Working Stiff:Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1)(8)

Yes, she had always heard that Cash Amsberg was loaded.

But no one from the office had ever been to his house.

He held his expected social events in downtown hotel ballrooms,  demurring that his house was too far out of the way for people to be  expected to drive to.

And now Cash was driving them through a neighborhood of mansions.

Gates and fences cordoned off entire hills, and exactly one house perched on each hill.

One huge house per enormous hill.

Rox rode in the passenger seat as Cash drove along the meandering  street. In the back seat, cat carriers lined up, each with a seat belt  lashing it in place. Midnight howled his displeasure. Pirate and  Speedbump flattened themselves against the floors of their carriers and  suffered in silence but with glaring looks.

"I really appreciate this," Rox said for the thousandth time.

"Don't mention it. About the meeting with Monty this afternoon, we  should strategize. Monty thought he would be dealing with Valerie. How  shall we use that to our advantage?"

"Guilt?" Rox suggested. "‘Poor Valerie had a stroke. Kind of your fault,  isn't it, Monty? Shoving screwed-up contracts like this at her?'  That'll get him."

"Nice. I like that."

"And then after that, I need to go back to the office. I have to drop a  contract in the cloud to work on tonight. I hate that security system."

"Everyone hates it," he said, checking the rear view mirror.

To read a file off-site, you had to be physically in the office and  check out the file with your personal security code and a random  nine-digit number from one of three tokens that were forever getting  lost in drawers or behind computers or in the trash cans.

Plus, the tokens were locked up at night, or they were supposed to be.  Most of the time, at least one was missing. A partner had to open the  safe to get them out again every morning.

It was a huge pain in the butt.

The stupid little things were constantly getting lost. Josie had  threatened to put bike flags on them, but for the time being, they were  just little plastic things about the size of a thumb drive that flashed a  long, long number for a few seconds before they blinked and changed  again and again and again.

Rox had heard that the partners had tried to have the security  software's firewall altered so that partners could remotely access any  file-just the partners, not the peons-but the security firm wouldn't do  it.

Cash turned off the road and halted in front of a gate. He pushed a button, and the black bars slid aside.

The private development looked very high-end, far beyond what Rox could have even imagined.

Behind the gate, the asphalt road wound up and between the hills. Lush autumnal wildflowers waved on the hillsides.

This expanse of unused land bordered on obscene in the space-hungry city.

Rox glanced over at him, but Cash seemed more intent on driving and  chewing on his lower lip, still considering their options for how to  outfox Monty. "There's something more to this."

"Yeah. It's weird, right?"

He nodded. "Certainly."

And he kept driving, up the hill, around the back, winding up more  hills, and switchbacks up to a house that spread around a cobblestoned  courtyard with a fountain at the center.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

Rox tried not to look like a gaping redneck.

He pushed another button near the rearview mirror, and a garage door  over on the other side of the fountain retracted. After he parked  inside, the garage door behind them still gaped open.

Rox stepped out of the car, walking away from Midnight's constant  yowling, and looked out of the garage door. Mountains flowed away from  his house, and the air smelled so much fresher than in downtown L.A. The  cool breeze of fresh water mist wafted from the fountain.

His house was on the highest hill, and it was the biggest. "Wow."

"Wow, what?" Cash said, getting out from behind the wheel and opening the back door.

"I-" What should she say? That she was really flabbergasted by how much  money he must have spent on his house? "You have a beautiful home."

He dropped one eyebrow at her. "Perhaps next time you're homeless, you'll remember that."

Touché.

He stooped into the back of the car and came up with two cat carriers.  "I'll go back for the other one. Come on. I'll show you to your room."                       
       
           



       

They walked in the side door, which didn't open into a kitchen like Rox  would have expected but to a living room decorated in Spanish Colonial.  Dark, exposed beams lined the white plaster ceiling. White and pale gold  furniture was grouped around dark wood tables. Honey-colored walls  looked like a sunset was glowing on them. Spanish-style art was framed  on the walls, vibrant still-life paintings of pots and landscapes.

Brick red, lush draperies framed huge French doors that opened onto a balcony that overlooked the ocean.

The ocean?

It was so much cooler up here in the hills that the doors stood open. A  light breeze drifted through the mountains and ruffled her hair,  carrying the freshness of the sea far below, cooling her nose and  bringing the taste of salt to the back of her tongue. She hadn't  realized that they had driven up the back of the highest hill, that  Cash's enormous house perched on the very top of the development, or  that they were so near the sea. Sunlight glittered on the rippled wave  tops far below.

Cash strode over and started closing the doors. "We'll turn the air conditioning on."

"I don't think they'd go out there," Rox said. "They're all pretty old and lazy."

"The coyotes might come in after them."

"Oh. Good point."

They carried in her few things-just a suitcase full of clothes and some  shopping bags with framed pictures of her cats, her friends, and her  father-and the last cat. Cash showed Rox a large half-bathroom off the  main rooms where she could set up a litter box and food bowls, and then  they released the beasts and took back off for the city and their  meeting with Monty.

They strategized all the way there, ranting and laughing in equal parts, with Rox taking notes on her phone while Cash drove.

The two of them were a well-oiled legal machine. They complemented each  other, and they had each others' backs. One time, when they had been  negotiating a contract in Moscow, opposing counsel had sent a hooker to  Cash's hotel room. Cash had escaped to Rox's room, his shirt half-torn  off, and insisted that Rox get rid of the woman because the hooker would  not take no for an answer. Rox had explained to the mortified woman  that Cash didn't need her services that evening because he preferred  men, and the woman had left.

The other lawyers had looked sheepish the next day. Cash had used that  embarrassment to negotiate an extra twenty thousand for their client. He  had even camped it up a little, if badly. Cash Amsberg would do  anything to give his clients the best representation he could because  that was the ethical thing for a lawyer to do.

All lawyers may be scumbags, he had told her, except for your lawyer, who was your scumbag.

On the way back into the city, the waving grasses gave way to strip  malls, then to tall buildings, but heavy traffic on the freeway delayed  them. The drunken idiots were out in full force that day, and Rox saw  not one but two people who had put their cars into the wall. One van  still spouted fire, and the paramedics were lifting a stretcher into an  ambulance. The standstill around the accidents stretched for miles, damn  rubberneckers.

Cash drove carefully, never with aggression nor emotion, and they broke free of the jam with little time to spare.

When Rox and Cash finally reached the other law firm's building, they  raced to the elevator, laughing and panting, right up until the elevator  doors parted on the opposing firm's floor.

And they both put on their bitch faces.

An admin showed them to a conference room at Singh, Proctor, and Evans,  where Monty Evans was already sitting with the contract stacked on the  table.

He scowled at them, his wrinkled forehead gathering yet more folds. "Valerie is supposed to handle your side."

Rox didn't let her eyebrows rise at that rudeness. This might not be the  South, but it was at least California. It wasn't like they were in New  York.

"Good afternoon to you, too, Monty." Cash's dry tone wasn't a surprise. They were practically psychic twins these days.

Rox dropped the annotated contract on their side of the table with a nice, loud thwack.

Monty scowled harder. "Where's Valerie?"

Cash said, "She's in hospital. She had a stroke a few days ago and will  be incapacitated for several more days or weeks, at the very least."

"But she was supposed to go over this contract," Monty insisted.

Cash glanced at Rox, one eyebrow lower than the other, and turned back.  "She's not available. We will negotiate this contract on behalf of Ms.  Watson."

Monty looked between the two of them, his head swiveling back and forth,  his cottony hair swaying in the breeze from the air conditioner. "When  will Valerie be back?"