“Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s perfectly healthy.”
Cash frowned. “Is it one of those weird mutations that got turned into a breed?”
“He’s not a Scottish Fold. He had a rough kittenhood.”
“You can’t keep a cat in your office.”
“It’s just for another day or two.”
A black cat’s face appeared above Pirate’s blond head.
“There’s two of them,” Cash said.
“Um—”Damn.Rox needed a good lie about now. All the ones she had thought of seemed stupidly transparent.
Of course, right then, Speedbump sauntered around the other side of the desk and stretched like he was doing kitty yoga. His body arched so hard that the silver and gray stripes on his sides expanded.
Cash’s lips parted, and his eyebrows pinched in the middle. “There’sanotherone? How many more of them are there?”
“Three. Just three,” Rox told him. “I call them the motley crew.”
“It’s like a cat clown car under that desk.” He whipped his head around and faced her, his bright green eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Rox said, a reflex that she couldn’t have stopped. “I’m fine.”
“No, something is wrong,” he said, his British accent softening. He looked down her body to the toes of her high-heeled black pumps and back up to her face, searching.
“Really, it’s nothing,” she said.
Rox could see him winding up to lay out the facts of the case like the lawyer he was.
Cash pointed at the cubicle farm of admins outside her door. “Melanie or Sierra might decide to bring their cats to work. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sunbeam or Daffodil were hiding hamsters in their desks. Notyou.”
“It’s nothing,” Rox whispered because her throat was closing up.
He continued, “I can count on you to be professional in all things. I can take you to impromptu meetings with clients or other lawyers because I know that you’ll behave impeccably and you’re always dressed professionally.”
Her hands twisted together in front of her, and Pirate chose that moment to bonk his thick skull against her leg, begging for petting, because of course he did.
Cash said, “I can trust that you won’t dress like a sexy vampire on Halloween or sport foil hearts in your hair on Valentine’s Day. I can travel with you because I know that I won’t find you naked in my bed as if we’re on a nookie run on the firm’s expense account, and we can get the workdone.I force HR to give you whatever salary you ask for because I can’t work with the other paralegals. They’re all over me and the clients and the opposing counsel that I bring in. They’re unprofessional. Irelyon you. You’re my rock in this office. You wouldn’t bringcatsto work unless something were terriblywrong.What iswrong?”
Her eyes burned. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I call bullshit, Rox.”
When he swore in that staunch British accent, it always made her giggle, and she gulped while she looked at the fluorescent tube lights on the ceiling and blinked.
“Rox?” His voice had softened.
When she glanced at him, the whole room swam from the water in her eyes.
“Are youcrying?”he asked, panic rising in his voice.
“No. I never cry.” Something dropped out of her eye and splashed on her cheek.
“Roxanne!”Footsteps clomped on the carpet, and Cash’s horrified face blocked out the lights. His hands hovered near her shoulders but grasped the air. “Did Grant hit you? Was there an incidence of abuse? Did you have to leave him in the middle of the night?”
“No. He wouldnever.”Really. He would never. The other figments of her imagination almost never hit her, either. She almost laughed at that.
