Working Stiff(46)

Even if his housekeeper had his suits cleaned and then hung them, he had probably instituted the system.

This chaos was unlike him. One of the reasons that he was such a good IP contract attorney was that he thought in neat little boxes and then used language to tidy up all the loopholes until a document solidified into a solid block of beautiful text.

What’s more, as she opened contracts that he had been working on, all of them were only partly finished, each of them with a notation reading WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS SHE THINKING? staked out in bold, red capitals somewhere in the middle of the contract.

And in each of them, no more notes were written beyond that.

Okay, Cash ranted when they were at the office, but he ranted after he had finished a thorough read-through and with full knowledge of every minute detail that was in a contract.

Rox scrolled ahead and searched for “autobiography,” one of the keywords that she had discovered would lead them right to some of the horrible clauses that were popping up in Valerie’s contracts.

About ten percent farther in the contract, she found one of the rights-grab clauses.

Cash had given up before he had even gotten to it.

He was still asleep on the couch, his hand resting on his stomach. In sleep, his square jaw was relaxed a little, but his lips had softened and become more lush.

Rox felt her own lips part. She blinked and looked away.

That white gauze on his cheek ruined the entire effect, anyway. She wanted to rip that damn bandage right off his face to see what was so horrible that he was keeping it covered up even from her. They had been to doctors’ appointments together. If it were infected or not healing, the doctors should have given him antibiotics or fixed it somehow.

She turned back to his computer, which looked like goshdarn gumbo.

Oh, Cash.

Her stomach clenched. Today wasn’t a triumph. Going into the office for him, letting him hunker down again in his house, had been a huge mistake.

Rox felt like she was falling sideways, and she grabbed an arm of the chair and Cash’s laptop, but it hadn’t been an earthquake, just her own head.

Vibrant extrovert Cash—that guy who was always out with the other guys after work, always in one or another flash-in-the-pan relationship—hadn’t left the house for over a month.

Now he couldn’t work, was sleeping during the day, and drinking alone.

Rox knew what happened after that.

Her chest clenched, falling inward like someone had been missing her whole life.

Not Cash. She wasn’t going to let it happen to him.

She crouched beside the couch where he lay and took his hand. “Cash, honey?”

He stirred and stretched on the couch, his long legs vibrating. “Hey, you’re back.” His wan smile was a pale imitation of the laughing, joking Cash that she had known for three years.

“I brought supper,” she said. “Mexican.”

“That sounds good. I’m not too hungry.”

For a guy who had only recently begun exercising—and his recent workouts had been gentle and limited compared to what she had seen him lift in hotel gyms around the world—he hadn’t run to fat at all after a month of lying around. His abs were still hard cobblestones under his clinging tee shirt, as she had felt every time she had changed that bandage on his side.

If he had been eating normally, he should have put on a little weight, a little insulation over those carved muscles.

But he hadn’t. If anything, his definition had gotten better as his little remaining body fat had burned away.

Man, she hadn’t even figured out what was going on when he had thrown away all those half-full boxes of food every night.

“Cash?”

He looked to where she was kneeling beside him.

Rox took his hand. Saying this scared the hell out of her, but not saying it scared her more. “I’m worried about you.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about.” He rolled up on the couch, not even wincing or holding the incision.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

He shook off her hand and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the couch. “The doctors said that I will live a normal life span without a spleen. I just have to be careful if I get sick and use antibiotics early and often.”

Careful here. Not accusatory. “That’s not it. You won’t see anyone. You won’t go anywhere.”

“I’m not quite up to it yet,” he said.

“That scar from your splenectomy is all healed up.”

“It is.”

“If the wound on your cheek isn’t closing right, then you need to see another doctor.”

He turned toward the long row of French doors that overlooked the ocean, unwittingly angling his bandage toward her. “It’s fine. It just needs more time.”