“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.”
“I would have thought that you would have an English name, like William or Henry, or something.”
“No, I don’t think I would.”
“And your last name is funny, too.” She squinted at the diploma, reading the calligraphy yet again. Van Amsberg. “It’s not very English, either.”
“It was German, but my great-grandfather made it sound more Dutch when he married my great-grandmother. It was von Amsberg, but this was within a few decades of World War II, and anything German was still rather unpopular in the Netherlands.”
“So he changed his name?”
“Modified it to appease my great-grandmother’s relatives.”
“That’s weird. How did you end up in England?”
He laughed and glanced at the ceiling. “You think I’m British?”
“You sure do have a pretty British accent.” She flipped a hand up in the air. “And everything you do is British. You called everyone a ‘barrister’ instead of a lawyer for years.”
“That’s common.”
“It’s so British. And you drink tea.”
“Occasionally. I drink coffee in the morning.”
“You have tea every day at four o’clock. The only thing that I’ve never seen you drink is hot cocoa.”
“Oh.” Cash stopped smiling and laid his hand over his stomach. “Don’t even mention hot chocolate. I can’t even stand the smell of the stuff.”
She blinked at him. “I didn’t know anyone had that strong an opinion about cocoa.”
“They used to force it on us twice a day at school.”
“In London?”
He set his laptop aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’m not British. I’ve only visited London upon occasion.”
“No way!”
He raised an eyebrow at her and hesitated before he carefully pronounced, “Way.”
“But you laugh when people sing that ‘Englishman in L.A.’ silliness at you!”
“It’s meant in fun.” He leaned back again.
“So what are you?”
“I am Dutch.”
“How did I not know this about you after three years of working with you?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I don’t advertise it.”
“Dutch. That’s, like, Holland, right?”
“The Kingdom of the Netherlands is composed of far more than Holland and includes several Caribbean islands, but yes.”
“The Netherlands. Sounds like something out of Minecraft. So where were you born?”
“Amsterdam.”
“Oh,” she chortled. “Amsterdam. You hear all those things about how decadent Amsterdam is. That explains a lot.”
“It’s not that bad. Less crime than Los Angeles. Less decadent than Denver or Las Vegas, probably.”
“So you speak Dutch?”