Working Stiff(32)

Josie demanded, “Are you sleeping with him?”

“I beg your pardon?” Rox’s voice squeaked at the end.

“Are you sleeping with Cash Amsberg?”

“What? No!” Rox covered her heart with her hand. “Good Lord, Josie. No, of course not.”

“You’re staying at his place.” Josie’s dark eyes were wide, serious, not squinty and jealous.

Rox relaxed a little. She didn’t think that Josie would start a slap flight over Cash, but he inspired some sort of weird mania in women. “He needs someone to take care of him. He just had surgery. He’s as weak as a blind kitten.”

Josie pressed her palms flat together in front of her chest like she was praying. “So you guys aren’t involved.”

“Not at all. That’s how I’ve stayed his paralegal this long.”

Josie nodded. “Okay, because if you’re going to be there for him, to take care of him, then you need to stay out of his bed. Otherwise, he might push you away when he really shouldn’t.”

Rox scrutinized Josie, watching for all the little tells that Cash had taught her to figure out when someone was lying their butt off. “Josie, were you involved with him, too?”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, it was a while ago, and I can still work with the man.”

“I knew Valerie had a fling with him, but I didn’t know about you.”

“Well, I never talked about it, and he’s a British clam.”

“Dutch,” Rox said. “He’s not British. He’s Dutch.”

Josie raised her eyebrows, her manicured, lined arches rising as high as the Botox would allow. “His accent is Royal Shakespearean Company British.”

“He’s Dutch.” Rox nodded.

“Well, don’t go Dutch with him, so to speak.” Josie turned and elbowed Rox in the side.

“Really?” Rox sighed. “Is that really the best dirty joke you could come up with? You can usually do so much better than that.”

“I know. I think they shot this last round of filler directly into my brain and it all calcified in there.” Josie patted her prominent cheekbones. She looked about forty from the tiny lines around her eyes, but you could never tell in Los Angeles.

“Something about tu-lips, maybe?” Rox asked.

“Yeah, two lips. That would have worked. Or Cash on delivery.”

“Yep. So many opportunities, squandered.” Rox shook her head. “I expected better from you.”

Josie shrugged. “I’m not always on my toes. This is why I’m not a litigator.”

“But seriously, no. I have no interest whatsoever in getting involved with Cash. I’m a married woman,” she flashed her fake rings around to prove her point, “and I want a long, fruitful, lucrative career working with Cash Amsberg and this law firm. I will never get involved with him. I have fruit flies flitting around my office that have been around longer than most of his girlfriends.”





IRREGULARITIES





“Look at this,” Rox said to Cash. “I’m dumping one of Valerie’s contracts from my account into your LAN for you. Look at what I’ve highlighted. Section four point two point three point one.”

A week had passed since he had been discharged from the hospital, and they were sitting out on the deck in the cool ocean breeze. Rox was lying in the sun, dressed in shorts and a tank top, while Cash lounged by the house in the shade, reading the contracts on his laptop. He had been awake for several hours, puttering around the house, slowly beginning to make his way back.

The ocean breeze filtered salt scents through the air, carrying the sounds of children playing on the beach far below. A gust whipped Rox’s long hair around her head, the brown locks flying and obscuring her view of the house and sunlit wood.

The three cats slept just inside the closed French door. Even though they and Rox had lived in Cash’s house for nearly two weeks now, they were still insecure Velcro kitties, following Rox around constantly and padding after Cash in a small herd when she ran to the law office or to grab supplies. When she came back, they were usually sleeping around his chair or on a couch beside him.

He dropped one eyebrow as he read what had appeared on his screen, and the bandage over his cheek shifted. Some of the bruising around his eyes and jaw had faded from black to purple and blue, and some of his scrapes had sloughed off their scabs.

You could almost see his normal, stunning self under there, except for that constant white gauze patch over his cheek.

He frowned as he read further. “This is egregious.”

Rox corralled the mass of her hair with both hands and wrapped it into a bun on the back of her head. “It was signed six months ago. According to the records, Wren was the paralegal on this one, and she’s good. She should have caught this. I mean, a blind squirrel could have caught this. It’s even set out in its own subsection. It’s like they were trying to get caught.”