The question made Marlow glance at Cade, who’d slouched back against the cushions with an expression of sullen patience on his face. Marlow opened his mouth to say yes, but Bennett talked over him.
“Franklin crashed my car,” Bennett ranted, too furious to realize Marlow had misunderstood her at first. “Totaled it, complete write-off. Now the shithead has gone to get drunk and lie low. Like he can avoid me when we’re on the same shift.”
“You want me to call you an Uber?”
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “To your house. He’s still got my keys.”
Marlow scratched his head, his hair sweaty and matted as he dug his fingers into it. There was a good chance she’d tried to kill him, that she’d worked for Piper all these years.
“Look, if it’s a problem, I can go to a hotel,” Bennett said. “Whatever. Enjoy your Hungry Man microwave meal.”
“Okay.”
She snorted down the line at him. He heard a door slam behind her and what sounded like a bar in the background. “Come on. I need a shower and a good night’s sleep.”
“Text me the address,” Marlow sighed as he swung his legs off the couch and stood up. His balls ached in complaint as his jeans pulled tight over them. “I’ll come and get you.”
Bennett sighed in relief. “See?” she said. “This is why you deserve that promotion—and why you aren’t going to get it at the same time.”
She hung up.
“Seriously?” Cade asked as he slung one arm along the back of the couch. His jeans were still undone. “You’re going to pick her over me?”
Shit.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Marlow said as he padded over and bent down to pull his shoe out from under the shelf. “It’s just—”
Cade shoved himself up off the couch and tucked himself in. “I’m teasing. I get it. She’s your squad. You show up. I’d do the same for my people. Probably.”
The Converse sneaker dangled from Marlow’s fingers by a grubby lace as he looked at Cade. It felt like something in his chest had just unclenched for the first time in years. Since he woke up in the middle of the night to someone hammering on the door. He hesitated for a second, but one of them had to do it. “Do you want to go out with me?” he asked. “On a date.”
Cade zipped up and came over to pull Marlow into a slow, sweet kiss. His thumb stroked up Marlow’s neck to the tender spot under his ear. After a moment, he leaned back.
“I’ll think about it,” he said as he grabbed his shirt and headed out.
Marlow caught his breath and stepped back to pull his shoe on. “Asshole.”
Chapter Eight
IT WAS EMOTIONALedging.
Cade sprawled in the leather chair behind his desk, legs stretched out in front of him. Most of his attention, 90 percent, was on the contract to provide personal security for a Russian politician’s family when they came to California. So far, they had agreed to Cade’s moderately inflated quote with no haggling but refused to discuss the reason they thought they needed protection. So either they just wanted bodyguards for the bragging rights, or they owed money to the Russian mob. One or the other. It didn’t make much difference, the operatives would be briefed to expect the worst and enjoy the uneventful, but Cade wanted to cover all eventualities in the Client Responsibilities rider.
The rest of Cade’s attention was on the fact that he could, at any moment, call Marlow and agree to that date. He would—soon enough—but for now, he enjoyed the pleasant, restless itch of anticipation. The breathless excitement of it felt like one of those kids in Christmas movies, ready to tear into a stack of presents for the one they knew Santa had brought.
So far, he’d kept himself on the hook for a week.
It wasn’t better than reality. The reality was Marlow’s mouth on his throat and his hand on Cade’s cock. It would take a lot to beat that. That didn’t mean that Cade couldn’t savor the satisfying knowledge that all he had to do to get what he wanted was say “Yes.”
Cade had played out a few scenarios in the back of his mind during slow meetings over the last couple of days, but he hadn’t quite decided on any of them. Maybe he’d just toss a coin… or decide what felt right in the moment.
Despite his efforts, he was still as infatuated as a teenager who’d had his first kiss.
The door to the office opened, and Lem came in. Halfway in, anyhow. Lem stopped on the threshold, one foot in and one foot out, and eyed Cade suspiciously.
“You look like the cat that saw the sunrise,” he said. “What happened?”
Cade pulled his attention back to the here and now. He saved and docked the file to keep it out of a mis-mashed keystroke’s way.
