Page 139 of Happily Ever After

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 everyonesaid 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 theirdesks, 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 heatedthe 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 downat 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, andlet 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 swarmingwith 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 hadclutched it.

Stunning,she thought later, when her brain had rebooted. He wasstunning.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-blond 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 havecasual 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 alot.He won’t even confirm or deny anything. And he’s,” shecleared 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’sattentive—”