“Sure, now you want to go inside,” she grumbled, standing on wobbly legs.
He lifted her into his arms, holding her against his shoulder, and carried her to his bed through the dark house.
ARTHUR AND MAXENCE
The next morning, Rox woke up in Cash’s bed, alone except for Midnight and Pirate sleeping by her feet, and his cell phone was ringing. “Cash!”
“Answer it, would you?” he called from the bathroom.
“I can’t answer your phone.” It rang again, and the clock next to the phone read seven o’clock.
Cash stuck his head out of the door, a dark blue towel draped over his head and face while he rubbed his hair to dry it. He was naked to the waist, another towel slung low around his slim hips. As he moved his arms, his chest flexed and stretched, and those rows of ridges rippled.
Speedbump peeked his furry face out of the door at his feet.
He said, “Everyone knows you’re staying with me. Pick it up.”
Rox grabbed his phone off his nightstand. “Cash Amsberg’s phone.”
He laughed and went back to the bathroom, still toweling his head.
A woman’s voice on the phone said, “This is the front gate guard’s station. I have two men here who say that you are expecting them as guests, Arthur Finch-Hatten and Maxence Grimaldi. Should I let them proceed?”
Arthur and Maxence.
“Yes, please,” she said into the phone. “They’re expected.”
“You can call to pre-register guests so that they won’t be delayed,” the woman said.
“Thank you. We’ll do that next time.” She hung up.
“Who was it?” Cash asked from the bathroom. “The office, asking when I’ll be in, again?”
She said, “Don’t be mad.”
Cash stuck his head out of the bathroom, white shaving cream slathered all over the lower half of his face, all the way up to his bright green eyes. The towel hung around his neck, the ends swinging by the vee of his lateral abs that pointed under the other towel. “What did you do?”
“Your friends Arthur and Maxence are coming for a visit.”
“Oh, God. Those two. We will probably end up in Mexico and need hepatitis shots afterward, if not rabies shots. I’ll call them and tell them that I’m indisposed and we’ll have to do it another time. When are they due to arrive? Next week?”
“About ten minutes from now, I figure,” she said.
“What!”
The doorbell bonged throughout the house.
She flinched. “Maybe sooner.”
His eyes widened, and he wiped at the shaving cream with the towel around his neck. “Damn. Go get dressed. I’ll answer the door.”
Rox bolted to her guest room, showered as fast as she could, threw on some clothes, stumbled over the cats, and high-tailed it to the living room even though she suspected that hiding in the guest room might be the saner choice.
In the foyer, Cash stood with two men. He had yanked on jeans and a tee shirt, and a gauze bandage was plastered over the stubble on his left cheek.
The three cats peeked around the corner with Rox and then spun their wheels on the Spanish tile, bugging out to her room to hide under the bed.
“Rox,” Cash said and held out his arm.
Three figures stood in the sunlight streaming in through the front windows, almost dark silhouettes, but even from that distance and backlit, she could see that the other two guys were also stunningly beautiful men and as tall as Cash.
“Howdy, there,” she said, sauntering over as if she met Cash’s non-work friends every day.
The three of them together were gorgeous enough to make her fall on her face on the cold Spanish tile at their feet.
Seeing Cash Amsberg every day had kind of gotten her used to him so that her eyes weren’t burned by his insanely handsome good looks.
But now, with the other two, it hit her all over again how very sexy he was, standing there with that tight blue tee shirt snug on his broad shoulders and muscular arms.
The other two men were wearing suits, and she could tell from their inverted-triangle silhouettes that if she chewed those suits off of them with her teeth, they would be just as ripped as Cash was.
It was a masculine smorgasbord, and Rox was inexplicably ravenous.
“Rox, these are my old friends,” Cash said, “Arthur Finch-Hatten and Maxence Grimaldi. They’re old chums from school.”
“Watch that,” one of them said. “You’ve said ‘old’ twice, there.”
“Arthur,” Cash said, gesturing to the one who had spoken. Arthur had dark hair, but his eyes were such a light blue-gray that they were almost silvery.
“And this is Maxence,” Cash said, opening his hand to the other one. Maxence was, if anything, the most classically handsome of the trio, his bone structure flawless and strong, and he had black hair and dark eyes. He was dressed in a black suit with a black shirt, which he wore open at the collar. He looked thinner than the other two, almost gaunt around his hard cheekbones and triangular jaw, but he seemed pale under his tanned skin.