“I just unbuttoned my blouse a little and flirted with the soldier,” she demurred.
“I would probably still be in prison down there.”
“Yeah, and I’ve heard that their prisons suck. They don’t even have WiFi.”
“Indeed. And that time in Egypt, when you wore hijab and sneaked in to talk to opposing counsel’s mother and told her that she could meet Harrison Ford if the deal went through? We would have never finished that negotiation without her demanding that her son arrange for her to meet Harrison.”
“Yeah, that was fun. She was so excited when she was on the set that day.”
“And that other time when we were in New Jersey and took a wrong turn in Camden.”
“You wanted to pull over and ask somebody for directions because we couldn’t get a cell phone signal to use the GPS. Those guys were drug dealers. You’re so naive.”
He stroked her hair. “I think I owe my life to you on more than one occasion. That time in Hong Kong?”
“I had to undo three buttons to get you away from those guys. Maybe Arthur was right and you do need security.”
He chuckled, and his deep laugh reverberated through his chest under her cheek. “We will always be friends, and I need you as my paralegal. Are we clear?”
“Yeah,” she said, and she felt a little stupid. “You probably would actually die without me to bail you out of trouble.”
He stroked her hair and down her back to her waist, and his arms tightened around her. “I think I would.”
AMSBERG V. ARBEITMAN, ROUND TWO
Casimir leaned against the closed door to his office, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. The afternoon sun was dipping toward the western horizon near the corner of the windows, and the glass darkened to compensate for the glare.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
When Rox finally left Grant—or whatever the hell had happened when Grant had ceased to exist—Casimir was supposed to swoop in and make Rox smile again. He was supposed to show her the wonderful life that she could have with a man who valued her. They were supposed to travel and have adventures and laugh together.
She had laughed all the time when they were just office colleagues.
She wasn’t supposed to cry.
Rox was right about one thing, though. He had said many of those things to other girls. Not all of them, but many.
He had known Rox for three long years. All during that time, she had given him no sign that she would ever leave Grant, Casimir’s fictional competition, so Casimir had indulged in affair after affair, waiting. None of the other women had satisfied him, each more superficial than the last, none of them as smart or reliable or personable or sensible as Rox—or as beautiful—and no matter how much he had tried to invest himself into each relationship, the time came in each affair when he just couldn’t pretend any longer.
Every time, when he had realized that each woman was not and would never be Roxanne, the guilt had overwhelmed him.
That was when, as Rox had said, he had ghosted them.
When he took a deep breath, he could still smell her perfume on his skin.
Casimir walked to his desk. A notepad with his own handwriting—odd and with violent vertical slashes, he had been told—lay on top of his myriad other papers. The name Valerie Arbeitman was written across the top.
His meeting with Valerie was due to start in five minutes.
He must focus on that. He must forget this insanity concerning Rox and concentrate on this meeting with Valerie.
Much hinged on his meeting with Valerie.
Her side of the story.
The state ethics panel.
Possible criminal prosecutions.
He wished that Rox could attend the meeting with him, but if it went very, very badly, he didn’t want her to lose her job, too.
He picked up the notepad and, setting his jaw, walked through the cubicle maze to the senior partners’ offices.
Valerie was waiting for him at her door. “I’m glad to see that you’re back and you’re all right,” she said. “I don’t think I said that, earlier.”
“And I’m glad to see that you’ve made a full recovery,” he said.
She shrugged. “Nearly. My left side is a little weak, and my cheek feels weird.” She pushed at the side of her face.
“No one could ever tell,” he said, keeping his voice low.
Valerie’s smile was rueful, perhaps even angry. “Always the gentleman, aren’t you?”
“I try.”
They walked inside Val’s office, and she kicked the door shut behind them. “And yet you requested this meeting to discuss my incompetence.”
Valerie was a senior partner, and she and Josie could agree to buy him out of the partnership and kick his butt to the curb with a memo. “I said that there were irregularities in your contracts that we needed to discuss, such as the net profits rather than the gross profits for DiCaprio this afternoon.”