“It makes them so happy,” Arthur muttered.
Rox shoved the straw back between his lips, and he drained the rest of the water out of the glass. Rox went and refilled it with green sports drink.
“Promise me that you’ll be more discreet,” Cash said. “I’m not even defending you, and this pains me beyond belief. You’re going to lose everything.”
Rox sat beside him and made him drink some of the green stuff.
“Fuck it,” Arthur growled. “I am going to lose it all, so I might as well spend it so that Christopher doesn’t get it.” He reached with his lips for the straw and sucked the sports drink from the glass that Rox held. He got about half of it before he sputtered.
Cash stroked Arthur’s hair like he was trying to soothe a suffering cat. “We’ll talk about this later, Arthur. Don’t think that we won’t. But for now, let’s get you to bed. Maxence, could you take his other arm?”
They half-dragged Arthur out of the kitchen, though he managed to stumble a few steps.
Cash glanced back at her. “I’ll be right back. We’ll just get him settled.”
Rox stacked their breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, shaking her head the whole time.
He returned a few minutes later, alone. “Maxence is going to sleep for a few hours, too.”
Rox swallowed hard and broached the subject. “So, Cash, we have that meeting with the DiCaprio people at one o’clock.”
“Yeah,” he said. “About that—”
She jumped on whatever excuse he was going to make. “So it’ll be the first time that we’ll be in the office, together, since—you know.”
Since they started fooling around.
Cash smiled, and a certain gleam appeared in his green, green eyes. “Imagine that.”
“Yeah,” Rox said, biting her lip and smiling at the same time. “Imagine that. And I bought something special for it.”
“You did?” The gleam in his eyes sharpened to a green laser-like focus.
“Uh-huh.” Rox maintained eye contact with him, and she smiled.
“I’d better go see what suits I have that are pressed.”
“I’ll meet you here in half an hour to drive in.”
She had better open a particular box that had been delivered yesterday afternoon. Expedited shipping labels plastered the outside of the very light cardboard box, so light that it felt like nothing was in the box.
And indeed, the lingerie in the box was very close to nothing at all.
FIRST DAY BACK
In the garage, Rox stood in front of the hood of Cash’s rented SUV.
The black skirt suit she wore felt tight over her shoulders and thighs, and the skirt cinched around her waist. Wearing mostly jeans and khakis the whole time she had been taking care of Cash had spoiled her.
At least she wasn’t wearing panty hose. Those itched, now.
But the high heels were cramping her toes.
She held the keys to the SUV. “It hasn’t quite been six weeks yet.”
Cash shrugged. “I’m fine.”
She tossed him the keys, and he snatched them out of the air. Indeed, his reflexes seemed normal.
The drive into Los Angeles was light traffic and high speeds, and after a few minutes of smooth sailing, Rox leaned her head back against the headrest and relaxed.
Cash watched the road. A white bandage was still plastered to the other side of his face, near the driver’s side window.
Damn, but she wished that he would take that off.
She pulled her phone out of her briefcase and slid her thumb over the letters on the screen, sending a mass text to everyone at the office that Cash was on his way in for the first time and to keep it casual. The day that Josie had come back from a quick plastic surgery job had been a chaotic scene like the frickin’ Rose Parade. Someone had whipped up margaritas in the break room. It said something about the office environment that the break room had such a fully stocked bar, including a blender for whipping up impromptu margaritas.
That mass text group that she had set up to disseminate information quickly when Cash had been in his accident now was coming in handy, she had to admit. Maybe she should set up mass texts for the animal shelter volunteers and her common cadre of lunch buddies. She thumbed the send button, and eighty-two people in the office got the ping, she hoped. If there was a huge brouhaha, Cash might not go back, and she wanted to avoid that.
Casual, she had told them all. Don’t make a huge scene. Say hello and let him pass.
Cash parked his rented SUV in the garage, and they got on the elevator to ride it up to the office’s floor.
As soon as the doors touched closed, Cash crowded her to the back corner of the elevator and braced his hands on the walls around her head. “This is going to be interesting.”