Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(3)

They played this game a lot, too, sometimes every day. "Never. He's six-foot-seven and a blond-bearded Norse god."

Cash mused, stroking the soft hairs of his short beard, "Last week, you  said he was six-three, two seventy-five of pure muscle, and a Latin  lover."

"Grant is all things to all women," Rox said, her chin held high.

"Is he coming to the office volleyball tournament this weekend? We could use a guard, if he really is that tall."

Yet another opportunity for Rox and all the other female staff to view  Cash with his shirt off, displaying his rippling abs and black tattoos,  always an impressive sight. A tribal-looking tattoo illustrated the left  side of his body. A swirl of black fire on his round pectoral muscle  spread into flames that reached over his shoulder to his back, trailed  down his left arm all the way to his wrist, and slid over his rippled  stomach to duck into his waistband.

Rumor suggested that the ink ran down the cut vee of his belly, over his  hip, and to the middle of his thigh, but Rox had not seen that much of  his skin.

"No," she said, blinking. "He's busy working on his screenplay, and  that's taking up a lot of his time. One of the series that he does  stunts for is going to start shooting next month, so he has to get his  script done because choreographing the stunts gets in the way of his  writing. He gets really sore from being beaten and blown up all day. And  he's thinking of auditioning for ‘American Obstacle Course Warrior'  this year."                       
       
           



       

Cash frowned. "I saw one of their contracts. It was reprehensible. Don't let him sign anything unless we look at it first."

"Josie Silverman always looks over his contracts."

He nodded. "Josie is good. All right, then. But come back to the office tonight."

And spend yet another long night curled up on those couches under Cash's  diploma, feeding each other with chopsticks or plastic forks, battling  legal wits and cracking jokes, while she watched that beautiful man  harmlessly flirt with her, that gorgeous man who was so delicious on the  outside but poison when tasted?

Not if she could get out of it.

Rox said, "I need to spend a little time with my actual husband instead of my work-husband."

Cash laughed. "Tomorrow morning, then?"

"You'll get it when it's done. You know that Bessie will try at least  one thing like this," she tapped the red flag in Watson's contract, "for  her studio. Maybe she'll try to tie Leo down to a fifty-year  right-of-first-refusal clause or something."

Cash shook his head. "Why do we always play these games? It's going to end the same way."

Rox glanced at him, wary, but the seriousness in his green eyes meant  that he was talking about the movie studios' contract shenanigans. She  said, "I couldn't say, Cash."

He pushed off the desk, his biceps pumping under his shirt, and ran a  hand through his gold and bronze hair. "Until tomorrow, then. What would  I do without you?"

Rox lifted her nose in the air as she walked away. "Wither away and die, I s'pose. Good night, Cash."

She went back to her own office, a much smaller, interior room. The only  window was beside the door and looked down a corridor between cubicle  dividers. None of the other paralegals had a separate office, instead  working in the cubicle farm in the center room, but Rox got whatever she  wanted from HR. She sucked in a deep breath.

It was exhausting, sometimes, being around him, knowing that she  shouldn't, knowing that she must not, and waiting for a touch or a  glance from him that never came.





THE CRAZY CAT LADY





After an entirely non-enlightening supper with Patty the night before,  Rox went home, slept, and was getting ready to leave for the office the  next morning, standing in the entryway of her single-bedroom apartment.

Yes, nine hundred square feet of shag carpet and Craigslist furniture were all hers.

Well, hers and her three fuzzy roommates'.

She had uploaded the DiCaprio contract to the office cloud, ready to  print it out and hand it to Cash when she got there after flagging it  last night. For some reason, Cash liked to go over a contract at least  once in hard copy, reading the actual pieces of paper with her notes  typed in little bubbles in the margins. Pointing and yelling at the  contract was easier to do with a stack of paper.

Paper was much more dramatic when thrown against a wall, too. A thumb  drive just went plink on the plaster and dropped to the carpet. So  unsatisfying.

Rox trotted over to the door, adjusting her blouse and suit jacket,  which she was of course wearing even though it was almost eighty degrees  Fahrenheit out there already. Suits hid her lumpy pudge a lot better  than some of the slim sundresses that the other girls wore.

Luckily, her new car had fantastic air conditioning and that new-car smell.

On the table near the door, one of her cats had squeezed himself into  Rox's purse. His long, ginger-blond fur and sumptuous gut overflowed her  bag, and he swished his bushy tail and blinked his one good eye up at  her. His chewed-up ears, long since healed, swiveled toward her while he  purred, thrilled with himself that he had wedged himself inside it once  again.

She scratched his head, feeling the lumpy scar tissue, and ran her hand  down his back, careful to go easy on the hard pebble where someone had  shot him with a BB during his homeless kittenhood. "Pirate, we have  discussed this. I need my purse."

He purred more loudly and blinked his yellow eye at her.

"Come on." She slipped her hands around him-her fingers running through  his cottony fur-and grunted when she lifted him out of the bag. "You  need to diet, mister. You and me, both."

She had been working a lot the last few years, staying late and getting  into the office early, and working through meals. Back home in Georgia,  she would have been considered a little plump. In body-obsessed Los  Angeles, Rox was constantly aware that she was always the chubbiest one  in the room.

Rox carried Pirate over to one of the three cat beds in the middle of  the room where the sunlight shone most brightly during the day and  lowered him into the nest. Hand-crocheted kitty afghans lined each bed.  The one in Pirate's bed looked a little shredded. She should buy some  yarn and whip him up a new one.                       
       
           



       

Speedbump and Midnight sprawled in the other beds, stretched to suck up  the morning sunlight. Pirate sniffed and poked around before he settled.

Yep, three cats.

When you volunteer at an animal shelter, accidentally adopting cats is an occupational hazard.

It was a good thing that she volunteered at the no-kill shelter the next  town over. They needed her help more than the local shelter, and if she  had volunteered at the local shelter that euthanized a lot of their  strays, Rox would have owned three hundred cats.

Hiding even these three beasts from the super could be a hassle.

Behind the cats, her living room was smothered in pearl pink velvet and  lace, just how she liked it. Rose potpourri fumed flowery scent from  every tabletop.

Rox might wear dark, tailored suits to work, but she went full-blown  girlie-girl when it came to her own space. One of the guys she had dated  last year, Robbie, had loved it, saying that it was like being invited  into a lady's bedchamber where no man had ever entered, only to ravish  her.

Robbie had been fun, but it hadn't quite worked out. They had drifted apart amicably after a few months.

She went back over to the little table by the entryway and called  goodbye to her cats as she fished around her purse for her keys. They  thumped their tails, ready for their fully booked day of eating and  sleeping while she earned the money for the kibble and cat litter.

Just before Rox left, she slipped on the wedding ring set that had been  lying in a blue bowl on the table beside a larger bowl of lemons and  oranges. The cubic zirconia glittered in a stray sunlight shaft, and the  thin gold plating shone.

She had bought the rings for herself during her lunch break on her first  day of working at Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg, after hearing that  Cash Amsberg the Heartbreaking Superman was repelled not by kryptonite,  but by diamonds.

Cash might be a maleslut, but he didn't touch married women. He didn't  even flirt with them. It was like he shut it all down. His flirting with  Rox was just friendly banter, like girls do with their gay guy friends.  It's just all in good fun.

He didn't mean anything by it.

She didn't want to have her heart broken like all the other women in the  office. They had all assured her that Cash would come for her and that  she would love every minute of it, until suddenly, he wasn't there  anymore.