to Le Rosey, he and Arthur became my brothers.”
“I could never send my children to boarding school.”
“The press was hounding me. My parents had to get me away from them, and some of the family situation was not ideal.”
Whoa. That was interesting. He had never mentioned anything about a family situation before. “I can’t imagine boarding school was better than living at home.”
“It was a great deal better. Within two weeks, I stopped flinching every time a bush rustled. Within a few months, I was much happier. It was definitely the best decision to get me out of the Netherlands.”
She glanced up at him, but he was still staring straight ahead.
“Ana and I are close because we were children together before I was sent away when I was seven. I barely know Margriet. She was a toddler when I left.”
“And Willem?”
His mouth was set in a grim line. “He’s two years younger than I am. We were never close.”
The door rattled as someone knocked on it.
“That was quick,” Casimir muttered. More loudly, “Come in!”
On the other side of the living room, the door opened, and a man entered.
The new guy was tall, Rox could tell by the fact that he was still an imposing presence even when walking through the oversized door, and he had bright blond hair that glistened in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Even from across the room, he looked like Casimir.
A lot like him.
Rox glanced up at Casimir, who stood rock-still by her side. He didn’t so much as blink.
The man called from across the room, “Casimir!”
His voice sounded like Casimir’s.
Beside her, Casimir straightened, and his stony expression turned into the one that she knew was his resting bitch face modified with a formal smile.