Working Stiff(80)

“Oh?” Rox glanced at the black eye-in-the-sky stuck to the ceiling, but she slid her hands over his strong chest and up to his neck. “Security is watching.”

“I know.” He ducked his head and captured her lips, kissing her thoroughly. His tongue slid into her mouth, and his hard body pressed her into the corner.

The elevator bounced, stopping, and Cash backed up, his emerald eyes still lit with desire. “This could be very interesting.”

By the time the elevator jiggled to a standstill, they were standing apart, hands clasped in front of them, practically wearing their bitch faces as if they were going to an appointment with opposing counsel.

The elevator doors opened.

Bedlam.

Everyone in the office had crowded the elevator doors, applauding and cheering.

A hundred people swarmed at them, grabbing them out of the elevator, and were talking and questioning and jabbering and yanking at their clothes.

Cash laughed aloud, his laugh ringing above the fray.

Rox swatted at the hands clinging to her clothes and stumbled toward the edge of the scrum. When you’re short, crowds close in, jostling and bumping, a claustrophobic clusterfuck. She popped out the side.

Because Cash was six-feet-four, however, his head stuck out of the bobbing crowd of office workers who were mostly in the medium range. He looked down, a grin on his face that wrinkled the bandage on his cheek, and talked to everyone, shaking hands, slapping backs, and hugging women who flung themselves at his chest.

He caught Rox’s eye at one point and smiled at her, but he kept pressing the flesh and talking.

Indeed, he was pressing a lot of flesh.

A lot of female flesh.

Pretty much every woman in the company wanted a hug, a big, long, full-frontal hug. They were frickin’ climbing all over him like creeper vines up a tall tree that got plenty of sunshine. He wrapped his arms perfunctorily around each one, patted their shoulders, and set them back, but Rox felt her own chin jutting forward with each molestation.

Seriously, they were slobbering all over his dark blue suit that Rox had picked up at the dry cleaners just a few days ago. The label said Armani. The jacket was going to be all wrinkled after they finished dry-humping him like a pack of stray dogs.

Cash caught her eye again and took a long look this time.

He turned back to the crowd, raising his open hands in the air. “I appreciate it, guys, but I’m a little sore, still.” He grabbed his ribs where the pink surgical scar creased his skin under his clothes. “Let’s hold it to handshakes, shall we?”

Mel bobbed up in front of him, giggling, and pumped his hand. “It’s so good to have you back. We were all so worried about you.”

Lixa and Perry chorused the same thing.

Cash smiled at them, spreading his hands apart. “You’re making it very difficult to keep it British, here. I appreciate your concern. It warms my heart, or whatever lawyers have instead of a heart.”

Rox practically heard a thud as a hundred pairs of panties dropped to the floor.

She refrained from rolling her eyes. Because she hadn’t been to the office on a regular basis for weeks, she was out of practice at repressing her eye-rolling.

Cash started to swim out of the crowd toward her, but Rox continued to scan the room.

Over on the other side of the room, the two senior partners, Josie Silverman and Valerie Arbeitman, leaned against the wall with their arms knotted over their chests. They were both smiling, but their smiles seemed forced, perhaps as they watched billable hours being frittered away.

Rox pushed off the desk and raised her hand, waving, because she hadn’t seen Valerie since she had gotten back from her medical leave for her stroke.

Valerie tipped her head toward Josie and muttered something. Josie’s grin grew more square, more forced. She noticed Rox watching them and her grin curved into a more genuine smile, and she waved.

Before Rox could leave to go over and see how Val was, Cash had pushed through the crowd to where she stood, and he turned her by the shoulder toward his office. “We need to confer before the DiCaprio meeting.”

“Of course.” She walked with him through the rabbit warren of cubicles toward his corner office.

When she glanced back, Valerie and Josie were gone, and Valerie’s office door was closed. The wooden horizontal blinds in the window beside the door were folded shut, too.





SERIOUS





Once Rox and Cash were inside his corner office, she said, “The DiCaprio meeting starts in two hours, so we should—”

Cash slammed the door, locked it, and grabbed her into his arms. His biceps bulged under his suit jacket. “There’s only one reason I came into the office today.”

“Cash! Everyone’s right outside!”