Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (9 page)

“Cash!
Please!”
Screaming hurt Rox’s throat. Rubber burned acrid black smoke that scalded her nose and chest when she breathed it in to scream at him again.

The deflating airbags slid down the windows.

On the other side of the median, police cars slid sideways and stopped, blockading the cars. Traffic stopped. The cars ahead of them continued, leaving the road empty. Sirens wailed in the far distance.

Rox pulled her hand up into her sleeve and started knocking the shattered glass out of the window. Cubes of safety glass clinked on the pavement around her feet.
“Cash!
Can you hear me! Are you all right?”

She shoved the limp airbag aside.

Inside, the gray upholstery and airbags were splashed with scarlet.

Cash was slumped in his seatbelt, unconscious, covered in blood.

“Cash!”

HOSPITAL

Rox sat in the hard plastic chair in the waiting room, breathing in the hospital sanitizer fumes and the fear sweat of the mother sitting next to her, and replied to the dozens of texts pinging into her phone.

She typed, over and over again,
I don’t know. I’m at the hospital. I’ll text or call when I know anything.

She thumbed that text into her phone at least two dozen times before she got too shaky and typed to everyone,
I cannot reply to individual texts right now. I will do a mass text with all information about Cash when I find out anything,
and sent the text to everyone in her work contact folder.

And then she sat and waited.

The desk had taken her information, that she was waiting for Cash van Amsberg, his license plate number and car, and where the wreck was.

The television overhead played local news, which had helicopter footage of the wreckage playing every fifteen minutes. After the firefighters had used the Jaws of Life to rip Cash’s car apart and lifted him into the ambulance, the red junker car that had caused the pile-up had exploded. The fireball had rocked the helicopter hovering above, jarring the video.

The guy in the other car had walked away, shaky and bruised. A breathalyzer test on the scene had come up negative. He chanted how sorry he was, over and over, while his hands shook.

Rox watched the video again.

A woman in a suit walked out of the desk area, and a male nurse wearing scrubs pointed at Rox.

Fear blossomed. This was it. She might have to write a mass text saying that he was dead.

The woman walked over, the sunlight shining on her glossy black hair and dark skin. “You’re waiting for the man who was pulled out of the gray Mercedes Maybach?”

Couldn’t be too many of those around. “Is he okay?”

The woman recited Cash’s license plate.

Fear lifted Rox, and she was standing. “Yes and is he okay?”

She nodded. “He’s alive. He’s out of surgery. We didn’t find a wallet on him. Are you next of kin?”

“Um, no,” Rox admitted. “We’ve worked together about three years.”

“What can you tell us about him?”

“His name is Cash van Amsberg, and we have excellent health insurance, the blue kind, and it’s the super-platinum level. I can give you my insurance card, and I can call HR to have them confirm his coverage.” Rox could be efficient in emergencies.

The woman relaxed, and her Southern accent strengthened as she said, “That would help a lot. Is he married?”

Just hearing a down-home accent was comforting, and Rox nearly teared up. “No.”

“Are you sure, sugar?”

Fair question. They did work in the entertainment industry in L.A. “I’ve worked with him for three years, and I slept over at his house last night. Didn’t see a wife or any signs of one.”

The woman laughed. “Okay. Do you know his next-of-kin?”

“I don’t think they’re in the country. He’s Dutch,” she said, as if she had known that particular piece of information longer than twenty-four hours.

“Dutch? Like tulips?” the woman asked.

“Yeah, like tulips.” Maybe Rox should learn some more about the Netherlands.

“Okay,” the woman said. “I’m going to take you back to make sure we have the right guy, and then I’m going to ask you for some information. I’m Zora.”

Rox’s Southern manners kicked in. She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Roxanne Neil, but you can call me Rox.”

Zora smiled as she shook Rox’s hand, showing white teeth behind her plum lipstick. “Call me Zora.”

Rox followed Zora through the hospital, up an elevator, and when they stood outside the room, she could hear machines before Zora even opened the door.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Rox asked.

Zora nodded. “You okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” She was tough. Her daddy had taught her to fish and clean her catch when she was five. She could run her thumb inside the belly of a trout, rip out the jaw, and toss the innards into a bucket in one smooth move.

Zora opened the door.

This was worse.

Gauze wrapped one side of the man’s face. Swollen bruises puffed around his eyes like poker chip-sized blood blisters. Monitors beeped, and IV bags floated around him like hovering jellyfish. White sheets flowed off the bed.

Rox swallowed hard. “Cash?”

“He won’t wake up for a while. Is this Mr. Amsberg?”

So much blood caked his hair that it might have been blond or brown, and his face was so distorted from bruising and gauze.

His left side was toward them. “Can I touch him?”

Zora shrugged. “As long as it’s not something I’d have to report you to the ethics committee for.”

“Oh, no.” Rox approached him, lying so still there in the bed. “Cash, honey. I just need to make sure. You just don’t quite look like yourself today.”

His left arm was under the covers, and IV lines snaked under there. She didn’t want to lift the sheet, maybe jostling those needles in his skin.

His right arm lay on the top of the sheet, and she gently rolled his hand outward, exposing the inside of his arm.

A few scrapes traced his golden skin, but black tattoo ink traced three shields around the triangular Celtic knot. The orange one held a white lion, baring his claws. One held three flattened crowns. The last was the red and white diamond checkerboard thing. Bruises stained his skin red around the tattoo.

Oh, no.

Some little hope had lodged in her heart that the shattered man in the bed wasn’t Cash, that Cash was in some other hospital room demanding tea or lunch or his laptop, but the little light of hope flickered out.

“It’s him,” Rox said. “His full name is Casimir Friso van Amsberg, and I’ll tell you anything else I can.”

WAITING

Rox answered all of Zora’s questions the best she could and liaised with the human resources people at the law firm to establish his health insurance, but she was stumped when Zora asked again for a phone number or name or anything for Cash’s next of kin. Even HR at the law firm only had one back-up phone number, and that was Rox’s cell phone.

“Luckily,” Zora said, “we don’t have any pressing medical decisions to make. They were all obvious save-his-life-now kinds of decisions, and he’ll be able to advocate for himself soon.”

“What happened?” Rox asked.

“His spleen ruptured,” Zora explained. “Either we had to take it out or he would have bled to death, so we did. Other than that, he has a couple broken ribs and a bruised liver.”

“And his face?” Rox asked, feeling stupid.

“Thought you said he was a lawyer.”

“He is.”

“So he’s not an actor or a model or anything.”

“That’s always a risk in California, huh?” Rox actually chuckled a little.

“Oh, Lord. You would not believe some of the things that people do to get a nose job, although this seems a little more extreme than normal.”

“He’s just, well,” Rox paused, not wanting to use words like
vain
or
obsessed,
“he’s got issues.”

“Again, we’re in California.
Everyone
has issues. He’ll probably want some plastic surgery on that cut on his face in a few weeks or so.”

“Yeah,” Rox said. “But he’ll be okay?”

“As okay as anyone ever is around here, sugar.”

Yeah. Good point.

Rox waited in Cash’s room until supper time, scanning yet more of Valerie’s contracts on her laptop so she wouldn’t have to think.

Just before she thought that she really should get some delivery or pick something up, Cash cleared his throat.

“Cash?” She was up, standing beside him, afraid to touch him because she wasn’t sure where the bruises or broken bones might hurt him. “Cash? Honey?”

“Ouch,” he muttered.

“I’ll bet. I’ll call the doctor. They said that you already had something for the pain but that you could have more. I’ll call her.”

“No drugs. Phone?” he whispered.

An orderly had dropped off the stuff that had been in his car, including his phone and his briefcase. “It’s here. You want to talk to someone?”

He cracked open his swollen, bruise-stained eyes. “Call my sister.”

“You have a sister? Is she your next of kin?”

“Tell the hospital that you and I are married,” he whispered.

Rox shook her head. “That ship has sailed, honey. I already told them we weren’t.”

“Damn.” He swallowed hard and moved his tongue in his mouth.

“Ice?” Rox asked, desperate to do something to help him. “You can have ice chips. You want ice?”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “The damn ice.”

Rox pinched a sliver of ice out of the bowl that the nurse had left and poked it between his puffy lips. His teeth looked okay.

Cash sucked on the ice, and the tightness around his eyes eased. “Need you to call my sister.”

Rox fumbled in his bag of his clothes and other things from his car to find his phone. “I don’t know her name. What’s it under?”

“Ana.”

What the hell was Rox going to say to his sister?

She found a contact for Ana van Amsberg—there were no other contacts called Ana in his list, and she had his last name—and dialed without making him talk any more.

She really hoped that Ana was just his sister, even though she shouldn’t.

He sucked on the ice.

After a long pause and a few rings, a woman’s voice started speaking rapid-fire in a language that sounded like German but kind of English-ish.

“I’m sorry. I don’t speak Dutch,” Rox guessed. “Do you speak English?”

“How did you get this phone?” the woman demanded.

“I’m here with Cash van Amsberg. He’s going to be all right, but he’s been in a car accident. He asked me to call his sister. Is this Ana?”

A gasp. “This is Ana, his sister. Is he very hurt?” Her accent wasn’t British at all, more like German.

“He’s going to be all right. He’s pretty banged up, and he had to have his spleen taken out. He broke a couple ribs. They’ll let him out of the hospital in a few days.”

Ana said, “Thank you for calling. Is he conscious?”

“Yes, but he’s having problems talking. He just woke up.”

“He will be all right?”

“Yes, ma’am. They said you can live just fine without a spleen. He’s awfully banged up.”

“Is his face damaged?” Ana asked.

Again, the emphasis on his face. Maybe he was secretly a model in Europe or something. “Um, we won’t be sure what’s going on until the bruises go down.”

“Oh, Lord. Poor Casimir. Could you put me on speaker, if you please?”

Rox liked Ana. She had nice manners. “Of course.”

Ana asked, “Before you do, who are you, please?”

“I’m Roxanne Neil. I work with Cash at the law firm.”

“And are you,” a very suspicious pause, “dating?”

“No. We’re just friends, but we’ve worked closely for three years.”

“You are the woman he calls Rox, correct?”

“Um, yes. I go by that.”

“Ah. Could you please put me on the speaker now?”

“Of course.” Rox tapped the screen and held it out.

Ana’s voice was louder from the speaker. “Casimir?” And then more in Dutch.

He shook his head from side to side.

Rox held the phone closer to her mouth. “Ana? I’m not sure what you said, but he’s shaking his head no.”

“Why doesn’t he want me to send people to take care of him?”

Cash’s hand crawled closer to Rox’s hip. He whispered, “Tell her no.”

Rox covered the microphone part of his phone with her palm. “But you need someone to take care of you.”

“I’ll be fine,” he croaked, barely conscious. “I don’t need anyone.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No.”

If they had been alone in his office, she would have laughed at him for being so ridiculous, but that might be the morphine talking. It must be impolite to laugh at people who were medically stoned.

She whispered, “Cash, honey, you’re hurt pretty badly. You need someone to be with you for a few days, just in case.”

“No one from Amsterdam,” he said, his voice barely audible. His eyes opened to slits. “Rox, don’t let her send someone. I’ll hire a nurse here.”

“You’re in no shape to interview and hire people.”

“Then I’ll be fine by myself.”

Rox was flustered, practically shaking her hands in her upset. “I can stay with you.”

“Too much of an imposition.”

“It’s not. You kindly took me in when I was homeless. I would only be repaying a favor. Now you hush your mouth because I’m going to tell your sister that.”

“You,” he whispered. “No one else. You and your hideous cats.”

“They aren’t—” she protested.

“I’ll pay you.”

“You will
not,
and I am
offended
that you would suggest such a thing. I would never take money for taking care of you. It’s the moral thing to do.”

“I am asking you to.”

“I—” He had outfoxed her. “Damn lawyer.
We’ll see.
Ana? Honey? I’m guessing that I’m going to stay with him for a spell to take care of him, so he’ll be okay. You don’t need to send people.”

“I hope this won’t cause offense, Roxanne, but I need to hear that from him, just considering how things are.”

“No offense taken. If I had a brother, I would want to make sure that he was safe. Do you want to do a video chat?”

Movement, and Rox saw that Cash was shaking his head as hard as he could, which was barely anything. Blood flaked out of his hair. “Cash! It’s okay. I won’t do video chat. It’s just a phone call.” She said into the phone. “I’ll put the phone right up to him. Cash, honey? Your sister wants to hear it from you.”