But not Cash, she reminded herself. No way.
Besides, he deserved to be able to heal without some idiot chick slobbering all over his sore, battered, bruised, hurting body.
Rox could be a real slimeball sometimes. All the women in the office treated Cash like a piece of ass, and she shouldn’t. Jesus, they were supposed to be friends, the kind who took each other in and took care of each other. She shifted her laptop on her legs to move the heating battery to a new spot on her leg before she got a burn.
Beside her, Cash drew in a deep breath and sighed. His muscular pectorals swelled under his tee shirt as he breathed. When he grabbed the back of the couch with one hand, stretching his chest, his muscles on that side all shifted up, and his heartbeat fluttered under his tee shirt.
She couldn’t quite take her eyes off of him.
Cash pointed to the television screen. “This movie is really funny,” he said. “We should watch more of these guys.”
“Yeah,” she said, wondering what the movie was about.
On the couch beside her, Midnight stretched and rubbed her leg.
He said, “You don’t seem to be laughing.”
“I’m laughing on the inside.”
“Come on. This is really funny.” He smiled at her, that cute and corny smile that sometimes took her breath away. He probably smiled at his girlfriends like that, too.
She agreed with him, “Yeah. It is,” without any idea of what she was agreeing to.
One of his eyebrows pressed down. “You don’t seem amused.”
“The movie is funny. I’m just still thinking about these contracts. I just can’t believe that we’re finding all these problems with them.”
He nodded. “I’m concerned about them. At this point, we’ve found so many problems that I think the law firm can’t be saved.”
Wow. “Seriously?”
“If the problems are in only a few of Valerie’s contracts, we might be able to save it, keep it operating. If they’re more widespread, and I suspect they are, I’m hoping to wind down the business so that people can find other jobs before I go to the ethics committee. I don’t know what else to do.”
“My God, Cash. People depend on those jobs.”
“I know. That’s why I want to wind it down slowly. We’ve got over a hundred people in there, and I don’t want to dump them all on the L.A. job market at the same time. With some planning, we can move everyone into new positions without disruption.”
“That’s thoughtful.” She was kind of surprised that oh-so-wealthy Cash had thought of that, had even known that other people lived paycheck-to-paycheck. A lot of rich people didn’t even know that twenty bucks can be a lot of money at the end of the month, and it could be even more money if you needed it but didn’t have it.
Cash set his computer aside on the couch cushion beside him and closed it. “We’ve done enough work today. Let’s just watch this movie.”
On the television, the actor slipped and fell in a vat of something orange and slimy, splashing the bad guy, who fell on his back and scrambled to get away. This was a lot more slapstick than they usually watched.
Cash cracked up, but he grabbed his side under his ribs, over the incision where they took his spleen out and winced.
“You okay?” she asked. Her fingers drifted toward his side, but she pulled her hand back. There was no reason for her to fondle him. He was just sore from surgery.
“Yeah, let’s just watch the movie.”
Rox closed the screen of her laptop and set it aside, too.
She had no idea what was going on. The good guys just seemed to screw up everything, and the bad guys seemed to be the ones that she should be rooting for. The actress who played the love interest was just a blond placeholder.
The good guy scrambled out of the vat of orange slimy stuff and chased after the bad guy, grabbing his ankle, and they both nearly fell over the side of the suspended walkway because it had no railing.
“Of course it’s a suspended walkway,” she said. “Movies don’t have ordinary sidewalks that are on the ground. Shouldn’t it have railings? Where is OSHA in all of this?” Her tone was a little drier than she had intended, but it was a pretty stupid thing in a movie.
Cash chuckled. “The walkway should have been suspended between two skyscrapers. That would have been even funnier.”
“Why is it funny if he fell?”
“Because of this.” He pointed at the television.
As the two actors plunged off the suspended walkway, falling toward their doom, the main character sprouted wings and flew, saving the astonished bad guy.
Rox’s mouth fell open. “No way.”