Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(2)

No wonder he could get away with loving ‘em and leaving ‘em.

"Why?" Rox had finally asked Melanie, one of the beautiful-blonde  admins. Rox could tell Melanie apart from the rest of the herd of golden  beauties by the strawberry highlights in her hair. "Why would women  have casual sex with him if he's just going to dump them like that?"

"Well," Melanie had mused, and her smile turned sentimental and vague.  "He's never a jerk about it. There's never a fight. There's no drama. He  never calls a woman a slut afterward, ever, or says anything bad about  her to anyone, as far as we can tell, and we all talk a lot. He won't  even confirm or deny anything. And he's," she cleared her throat,  "attentive."                       
       
           



       

Rox frowned. "Like, he listens to you?"

"Yeah, that, too." Melanie twiddled with a piece of paper on her desk and wouldn't look at Rox.

"You mean that he told you that he loved you?"

"Oh, no. He's not mushy at all. A good time is had by all, but he  doesn't lie about what's going on. He doesn't talk about ‘love' at all."

"But there's something else," Rox prompted. "He's attentive-"

Mel cleared her throat. "In bed. I mean, you know. He's good in bed."

Rox shrugged, wanting to reach over and snatch that shredded paper away from the blonde. "A lot of guys are good in bed."

Mel glanced up at Rox, her blue eyes serious and direct. "Not like him."

Rox had tugged her sundress lower on her thighs the whole afternoon that  first day, but after that, Rox had worn professional-class suits,  either skirts or pants, but definitely suits, and wedding rings.

Since then, in the three years that Rox had worked with Cash as his  paralegal, he had humped and dumped at least fifty women, and those were  just the ones she knew about for sure. The actual number was probably  higher.

He didn't seem to have a "type," either. He liked the skinny-willowy  ones and the shortie-curvy ones, the pale redheads and the delicate  blondes and the gorgeous raven-haired, the porcelain-skinned and the  golden-tanned and the cocoa-dusted, the nubile nineteen-year-old interns  and the silver-fox lady partners, and all the women in between.

Cash even sent out discreet, non-threatening sexual feelers to the seven  lesbians who worked at the law office, just in case any of them were  actually a little more toward the center of Kinsey scale than they had  previously thought themselves. One was. For two and a half weeks, Ginger  declared herself bi-for-a-guy, which is not the usual meaning of that  term but she owned it. She got along with Cash better than any of the  other women, afterward.

Rox had watched them all traipse into Cash's bed and then out of his life.

All the admins stared at Cash with weepy doe eyes. All the other  paralegals teared up or blushed when they saw him stride through the  office. The women attorneys were businesslike and courteous to him, but  their glances turned sharp when he wasn't looking.

The clients, however, still flocked to him, flirted with him, and went for round two in record numbers.

And then he ghosted them again.

The actresses didn't seem to care much about his retreats. They were used to ninety-day shoots, so to speak.

The models probably didn't have the attention span to notice his absence.

And, for some unholy reason, the guys in the office loved him. You would  think that, with Cash sopping up all the available women, that the men  would be competitive or derogatory, but they were all bestest buds with  him. He was a great guy, always up to go have a beer with, or to watch a  game with, or to be on a league team with.

He charmed them, too.

But Rox was the only person in the office who could work with him.

Now, after three years, every time Rox went in for quarterly evaluations  with the senior partners, her paycheck fattened, just by her suggesting  that she might be looking at other, less tempestuous law firms. They  couldn't let her leave, not with just about everyone else emotionally  unable to work with Cash.

Some of the women threw themselves at him, hoping for another taste. He  usually accepted their offers, but the ghosting came sooner the second  time or the third. Some of them stared at the floor and mumbled around  him, stealing glances at his chest or lower, but dodged when he came too  close, unwilling to go through it again.

It was a matter of concentration and efficiency, really. The women  imagined his hands taking the sheaves of paper from their fingers for  hours, imagining a brush or a touch, and failed to get the damn work  done.

And so Rox made out like a proverbial bandit.

She had bought herself an awesome sports car last month even though she  knew she should be saving for a down payment on a house, and she grinned  just thinking about the drive back to her apartment.

But sleep with beautiful, brilliant Cash Amsberg?

Never.

And he had never hit on her, anyway. Not even once. Not even a little bit.

Not in any serious way. He joked around a lot.

But she could tell that he was just joking. It was pretty obvious.

Cash wasn't particularly a chubby chaser, anyway. Not only could he have  any woman whom he wanted, he actually had them all, one after another.

"Well, talk to Patty anyway," he said, poking the Watson contract again. "See if she'll do it for you."

Rox flicked the red plastic tag hanging onto the margin of the page. The  sparkling stones in her wedding rings caught the afternoon sunlight  streaming through the windows and threw spangles over the office for a  moment, illuminating the heavy desk and running down Cash's bare arms.                       
       
           



       

He saw the glitter on his arm, tracked the points of light to her rings, and shifted his weight away from her.

There was only one type of woman that Cash Amsberg was not interested in.

He did not hit on married women, not even once, not even a little.

Rox said, "Fine. I'll call Patty and see if she wants to grab a drink after work today."

Cash said, "We appreciate you taking one for the team."

And that was the only way that Rox was going to take one for the team of Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg. "Yeah, whatevs."

Cash smiled at her, his lush lips sliding apart over his straight, white  teeth, and his green eyes sparkled with humor. "Thanks, work-wife. Have  I told you that I love you today?"

That time, Rox let it happen, and the muscles at the corners of her eyes  strained from her epic eye-rolling. "I'll bet you say that to all the  girls."

He laughed, his broad shoulders lifting. "Only you, Rox. You're my rock."

"Yeah, the ball and chain holding you in this law firm. If it weren't  for me, you would probably be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by  now, writing learned opinions about which of the lawyers arguing the  case in front of you was better in bed, the redhead with the fake boobs  or the black woman with the low-cut top."

He was laughing harder now. "Surely I'm not so bad as all that."

"Worse. You'd probably have all the lawyers, the women ones anyway, in  your chambers in some sort of a horrible orgy on your huge law desk, and  then they'd all kiss and make up and dismiss the case. It would be the  only Supreme Court session where absolutely no decisions were handed  down, and you would go down in history as the Screw It All Court."

Casimir fell backward onto the couch, his long legs splayed, both his  arms wrapped over his stomach and giggling helplessly. "Stop."

"All right, fine. But seriously, at least with me, you get the work done."

"Yes, I can trust you." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his  knees and shaking his head. "Now, did Bessie from Universal send us the  DiCaprio contract yet?"

"Yep. Got it this morning." She waved her phone, indicating email.

"When can I see it?"

"Soon as I read it and flag it."

"This evening, then?"

"Not if I'm gonna be pimping Patty for information about Monty."

He shrugged, his white shirt sliding over the thick muscles of his chest  and arms and straining around his tight waist. "Come back afterward. We  can get delivery from that new Thai place around the corner and go over  it."

Rox waggled her left hand at him, letting the stones in her rings catch  the sunlight again and trying to flash the spangles in those brilliant  green eyes of his. "I've got to see my own husband sometimes. I'll check  out the file before I leave so I can look at it when I get home."

The law firm's draconian security system didn't let them access files  from outside the office unless they had been checked out, a stupid  process involving speed-typing security codes.

"Oh, Grant. Leave him for me, Rox. I'll take you to Fiji for our honeymoon."