Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(26)

From the barking in the background of the call, Brandy was already at  the animal shelter. She asked, "Yeah? When are you coming in?"

"I can't this weekend. There's some stuff going on. You have enough food for the week?"

"Plenty. Don't sweat it. I've got three other people coming today. Two  of them have been socializing kittens for a couple of weeks, so now I  can put them to work."

So the shelter was set for labor and food. "I'll be in next weekend. I promise."

"That's right. You get your butt down here. Are you still homeless?"

"In that I'm still shacking up with that guy, sure. But I'm not sleeping with him."

"Why are you living with him if you're not even getting any?"

"Well, it's complicated."

"This is the guy who might dump you at any second, and his M.O. is just disappearing when he doesn't want to deal anymore?"

"Yeah. Well, it's complicated."

"I do not understand why you are putting up with this. If you need a place to stay, come hang with me."

"Your dogs will eat my cats."

"They will not." Brandy paused. "Probably not."

"I'm fine, really. And he kind of needs a friend right now, just a  friend. And we've been just-a-friends for three years, so it's cool. I'm  okay."

"Okay, then. But call me in a few."

"I will."





QUID PRO QUO





"You haven't left the house for days, Rox. I'm beginning to worry about  you." Even though Cash was trying to joke, his voice and laugh were  still so dispirited.

She looked over at him, holding onto her laptop screen so she wouldn't  dump it on the floor. They were sitting beside each other on the couch  in the media room, watching sitcoms over their laptops and working  during commercials. Cash sat to Rox's left, which meant that the awful  white bandage was taped to his far cheek. Unless he turned and looked at  her, she really couldn't see it.

On the coffee table near their feet, two empty wine bottles stood among  wine glasses and sauce-streaked Chinese food boxes. The light from the  television painted garish colors on the sides of the containers and  bottles in the darkened room.

Truth be told, the wine sang in Rox's head so much that she was having  trouble concentrating on the television and hadn't read anything on her  computer for over an hour.

She said, "I haven't needed to go into the office to drop more docs in  the cloud, and all our favorite restaurants around here deliver. Even  the wine store delivers. I'd rather work."

He looked back to his computer. "You're beginning to sound like me."

"I suppose that was inevitable after all these years."

"You follow me around more than the cats," he said.

"Yeah, I don't think that's possible."

The three cats were draped over them both. Speedbump had trained Cash in  his peculiar vocalizations that meant he wanted to be picked up or set  down on the ground, a necessity with his bum leg, which meant that  Speedbump now loved Cash with the burning fire of a thousand suns and  was currently lying behind him on the back of the couch, cuddling the  back of his head. The cat was purring so loudly that Rox could hear the  vibrations through the upholstery.

Cash, however, had glommed onto Pirate and snagged the fluffy ginger cat  whenever he walked by, settling the motheaten cat in his lap. Pirate  usually strained against Cash's arms, his single eye bugging out, until  Cash calmed him down by scratching around his destroyed ears.

It was a love triangle to rival the best of them, a bromance of man and beasts.                       
       
           



       

Midnight was still very much Rox's cat and was lying beside her on the  couch, tummy-up. She scratched his chin and chest while she pretended to  work. His triangular head hung off the cushion, his black fur blending  with the dim room.

Good to know who the loyal one was, though, especially when shrimp-treat time came around.

"Yeah, well," Rox dithered, trying to get her buzzed brain to work  properly. Cash had a tendency to pick sweet wines, and she loved them.  Where had Rieslings been all her life? "If I didn't follow you around, I  might get lost in this humongous house, and they would only find my dry  bones when the new owners moved in twenty years from now."

He chuckled. "And I thought that you liked hanging out with me."

She punched him in the shoulder. "You? If I wanted to hang around a hot,  successful lawyer, I'd flirt with Josie. At least she would fix me up  with her plastic surgeon."

He laughed a little more at that one. "Josie keeps her plastic surgeon  pretty close. Otherwise, he would get too busy to see her for emergency  Botox. Can't have that."

"I'm worried she's going to end up looking like Michael Jackson."

"There's little chance. Josie does plastic surgery the correct way, in  consultation with her very good surgeon and taking his advice on what  subtle procedures will effect the best outcome. Michael Jackson ordered  his unethical surgeon to keep cutting because he wanted a smaller and  smaller nose, and the surgeon did what the client wanted instead of  insisting that there wouldn't be a good outcome. A good surgeon is an  artist, and you have to let them do the work."

"Her surgeon is great. She looks great for forty."

Cash looked up at the dark wooden beams on the ceiling, considering. He  must have decided that he wasn't violating confidentiality, because he  said, "Josie is fifty-five."

"No way! She looks forty!"

"Yes, but she doesn't look like a cartoon of a twenty-year-old."

"Wow. Now I seriously want the name of her plastic surgeon." The sitcom  came back on, but the television was still muted. The remote sat beside  Midnight, close to Rox's hand.

"He is an artist. Not that you need any plastic surgery at all."

"If Josie offered, I have a list of procedures that I would do. A long list."

He laughed out loud that time. "Surely you don't."

"Obviously, I would start with liposuction or just go whole-hog for a  tummy tuck. Or a lap band. Or a gastric bypass." She didn't grab the  chub that hung around her waist. She had some pride left. If she'd had a  little more wine, she might have gone for it. "And then we would move  onto a nose job and lip injections."

His expression turned to disbelief. "You wouldn't let a scalpel near you, would you?"

"Oh, heck, yeah. In a heartbeat, if I had the money."

"Promise me that you won't."

"Drunken promises never count."

He set aside his computer and turned on the couch, rumpling Pirate, who  stalked down the couch to collapse by the arm. "Promise me that you  won't let a surgeon cut you, even if you had the money. Your skin is  beautiful."

Rox laid aside her own laptop and turned toward him on the couch,  jostling Midnight, who stalked off and flopped on the arm of the couch,  because she was very, very buzzed. If she had been sober, she probably  would have turned the TV volume back up and ignored him.

But she was buzzed. So she turned.

His emerald eyes-so dark in the dim room-were unfocused from the wine,  and he stroked her cheek with his knuckles. He said, "It's like you  don't even have pores."

"It's dark in here," she said.

"It's not the dark. I marvel at you all the time. No matter how good the  surgeon was, he couldn't improve on this. If you let someone cut you,  it would destroy this satiny feel." His fingers warmed her cheek, and he  ran his thumb over her cheekbone almost all the way back to her ear.  "Your bone structure is incredible. Your nose is perfectly straight."  His fingers wove into her hair. "You don't color your hair, do you?"

"They don't make a bottle called ‘Garden Dirt Brown.'"

He chuckled, but he watched his fingers comb through her hair. "It's  lustrous. I've been accused of highlighting mine, but I don't."

Her own hand rose, and she kind of watched it, too drunk to want to do  anything about stopping it. She touched one blond streak at his temple  that ran though his dark auburn hair. "I can tell. It's growing out, but  the streaks are still there."                       
       
           



       

He turned his chin, resting his face against her hand, and watched her.  "Your hair doesn't look like dirt. It's glorious. It's so dark, and then  the sun shines on it and picks out gold and copper."

"It's-" She couldn't think, not with his fingers deep in her hair and cupping the back of her head. "-It's not."

"I like your hair," he said. "I think it's beautiful. You're beautiful."

"I am not," she said, her voice getting more breathless. "Stop saying that."