Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(58)

       

Rox shook her head. "Yeah, he wouldn't."

"He always battles injustice, and he won't let other people fight his  battles for him. Most of the boys were fine. After they got to know him,  everybody liked him. Heart of gold and all that. Always picked for  teams early, too."

"All the guys love him at the office."

"That's Casimir. Everyone's a friend. No one could have actually teased him even if we had wanted to. None of the boys, anyway."

A few tumblers fell into place on the lock that was Cash Amsberg. Rox clarified, "None of the boys, you said."

He nodded. "None of the boys."

"But the girls?"

Maxence studied a painting of a golden bowl full of jewel-toned fruit.  "The girls were different. When we were very young, it wasn't a problem.  Once everyone hit puberty, though, things changed for him. There was  some groupthink going on, not uncommon in children."

"I'm not sure I want to know this anymore."

"I think you should." He still wouldn't look at her, though.

"Okay." She took a deep breath and steeled herself.

Maxence pursed his lips. "They toyed with him."

"This sounds really bad."

He nodded. "They dared each other to go out with him, to kiss him, to  make him fall in love with them, and then they laughed at him to his  face and among their friends. It was brutal. No one could stop him from  believing them and falling in love with them, until one day, he didn't  anymore."

"Oh."

"Something clicked in him, and he never believed them after that day.  When one of them approached him, he was unflaggingly polite, but his  eyes were hollow for hours afterward. We watched him to make sure that  he didn't ski into a tree or stop swimming in the middle of the lake."

She looked at the Spanish tile under her feet. "Okay."

Maxence nodded, biting his lower lip.

Rox planted her hands on her hips so that Maxence wouldn't see them shake. "So what did you guys call him?"

Maxence stared at his feet, embarrassed. His mouth went tight, and he enunciated very precisely, "Prince Monster."





ARTHUR'S WORK HERE IS DONE





In the kitchen, Cash was sitting at the table by the front window with  Arthur. Empty cereal bowls stood on the table between them.

Cash was holding his spoon in his hand, pointing it at Arthur's nose like he was going to shank him.

Arthur was inspecting the tip of the spoon as if something was clinging to it.

Both looked up when Rox came in, then looked over her shoulder when Maxence walked in behind her.

Arthur asked, "Are you packed?"

Rox asked, "For what?" but behind her, Maxence said, "Yes. We can leave whenever you want."

"Where are you off to now?" Cash asked.

"Home," Arthur said. "I have socialized all the kittens in Los Angeles, and so my work here is done."

Cash raised an eyebrow. "More like you managed to coax Maxence and me  into going to The Devilhouse with you, so you've tempted us enough with  your evil ways."

Arthur pretended to frown. "Evil lurks only in the hearts of men, not in our dicks. Support me here, Maxence."

"I'm not getting involved in this conversation." Maxence's breezy tone  didn't seem serious, but it did sound like he had heard that line of  reasoning far too often.

Or maybe he just feared for his immortal soul whenever Arthur was  around. Rox wondered just how often Arthur felt the need to tempt  Maxence, whether with liquor or women or who knew what else Arthur was  into. She wandered over to the cabinets and poured herself a bowl of  cereal.

"Fine, don't support my position." Arthur's dry drawl suggested that he  didn't believe Maxence for one minute. "But you would still like a lift  to London, wouldn't you?"

Maxence shrugged. "If you wouldn't mind."

Arthur's grin and the squint of his silvery eyes bordered on demonic. "It would be my pleasure."





SUB MODO





Rox strode through the law firm from her office toward Cash's, careful  to skirt the long way around the cubicle farm to avoid Val's and Josie's  offices.

Wren discreetly waved at her over the top of her padded walls, but a lot  of the other paralegals kept their heads down and their gazes, averted.  The mumble and mutter of the office died down as she walked through.

She holed up in her own office for a few minutes before she met with  Cash in his. Flipping through the document security system just pissed  her off more. Josie and Val had been into everything, all of Cash's  contracts, everything that Rox had worked on, and a bunch of other  contracts, too. Obviously, they had been searching for something or  trying to hide what they had done.                       
       
           



       

She skulked around the perimeter of the cubicle farm to get to Cash's  office. Something was definitely going on, and the rabble knew about it.  If she asked someone, though, she might get them into trouble.

Cash opened his office door for her. "Meeting time?"

"Eleven," Rox said. "We've got half an hour. Cash, do you want to look at the DiCaprio contract?"

"Casimir," he said, shutting the door behind her.

Rox looked behind herself. "Pardon me?"

He closed the distance between them and folded her into his arms.  "Casimir, not Cash. I've never liked that nickname. You started calling  me Casimir this morning. Don't stop."

"I, well, okay. I might slip sometimes, Casimir," she said, trying it  out. It sounded funny, but it fit him. Calling him by his whole, real  name was a little more exotic, a little more formal, and yet intimate.

"That's all right." He kissed the top of her head. "Do you want me to call you Roxanne?"

"Ain't nobody but my daddy called me by my full name, and then only when he was threatening to whup my butt for being sassy."

"I did not understand a word that you said, but I'll assume that I'm to continue calling you Rox."

"You're not wrong."

He laughed and released her. "Pull up the revised draft for that DiCaprio contract. It should've come in last night."

Rox pulled her computer out of her purse and logged on. "Yep, there it is."

Cash moved around behind her to look at the screen. He braced his arms  on the desk, one on each side of her, something that he wouldn't have  done a month ago. He rested his chin on her shoulder. "Go to the  compensation section, Twelve Point Six."

Rox skimmed the solid black blocks of text on the screen. "Casimir," she  said carefully, "this says ‘net' again. They changed it back. They're  trying to give DiCaprio a share of the net profits instead of the  gross."

"What? It can't. We changed that in the document while we were sitting  in the conference room. Are you sure that's the right file?"

"It was the last file on the list, the most recent." She flipped back to  the screen that listed all the documents. "Yep, look. It came in at  eleven-thirty last night."

"So they changed it back? Why would they do that?"

"I have no idea, and the note on the side says that it was sub modo."

"We certainly didn't agree to that," Cash mused.

Cash? Casimir. Yeah, Casimir.

She asked, "But why would they tag it as sub modo? That's insane. It's like they wanted us to catch it."

"Or they didn't take care because they assumed that no one would ever  look at it. It's possible that the agents have been conspiring to screw  their clients, and we've been wrongly accusing Val and Josie of  malpractice."

"I would be dang hard-pressed to believe that it was all of the agents,  every single one of them," Rox said. "And besides, they make a  percentage of their clients' fees. They have no reason to reduce what  their clients are paid."

Casimir scratched his cheek and squinted at the ceiling, thinking.

"Let me check something." Her fingers rattled over the keyboard. "No,  all of these contracts are from different agents and even different  agencies. If the agents are the guilty ones, then they're all psychic  because they're all doing exactly the same thing, exactly at the same  time, in exactly the same way."

Casimir frowned. "That's unlikely."

"Statistically impossible," she agreed.

"Can't the document security system tell us who checked things out?"

"Yeah, I think it can." Rox tapped a bunch of keys, searching the list.

There should have been a list of people who had dropped the contract in  the cloud, but that list was empty except for Rox's name. A hot flash of  panic puffed over her at seeing only her own name, even though she knew  that she hadn't done anything wrong.

And of course her name was on that list. She had dropped it into the cloud so that they could work on it at Cash's house.

However, there was a list of people who had accessed the contract from inside the office, too.