Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(20)

She wrapped her arms around his neck and gasped out. "Okay, stop it. I mean it. Stop it."

Cash stopped tickling her with one arm around her waist, and his other hand stretched over her ribs.

That was when she realized that he was half-lying on her, their bodies  pressed together, and his hand was against her bare skin under her  shirt. His face was flushed, and the brightness in his eyes faded as he  looked at her lips, replaced by a misty tenderness that she had never  seen before. His lips parted, even though he was still panting from  wrestling with her.

Her arms were around the back of his neck.                       
       
           



       

She should move those. She should push him away. She should make a joke of this, and they should never speak of it again.

Her hands dropped slowly from around his neck, caressing his neck and  brushing his jaw line just underneath that white bandage that he still  wore.

His face turned, and he nudged his chin into her palm. His five o'clock  shadow felt like sandpaper in her hand, and the heat of their bodies  brought out the last subtle scent of his cologne.

A heartbeat.

His eyes searched hers, and he didn't move away.

Another heartbeat.

She said, "I think the movie's over."

They both turned their heads to look at the television. Credits scrolled up the large screen.

Rox let her hand drop away from his face, and Cash pushed himself up on  his arms. The cool air chilled her side where he had been lying against  her.

"I guess it is." He sat up and stared at the screen. "You didn't miss much."

His hands curled into fists on his knees, and his downward glance seemed ashamed. "That went too far. It won't happen again."

Great. Now they were uncomfortable with each other. It wasn't like they were living together or anything.

"It was just the wine, Cash. Wine and pain meds are a bad mix. We're  fine. Don't even worry your fool head about it." Rox touched his  shoulder with just her fingertips. "You did make me laugh, though."

A smile curved his lips, and his head bounced a little bit as he chuckled ruefully. "There is that."





SEDUCTION





Two days later, Rox returned from a quick trip to the grocery store and  the wine shop because they were killing at least a bottle every night,  almost like they were daring each other to use drunkenness as an excuse,  or maybe that was Rox's wishful thinking. More bottles seemed to go  missing. She suspected the cats.

She carried the bags into the living room and turned right for the  kitchen, through the dining room, calling, "Cash? Where'd you go?"

No answer.

"Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!" she called.

Nothing.

Not a puff of breath in the house.

Visions assailed her: Cash slipping and falling somewhere, maybe still  too sore to catch himself, maybe hitting his head, or maybe something  internal had torn because they had actually botched the surgery and he  had bled out internally, and he was dead and the cats were eating his  dead body.

She had no illusions that her cats would stand guard over his corpse.  Cats know when your soul has fled and there's nothing left but the kind  of barbecue that takes a secret sauce and pairs well with fried green  tomatoes.

"Cash? Cats? Cats!" She walked into the kitchen.

The three cats were lined up like circus-performing lions on the barstools.

Cash was standing on the other side of the breakfast bar, a thin slice of turkey dangling from his fingers.

She asked, "Are you feeding them lunch meat?"

"Um," Cash said, and he withdrew his hand. Pirate took a swat at the  turkey but missed because he had no depth perception, with only one eye.

White paper sat on the counter, flopped open.

Rox set the clinking bag of wine bottles on the counter and craned her  neck to look at it. "Are you feeding them Boar's Head Maple Roasted  Turkey?"

"No," Cash said.

Midnight licked the black fur around his lips over and over, obviously sucking up the last of the turkey juice.

She said, "You totally are."

Cash threw the piece that he was holding to Speedbump, who snagged it  out of the air and ate it off his claws. "They looked hungry."

"They each have their own bowl of kibble in my room. The scientifically formulated for optimal cat nutrition kind of kibble."

"Cats eat birds." He was starting to grin. "It's their natural food in the wild. It's even better for them than kibble."

"Cats do not eat maple-roasted turkeys in the wild."

"They would if they could catch them."

"Sadly, the elusive maple-roasted turkey is endangered in this part of  California. Gimme that." She made a grab for the meat, but Cash plucked  it out of her reach.

Pirate jumped down from the chair, sauntered around the counter, and  walked right the hell past Rox without a glance to rub on Cash's leg.

"Traitor," she told him.

Cash's grin was so big that the bandage on his cheek was in danger of peeling off.

"Great," she said. "They love you now. You seduced my cats."

He laughed and held out a turkey slice at her eye-level. "Want to see if it works on humans?"

"I am not so easily trained, Amsberg."

"I'll say. It took me months to train you at work. All that chocolate worked wonders."                       
       
           



       

"You are incorrigible, and I'm not sharing my wine with you until you learn proper manners."

Pirate wound between them, rubbing Cash's leg and then hers, helplessly purring and trying to get more turkey.

Speedbump yowled, and Cash walked around the breakfast bar and picked  him up, scratching him around the chin for a second before he set the  cat on the ground.

It occurred to Rox that Speedbump had known just what to do when he  wanted to get down, and there was no way that he could have jumped up on  that barstool by himself, due to his bum leg from when the car had hit  him.

The four of them had been doing this every day, every time that she left.

That heartbreaker had seduced her cats just like he seduced every woman who crossed his path.

Oh, she should never, ever, ever get involved with him.





ANOTHER TRY





They sat in the living room, watching a storm outside whip the sea into  gray froth. The wind battered the scrubby trees and long grass on the  hill, but the house remained perfectly sturdy, silently withstanding the  gale.

Rox had her laptop propped on her folded legs. Midnight and Speedbump  sprawled on the rug, oblivious to the storm. Pirate was curled up  tightly on the couch, his head tucked under Rox's knee. Every time  thunder rumbled through the house, Pirate growled at it, his warm fur  vibrating under her leg.

"Cash, I'm going into the office today to dump more contracts in our cloud. You wanna come with?"

He looked up from the piles of paper stacked on the coffee table. His  knees were spread wide as he leaned over, reading and etching notes in  the contract's margins in green ink. Leaning over like that, his broad  shoulders looked bigger, and his narrow waist, smaller, and he was even  more of an inverted triangle. In the light grayed by the storm, the  golden highlights in his hair faded, but his green eyes darkened. The  bruising on his face and arms had begun to fade, and the swelling  diminished a little every day. "It would be more efficient for me to  stay here and look over Valerie's contracts."

"You remember that meeting with Watson's people is in three days, right?"

He went back to working on the contract. "What of it?"

"You're going to have to go into the office."

Cash didn't look up again, but he paused, his pen touching the paper  like he had frozen. He didn't look frozen, though. He looked like he was  restraining himself from leaping up. "I'm aware of the appointment."

"Are you going to postpone it?" she asked.

"We can't. Principal photography is due to begin in less than a month.  This contract is already overdue, thanks to the producer's dithering and  my accident." Anger laced his voice at the end.

"Just making sure you knew."

Lightning cracked across the sky. Under Rox's leg, Pirate growled.

"I know." Cash went back to writing on the contract.





BANDAGE





The next evening after dinner, after they had split another bottle of  sweet, white wine, Cash laid down flat on his bed again for Rox to  change the bandage on the surgical incision on his side, which she had  done with trembling hands twice a day, every day.

She should have gotten used to stroking the paper tape and gauze onto  his bare skin, feeling the subtle velvet of him on her palms, and  brushing her fingertips over his muscles and flesh, but twice a day for  almost three weeks now, she had been left shaking after she touched him.

He had begun exercising, gently, in his small gym in a back bedroom of  the house. His body sure hadn't atrophied in the couple of weeks since  the accident. Muscles wound around more muscles on his chest and arms,  all decorated by the black fire of his tattoo that ran along his left  side and disappeared into the jeans that he still wore.