EIGHTEEN months later, Peyton Cabot debuted his first major concert at the Hollywood Bowl, the clamshell amphitheater carved into Bolton Canyon in Los Angeles.
Peyton had been working on his music since Gita’s birth. Polishing songs in the large music room of their new house while tending to her had been easy. She liked the piano and when he sang to her, so his songs’ lyrics received a lot of work. Gita had pulled herself up to standing for the first time on the piano’s legs and cruised the furniture in the music room while he played.
It was a good thing he had taken a few semesters of voice at Juilliard and been singing back-up with KV for nearly three years.
Perhaps he had been subconsciously considering making a break for it his whole music career.
When he’d played his music for some of his friends and instructors from Tanglewood and Juilliard, while they couldn’t countenance his decision to indulge in contemporary music, they had made some phone calls and introduced him to music critics for magazines and a few booking agents. Those introductions had led to MP3 files being shared with social media influencers, a few of whom decided that Peyton was the Next Big Thing.
He began to perform in a few small clubs.
Some Killer Valentine fans crossed over, interested in the ex-bassist who had gone solo. Many became an immediate, solid fan base.
The small clubs had led to larger venues, and the larger venues had created that sought-after buzz that had translated into online streaming revenue.
A lot of online streaming revenue, and shockingly fast.
Killer Valentine had taken years to build a global following.
Peyton had broken out in less than a year.
When the Hollywood Bowl, usually booked years in advance, had a cancellation, they approached Peyton Cabot to give his first major concert.
It was a dream, a psychedelic, impossible dream, a whirlwind of images and sounds.
Like Killer Valentine, Peyton hadn’t signed with a music label. Watching Xan Valentine navigate that minefield had left him wary. He had hired Xan’s producer for his recordings and kept complete control.
His music had turned out to be, as he had expected, lighter and sweeter than Killer Valentine’s and composed mostly of ballads and piano instrumentals.
Killer Valentine’s publicity problem had, predictably, passed in a month or so. The supposedly jilted pregnant girlfriend was suddenly married to the musician who defended her at every turn. With no additional clickbait such as ODs or drug-fueled hooker binges from the Killer Valentine camp to feed the media beast, it just died down. The ravenous media had moved on to the next sordid story because, just like sharks, they needed to keep swimming forward or they would die.
Peyton wouldn’t talk to Xan fucking Valentine, though. Fuck him and his PR machine.
After a few months of growling at each other through intermediaries, Killer Valentine had stopped for a tour date in Los Angeles. Georgie had called up and asked Peyton and Raji to meet her for supper, and a part of Peyton still couldn’t refuse her.
When he and Raji arrived in the private room at the rear of the French restaurant, Xan fucking Valentine was sitting at the table, too.
Xan’s dark eyes widened in shock. “What the fucking hell?”
Peyton had turned on his heel, preparing to walk the fuck out.
Georgie and Raji had pounced on them both, insisting that they talk it out.
Obviously, this was a coordinated attack on both fronts.
There was nothing to do but surrender.
After some snarling from both sides of the table, they crossed the distance between them and talked about music and the music business.
Within an hour, Xan was offering terse, instructive critiques on Peyton’s lyrics, and Peyton listened. When one of the century’s geniuses is willing to give you notes, you should let them.
Peyton offered Xan an introduction to a social media blogger whom he hadn’t been able to find an in with.
Now, Peyton stood in the dark of the Hollywood Bowl, listening to seventeen thousand, five hundred whispers wither and fall away.
Night air gathered around him.
Behind him, the orchestra settled, tuning their instruments one last time in a smooth cacophony.
Over on the side of the clamshell in the wings of the stage, just visible in the backstage safety lighting, Raji stood with Xan Valentine, Georgie Johnson-Grimaldi, and the other members of Killer Valentine.
Georgie’s arm was draped casually over Raji’s shoulders as they both grinned.
Xan looked like he was restraining himself from walking onto the darkened stage. One of his hands firmly grasped the back of a chair.
Tryp had wrapped his long arms around his sprite of a wife, Elfie, and was ruffling the brush at the end of her blond braid. Rumor had it that she was pregnant with their third child, but they hadn’t admitted it yet.
The toddlers and kids were sequestered at Peyton and Raji’s house, corralled by a platoon of nannies and sitters. Play yards lined the large nursery-slash-play room, waiting for bedtime.
Gita had been toddler-flirting with both Tryp’s son Neil, who was her age, and Xan’s son Adrien, staggering after them as they stumbled around the padded playroom. Peyton was pretty sure she was primarily after Adrien who was almost two years old, so she might have a thing for older men.
At the Hollywood Bowl, out in the dark expanse that crawled up the hillsides of the canyon turned into an open-air theater, the lights dimmed. The crowd quieted in their seats and on the benches that striped the hills around the stage.
Over seventeen thousand throats breathed out there. Seventeen and a half thousand hearts beat. Tree-covered hills in the Hollywood Heights funneled cool air and quiet into the valley, blocking out the traffic and blare of Los Angeles. The stars above glittered through the haze of light all around the tops of the mountains.
Peyton’s parents were in the front row, mollified that their offspring was at least making his debut at the Hollywood Bowl, a stage renowned for its classical and jazz traditions and for being the summer home of the L.A. Philharmonic. The venue was a marginally suitable substitute since their progeny was too stubborn to make his entrance to musical society at Carnegie Hall like a proper musician.
At least they were there.
Peyton took one last look over the body of the piano at Raji, standing in the wings. Her thrilled grin and hands clasped under her chin in excitement made each day of his life worthwhile.
Every step of his shooting-star rise to fame had been detailed on one of her spreadsheets, from polishing a defined number of songs via intermediate goals, to capitalizing on his classical contacts, to working his connections in the rock world, to the initial club dates, and finally to uploading his music to the streaming services with advertising already in place.
Raji’s spreadsheets and then project management software files were organized, so precise and detailed that Georgie had dragged Killer Valentine’s A&R VP Jonas all the way to California during another one-month band hiatus. Raji had given them both a crash course in how to use the software.
Peyton had cracked up as both Jonas’s and Georgie’s eyes had lit up at the possibilities for long-term career planning and management team organizational structure. So much planning.
Now, at the apex of Raji’s planning, seconds before the beginning of his first stadium-sized concert, Peyton drew a deep breath and laid his hands on the piano. The cool ivory calmed him.
Voices broke the silence of the crowd beyond the apron of the stage.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, he counted in his head.
In the darkness, the few wails swelled to screams, which expanded into a roar.
Three.
Peyton shouted into the darkness, “One, two, one-two-three-four—”
His hands slammed the piano keys.
Spotlights blasted through the Hollywood Bowl. The clamshell brimmed with light, and the glow flowed over the restless audience along with his music.
Peyton opened his throat and his soul and sang.
He had been born to do this.
In the floodlights on the wings of the stage, Raji laughed and beamed at him, thrilled.
Peyton poured his heart onto the stage in the form of love songs, all of them written for her.
Have You Read Blair’s Other Books?
Because they’re fabulous.
They’re funny and hot and interesting.
Read on!
Working Stiff
(Runaway Billionaires: Casimir)
By Blair Babylon
Red Flags
Rox was standing in Cash Amsberg’s corner office in the law firm again, listening to him rant, again.
If he hadn’t been so damn sexy, she might have had to put a stop to this. But he was, so she just ranted along with him.
It was kind of their thing.
At least Rox wouldn’t get fired from this law firm for being a “hothead.” She wasn’t a hothead. She was a Southern belle with a fiery temper, a tradition harkening back to the founding of Virginia. She would have done well in bygone eras, stamping her foot beneath her flowing hoop skirts and cursing like “Fiddle-dee-dee!”
Except for maybe that last part. Rox enjoyed a good cussin’ when the situation called for it. Not that the situation called for it too often. But sometimes, she went biblical on people who desperately needed to be told that she would smite them and salt the Earth.
Cash Amsberg pointed to a sentence in the contract, stabbing at the thick sheaf of paper with his finger. “What the bloody hell could Monty mean by this section? He must have known we would strike it off. It’s not even a negotiating point. There’s no way we would let Gina Watson sign this. Why would he even suggest such a thing?”
They were standing on the same side of Cash’s mahogany desk. He leaned over the contract, bracing both hands on the edge. Windows broke open the walls on two sides of the room. The afternoon California sun blazed in, glaring on the scarlet design of the Oriental rug covering most of the floor. Cash’s enormous diploma from Yale Law School hung above the couches at the back end of the office.
Dark bookcases packed with leather-bound books lined the other two walls. The books were mostly for show because the law firm had done all their research via LexisNexis for years, but Rox had caught Cash reading the hard copies late at night sometimes, rubbing his eyes.
He ran his hand through his hair, a sign that he was perilously close to losing his cool. She’d only seen him do that a few times, once when a Taiwanese film director had insisted that Cash play golf with him. Cash had appeared to be in good humor and had shot a perfectly respectable ninety-two, but he had returned to their hotel and ranted about The Damned Scottish Game for half an hour. Rox had laughed at his tantrum until he started chuckling about how his ball had gone into the water three times on the seventh hole.
Rox flapped her hands at her sides, narrowly missing Cash’s broad shoulder. “I cannot believe that he would even try such a dick move. That’s why I put a red flag sticky on it, so you would see that part first. Does he think we’re redneck idiots?” She emphasized redneck with her Southern accent to camp it up.
Cash scowled. “He must think we’re idiots. He must think we’re all idiots, every one of us, if he thought no one here would catch this.” Cash’s upper-crust British accent made them sound like the King of England conversing with a redneck colonist.
When Cash got all heated up like this, he literally got hot under the collar, and the subtle cologne that he wore—sandalwood and cinnamon and vanilla—crept out of his sharp designer suit and crisp white shirt. She tried not to lean in to catch a whiff, but she could just smell it when he was having a good rant. She could almost taste the vanilla on her tongue, as if she had her mouth pressed to his neck.
“This is one of Valerie’s contracts,” Rox reminded him.
Cash ran a hand through his hair. “Surely Monty doesn’t think that Valerie wouldn’t have caught this. Was he counting on her illness throwing us in such disarray?”
“This came in the very morning that Val had her stroke. I don’t see how Monty could have known that that was gonna happen. He’s still an asshole of the first degree, both for thinking that Valerie and her paralegals would miss this and for trying to do this to Watson. I mean, these frickin’ autobiography rights have nothing to do with the movie. It’s just a jackass rights grab.”
“This is egregious,” Cash muttered, his British accent turning more clipped. “Monty has gone senile or something. Call Patty. Mention it in passing. See what you can get out of her.”
Patty was Monty’s paralegal at his law firm. She was in Rox’s lunch bunch of girls who ate meals and went to movies together sometimes, mostly chick flicks. Rox went with them when she could escape from workaholic Cash, who liked to work through meals, and nights, and other appointments.
He shook his head. “Perhaps she can give us some insight into his thought processes, such that they are.”
Rox refrained from rolling her eyes and nearly sprained an eyebrow from the effort. “I don’t think Patty is going to do any industrial spying for us, not after you didn’t call her the next day, or ever again.”
“She didn’t care,” he said, waving his hand to dismiss that.
“Oh, I assure you, she cared,” Rox told him.
Cash raised an eyebrow at her. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Did she?”
“Oh, yeah.” Rox had heard from Patty about what an asswipe her boss was for weeks, and Rox hadn’t disagreed, not when she knew that ghosting was Cash’s favorite modus operandi to end relationships. He took women out on a couple of dates, screwed them a few times, maybe kept up the appearance of something that was becoming substantial for a few weeks, and then dissipated into thin air, poof. He became unreachable, untextable, untouchable. As far as the women could figure out, he might as well have turned into a ghost, even if they worked in the same office and saw him every day.
Which was one of the many, many reasons why Rox would never date him.
One of many, many, many reasons.
Other women looked far, far up at Cash’s brilliant, intense green eyes, the dark blond streaks in his auburn hair and his pale scruff of beard, and the hard lines of his cheekbones and jaw line.
They dropped their panties even before he took off his perfectly cut suit and silk shirt to reveal his broad, rounded shoulders, those chiseled abs like cobblestones on his flat stomach, and the deep vee of his obliques that pointed below his tight boxer-briefs.
They were lost before he whispered to them in that cultured, sexy accent and far before they saw the top-of-the-line Mercedes Maybach that he drove to his rumored enormous, manicured estate in the foothills. No one had ever been there, but everyone said that his house was huge without any evidence whatsoever.
Yep, Cash was several inches over six feet tall, emerald-eyed, ripped, gorgeous, his tailored suit clinging to his athletic body, sporting a British accent, and loaded.
Shockingly, women swooned over him.
Even after he ghosted on them, every admin and paralegal and client in the office still flirted with him. When he walked by their desks, they pushed their boobs together with their elbows and smiled up at him, blinking rapidly.
The one time he got a little bit of road rash on an elbow playing basketball on the roof of the parking structure, they fawned over him and brought him cookies the next day to raise his spirits, even though he had laughed the whole thing off at the time.
But not Rox. Never.
The afternoon sun heated the corner office, and Cash had already taken off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, baring the strong ropes of muscle on his forearms, the rough hairs on his tanned skin, and his tattoos. On his right forearm, above his wrist on the inside, three shields surrounded some kind of a triangular Celtic knot thing. It was small, maybe three inches across. The orange shield that pointed down at his hand had a white figure on it like a stylized lion rearing up with extended claws. The other shields were blue with three crowns and a red and white diamond checkerboard.
On his left arm, ink trailed tendrils of black fire all the way to his wrist.
He glared at the Watson contract as if the paper had offended him.
Other women might fall across his desk, hike up their suit skirts, and let Cash screw them face-down on the green blotter.
But three years ago, the other women in the office had warned Rox about Cash.
Manwhore.
Ladykiller.
Heartbreaker.
He was a walking, waving cluster of red flags.
And Rox had been fresh meat.
At first, she had assumed that he wouldn’t be interested in a chubby, dumpy, short, brunette Southern belle such as herself, not in an office swarming with slim California blondes.
When he had walked by her desk at ten o’clock that first morning, Rox had suppressed the gasp that had sucked into her mouth and through her body.
When he turned his head, gazing into her soul and her heating chest and her very cells, she gripped her mouse like she might fall off her office chair.
She had wiped beads of sweat off the mouse afterward where she had clutched it.
Stunning, she thought later, when her brain had rebooted. He was stunning. Looking at him made the world stop.
No wonder he could get away with loving ‘em and leaving ‘em.
“Why?” Rox had finally asked Melanie, one of the beautiful-blonde admins. Rox could tell Melanie apart from the rest of the herd of golden beauties by the strawberry highlights in her hair. “Why would women have casual sex with him if he’s just going to dump them like that?”
“Well,” Melanie had mused, and her smile turned sentimental and vague. “He’s never a jerk about it. There’s never a fight. There’s no drama. He never calls a woman a slut afterward, ever, or says anything bad about her to anyone, as far as we can tell, and we all talk a lot. He won’t even confirm or deny anything. And he’s,” she cleared her throat, “attentive.”
Rox frowned. “Like, he listens to you?”
“Yeah, that, too.” Melanie twiddled with a piece of paper on her desk and wouldn’t look at Rox.
“You mean that he told you that he loved you?”
“Oh, no. He’s not mushy at all. A good time is had by all, but he doesn’t lie about what’s going on. He doesn’t talk about ‘love’ at all.”
“But there’s something else,” Rox prompted. “He’s attentive—”
Mel cleared her throat. “In bed. I mean, you know. He’s good in bed.”
Rox shrugged, wanting to reach over and snatch that shredded paper away from the blonde. “A lot of guys are good in bed.”
Mel glanced up at Rox, her blue eyes serious and direct. “Not like him.”
Rox had tugged her sundress lower on her thighs the whole afternoon that first day, but after that, Rox had worn professional-class suits, either skirts or pants, but definitely suits, and wedding rings.
Since then, in the three years that Rox had worked with Cash as his paralegal, he had humped and dumped at least fifty women, and those were just the ones she knew about for sure. The actual number was probably higher.
He didn’t seem to have a “type,” either. He liked the skinny-willowy ones and the shortie-curvy ones, the pale redheads and the delicate blondes and the gorgeous raven-haired, the porcelain-skinned and the golden-tanned and the cocoa-dusted, the nubile nineteen-year-old interns and the silver-fox lady partners, and all the women in between.
Cash even sent out discreet, non-threatening sexual feelers to the seven lesbians who worked at the law office, just in case any of them were actually a little more toward the center of Kinsey scale than they had previously thought themselves. One was. For two and a half weeks, Ginger declared herself bi-for-a-guy, which is not the usual meaning of that term but she owned it. She got along with Cash better than any of the other women, afterward.
Rox had watched them all traipse into Cash’s bed and then out of his life.
All the admins stared at Cash with weepy doe eyes. All the other paralegals teared up or blushed when they saw him stride through the office. The women attorneys were businesslike and courteous to him, but their glances turned sharp when he wasn’t looking.
The clients, however, still flocked to him, flirted with him, and went for round two in record numbers.
And then he ghosted them again.
The actresses didn’t seem to care much about his retreats. They were used to ninety-day shoots, so to speak.
The models probably didn’t have the attention span to notice his absence.
And, for some unholy reason, the guys in the office loved him. You would think that, with Cash sopping up all the available women, that the men would be competitive or derogatory, but they were all bestest buds with him. He was a great guy, always up to go have a beer with, or to watch a game with, or to be on a league team with.
He charmed them, too.
But Rox was the only person in the office who could work with him.
Now, after three years, every time Rox went in for quarterly evaluations with the senior partners, her paycheck fattened, just by her suggesting that she might be looking at other, less tempestuous law firms. They couldn’t let her leave, not with just about everyone else emotionally unable to work with Cash.
Some of the women threw themselves at him, hoping for another taste. He usually accepted their offers, but the ghosting came sooner the second time or the third. Some of them stared at the floor and mumbled around him, stealing glances at his chest or lower, but dodged when he came too close, unwilling to go through it again.
It was a matter of concentration and efficiency, really. The women imagined his hands taking the sheaves of paper from their fingers for hours, imagining a brush or a touch, and failed to get the damn work done.
And so Rox made out like a proverbial bandit.
She had bought herself an awesome sports car last month even though she knew she should be saving for a down payment on a house, and she grinned just thinking about the drive back to her apartment.
But sleep with beautiful, brilliant Cash Amsberg?
Never.
And he had never hit on her, anyway. Not even once. Not even a little bit.
Not in any serious way. He joked around a lot.
But she could tell that he was just joking. It was pretty obvious.
Cash wasn’t particularly a chubby chaser, anyway. Not only could he have any woman whom he wanted, he actually had them all, one after another.
“Well, talk to Patty anyway,” he said, poking the Watson contract again. “See if she’ll do it for you.”
Rox flicked the red plastic tag hanging onto the margin of the page. The sparkling stones in her wedding rings caught the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows and threw spangles over the office for a moment, illuminating the heavy desk and running down Cash’s bare arms.
He saw the glitter on his arm, tracked the points of light to her wedding rings, and shifted his weight away from her.
There was only one type of woman that Cash Amsberg was not interested in.
He did not hit on married women, not even once, not even a little.
Rox said, “Fine. I’ll call Patty and see if she wants to grab a drink after work today.”
Cash said, “We appreciate you taking one for the team.”
And that was the only way that Rox was going to take one for the team of Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg. “Yeah, whatevs.”
Cash smiled at her, his lush lips sliding apart over his straight, white teeth, and his green eyes sparkled with humor. “Thanks, work-wife. Have I told you that I love you today?”
That time, Rox let it happen, and the muscles at the corners of her eyes strained from her epic eye-rolling. “I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”
He laughed, his broad shoulders lifting. “Only you, Rox. You’re my rock.”
“Yeah, the ball and chain holding you in this law firm. If it weren’t for me, you would probably be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by now, writing learned opinions about which of the lawyers arguing the case in front of you was better in bed, the redhead with the fake boobs or the black woman with the low-cut top.”
He was laughing harder now. “Surely I’m not so bad as all that.”
“Worse. You’d probably have all the lawyers, the women ones anyway, in your chambers in some sort of a horrible orgy on your huge law desk, and then they’d all kiss and make up and dismiss the case. It would be the only Supreme Court session where absolutely no decisions were handed down, and you would go down in history as the Screw It All Court.”
Casimir fell backward onto the couch, his long legs splayed, both his arms wrapped over his stomach and giggling helplessly. “Stop.”
“All right, fine. But seriously, at least with me, you get the work done.”
“Yes, I can trust you.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and shaking his head. “Now, did Bessie from Universal send us the DiCaprio contract yet?”
“Yep. Got it this morning.” She waved her phone, indicating email.
“When can I see it?”
“Soon as I read it and flag it.”
“This evening, then?”
“Not if I’m gonna be pimping Patty for information about Monty.”
He shrugged, his white shirt sliding over the thick muscles of his chest and arms and straining around his tight waist. “Come back afterward. We can get delivery from that new Thai place around the corner and go over it.”
Rox waggled her left hand at him, letting the stones in her rings catch the sunlight again and trying to flash the spangles in those brilliant green eyes of his. “I’ve got to see my own husband sometimes. I’ll check out the file before I leave so I can look at it when I get home.”
The law firm’s draconian security system didn’t let them access files from outside the office unless they had been checked out, a stupid process involving speed-typing security codes.
“Oh, Grant. Leave him for me, Rox. I’ll take you to Fiji for our honeymoon.”
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, anyway.
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.
Rox fell apart when people left her like that, like they didn’t give a crap about her and just walked into oblivion.
She wasn’t going to go through that again.
And so, since her husband “Grant Neil” had not existed, Rox had invented him.
She had assured Cash and anyone else who would listen, yes, she was married. Her husband was a stuntman for several of the television studios, but he wanted to get into screenwriting and directing. He did a little modeling on the side. And maybe his music would take off for him.
So, yeah, “Grant” was a ridiculous mashup of all the Hollywood wannabe clichés and thus utterly believable. No one had even questioned his existence for three whole years.
Despite the fact that no one had ever seen him.
A friend of hers, an agent, had found a suitable headshot of a hot model/stuntman for Rox to use.
Really hot.
You could see ripply abs under his tight, black tee shirt. She had folded under his real name, Lancaster Knox, and wedged it into a frame for her desk.
Rox liked to stare at pretend-Grant and imagine that he was, indeed, her lawfully wedded husband. Sometimes she drooled.
And for three years, Cash hadn’t turned that sexy glower on her.
Yeah, thank goodness. She certainly didn’t want the hot, ripped British lawyer coming on to her.
She slid the cheap rings onto her left hand, scratched her cats on the head one last time, and opened the front door to leave the apartment.
Three cats.
She was twenty-seven and unmarried, not even dating anyone, and enmeshed in a workaholic office so she couldn’t even meet any guys who might be prospects.
Yep, it was official.
At what point had Rox turned into a crazy cat lady?
She was pivoting on her heel away from her door as it was slamming toward her, when a piece of paper taped under the door’s knocker fluttered in the breeze.
The two words at the top, bold and in all-caps, read: EVICTION NOTICE.
Oh, shit.
A box was bolted over the doorknob.
If that door shut, she couldn’t get back in.
Her cats.
Rox kicked the crap out of the swinging door. It banged back against the wall, and she threw herself through the doorway.
The door bounced and punched her in the arm, but she shoved it and rolled inside before it could slam shut.
The door closed, but she was inside the apartment.
She sat up, panting.
Her three cats looked over at her from their beds, vaguely amused at her antics. Pirate yawned, showing three long fangs.
“Oh, my God,” Rox said. “What am I going to do?”
She couldn’t leave them there. That lock was bolted on. Once that door shut one more time, she wouldn’t be able to get back in. They would be trapped until the super came and—
Rox didn’t know what he would do. Toss them out into the landslide-prone hill behind the building? Throw them in the pool?
Take them to the local animal shelter where they would be considered unadoptable because they were old and ugly, where they would be immediately slated for a lethal injection?
At least they were all healthy now. They might have a week or two before they were put down for overcrowding. Or maybe three days.
Fuck, no. She would not, could not, abandon them like that.
Okay, it was only six-thirty. She needed to plan. Rox needed to calm down and plan.
First of all, she wasn’t behind on her rent at all. She had automatic withdrawal set up for the first of the month, and the rent had been deducted on schedule on the first. She had checked. She always checked.
Rox needed that eviction notice. She needed to know why.
She just had to make sure the door didn’t close while she did it.
From growing up in the South, Rox understood that the solution to any engineering problem lay in shoe glue, bailing wire, or duct tape.
A fat roll of extra-strength, silver tape was wedged in her kitchen junk drawer. She pried it loose and marched to the door.
Like Hell she was going to get locked out of her own apartment.
Rox might be a paralegal, but her daddy was an engineer. Anything that is worth engineering is worth over-engineering.
The duct tape cracked as she ripped a long length off the roll, and she wadded it into a sticky ball before she shoved it against the side of the door, binding the bulge in place against the latch by winding layers and layers of duct tape around the knobs on both sides of the door. She did the same with the hole in the strike plate, mashing the gluey tape to the wall. So what if it peeled off some paint? If she was getting evicted, she probably wasn’t getting her deposit back, the thieves.
Luckily, Rox knew a few lawyers. She would take those jerks to court and get her damn deposit back later. Right now, she had to get everything she could out of this trap, starting with her cats.
She glanced behind herself.
Pirate, Speedbump, and Midnight were limp in their beds, basking in the morning sunlight, oblivious to the fact that they had almost ended up back in kitty jail.
And maybe death row.
Rox bound the duct tape more tightly around all the parts of the door lock, wedging the door open with her feet and yet still standing back inside the apartment. The door looked like it had grown a silver tumor by the time she was done with that part.
She stood inside her apartment in the entryway and let the door slam closed.
The heavy security door bounced off the duct tape, and sunlight shone off the mound of tape through the open crack.
Good.
Rox wedged the door all the way open by jamming a butcher knife under the bottom of it and proceeded to secure another ball of duct tape into the hinges so that it couldn’t swing even partway closed. Winding the duct tape around and around the hinges, gumming them up but good, calmed her down a little.
When there was no way that damn door could possibly swing shut, she swiped the eviction notice off it.
Animals was written in the box for Violations. No pets policy was scrawled underneath. Boxes for lease violation and deposit forfeited and endangerment of other residents and immediate eviction were checked below.
Legal action was written in uneven letters, and authorities called.
All for three damn cats?
That was ridiculous. Rox wasn’t hoarding goddamned cobras.
Pirate stretched and extended one paw, his claws gleaming in the morning sunlight like vampire fangs or hypodermic needles or something.
Seriously. How the hell were three geriatric cats endangering anyone? They’d had all their shots.
Even if they did look a little ragged.
Okay, she couldn’t fight this right now. Cash or Josie would slap the apartment management company upside the head with a lawsuit for her soon.
But in the meantime, she couldn’t leave her cats here, not with a permanent lock on her door stymied only by duct tape. Even a small knife would make quick work of it.
So she couldn’t stay, and the cats couldn’t stay.
Which meant that they all had to go together.
This part had to be done carefully.
Rox sidled over to her bedroom and violently shook the treats bag, nearly powdering the shrimp-flavored bits inside.
The cats ambled in after her, checking out each other, unsuspecting but more than okay with an unscheduled shrimp-treat break.
She slammed the bedroom door behind them and fed them the treats.
They didn’t see her sliding the three cat carriers out from under her bed until it was too late.
Homeless
Three days later, Rox sat behind her desk, annotating yet another contract on the enormous monitor that threw blue light on the walls of the office, blazing even brighter than the sizzling fluorescents overhead. Her feet were baking, nearly steaming, but she didn’t so much as wiggle her toes.
The picture of the very hot Lancaster Knox, model and stuntman, sat on her desk. She blew him a kiss.
A huge rubber plant blocked the tall window beside her door. A dark track in the beige carpeting led from the heavy pot to the far wall.
Over the thick leaves, Cash’s face rose in the window. He grinned at her, pointing at the locked doorknob.
Couldn’t that man ever text or email or call on the damn phone?
But he never texted unless something was horribly wrong. When they traveled, he showed up at her door at all hours of the night, holding documents to talk with her about. She had bought three pairs of travel jammies so she could open the door when he had had a brainstorm or just needed to talk to her in the middle of the night.
But today, she hadn’t seen him coming.
Usually, that enormous plant stood beside her desk, and Rox could see Cash striding down the aisle lined with cubicles where the admins and other paras worked. His long legs covered the floor, and he grinned at everyone in the office he passed. The other women smiled at him, laughed at something, and a few fluffed their hair and inhaled deeply.
Considering that they were all nursing broken hearts about him, they sure got aggressive with the flirting whenever he walked through the cubicle farm.
She withdrew her feet from under her desk, found her pumps with her toes, and walked over to open the door.
As soon as she flicked the lock on the door, Cash poked the door open and started to walk into her office. “Rox? Did you receive the Killer Valentine contract?”
She stepped in front of him, blocking his way. He stopped short and blinked at her, looking far down from where he stood up there at six-feet-whatever. Confusion twitched his eyebrows downward.
She glared up at him and stepped toward him, crowding him back toward the door. “Yeah. Working on it,” she said. “Let’s talk in your office.”
“But I’m right here,” he said.
Rox put her hand in the center of his broad chest and pressed, intending to steer him out of her office. Even through his crisp shirt, his pecs rounded in toward his sternum. “Let’s go.”
He grinned down at her, his white teeth even and straight between his lips. “Don’t worry, I won’t take advantage—”
He paused, looking over her head.
Everyone was able to look over Rox’s head.
He asked, “Is that a cat?”
“Nope. No cats in here. Let’s go.”
He side-stepped, peering around her, and her fingers slid across his chest to his muscular biceps.
He said, “That’s a cat.”
Rox slammed the door behind him, not to keep Pirate, Speedbump, and Midnight from running out the door but to keep anyone from seeing them or hearing Cash. “Look, I’ve had a little problem.”
Pirate was peering around the corner of her desk with his one, good eye. His blond fur was rumpled on one side of his head where he had been sleeping on her feet. His ears—rounded on top from crumbling off due to frostbite and the stumps shredded from fighting—twitched toward Cash. He yawned, showing that he was missing one of his big canine fangs, too.
“It is a cat, right?” he asked.
“Um, yeah.” Rox started figuring out some new lies, just in case he didn’t believe the fifty or so she had already cooked up.
He asked, “You have a cat in your office?”
“It’s a long story.”
He squinted at Pirate. “What’s wrong with it?”
“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’s another one? 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. Not you.”
“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 work done. 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. I rely on you. You’re my rock in this office. You wouldn’t bring cats to work unless something were terribly wrong. What is wrong?”
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 you crying?” 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 would never.” Really. He would never. The other figments of her imagination almost never hit her, either. She almost laughed at that.
“Are you sick?” Cash asked, his eyes horrified.
“I’m not sick. Why would I bring my cats to work if I were sick?”
“I don’t know. Comfort? The thought worried me.” Cash’s shoulders lowered, and his hands dropped to his sides. “All right, whatever it is, you can tell me. No matter what it is, I’ll help you.”
He was standing really close to her. They never stood this close together. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, sure, when they were going over paperwork or sitting at a table, negotiating a contract. On airplanes, they always flew first-class, so the seat armrests were solid all the way down to the cushions.
They never touched each other, though, unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then, as little as possible. It was one of the unspoken rules of their relationship that kept them friends, good friends, and nothing else.
The light scent of his cologne, sweet wood and delicious spices like cinnamon and vanilla, mixed with the warmth drifting out of his suit, even though he wasn’t ranting.
They didn’t stand this close together, ever, and Rox’s forehead only came up to his chest, even though she was wearing heels.
If she leaned forward, she could rest her forehead against his chest.
His low voice was gentle, almost like he murmured to her, “We’ve been friends too long for this. Tell me what’s going on.”
She couldn’t quite open her throat enough to talk.
He raised his hand beside her shoulder, and for a minute, she thought he was going to wrap his arms around her.
She should step back if he did. She should gently push him off of her and not let anything get out of hand.
Rox leaned forward two inches and rested her forehead against his shoulder.
It was ridiculous that the square inch of contact of her forehead against his suit jacket suffused comfort through her. She hadn’t told anyone what was going on, and the isolation was the worst part.
She breathed in the subtle scent of his cologne and natural musk.
Her shoulder warmed, and she realized that, instead of wrapping his arms around her, he was stroking her shoulder and upper arm. He whispered somewhere near her hair, “Roxanne, tell me. I’ll help you.”
“Something stupid happened,” she admitted.
He took a deep breath, and his chest expanded. She angled her head, and his suit brushed her cheek.
Cash asked, “Did you have an auto accident? Is there a legal problem, perhaps you panicked and left? I can help you with that. I’ll bring the full power of this firm into play.”
“Nothing like that. It’s just—I got evicted from my apartment.”
A pause.
Which lengthened.
He finally asked, “You live in an apartment?”
“I’ve really only been making good money the last couple years, and I was saving for a down payment for a house, but I bought the car.”
“I don’t need to know this.” He shook his head and stepped back to peer down at her. Her forehead chilled. “Why would you be evicted?”
“They found out about the cats. The lease said no pets. And the eviction notice was effective immediately. They put a bolt on my door. I just took my cats and some clothes and left.”
“You can’t be evicted without due process. An eviction proceeding usually takes months, even if there is a lease violation.”
Cash looked down at their feet.
Pirate leaned so hard against Rox’s leg that her knee almost buckled, and his bottle-brush tail coiled around her thigh like a furry snake.
“I suppose I shouldn’t ask why you even have cats, then,” he said, “if the lease forbade them.”
“I volunteer at an animal shelter on Sundays. These guys were so sad. They needed someone to love them. And I did. So I took them home.”
“Even though your apartment had a no-pets policy.”
“I figured that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission.”
“I don’t think you received either.”
“Look at this little guy.” Rox hoisted him into her arms, burying her fingers in his deep fur. Pirate tucked his forehead under her chin and purred hard. “He was so depressed, living in that little cage for months. How could I just walk away from him?”
Cash stared at the cat—at his ruined ears, the blank fur where his eye used to be, and the scarred pits where he was missing some of his yellow fur—and his eyebrows rose with skepticism. “I’ll leave that to your judgment.”
“I couldn’t,” she said, scratching him under the chin, and Pirate closed his yellow eye in happiness.
“And the others?”
“Same thing. They needed me.”
A slow smile crept over Cash’s face. “It would not have occurred to me that you would rescue three motheaten cats at some risk to yourself. You’re a sweet person, Rox.”
“I am not. You take that back.” She set Pirate down on his paws. He sat and washed his flat face with a paw.
Cash watched the cat smear spit on his face. “So where have you been staying?”
“That’s kind of the problem,” she admitted.
“Oh?” His query was laced with wariness, and he began watching her more closely again.
“I couldn’t find a hotel that took animals, and I swear to God, all my friends are allergic or have aggressive dogs or something.”
Cash looked horrified again. “So where have you been staying?”
“I’ve been sleeping in my car and showering at my gym.”
“In your car? You can’t sleep in your car in Los Angeles. There are homeless persons, and vagrants, and criminals. It’s not safe. You can’t do that.”
“I didn’t have any other options,” she said.
“Of course you did. You could have called me. I’m not allergic to cat hair—”
“It’s actually the dander, not the hair.”
“—and I don’t have a dog to frighten them.”
Rox fidgeted, digging her toe into the flat carpet. “But, you’re a guy.”
“Does not follow,” he said, his eyebrows drawing farther down. That was lawyer-speak for something illogical or that he couldn’t understand.
“I can’t ask a guy if I can come sleep on his couch. It implies things.”
“Gender propriety rules do not apply when you are homeless. This is appalling.” Cash ran one hand through his hair.
And yet she had no choice. There was one damn good reason why she hadn’t told him. “And, you’re you.”
“What on Earth is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“You’re Cash Amsberg. You’re that guy in the office.”
His brilliant green eyes lit with anger. “What guy?”
“The guy. The guy who everyone has—you know.”
He rolled his eyes and raised his hands. “Rox, it’s me. It’s just me. We travel together every month. I’ve certainly never assaulted you.”
“Well, there was that one time in Japan that you dragged me into your room—” she mused.
“I carried you out of the bar on the night when you discovered sake. I held your hair back. That night was like the aftermath of a frat party.”
“You took my clothes off.” This was one of their comedy routines. They’d been through it a dozen times, but Cash was still ranting so much that he didn’t recognize it.
He insisted, “It was an act of charity to take that vomit-soaked blouse off of you, and I got you into one of my tee shirts before I rolled you into the bed.”
She was trying to repress a smile at his sputtering. “You stayed in my room when I was too drunk to give consent.”
“I slept on the floor to make sure you didn’t choke to death on your own vomit, and it was actually my room.”
“That’s still not consent.”
“I have never behaved improperly or even suggested such a thing.”
Cash was well into a good rant. His ears were even turning pink. Rox blinked hard, trying to get the teary crap out of her eyes.
God, he smelled good, like cookies and fresh lumber and something darker, masculine, and clean.
He demanded, “And where is your husband during all this? Is he sleeping in his car, too? Or has he gone to stay with someone and left you out in the cold?”
It wasn’t particularly cold in early autumn in Los Angeles, especially with three traumatized cats who had slept draped on top of her while she reclined in the passenger seat, but that wasn’t the point.
Rox said, “Grant is on a month-long shoot in Thailand. He’s been gone for over a week. He doesn’t even know. I didn’t want to worry him.”
Cash’s deep voice rose, along with his hands. “Good God, Rox. So you were alone, in your car, with three cats, and you didn’t call me. I can’t bear it.”
“It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.”
His voice rose further. “Damn you and your bizarre Southern proprieties. Get your cats. Get your things. We’re taking everything to my place so that you can concentrate on work the rest of the day, and then you’ll stay in my guest suite until we can find a proper apartment for you that accommodates pets so this doesn’t happen again. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
He was so funny when he was outraged. Even though Rox saw it a couple times a week, it was still kind of cute.
And because it was cute, she provoked him further. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“I assure you, I am actually the boss of you,” Cash said, still ranting. “I am your boss and you will do as I say and you will not sleep in your damned car even one more minute.”
Cash paused, taking in the fact that she was grinning at his tirade, even though her eyes still burned a little.
He said, “Oh, I see how it is. Fine. Get these beasts packed up. We’ll pick up some lunch while we’re out. Have you been eating?”
Rox rolled her eyes at that. “I have money. I just couldn’t find a place to stay.”
“Then it’s settled.”
“It’s just for tonight. I’ll find someplace starting tomorrow.”
“Fine, then. I’ll be back in ten minutes to carry your things downstairs to my car.” He turned to leave.
“I can drive myself,” she insisted.
“My car is larger, and yours has been recently used as a flop for homeless people and unwashed beasts. It’s not fit transportation.”
She laughed at him that time. “You don’t have to do this. I’m really fine.”
Cash rolled his eyes, finally thoroughly exasperated. “I will brook no more arguments. Pack up your cats.”
“Okay, boss.”
His shoulders relaxed as he finally simmered down, and she could see the snark building in him. He asked, “Also, you belong to a gym?”
Oh, a chubby crack.
Rox popped her chin up. “Yeah, I do. Where I take kickboxing, and I will pound your skinny, arrogant, lawyer butt if you make a fat joke.”
Cash chuckled. “That’s not what I meant. You should try mine. It has an excellent juice bar with very good food service. The treadmills have desks. I often look at contracts on a laptop while I’m there. You might like it.”
She rolled her eyes at that, too. “Dude, you have a serious workaholism problem. There’s gotta be a twelve-step program for that.”
~
CLICK HERE TO SEE WORKING STIFF
~~~~~
Want to read about aristocratic billionaires instead? Try the Runaway Billionaires series, which are funny, sexy romps with courageous, loyal men who are so much more than the naughty playboys with jet airplanes and fast cars they appear to be. (3 Books.) CLICK HERE.
Or do you like your billionaires tall, blond, blue-eyed, dominant, and royal? Meet Wulf, a secret Billionaire in Disguise (2 Books.) CLICK HERE.
Do you like your billionaires to rock hard? Rock star Xan Valentine is the lead singer for Killer Valentine, and he has a huge secret. (4 Books.) CLICK HERE.
Want something a little darker? Theo rescues Lizzy from a BDSM relationship gone bad, but they end up in a suspenseful chase through the Southwest to Paris. (4 Books.) CLICK HERE.
Or you can read about a modern-day princess who escapes from her abusive ex by running away with her bodyguard who was her first love, and he never stopped loving her. (5 Books.) CLICK HERE.
~~~~~
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BILLIONAIRES IN DISGUISE SERIES
READING ORDER
Here’s the theoretical and chronological reading order:
Working Stiff (Runaway Billionaires #1, Casimir)
Stiff Drink (Runaway Billionaires #2, Arthur Duet, Part 1)
Hard Liquor (Runaway Billionaires #3, Arthur Duet, Part 2)
Billionaires in Disguise: Rae, Complete Omnibus Edition (includes “Rae Falling”)
“An Extravagant Proposal” (A Side Story for Billionaires in Disguise: Rae)
Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1)
Playing Rough (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #2)
Breaking Rules (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #3)
Burning Bright (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #4)
“Alwaysland” (Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan, A Prequel)
What A Girl Wants (Rock Stars in Disguise: Rhiannon)
Somebody To Love (Rock Stars in Disguise: Tryp)
Every Breath You Take (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan, #1)
Wild Thing (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan, #2)
“Skiing in June, A Rae and Wulf Epilogue #1” (Billionaires in Disguise: Rae)
“Kidnapped, A Rae and Wulf Epilogue #2” (Billionaires in Disguise: Rae)
“Rae and Wulf: At the Hospital”
Lay Your Hands On Me (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan, #3)
Nothing Else Matters (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan, #4)
“Montreux, A Rae and Wulf Epilogue #3” (Billionaires in Disguise: Rae)
The Rock Star’s Secret Baby (Rock Stars in Disguise: Cadell)
“Dream On” (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan, Epilogue #1)
“Keep Dreaming”
Santa, Baby (Rock Stars in Disguise: Peyton)
Once Upon A Time, Runaway Princess Bride (Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka)
In Shining Armor (Runaway Princess #2) (Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka)
In A Faraway Land (Runaway Princess #3) (Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka)
At Midnight (Runaway Princess #4) (Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka)
Happily Ever After (Runaway Princess #5) (Billionaires in Disguise: Flicka)
One Night in Monaco (Runaway Billionaires: Maxence prequel)
Rogue (Runaway Billionaires: Maxence #1)
Order (Runaway Billionaires: Maxence #2)
Prince (Runaway Billionaires: Maxence #3)
Paranormal Romance, Just for Fun!
Dragons & Magic (Dragons and Witches Paranormal Romance #1)
Dragons & Mayhem (Dragons and Witches Paranormal Romance #2)
Dragons & Fire (Dragons and Witches Paranormal Romance #3)
You don’t have to read everything perfectly in this order. I try to recap or make books as standalone as possible. The mini-series within this overall list, such as the Lizzy books or the Georgie books, should be read in order. ~BB
Also, just so you know what you’re getting up there, novel-length books are in italics, like this, but “short forms,” like short stories and novellas, are in “quotation marks.”
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Q. Are Blair’s Billionaires Books erotic romance or erotica?
A. Blair’s Billionaires Books are all erotic romance or contemporary romance.
Erotica generally centers around the sex act, a preponderance of the page count is given to the sex act, and the main characters usually do not build a life together after the sex act. The main character usually discovers or accepts something new about herself or himself, thus it is a journey of self-discovery.
Erotic and contemporary romance concerns itself with the two people falling in love and, usually, building a life together in a very, very sexy way. Romance novels generally end with an HEA (Happily Ever After) or at least an HFN (Happy For Now).
Q. I want to read more of The Billionaires in Disguise Books. How can I be notified when another one is published?
A. Sign up for the email mailing list HERE. Email subscribers get discounts or free episodes in addition to special deleted scenes and epilogues.
Q. I want to tell you how awesome The Billionaires in Disguise Books are. Where can I tell you this?
A. The best way to support writers whom you enjoy is to leave a review at your ebook store, even a short one. Blair reads all her reviews at all the ebook stores and appreciates every one of them.
You can email Blair Babylon by putting her name in the subject line when you email Malachite Publishing. She loves to hear from readers, reads every email, and does her best to respond to everyone. You can also connect with Blair via her Facebook Group or Goodreads Page.
Q. Do you have a study guide for book groups?
A. Seriously? You’re reading The Billionaires in Disguise Books in a book club? Blair wants to hang out with your awesome dirty book club. Email her above. She likes to Skype or do Google Hangouts with book clubs.
About Blair Babylon
Blair Babylon is an award-winning author who used to publish literary fiction. Because reviews of her mainstream fiction usually included the caveat that there was too much deviant sex in her novels, she decided to abandon all literary pretensions, let her freak flag fly, and write hot, sexy romance novels. She’s having much more fun, now.
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Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Santa, Baby (Rock Stars in Disguise: Peyton).
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Blair Babylon