"Come on, baby. It's okay."
The name on the cage read "Fairy Dust, possibly feral."
"It's okay, sugar. I won't hurt you," she said.
The cat's ragged fur stood all on end like an electric current of hate ran through her.
Rox knew better than to put her hand in the cage.
After a few minutes, she closed the cage and went to work with a cat, Jubilee, who had been abused and was understandably terrified of people. In five minutes, Rox had that kitty sitting in her lap and leaning against her chest, purring with relief.
LIKE A PARTNER
The next morning, the morning of Gina Watson's contract discussion, Rox padded through Cash's house, swinging her pumps in her fingers and dressed in her best business chic suit. Her laptop and cell phone were charged. The contract was heavily annotated and the notes had been approved by both Cash and Josie Silverman, the middle partner of Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg.
They were ready to rock this thing.
She and Cash were going to walk in that office and explicate the crap out this contract. The agents could then negotiate the final terms with the studio, and they could go over the final draft one more time and then sign that puppy. Watson could be filming in a week.
"Cash!" she called, walking through the house.
The three cats trailed her in a small herd. Every time she yelled, Speedbump whined. He didn't like it when she raised her voice.
He wasn't in the kitchen or the living room.
"Cash!"
Speedbump whimpered.
"Hey Cash!"
Speedbump's grumble turned into a yowl.
"Cash, where are you!"
"Out here." His voice wasn't a yell, just a comment spoken loud enough for her to hear it.
The French doors to the deck were open, and the ocean breeze filled the house through the screen doors.
Cash was leaning over the deck railing, wearing jeans and a loose white tee shirt.
Those were not lawyer clothes.
"Hey," she called, walking out onto the deck. "Why aren't you dressed?"
"I have an idea," he said, turning and resting his elbows on the rail behind himself.
"Nuh-uh." She shook her head. "You go put a suit on. You're going to the office."
"You can set up your cell phone so that I can see Watson's people."
She walked over to him in case she needed to shake her finger in his face and leaned on the railing beside him. "You're going to video chat this conference? They are not going to like that. They paid for Cash Amsberg to work on their contract, not video chat because you're too busy surfing and lying on the beach."
Not that he was surfing or doing anything remotely recreational, either.
He said, "I'm not going to video chat. You're going to go in for me and do all the talking."
No way. "I wouldn't know what to say!"
"I'll watch and listen over your phone, and I'll give you notes through the Bluetooth."
"It is so rude to wear a Bluetooth into a conference. I would never."
He gestured to her head, nearly brushing her shoulder. "Just don't tie your hair back in one of those headache-inducing buns, and no one will be able to see it."
He started taking pins out of her twisted-up hair, standing far too close to her and reaching around to the back of her head.
She just had to raise her hands to slide them up his chest and around his neck, but she didn't. "I am not a lawyer. I'm a damn fine paralegal, but I didn't go to law school."
"You've just been made partner." He pulled the brown scrunchie at the base of the bun out and unfurled her hair.
"I can't be a partner. I'm just a paralegal. I'm nothing but paid help."
"I don't like the sound of that, Rox."
"You guys gonna pay me like a partner?" She'd have her down payment for a house in about a week.
A smile played around the corners of his mouth as he lifted her hair, laying it around her shoulders. His fingers brushed her ear, and a tremor shivered down her spine. "We might be able to work something out. I could pay you my salary, and you could do my job for me."
"You can't bankrupt yourself so that you don't have to go into the office."
This time, he laughed. "Oh, Rox. Paying you that salary wouldn't bankrupt me."
"How so?"
He winked at her, just a quick flick of one of his dark green eyes. "I'm a professional poker player in my spare time. Just set your phone up, and I'll tell you what to say."
CYRANO ON THE CELL PHONE
Rox sat in the center of the long table in Conference Room A, which was one of the few conference rooms in the office that had solid walls.
Some of their celebrity clients actually cared about how their contracts were written and came in with their lawyers for the discussion, and so they used these private conference rooms for those times.
Rox had booked it because she didn't want anyone to see that Cash wasn't there.
Wren sat beside her, her long, blond hair cascading over her shoulders. After Rox had shown Wren the Woods contract with the egregious clauses in it, Wren wanted to see all the contracts in the office. She had found another bizarre clause in a contract for a shock comedienne, signed six months ago, that could cause the actress to have to pay royalties to Tigersblood Production Company to use her own standup material that had preexisted before she had signed the contract. Rox had nearly flipped her ever-lovin' lid on that one.
Wren tossed her blond hair behind her shoulders. "Everybody ready?"
The lawyers on the other side of the table, one woman and two men, nodded and flipped open their portfolios. The Japanese man held his pen pinched with both his hands, looking very ready to do battle. These were Gina Watson's personal lawyer and accounting team who handled all aspects of her finances. Cash and his firm were intellectual property contract attorneys, hired guns brought in to inspect this particular contract.
"Let's go," Rox said. "We'll start with the first page."
At least Cash didn't need to cue her for the basic procedure. She had done at least a couple hundred of these contract discussions with him over the last three years.
It was really weird to do this without him there.
In her ear, Cash whispered, "Can you still hear me?"
Rox's laptop was open in front of her, supposedly to take notes on the contract. It was small enough that she could see over the top to talk to the other lawyers.
In a side chat window, she typed, Yes.
Cash whispered, "Good. The first problem doesn't come up until page three."
Rox lifted her chin and said in her best professional voice, "The first problematic clause is on page three, but let's discuss the first few pages to make sure we concur."
They dissected every page, every clause. Any time Rox was unsure, she typed a question mark in her chat, and Cash told her what to say. She repeated everything verbatim.
Cash whispered in her ear, "This means that principal photography must be completed by September fifteenth, which is two weeks beyond the customary three-month shoot, or else the studio will incur a ten percent penalty. That protects your client from penalties for the Ridley Scott project that she's already signed for in the fall, should there be an overrun."
Rox repeated it as he spoke. Screw Watson, Rox deserved an Oscar for her performance in the role of a top-notch lawyer.
While the other lawyers conferred about a note to add in, she typed in her chat window, You don't have to whisper. Just back up a little and talk like normal.
Cash paused. "I'm just making sure they don't hear me. All right, let's go back to work."
She smiled in a professional manner, she hoped, at the team of lawyers on the other side of the table. "There is a clause on page three that must be struck out. We consider it a deal-breaker. If Ms. Watson were to write an autobiography and include any material from the time period when the film was in production or in theatrical release, so over the period of several years, Ms. Watson would have to split her royalties with the studio and producers, eighty-twenty, with her getting twenty percent."
"What!" the woman lawyer Jan on the other side of the table leapt to her feet. "That's outrageous!" She had a South Boston accent so strong that she dropped her R's entirely, turning that last word into outwageous. Her blond bun flopped on her head and threatened to fall apart. "I will never let her sign that!"
"As well you shouldn't," Rox told her. "We've begun to discuss the clause with the studio's attorney, Monty Evans. Unfortunately, he stonewalled, and then one of our partners was in a major car accident that afternoon."