Working Stiff(19)
“Oh, a princess who will be queen. That’s so—” Rox trailed off, trying to find a good word, her hands clasped under her grin.
“Romantic?”
“Feminist,” she decided. “I love that she is going to rule the kingdom. Queendom?”
“Kingdom. They don’t change the money and the stationery every few decades.”
“Is she beautiful?” Rox asked, thoroughly aware that she was going all girlie-girl over the princess, but Valerie’s contracts were so damn boring.
“Oh, yes,” Cash said, his tone sing-song because he was obviously humoring her. “She is as beautiful as she is evil.”
“Oh, no!” Rox sat up straight. “She can’t be evil. She’s a princess.”
“They call her Princess Anastasia the Nefarious.”
Rox curled her upper lip at him, doing her best to snarl. “That is totally not how the fairy tale goes. The princess is as beautiful as she is good.”
“When Princess Anastasia comes to power, she’ll probably overthrow the Dutch elected government and invade France.”
Rox shrugged. “Everyone invades France first. It’s like the center square in tic-tac-toe.”
“The one that everyone thinks they should take but is actually a losing strategy?”
“You know it.”
“And then she’ll conquer the world,” Cash said, his voice turning low and ominous and his green eyes laughing.
“It would be kind of cool to be ruled by a queen who conquered the world,” Rox mused.
Still in the ominous voice, Cash intoned, “As long as you understand that she has a raging temper, and she will summarily execute anyone who annoys her.”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“Seriously?” Cash’s dark green eyes widened.
“And still, a beautiful, young, evil princess—”
“She’s thirty-three now.”
“—looking for love while she conquers the world—”
“She’s been married for nearly ten years and has four children.”
“Dude, y’all are harshing my mellow!”
“You’re so funny when you speak surfer with that Southern accent.” Cash’s voice and eyebrows rose, and he made fun of her accent. “Y’all are hahshing mah melluh.”
“Oh my God. The British accent trying to do the Southern drawl doing a surfer dude is going to make my head explode. Get back to work, slacker. We’ve got a thousand of Valerie’s contracts to look over.”
He stretched, his leather shoes pointing up from where he had rested them on the coffee table. “Let’s continue this at home.”
Let’s continue this at home.
Rox felt his voice resonate all through her bones like a bell that was tolling for her. Maybe accepting his invitation had been a mistake, even if the alternative was sleeping in her car.
“We can pick up some Italian or Thai on the way and eat on my far more comfortable couches while we work for a bit.” Cash smiled that brilliant smile, leaned forward, and held out his hand to her. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Rox made a hard decision and rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
FRISO
You know that exhilaration, Casimir thought, when you’re zooming down the wide and open freeways of Los Angeles, when the traffic becomes tightly packed around your car and yet no one slows down?
When you are barreling at eighty miles an hour, a missile in a speeding flock of missiles, and the pavement runs away underneath you and you know that you should divert but the feeling, the utter joy of getting away with it, of sailing as the wind rushes over your car, that takes you, and you fly?
The other cars ahead of you are blocking your view, and the sunset streams across the sky, glaring on the windshield and blinding you. Your music roars around you from the stereo. You’re moving almost by instinct, keeping your car even with the others, the equivalent of flying wingtip to wingtip, as you and other cars form a dart and flow together.
And then you dodge through an opening and survive yet another minute.
That was what Casimir was feeling when he and Rox were sitting on the couches in his office, when she so casually asked about his middle name, Friso.
Friso.
What a name.
What an odd, obvious name.
Casimir dodged, and he feinted, and he survived each moment of the conversation, when any comment could have turned into a flaming pile of rubble and twisted metal.
And yet, surely Rox wouldn’t want things from him. Surely she wouldn’t take advantage of him for something that he couldn’t control and had never sought.
The cynical side of himself laughed at such immature thoughts.