Working Stiff(89)

“But he must have given you some clue. There must have been something,” Rox insisted.

“Nope.” Wren fluffed her blond curls.

“He didn’t meet someone else? He didn’t start getting mysterious texts or phone calls or have other places that he had to go?”

“Not at all. I don’t think he had anyone else lined up. Everything was light and laughter, and then he was gone. It was like any other day, until it wasn’t.”

“Yeah,” Rox said, staring at her own brown, haunted eyes in the mirror. “It’s always like that, just like any other day, and then they’re gone.”





EUROTRASH





After Rox and Cash abused Maxence and Arthur with nuclear-hot Thai food during an early supper, they sat around the table, and Arthur announced that he and Maxence were catching a cab for the airport and they would be back in the morning.

“How come?” Rox asked before she saw Cash waving her off. “Not that it matters. You’re big boys. You don’t have to report to me.”

Arthur laughed. “Did you warn her, Caz?”

Cash glared at him. “Warn her of what?”

Arthur laughed again.

Maxence, however, was staring at his empty plate and rearranging his used silverware slanted across it, not making any eye contact.

Okay, they were obviously up to something truly sordid.

Sometimes, Rox was not a nice person. “So, are you going, too, Maxence?”

He looked up, his dark eyes wary. “Someone has to make sure Arthur isn’t face-down in a gutter after he’s been in his cups.”

Cash snorted something that almost sounded like a laugh.

“Someone has to take care of him. You know how he is,” he told Cash.

Cash said, “You could send one of your minders with him. They’re still holed up at the airport, right?”

Maxence pursed his full lips. “They won’t leave me here. If I want them to go, then I have to.”

Rox said, “That’s right charitable of you.”

Maxence glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, a sexy squint, like he was unsure whether he was being made fun of.

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, Maxence. That’s ‘right charitable’ of you, walking through Hell itself to ensure that I don’t end up face-down in a puddle of my own vomit at The Devilhouse.”

Now Rox suspected that she was being made fun of.

Maxence’s black eyebrows pinched together, and he frowned. “I’m not a priest yet.”

Arthur cracked up and pounded him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, Maxence. And with my steadying influence and a little luck, you never will be.”

Cash’s voice dropped in a warning. “Arthur.”

Maxence shook his head, his black hair falling over his forehead. His dark eyes creased in pain. “You’re right. I shouldn’t go. That den of iniquity—”

“Oh, come now. It isn’t that bad!” Arthur insisted.

“—is a symbol of everything that I should leave behind. The decadence. Using people as pawns and playthings. We should be better than that.”

Arthur grabbed his chest. “Maxence, you’ll hurt my feelings if you keep this up.”

“I’m sorry, Arthur—”

“I’m fucking with you. I drowned all my feelings in thirty-year-old scotch years ago. I think you might have been there, but you were probably engaged in something worse than I was, considering those years.”

Rox leaned back in her chair, unsure whose side she should be arguing for. Cash caught her eye, and even though he was wearing his blank court face, Rox could see that he was upset.

Maxence said, “Let’s not go, Arthur. Surely, we can resist this temptation.”

“Oh, I succumb to temptation every chance that it is offered. I’m going.”

Maxence glanced at Cash. “You could go with him.”

Cash shook his head. “I’m not going to The Devilhouse.”

“It’s Monday night,” Rox piped up. “We have to go to the office tomorrow.”

Cash looked down at his plate as if she had said something gauche. Well, to heck with him. She was a hard-working Southern girl and wasn’t going to crawl into the office reeking of liquor.

“We’ll be back in time for work tomorrow,” Arthur said. “It’s only an hour flight, if that. We could be back in plenty of time to shower and get to ‘work’ by ten.”

She could hear his quotation marks around the word ‘work’ as if that were an unfamiliar concept to him. Yeah, Rox just bet that it was. “Office opens at nine. Not ten.”

“We could have the pilot flap those wings faster. However, if you do not have the tolerance to handle even a drink or two and function at your office the next day, perhaps it would be better to leave you three here. Such an adventure might be too rigorous for you.”