He glances around, appearing a bit dodgy if I have to admit, and nabs me by the elbow. I was on my way to the staircase, intent to head up to the fourth floor to meet Malik for lunch—and by lunch, I mean sex in his apartment—but he steers me toward my office.
“Hey,” I challenge, trying to pull away from him.
“Sorry,” he mutters, clamping down on me tighter. “But I really need to talk. It’s an emergency.”
It’s not the words so much that has me submitting, now hurrying my step to match his. It’s the tone of his voice that has me realizing he really, really needs to talk.
He sounds almost… panicked.
I precede him into my office. He pulls the door shut behind us, immediately starting to pace back and forth.
Which, in my small office, is basically taking two steps before needing to turn around. He can only get about two more in before changing direction, so he’s more or less just circling in place.
“What’s wrong?” I demand.
He jerks, focuses in on me, and I can see that whatever it is, it’s bad. His gaze starts to slide away.
“Cage,” I snap, wanting to keep him in the moment. “Tell me what it is, and I’ll help you fix it.”
I’m imagining all sorts of horrid things. He killed someone, inadvertently of course, because Cage would never do so intentionally unless it was in the line of duty. Or he knows a terrible secret, one I should know, but he’s not sure how to tell me. Or he, by mistake, walked in on—
“I got married,” he blurts out, and my entire body locks solidly in shock.
“You what?”
“I got married,” he mutters, now dropping into the chair before him and sagging so completely into it I’m afraid he’ll never re-inflate.
“Got married,” I repeat the words, hoping they’ll sound more realistic coming from my mouth instead of his. Nope. They don’t sound right at all. “To whom?”
“To Jaime,” he practically moans.
Well, of course to Jaime. Who else would he marry on a whim other than the woman he’s been seeing and lying to? A nagging suspicion takes hold, and I demand, “You told her the truth about what you do, right?”
He shakes his head, the expression on his face miserable.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” I screech, then immediately lower my voice as I know sound carries through these glass walls. I march over to him, bend at the waist and get in his face as I hiss, “You cannot marry a woman unless you are in love with her and she knows the absolute truth about what you do for a living.”
He gives me a sheepish look. “Well… I got half of it right.”
That catches me off guard, because while I’ve been moderately charmed by the way Cage has been falling for this woman, I had not expected an admission he was in love.
“You love her?” I ask for clarification.
“Regrettably, I do,” he mutters, rubbing his forehead with a sigh.
I frown. “Why regrettably?”
“Because she’s going to absolutely hate me when she realizes I’ve been lying to her for this long and then let her tie herself to me legally while I’m leading a double life.”
My hand flies out, grabs his arm, and I start to pull him from the chair. “Which is why you need to get your ass out of here right this moment, go to her, and tell her the fucking truth.”
Cage jerks over my liberal use of the “F” word since it’s not normally part of my vocabulary, but he settles his weight deeper into the chair. A silent statement he’s not doing any such thing. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m leaving for Ft. Bragg tomorrow on a training mission,” he says. “There is absolutely no way I can tell her something like this and then leave. If I do that, she’ll be in the wind. She’ll leave my ass so fast my head will spin.”
“You can’t continue to lie to her,” I grit out.
“Well, no shit, Sherlock,” he yells, sitting up straight in the chair. His expression then turns to one of miserable suffering, and he holds his arms out in supplication. “But I need some time and a well-thought-out speech to lay this on her. I’m thinking maybe I can kidnap her, take her somewhere she can’t leave, and then force her to love me for who I am.”
I just gape for a long moment, taking in the lunacy of what he’s saying. And when I simply can’t hold it in for another second, I bust out laughing.
Cage stares in shock and snooty judgment.
It makes me laugh even harder.
“You’re not being a good friend,” Cage mutters.
A snort escapes before I clamp down hard on my mirth, swallowing the laughter and bestowing him with an empathetic smile as I admit, “You’re in a pickle, and I’ll help you figure it out.”