Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(29)

Ah, there was the crippling remorse. Casimir had wondered how long it would take to show up.

He pulled on pajama pants and a tee shirt and wandered the house until  dawn. As the sun came up behind the house, he went to the deck to watch  the sunlight fill the air and the ocean.

He didn't even really notice what he was doing when he climbed up on the  railing to sit, to swing his bare feet over the expanse of nothingness  where the deck hung over the side of the mountain. Far below, the sea  crashed against the boulders at the base of the cliff.                       
       
           



       

Below his naked feet and long toes, shadows still gathered deep on the side of the hill among the boulders and weeds down there.

He still didn't know why he had made a move on Rox last night. Nothing  but heartache could come of it. He might have messed things up between  her and her husband, even though Casimir suspected that he was just a  pity fuck and she would be repulsed if she ever saw the deformity under  that bandage.

No. Not Rox.

She wasn't like the others.

All the others.

He knew that these whispers were phantom pain, just a memory of heartache from years ago, but the regret amplified them.

And the knowledge that he was going to lose her soon was paralyzing  because surely she wouldn't stay in the same house with him anymore.

Far down below, shadows whispered amongst the rocks, sounding like hard truth.

No one could love the monster.

His bare feet swung over the emptiness as the sun lifted in the sky behind him, heating his back like a hand, pushing.





NOT JUMPING BUT FALLING





Rox stood in the doorway that led to the deck, touching the wall to  steady herself, while Cash leaned too far over the thick wooden railing  above the cliffside that fell away from the house. The breeze from the  ocean, strong this morning, plastered her pajamas to her body, and the  deck chilled her bare feet.

He was bending very far over the rail. His feet were planted on the  deck, but he rested a lot of his weight on his elbows on the rail,  almost as if he were unbalancing, trying to tip over.

Usually, he sat in a deck chair or braced his arms against the railing. He never did this.

The tension in his body screamed that he was stretching to go over the side.

"Cash," Rox said, careful to keep her voice low as if she were gentling a  skittish puppy at the animal shelter. "Cash, honey. Come on inside."

"I'm just watching the sunrise," he said, looking out at the grim ocean.

"The sunrise is the other way, toward the mountains. Let's go look at it together."

"I'm just standing here."

She had gentled hundreds of animals at the shelter, those mourning for  owners who had dropped them off when it was no longer convenient to have  a pet, skittish babies who had never been lifted off the ground before,  and abused creatures whose last experience with humans had been  vicious.

Cash was no different, except she had no idea what was going on with him.

She said, "I'm going to stand beside you."

His shoulders shifted, a shrug.

She padded over and leaned her arms on the rail beside him, not  touching, not grabbing. The sunrise painted the horizon pink all the way  around the bowl of the sky, and the ocean scented the wind with salt  and seaweed. "It's a nice view."

He nodded.

She let her arm drift closer, touched his elbow, and then threaded her  hand through his arm. If he chose to jump, her grip wouldn't stop him,  but she was confident that he wouldn't drag her with him.

If he wobbled, however, her arm might steady him.

He sighed and looked out at the ocean. A chilly sea breeze needled  through Rox's tee shirt and blew Cash's hair back from his face.

"Something happen last night, afterward?" she asked.

"I was thinking."

"Must have been some pretty serious thinking."

"I'm fine."

"Let's go inside, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Breakfast?"

"Sure."

Once they were inside, Rox locked the doors, not that that would stop him. It might, however, make him pause, make him think.

In the kitchen, Cash sat at the breakfast bar while Rox started the  coffee maker and watched it brew, plotting hard. The kitchen was a  modernized version of the Spanish colonial decor of the rest of the  house, black appliances and quartz countertops topping honey-colored  wood cabinets. The brick-red Spanish tile was cool under her feet.

"It's too chilly out there this morning for just jammies," she said, handing him a cup.

"Yeah. Thanks." He sipped the coffee, wincing at the heat.

"How long were you leaning over the railing like that?"

"Since I heard you coming."

"And before that?"

Cash spooned sugar into his cup. "I had been sitting on the rail."

Oh, God. "Why were you doing that?"

"I just found myself up there."

"Were you thinking about jumping?"

He stirred his coffee. "After a moment, I thought about falling."

"That's the same thing."

"No. Jumping means you choose to jump. Falling just happens."

"Nothing just happens. You had to climb to get up on the railing."

"I'd been up there for an hour."                       
       
           



       

"Sweet baby Jesus, Cash. My butt would have been numb."

He shrugged.

"Maybe I'm not the most sexually experienced person in the world, but my  blow jobs have never driven someone to contemplate suicide before."

He blinked, and the little shock of what she had said made him smile.  "Last night was the best thing that has happened to me in years."

"I doubt that. I know what your social schedule is like, big guy. So is tempting fate a normal part of your day?"

"No."

"Then why this morning?"

Cash set his coffee cup very deliberately on the sparkling quartz  countertop and turned the cup with his palms. "I've never been with a  married woman before."

"We didn't go all the way. It was just a slip. It wasn't important enough to get so upset over."

"It was important to me."

"How upset are you?"

He turned the cup in his hands. "Have you ever thought about-" he paused, "-falling?"

"Never."

He looked up at her, his green eyes darkly serious. "That's a strong response."

"Suicide is a crime because it's an act of violence on a whole family  and community. It's a bullet in the heart of everyone who loves them.  The people who are left behind grieve for the murder victim and hate the  murderer, but they're both the same person, and you loved them. It's  unbearable."

He was still watching her, evaluating her every twitch. "Who died?"

Rox swallowed a stinging gulp of coffee before she could answer. "My mother. I was eight. I found her."

"How did she do it?"

"Shotgun."

Cash winced and picked up his coffee again. "I'm sorry. That's brutal."

"It doesn't matter how. It matters that she did."

He nodded, but he was staring into the black depths of his coffee cup.

Rox pushed her mug to the side and picked up one of his hands. His cold  fingers chilled hers. How long had he been out there? "I couldn't stand  to lose you."

His bright green eyes widened, startled, and he glanced at their intertwined hands on the countertop.

"Promise me that you won't. Promise me that whatever it is, you'll give  it one more day, that you'll stay with me one more day. You have to stay  for me."

He looked back up to her, and his voice was hoarse. "All right."

"Promise."

"I promise," he said.

She didn't believe him, not really, but she let go anyway. "Are you sick? Like cancer?"

He shook his head.

"What, then?"

"Just not enough coffee, I imagine."

"Ever since the accident, you've been down. Sometimes you perk up for a  while, but then you're down again. It's not just your car, right?"

"The Maybach? No. I think I will get something bigger this time."

"I've been watching you for weeks, wondering if this kind of thing was running through your head."

"I'm fine. I wouldn't have jumped, and now I've promised you that I won't."

Rox had heard those kinds of promises before.





CALLING ANA





Rox hid in her bathroom-the cats swarming around her feet and hurriedly  crunching kibble from their individual bowls while they had her  company-and dialed the long, international number, scrubbing a hot tear  out of her eye.

The phone rang.

And rang.

Some of those rings must be bouncing off satellites over the Atlantic Ocean.

Rox bit her lip. Speedbump growled at Midnight, who was nose-nudging him  too much in the kibble bowl. She bopped him on the forehead, and he  gave her the stink-eye instead.

Some more rings.

"Hallo?" a woman's voice asked.