Working Stiff(45)
This time, Josie kicked the door shut. “Is he okay?”
Sweet baby Jesus, Rox had thought that she was going to get bawled out for impersonating an attorney. “Yeah, he’s fine. He’s having a hard time with some things.”
Josie crossed her arms and frowned. “With the contracts?”
“Yeah. The contracts.”
“Like what?”
“Like there are some problems with them. Has he said anything to you about them?”
Josie’s dark eyes widened, and her head tilted forward. “Rox, did he have a head injury?”
“What? Oh, no. No. Not at all. Cash had me read his charts to him while he was in the hospital because his eyes were swollen shut, but they actually ruled out any kind of head injury or concussion. His brain’s all there.”
Josie deflated with relief, and she braced her hands on her knees, bent over. “Jesus Christ, I thought I’d lost a partner there for a minute. It’s just been a few days since they said that Valerie was going to make a full recovery and could come back to work soon.”
“About Valerie—”
Josie was still bent over. “You scared the shit out of me, Rox.”
“Yeah, but about Valerie. We’ve been finding some serious irregularities in her contracts, things that she should have found.”
Josie squinted at her from where she was bracing her hands on her knees. “Was this before or after her stroke?”
“Before.”
She straightened. “Valerie is the best. If she signed off on them, then I’m sure it’s okay.”
“They really aren’t okay. These clauses are very, very not-okay.”
“Valerie is the senior partner because she’s been in this business for decades. She knows everyone, and everyone knows that she’s the best. Cash has only been out of law school for a few years and was only made partner a year ago. I’ll take Valerie’s interpretation of a clause over Cash’s every day of the week and twice on Sunday. He’s just not as experienced.”
“Even I can tell that these clauses are either squirrels to give us something to take out so we won’t fight the other rights grabs, or else something is terribly, horribly wrong.”
Josie smiled at her. “Roxie, sugarbear. As much as I value your very astute judgments, I am going to trust the interpretation of the senior partner over a junior partner or a paralegal.”
Rox ground her teeth at that.
Just a damn paralegal, was she? She wasn’t damned blind.
Josie walked her to the door, even though Rox was hanging back, stuttering. “Now you go back to Cash and tell him to get better and to make sure that he’s not second-guessing the senior partner’s judgment.”
NOT A TRIUMPH
Rox grabbed the Styrofoam boxes of Mexican food take-out off the other seat of her car and practically skipped into the house. “Cash! I can’t believe we pulled that off! They bought it, hook, line, and sinker and are under the blatant misconception that I’m a scum-sucking, bottom-dwelling lawyer. You should be paying me ten times what I make. Everything went perfectly!”
Cash was lying on the living room couch, a half-empty bottle of wine beside an empty glass, with his laptop on his thighs, sound asleep. That horrid white bandage was still stuck to his face.
Speedbump had climbed up on the couch somehow and was sacked out across Cash’s legs. Cash had probably helped him up there.
Pirate was curled up between his side and the back of the couch.
Midnight sprawled on the floor. He stretched and sauntered over to greet her with a rub.
Cash had been drinking alone.
And he had fallen asleep while working, even though it was barely five o’clock.
Cash was one of those high-energy guys. He paced. He jumped up and gestured. He had a standing desk in his office to work at. When they traveled together, he was at the gym before her and stayed to drink with the clients or other lawyers long after she retreated to her hotel room.
He didn’t doze off while watching television at midnight.
She very gently lifted his computer off of him by one corner of the screen. He stirred a little, his hair brushing his forehead, but he didn’t wake.
Rox tucked the computer under her arm and glanced down to make sure she hadn’t roused him.
His breathing deepened as he settled, and his strong chest rose and fell easily.
Rox opened his computer and entered his password, Oranje-Nassau-6.
On his desktop, files and folders littered the screen like he had thrown them against the wall and some had stuck.
She frowned. Cash usually nested his files in multiple levels of organized folders and then alphabetized them. While she hadn’t actually gone snooping in his bedroom, she bet that he color-sorted his socks. Her quick glimpses at his closet suggested that his several racks of suits were organized first by color and then by style, then maybe by designer.