The cat watched Rox but didn’t run off.
Rox didn’t even try to hold out her hand. This was such a triumph that she didn’t want to interfere. Rox did, however, take one covert picture of Fairy Dust nuzzling Cash’s fingers to show Brandy.
Fairy Dust just might find a home someday instead of ending up as a barn cat.
“How did you do it?” she murmured under her breath to him.
“I just waited,” he said. His fingers found hers in the scant space between them. “I’m a patient man.”
“That’s what makes you such a deadly lawyer. You grind the opposing counsel down until they are sitting on your lap, purring.”
He smiled, still scratching Fairy Dust under the chin. “I can wait however long it takes.”
NEW MEXICAN
Arthur and Maxence cajoled Cash to take them to his favorite Mexican restaurant, so Rox drove the three guys to a hole in the wall in Los Angeles, the decor done in neon and Christmas-color paint. They were shown to a booth with cracked red vinyl in the corner farthest from the door, the best seat in the house.
Rox squeezed in next to Cash, while Maxence and Arthur sat on the other side, angling their shoulders away from each other the best that they could. Mexican tile covered the table top. Rox rubbed her fingers across the sandy grout and puffy dollops of paint just like she always did when she and Cash came here.
Cash said, “Now, something that you learn while living in the Southwest or California that you never learn in Europe is the difference between Mexican food and New Mexican food. Have you chaps ever heard of a town named Hatch, New Mexico, or the special kind of chiles that they grow there?”
Rox grinned. Oh, yeah. New Mexican food, especially made with chiles from Hatch, was delicious, but these European guys had better be able to tolerate heat.
She told them. “I’ll drive home. I’m a nice Southern girl, so I’m used to eating spicy food with nothing more than sweet tea. But you guys will want beer or margaritas to wash it down with, and maybe ice cream after supper.”
Afterward, they stumbled out of the restaurant, laughing. Maxence and Arthur were wiping the sweat off their faces, cracking up, while Rox tossed the car keys in the air and caught them, the early evening sunlight sparkling on the metal. Cash pressed his hand to the small of her back, just touching her.
She looked up into his eyes, and he smiled down at her, happy crinkles appearing around his bright green eyes.
He leaned against the side of the SUV, and his shoulders drooped.
Arthur asked, “Where are we off to now? Theater? Nightclub? Some sordid entertainment that I dare not mention in front of a lady?”
Rox watched Cash, and his exhausted glance at her told her all that she needed to know. She said, “It’s Sunday night. What the heck is going to be open on a Sunday night?”
“Oh, there’s always entertainment, if you know whom to ask,” Arthur said.
Cash glanced at her, his hands in his pockets, the picture of unwilling exhaustion. He looked like that time in Rome when they’d been double-teaming two clients on one trip and had meetings and social events for forty-two hours straight. After they had left one group’s hotel room at five in the morning, still stumbling from grappa shots, they had showered and met the other team at six for a breakfast negotiation. On the plane home, they had both crashed in their respective first-class pods, two days of drunk finally catching up with them.
“Guys, I’m really tired,” she said. “Cash and I have a big day tomorrow and an important meeting that we need to prepare for. I think I need to call it a night.”
Arthur groaned, but he was watching Cash from the corners of his eyes, too. The yellow streetlights in the parking lot reflected in his eyes, making them colorless and oddly glass-like. “Are you going to see Rox back to the house, then, so that you can prepare for your client meeting tomorrow?”
Cash said, “I’m sure she would be perfectly safe, but I feel like I should.”
Arthur pressed the screen of his phone and held it to his ear. While he waited, he said, “We’ll find our own way home, then. See you two tomorrow morning.”
BACK TO THE HACIENDA
Once Rox and Cash were belted into the SUV, she drove them back to the foothills and Cash’s house. He reclined the seat a little, resting.
“This has been too much for you, hasn’t it?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said, “or I will be fine. Those lacerations on my liver must have reduced my tolerance for alcohol.”
He had been chugging bottles of wine every night and never shown more than an occasional giggle and a little sleepiness. “Are you still taking any of the painkillers?”