Arthur’s barber had indeed shown up with a toolbox full of scissors and combs, and he’d given Cash a haircut right in his own bathroom. Good God, the extravagance of these rich people astonished her.
He did look more like himself, though.
Arthur and Maxence caught Cash up on news of friends of theirs.
Rox smiled, nodded a lot, and ate her coq au vin, chicken and vegetables in a thick sauce. She had never heard of the people they were discussing, and they tended to only use first names, anyway. Cash kept giving her one-sentence backgrounds on the old school friends they were talking about—youngest kid from a French banking family and likes to ski, Saudi minor royalty with a fetish for long-haired cats and flying his own plane, and a guy with a talent and obsession for computers that had turned out rather well for him despite that he had to hide his involvement in his own company—but she wouldn’t remember anything from the rapid-fire gossip and soundbites.
She had checked on the cats earlier. Traumatized by all the new humans and loud talking in the house, all three were crouching under her bed, huddled together, and wouldn’t look at her. She filled their food bowls and closed her door so they could get some sleep.
Arthur gestured across the table. “But Maxence here is almost out of the woods, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Hopefully within a few years. They won’t have children too soon, though. Pierre hates it when people talk.”
Cash leaned over to Rox. “Maxence’s older brother was engaged a few months ago. He’ll be married next spring. There has been a rash of high-profile engagements and weddings lately.”
“God, yes,” Arthur sneered, though he was grinning. “It’s like it’s contagious.”
“Arthur was at that engagement party that I went to in Dubai a few weeks before the car accident, and we were both at the one in Madrid in March. Maxence wasn’t there for either one of them. He has managed to dodge every social event for over a year, even his own brother’s engagement party in Paris a few weeks ago.”
“You skipped your own brother’s engagement party?” Rox asked him. Maxence sat directly across from her, on Cash’s left.
Maxence didn’t smile. He didn’t look angry, just solemn. “I was on a mission in Africa, building a school and digging wells for a town that had been nearly wiped out by a civil war.”
“Good Lord, why didn’t you say so?” Rox turned to Cash. “And here you had me thinking that he was just shirking his duty.”
“Oh, he was,” Cash said, grinning at Maxence, who still did not crack a smile. If anything, his unearthly physical beauty increased when he was so solemn. It was unnerving.
Cash was grinning so hard that the bandage on his cheek wrinkled. “Maxence should have been there. Everyone remarked on it. Pierre and Flicka won’t be married for over a year, though, not until next June.”
“If they marry,” Arthur said.
“You think they won’t even make it to the altar?” Maxence asked him, his voice sharp.
“Not if Flicka has any sense.” Arthur looked up at him. “And not that you should start wasting away over her again.”
Maxence looked down at his hands in his lap. “I don’t want to see her hurt.”
Cash told Rox, “Flicka broke a lot of hearts when she decided to marry Pierre.”
Maxence grimaced. “She didn’t ‘break my heart.’” He looked back to Rox. “We dated for a short while last year. It was never serious. Within days, I knew that she was still in love with my older brother, even though she didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to break it off because I thought I could win her over, so it dragged on for a few months. It was an indecent cliché.” He looked at Arthur. “But you don’t think she’ll marry him?”
“Not if he can’t keep it in his pants.”
Rox asked Cash, “Is that a problem?”
Cash frowned. “Pierre earned his nickname ‘The Rat Bastard’ by screwing around on every woman he ever dated. It was his preferred method of breaking things off—”
Maxence cleared his throat around a bite of food.
“—but we never call him that because Pierre is Maxence’s brother,” Cash finished.
Arthur told Rox, “If Pierre screws around on her, she’ll kill him. Perhaps quite literally. That family is a bit bloodthirsty.”
Rox nodded. “Down South, we have severe penalties for men who stray, usually the same methods as one employs to keep tomcats from running around.”
Maxence flinched and edged away from her. “A bullet might be kinder than that. If she doesn’t kill him, though, her brother will.”