Cash

by Cassia Leo

  This time I don’t laugh. “You expect me to agree to that?”

  “Those are my terms. If you can’t agree to all three, then I can’t help you.”

  Why do I have a strong feeling her conditions are meant to reduce the risk of her getting caught cheating? And if she is in a relationship, then that whole spiel about not having had sex since she broke up with her boyfriend six months ago was a lie. Who the fuck is this girl and what the fuck am I getting myself into?

  I’ll find out who she is soon enough. I just have to figure out a way to get her last name without scaring her or sifting through her personal belongings. I’ll have to get her to slip up.

  “You’re on,” I reply confidently. “Come to my penthouse after your shift. We have a lot of work to do. The concierge will escort you up, so you don’t have to be seen with me or my bodyguards.”

  “I’ll be there. But don’t forget rule number three.”

  I laugh as Hector pulls the Mercedes out onto Tropicana Blvd. “Same goes to you, Miss I Can’t Remember How Many Orgasms I Had.”

  I hang up before she can retaliate, then I lean back and close my eyes. I have to remember not to push her boundaries too much on rule number three, otherwise she might enact rule number two, and I can’t have her quitting.

  Kara is perfect for this role. She’s smart, sexy, and strong. Stronger than she thinks she is. She’ll have no problem convincing the board members that she’s the kind of woman who can put me in my place and make me settle down. Then, when this whole thing is over and the board decides not to fire me, I can fuck her at least one more time before I move on. Easy come—multiple times—easy go.

  Dex calls me from the lobby at 12:38 a.m. to tell me Kara has arrived and the concierge is currently escorting her into the elevator. I quickly end the call and race to the security room in the penthouse. The door in the hallway is labeled ELECTRICAL, and you have to pass through to the back of the electrical-slash-server room to find the door to the security room. It’s a small 8’x12’ room with a wall of monitors streaming security footage, where Hector is currently hanging out with his feet propped up on his desk, watching ESPN Classic on one of the monitors without sound.

  “Hector, I need you and Dex to go somewhere for a while.”

  He lowers his feet from the desk. “Is that chick here? What’s her name?”

  “Her name doesn’t matter. In fact, I’d rather you try to forget her name. Just go have a beer or something, on me,” I say, handing him a $100 bill. “Don’t come back until morning.”

  The left corner of Hector’s mouth pulls up in a knowing grin. “Oh, I see. This one’s gonna be an all-nighter. All right, boss.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” I insist and he winks at me as if he understands the need for discretion.

  I sigh as I follow him out of the electrical room. When I open the front door to see him out, Kara is standing there with her hand up ready to ring the doorbell.

  She looks a bit nervous as Hector passes by her on his way to the elevator.

  “Later, boss,” Hector says as he presses the call button.

  “Later, man,” I reply with a nod, then I turn back to Kara and flash her a warm smile. “Good evening, Future Mrs. Westbrook.”

  Her eyes widen and she glances over her shoulder to see if Hector is still there. He smiles and waves at her. She turns back to me, and I can see the fury in her eyes as she shoves her way past me into the penthouse. I wink at Hector as the elevator doors open and he flashes me a thumbs up as he disappears inside.

  I close the front door and nearly jump out of my skin when I turn around and find Kara’s nose right up to mine.

  “Do you think it’s cute to play with my job security? Because I don’t,” she says in a fatal whisper.

  “I’m not playing with your job security. I already told you that Dex and Hector have to know about us. And they’re bound by a rock-solid NDA, which they signed with their firstborn’s blood. I can guarantee you they won’t breathe a single word about what happens here. Okay?”

  She lets out a deep sigh and her shoulders relax. “This whole thing freaks me out,” she says, turning around to head toward the kitchen. “I feel like my face is going to be plastered on the cover of every tabloid soon. I was checking my rearview mirror for paparazzi on the way here.”

  I can’t help but laugh at this, but I immediately stop when she whips her head around and shoots me a deadly look. “Hey, you don’t have to worry about photographers and leeches unless news of our arrangement is leaked. And that’s not going to happen, so there’s no need to worry.” I follow her into the kitchen and reach into the cupboard for a glass to get her some water. “Listen, if it makes you feel better, once your background check goes through, I can program—”

  “Background check! You never said anything about a background check!”

  “Well, you had to expect that. If I don’t do it, my father will, and you’d rather I do it than him. Trust me.”

  She bites her lip as she stands in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the glazed concrete floor. “What kind of background check?” she says, her gaze still focused somewhere near my feet. “I don’t have a criminal history. You can check that out. And I’ve never been in a car accident or gotten a speeding ticket. You can check my driving record.”

  I take a tentative step toward her and slowly reach up to raise her chin. “Then, you have nothing to worry about. In fact, as a show of faith, I’ll program your fingerprint into the system now, so you don’t have to bother with the concierge next time. You can just come right on up. Okay?”

  She swallows hard then nods. “Okay.”

  I lead her into the security room and she still looks very tense as I record her fingerprint in the security software. She hesitates a moment when I ask for her last name, but after she says it aloud she seems to relax. I don’t think she realizes I’m only giving her a temporary guest pass, which will expire after one week. That’s about how long it will take to perform a thorough background investigation. If everything checks out, and I don’t find out she’s on the run from the authorities for murdering her last three husbands, I’ll extend her guest pass until after the corporate retreat.

  Once we’re back in the kitchen, she seems a bit more relaxed, but I decide to grab her a beer instead of water, just to continue the trend.

  She takes the beer without question and sits down on a stool at the breakfast bar. “Okay, where do we begin,” she says, looking up at me as I take the stool next to her.

  I chug half my beer and set it down on the counter before I respond. “I was thinking we should start with how we met.”

  “Well, Victor and Wyatt saw us meet in the Billionaire Club on Saturday night. Doesn’t that kind of ruin the plan of creating a fictional on-again off-again relationship?”

  I shrug. “Maybe we like to role-play. Maybe we were just pretending to meet for the first time.”

  “Great. So, now I’m into bad boy billionaires and roleplaying?” she says, then takes another sip of her beer.

  “What’s wrong with bad boy billionaires? And roleplaying, for that matter?”

  She shakes her head. “Should I be taking notes?” she asks, as she mimes writing on a notepad. “Cash likes roleplaying and bad boys.”

  “Very funny,” I say. “We really need to get this straight. I think we should say we met at a club on the Strip, just because it’s always best to make a lie as close to the truth as possible.”

  “But I hate clubs.” She reaches out and pokes me in the chest. “And you should know that if we’re getting married.”

  I glance down at my chest, then my gaze rises slowly until I’m looking her in the eye. “Do not poke me, young lady, unless you want to get wrestled to the ground.”

  She tilts her head and flashes me a smug grin. “Is that a threat or an offer? We mustn’t forget rule number three.”

  I press my lips together and shake my head. “You think it’s funny to taunt me and t
hrow your little no-sex rule around at the same time?” I stand up from the stool and step forward until I’m standing between her legs. “Because I can dish it out just as well as you can.” I lean in close and she swallows hard as my mouth comes within a hair’s breadth of hers. “I will have your heart pounding, your tight little ass squirming in your wet panties, begging me to touch you… kiss you… lick you… fuck you…” I step back and smile at the way her chest is heaving with anticipation. “But I’m all about following the rules now. After all, that’s why you’re here. So, if you want to change your mind on rule number three, I will gladly fuck you until you can’t sit right for a week. But until then, don’t poke the beast. Got it?”

  10

  Kara

  The look on his face sends a chill through me. He’s fucking me with his eyes. The pulsing ache between my legs says I should throw rule number three out the window. But the warning signs in my head are telling me there is danger if I go down that road. Too much fucking equals too many opportunities to mistake this for something other than a business arrangement. I can’t allow that.

  “Rule number three stays, or I leave. It’s as simple as that,” I reply, crossing one leg over the other so he can’t get that close again.

  He smiles as he places his hands together in front of his chest and bows his head. “Rule number three is my new religion.”

  I roll my eyes as he takes a seat on the stool next to me again. “Does that make me the god of your religion since I wrote the commandments?”

  He chuckles. “I’m willing to concede a certain level of control to these three rules, but you won’t reach God-level until I’m ready to worship you. I don’t think we’re there yet, sweetheart.”

  I nod. “Point taken. And I appreciate your bluntness. It will make this arrangement easier.”

  He shakes his head as he lifts the bottle of beer to his lips, takes a long draw, and sets it down gently before he turns to me. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  I swallow hard as I try to imagine what he could possibly want to ask me at this stage. “You can ask me anything you want, but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer.”

  “Fair enough,” he replies as he twists around in the stool so he can lean back with his elbows resting on the breakfast bar. “Until just now, I thought there was a good chance you were married, but now I realize you were telling the truth when you said you haven’t been with anyone in six months.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “No. My question is: How many times have you been with a man who proposed marriage?”

  I laugh. “How many times? That’s presumptuous. How do you know anyone’s ever proposed to me?”

  He shakes his head and casts me a sideways glance. “Don’t toy with me, Kara. I know your type. You’re afraid of letting anyone in because you’re afraid anyone who gets close enough to see the real you will realize they don’t like what they see. So, how many times?”

  A swell of emotion rises up inside me, stinging my eyes as I think of the three times I rejected my previous boyfriends’ marriage proposals. Am I really that transparent?

  He turns to face me head-on, watching the emotional reaction in every twinge of my facial features. “You have your three rules, Kara, but I only have one.” His gray eyes are fierce as they lock on mine. “You cannot lie to me. I will always know when you’re lying. Remember that.”

  I let out a deep sigh. “Time’s up,” I say, turning around to head for the door.

  I half-expect him to chase after me and demand an answer to his question, but he doesn’t. He allows me to leave without further inquiry. The moment the valet brings my car and I drive away from the building, the tears spill down my cheeks.

  It’s stupid. He doesn’t know me. He thinks I’m easy to read, and maybe I am, but the truth is that no one wants to marry a girl with a price tag on her head. They don’t want to move in with me and my father and deal with nightly alarms when his blood-oxygen level drops too low. They certainly don’t want to have to clean up his vomit. My life is not a fairy tale, and I won’t pretend it is by getting married and planning a life that doesn’t involve my father.

  I hastily wipe the tears off my cheeks as I speed away from the Strip. And I certainly won’t allow a rich asshole like Cash Westbrook make me question my life decisions. He doesn’t know what it’s like to go to sleep wondering if you’ll wake up to find your father died while you were sleeping. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt pressing you into the dry, salty Nevada earth.

  He doesn’t know me. And as far I’m concerned, he never will.

  After spending a few restless hours in bed, trying not to think about Cash and his stupid theories about me, I get a very rude awakening just a few minutes past four a.m. The sound of the glass breaking rouses me instantly. The explosion of glass all over me and my bed throws me into a panic, and I do just about the worst thing I can do: I leap out of bed and race out of the bedroom.

  Instinct sends me flying to the living room to check on my dad. It isn’t until I’m standing at his bedside, heart pounding with adrenaline as I check his pulse oximeter, that I realize I’m bleeding. The blood is pooling around my left foot, but I don’t feel any glass or cuts on my foot. Then comes the stinging pain from the back of my thigh. Swiping my hand across my leg, I’m horrified when it comes back covered in blood.

  “Oh, God,” I whisper as I watch the viscous fluid drip off my trembling fingers.

  I must have rolled over onto a piece of glass when I got out of bed. Holy shit. This is a lot of blood. I hobble back toward my bedroom as my left leg begins to fall asleep. I find my phone on the nightstand where I left it and dial 911. I manage to give the 911 operator my name and address before I begin to feel very woozy. The last thing I see before I pass out is the brick with the Polaroid picture taped to it lying on the floor next to my bed.

  I wake in a hospital bed with a parched mouth and my skin enveloped in a warm, woolen sensation. But the back of my left leg is extremely sore, as if I’ve been hit in the hamstring with a baseball bat. The room looks fuzzy around the edges and begins to spin when I try to lift my head.

  “Whoa,” I whisper.

  “Don’t try to get up,” Suzy says, rushing to my bedside. “Oh, my God. You scared the shit out of me.”

  I try to move my hands, but my fingers are so swollen I can’t make a fist. “I can’t move,” I mutter.

  “You’re not supposed to move, stupid,” she says wiping away tears.

  “Why are you crying?”

  She shakes her head. “Did you not hear me say that you scared the fuck out of me? Jacie called me as soon as she got to the house and saw the police and the blood. She said it looked like you’d been murdered. And the fucking police and the hospital wouldn’t give me any details because we’re not family. What the fuck happened?”

  I think back and remember the window and the blood… and the picture taped to the brick. I can’t tell her what happened. She’ll freak out, then she’ll try to get involved, and I can’t have that.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “I think something flew through the window. Maybe a bird or a baseball or something.”

  “A baseball? At four in the morning?”

  “I don’t know. I went to check on my dad, then I passed out before I could check the bedroom to see what it was.” I turn my face to look at her, to see if she’s buying any of this, but she looks a bit skeptical. “Is my dad okay?”

  She nods. “Yeah. In fact, I have to call him to ask him what the hospital said about your injuries.”

  “Well, I can tell you that. I had a pretty bad cut on my thigh. Probably nicked a vein or something based on the blood loss.”

  She lets out a sigh. “That’s probably why you were in surgery. Shit, I thought you were shot or something.”

  I force out a chuckle. “Yeah, right. Who’s gonna shoot me? The hospital for not paying my dad’s bills? I’m fine,” I assure h
er, though the throbbing pain in my thigh says otherwise. “Damn. I need to call Mick and tell him I can’t make it to work tonight. Can I borrow your phone?”

  Mick takes the news fairly well, though I sense a bit of suspicion in his voice. If there’s anyone who would know the real reason behind the attack, it would be Mick. He knows my dad’s history. Heck, he probably even knows my dad’s bookie and how much he owes.

  “I might need a few days off,” I add as I motion to Suzy to get me a glass of water. “I’m sorry, Mick.”

  “Don’t worry, kid. Your job will be here when you get back. The clients like you.”

  I try not to read too much into this statement as I end the call. I don’t think Mick knows about my arrangement with Cash.

  Shit! Cash. What reason am I going to give him for not being able to go to his penthouse tonight? His only rule is that I can’t lie to him, but I think I can finesse my way around the truth.

  “Did the doctors tell you when I’ll be released?” I ask Suzy as she hands me a waxy paper cup of water.

  “They wouldn’t tell me anything,” she groans.

  I try to sit up a little to drink the water, but the pain in my leg fires up, causing me to wince.

  Suzy’s face contorts with anger. “That’s it. I’m getting a doctor in here now. I want answers!” Quickly changing her tone, she gently places her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  I shake my head as she storms out of the hospital room. As I manage to take a small sip of water, I notice she left her phone lying on the bed next to my thigh. I grit my teeth against the pain as I reach down to grab it, then I quickly dial Cash’s number. He picks up on the third ring.

  “Cash, it’s me, Kara. I’m calling you from my friend’s phone.”

  “Couldn’t stop thinking about me, huh?”

  I roll my eyes. “Listen closely because I don’t have much time,” I begin. “I can’t make it to your place tonight. Something came up, but I should be there in…a few days.”