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.
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.