Wanting It All: A Naked Men Novel (22 page)

Summer beamed. “This is sounding like you don’t need to bounce anything off of us. It sounds like you’ve made up your mind already.”

Made up her mind? Madison wasn’t even leaning a little bit to one side or the other. Her inner compass was as straight up and down as the Washington Monument. “Oh, no. Not even close. Because there are two other major parts to the Grand Plan. One of them was landing a dream job. Which I did already. Working at the Library of Congress is amazing. I’ve got a whole, twenty-year career trajectory there. Just…not if I give it up after a month to gallivant around the world.”

“It wouldn’t exactly highlight your dedication. Or responsibility.”

“I think it’s safe to say not only would they not hold my job, but they’d never hire me back. Ever.” And Madison wouldn’t blame them.

Summer shifted to her knees. “You could work at another library when you came back.”

“True. But it wouldn’t be the most important library in the country.”

Annabeth stuck out her tongue. “Overachiever.”

Maybe. But Madison knew what she wanted. Was it overachieving just because she’d aimed high? Or living the dream? “It’s not called the Plan, it’s called the Grand Plan.”

Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Put a pin in that for now. What’s the other major part?”

“Finding a husband.”

That netted her another eye roll. “Couldn’t you put that off for three months?”

“Or fall in love with a Turkish prince?” Summer suggested. She stood and executed something sinuous that looked like belly dancing.

Annabeth tickled her behind her knees until Summer kicked wildly to escape. “Keep your seven veils on, Salome. I don’t think Turkey has princes anymore.”

Pouting—serious pouting highlighted by deep burgundy matte lips—ensued. “First you don’t like my road metaphor. Now you’re shooting down a perfectly romantic prince fantasy. Annabeth, you need to be less literal.”

“Practicality keeps a roof over my head. And in this instance, it’ll keep Madison from making an idiot out of herself in a foreign country, asking everyone she meets how to hook up with a prince.”

She’d already found her prince, though. Prince Charming. Madison knew it down to her bones. “I could take a short hiatus from my husband search. Except for one key fact—the search is over. I’m in love with Knox.”

Annabeth winged a twig down at the slow-moving water. “Nope. That’s only half the key point. The missing half is the million-dollar question. Is Knox in love with you? And, not to be bitchy, but let’s bookend that question with the reminder that he did walk out on you.”

“What if he did it
because
he loves me?” The more Madison thought about it, the more it had to be the only logical explanation. The girls had talked her into doubting him before. Not today. Not even though her hurt and worry and fear weighed down her stomach like an eighty-thousand-ton oil tanker. “Because he realized it at exactly the same time I did? And it sent him into a spiral of panic and cold feet?”

“Knox is…” Annabeth tapped a finger against her chin. “Well, come to think of it, he’s a lot like you. He always knows what he wants, and grabs it. That’s been the way he operates since I met him.”

“Great. Similar personality traits are another reason he’d make a good husband.”

Annabeth blew a wet, noisy raspberry. “Not even
remotely
close to where I was going. I’m saying, as gently as possible, that if Knox loved you, he’d be darn sure to keep you. If he realized that you were the woman for him? He’d move you straight into the rectory. Introduce you to his beloved mother. Get you a security clearance so he could talk about his work stuff. He’d make you his.”

Damn it. As usual, their excellent logic was poking holes in Madison’s carefully constructed doubt-shield. “Maybe he just needs time. Remember, you both said he’d never commit to dating. And we’ve been doing it for over a month. According to you, in Knox years, that’s practically forever.”

“So if,
if,
” Summer waved her hands, fingers outstretched, “Knox loves you back, and he takes some time to pull his head out of his ass, you think he wouldn’t still love you three months from now?”

“I think—no, I
know
,” Madison mimicked, “that I’m the first serious relationship he’s ever committed to. He’s made a valiant effort. He’s definitely got it in him to be a forever kind of man. But if I left so soon? Took a hiatus from him? That’d be yanking the rug out from underneath. It wouldn’t be fair. There’s a good chance that he’d move right down the buffet line of women before my plane finished taxiing at Dulles.”

And just like the Library of Congress probably not rehiring her, Madison wouldn’t blame him one bit. If Knox made the effort to be there for her emotionally, she owed it to him to be there for him physically.

Summer stacked pebbles in her hand. “You’re being forced to choose between your new job, your new boyfriend, your new friends and connections here”—she put a single rock in her other hand—“for a single, currently tenuous connection. But one that is guaranteed for life.”

“Correct. Choosing Logan means giving up everything else.” How on earth was she supposed to choose, put like that?

Annabeth cocked her head to the side. “What if choosing Knox means giving up Logan?”

How come getting everything she wanted, all at once, was turning into the worst possible thing that could’ve happened? “I don’t know. I don’t know what will make me happier.”

“That’s how you decide.”

Madison dropped her head to her knees. Realistically, neither man was a sure thing for reciprocal love. Madison knew she loved Knox, right now. Knew she wanted to love Logan. Hoped Knox loved her back, right now. Hoped that Logan would eventually learn to love her back.

So now what?

Knox tapped a scrap of toilet paper onto the cut on his chin. Forget drones. Maybe he should pivot his attention—and that of his vast knowledge team—to inventing a razor that didn’t turn his chin into human tartare.

A knock sounded on his office door. Finally. He’d been waiting for the courier from Riccardi’s for hours. The upside to being ridiculously wealthy? When you couldn’t go home because you’d been an asshole to your roommates, you could get fresh clothes delivered to you. Although it certainly wasn’t a long-term solution to his problems.

He kicked shut the door to his private bathroom. Thank God it came with a shower. And that his office came with a couch. Although, now that Knox thought about it, checking into a hotel would’ve been much smarter than camping out here. Hotels had room service. Maid service. Actual blankets, as opposed to the terry-cloth bath sheet he’d slept under for the past two nights.

Staying at a hotel wouldn’t have allowed him to wallow as deeply, though. Too much comfort would’ve kept him from processing the enormity of everything he’d done wrong on Tuesday night. And, in almost direct opposition to that line of thinking, Knox’s office made him feel safe. His mock-ups and plans, spreadsheets and schematics were soothing. Comforting. It’d seemed like the logical retreat. If only he’d thought to stock it with clothes. And booze.

Knox threw open his office door. No secretary, no courier. Just Lara, who raised an eyebrow at his naked chest. At least, he guessed it was Lara, since he doubted her twin knew where he worked. “What?”

“Hello to you, too.” She pulled Lionel into his view from the other side of the hallway. “Say hello, Lionel.”

“Hi, Mr. Knox.”

“See that? A fourteen-year-old boy has better social graces than you.”

“Sorry. It’s been a hell of a week.” He rubbed his hand across his mouth when Lara frowned at him. “Shit, I didn’t mean to swear in front of the kid.”

“Is this how you actually earned your dough? By flashing your six-pack abs? Then they just rained down money on you like a high-end version of Saturday night at an Atlantic City strip joint?”

“I can’t swear, but you can fill his ears with talk of strippers?”

“Swearing is a vice he could slip into immediately. Stripping he won’t be able to even sample for a few more years.”

If Lara didn’t know that teenagers had heard of the Internet, Knox sure wasn’t going to be the one to break it to her. He had bigger issues. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted you to have some samples of language for the potential videotape addendum to the
Naked Men
contract. Lionel and I are headed out to a big Friday of museum hopping after this. But I think his seeing your office will be the biggest treat of the day.” She slapped a hand on the back pocket of her skin-tight white capris. “I have to get this. Last time today, I promise,” she said to Lionel before hurrying down the hall.

Great. Now he was left with still no shirt, and a teenage kid who was looking at him with equal parts awe and curiosity. Scratch that. Not him—just the whiteboard
behind
him, covered with the schematics for the problematic hoverboard.

The other good part about camping out in his office had been a late-night brainstorming session with a handful of people from his team. Knox hadn’t asked them to stay. He’d climbed back on the thing—what were a few more bruises after all?—and tried to isolate which component worked the worst by riding it up and down the length of the office. Pretty soon, the general laughter died down, replaced by a few people who started shouting suggestions.

None of them were officially attached to the project, but they’d helped anyway. They’d helped because they freaking loved unknotting a scientific problem just as much as he did. No overtime, no glory with their name on top of a journal article—just the thrill of discovery. Sure, Knox bought them all Chinese for dinner. But he didn’t think his magnanimous sacrifice of the last egg roll was what prompted Rose to stay. Although the fact that Rose stayed until three in the morning might have been enough to prompt Clark to stay.

Knox had been so focused on making as much money as possible, as fast as possible, that he’d ignored some of the fun in
how
he made it. The reminder was nice. Hell, it was a goddamned lifeline in this shit storm of a week. But now this kid was staring at the very proprietary remnants of his good night like it was the Ark of the Covenant.

“Is that a real, working hoverboard?” Lionel asked in a hushed tone. Awe dripped off of him like sweat dripped off of Josh when they did wind sprints by the Lincoln Memorial.

No use denying it. The thing was drawn up there, plain as day. Some joker had even put cartoon flames shooting out the back of it. “Yeah.”

Lionel rocked forward onto the tips of his sneakers, as if straining to get even that much closer. “Is it in development, or already produced?”

Knox jerked his head to the side. “It’s in the bottom of that supply closet behind you.” They were testing its capacity to hover with different weight loads. Someone checked on it every half hour. So far, it held its position. Hadn’t dipped so much as a millimeter.

“Can I see it?”

The idea hit Knox like…well, like a hoverboard thwapped right into the remains of the knot of his concussion. Bribery worked. It worked on kids and adults alike. No matter how much you didn’t want to do something, everyone had their price.

He beckoned him inside, and they sat on the gray sofa that had doubled as his bed for the catnap Knox managed to snatch between sunrise and the office opening. “Tell me something, Lionel. Did you figure out what team to join when school starts again?”

The speed the kid’s eyes darted to the carpet answered the question before he even opened his mouth. “No.”

“Because you didn’t try, or you couldn’t decide?”

“Didn’t want to. And I figured Mom wouldn’t make me.”

Knox would talk to Lara—and her twin—to make sure the import of extracurricular activities got through to the entire family. “What do you think
would
make you take my advice? Would you join a sports team if, for example, you got to ride on a hoverboard?”

“Yeah!”

The naked enthusiasm on his face cracked Knox up. “You’ve gotta learn to negotiate, kid. Never jump at the first offer.”

“Sorry, Mr. Knox.”

“Hey, you’re stuck with it now. I was going to give you the chance to keep it for a weekend. Show it off to your friends. But now…you just get a ride.”

A lickety-split grin whooshed across his face before a canny gleam settled in behind those Coke-bottle glasses. “Can I look at the schematics, too?”

“There you go. Now you’re using your head. It’ll cost you, though. I’ll give you an all-access pass to the whiteboard if you agree to come out and kick around a soccer ball with me and my friends tomorrow. I’ll bet we can convince you that soccer doesn’t suck.” If his friends were talking to him by tomorrow. Yet another problem to solve. Knox was sure they wouldn’t be as easy to handle as Lionel here.

“For how long?”

Laughing, Knox stood. “Don’t think you can hustle me.” He stuck his head into the hallway. “Clark, get in here.”

“Do you think better with your shirt off?”

“I think better when I’m not wearing a shirt covered in soy sauce.” The next thing he had to fix were those stupid, hermetically sealed packets. Half the time a diamond-tipped drill couldn’t get through the plastic, and the other half they squirted in every direction except onto fried rice. That’d be a service to humanity, really.

Clark appeared in the doorway. His pocket protector wasn’t fully stuffed for the day yet. Must’ve just gotten here. “Yeah, boss?”

“Would you mind giving Lionel here a test run or twelve on the hoverboard? I’d do it, but I probably shouldn’t be taking laps through the office half naked.”

His phone rang. Rang with the Italian national anthem, which was the ACSs own version of a 911 ring tone. It meant rescue was needed, the same way the Italians had rescued them so long ago. No questions asked. They all dropped everything and came running. Knox glanced through the cracked-open bathroom door at the still-dripping shirt he’d rinsed out. “While you’re doing favors, Clark, I’m going to need one more.”

Knox had run full-tilt the five blocks from the L’Enfant Plaza Metro stop. He’d left his car back at the office, because in the middle of rush hour, it was about as useful as strapping himself into a giant punch bowl with wheels. Out of breath, he braced his hands on his thighs and stared at Capitol Grilled, Josh’s food truck. It wasn’t in flames. There wasn’t a pool of blood dripping from the door at the back. This better be for real, and not some trumped-up intervention about his fight with Logan. Their ACS 911 was sacred. Like the Bat-Signal.

The door opened, fast enough to clang against the back wall. Josh froze, midstep, when he spotted Knox. “Good. You’re here.”

“Of course I am.”

Josh uncoiled a hose and walked it around to the front. “Thank you for coming out.”

Well, that was formal and stilted and utter bullshit. So they’d had a fight. Actually, he and Josh hadn’t fought at all. Josh eavesdropped on a fight that was none of his damn business. So Knox forged ahead like nothing was wrong. Like he hadn’t just spent three nights holed up in his office avoiding the inevitable fight he’d narrowly ducked out on by leaving his own house.

“What’s the emergency? You look like all your digits are still attached. Plus, you’re closed. Closed when you could be making money hand over fist with the breakfast crowd. Weird.”

“I got a heads-up that the health inspector is coming first thing tomorrow morning.”

“A heads-up?” Knox saw right through that. “You mean a bribe paid off?”

The stilted mask of formality finally cracked off Josh’s face, shattered by a cocky grin. “If by bribe, you mean a night of hot, dirty sex, then yes. Melinda calls me occasionally when she’s got an itch that needs scratching. In return, she also calls to warn me when I need to triple-scrub the truck.” Josh screwed on a power sprayer, then did a double take at Knox. “What are you wearing?”

Borrowing Clark’s shirt meant wearing a scratchy, untailored, patterned-to-look-like-graph-paper button-down. Short-sleeved, even. It literally hurt him that people in the subway had seen him wearing this. Even though they were strangers. On the other hand, it’d been damn decent of the guy to strip and hand it over.

“There wasn’t a dress code on the 911 text.”

“Whatever.” Josh smirked. As if his own Bruno Mars concert tee wasn’t stained and ripped at the shoulder. “So I’ve got today to sanitize everything. Make sure all the staples are properly wrapped and stowed, double-check all the wiring, plumbing, connections—that’s where you come in—and even scrub the tires.”

That’d take all day. No wonder he called in the reserves. “Is there anything you need to hide or fix that you know of, right off the top?”

“God, no. I’d never risk getting my customers sick. But, you know, you fall into a routine, and maybe don’t keep as eagle an eye as you should all the time.”

“I get it. Where’s the toolbox?”

“Already on the counter, waiting for you.”

Knox looked down at his shirt. Figured it could help keep the ice thawed between them. “A little honest grease can only improve this thing. Maybe turn it into a good Rorschach test.”

The crunch of dress shoes on gravel had him turning. Sure enough, there was Ry. Also running. But he pulled to a fast stop when he locked eyes with Knox. “You’re here.”

“Where else would I be when a 911 comes through?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Don’t fucking start.” Knox climbed into the truck, as much to get away from Riley’s cool judging as to begin checking the connections on the grill.

Riley followed on his heels. “We’re about to be sharing a metal tube barely bigger than a can of shaving cream, for the next eight hours plus. You can bet I’m going to start. What good will waiting do?”

“I’m not here to be hassled. I’m here to help Josh.”

From the side of the truck, Josh lifted the big metal window cover to let more air in. “Exactly. Helping each other is what we do. What we don’t do is threaten to kick our friend, our brother, out of our house.”

“
My
house,” Knox corrected. “My rules.” It was a shitty thing to say. It wasn’t how they worked. But when you didn’t have any defensible ground to stand on, well, you ended up kneeling in crap.

Riley stripped out of his navy sport coat. “That’s your explanation?”

“No, it’s me saying that I don’t need to explain it to you.”

“Yes, you do. We all agree on this.”

“All?” Knox winged up an eyebrow. “Griffin isn’t even here.”

Josh tapped his phone on the window ledge. “He’s overseeing a rescue. Can’t make it. But, since you’ve been AWOL the past few days, you can bet your ass we’ve all had a chance to discuss and come to a consensus.”

Knox stared down at the prison gray toolbox. Thought about picking up a screwdriver. Getting started on taking off the switch plates. Then thought about not being able to resist driving the screwdriver into his eye to avoid this entire discussion. He closed the toolbox.

“Logan and I had a conversation. Period. If he wants to continue the conversation, he can damn well drag his ass back here to civilization to do so.”

“It doesn’t matter how far away Logan goes. Or how long he stays away. He’ll always be one of us. An ACS.”

Josh clambered back inside. “We always put each other first. The ACSs above all else, ever since Italy. A concussion isn’t an excuse to treat Logan like shit.”

“And neither is regular sex,” Riley added with a wag of his finger.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Knox exclaimed. “This isn’t about sex.”

“No kidding. This is bigger than sex. It’s about the ACSs.”

Rummaging through overhead cupboards, Josh said, “We like Madison, but let’s be real—you’ll move on to another mattress bouncer sooner rather than later. She’ll be gone in a couple of months. But Logan will always be our brother.”

Brother. There was the damn word that set off the whole thing. “Logan is
Madison’s
brother. And he treated her like shit. All I did was make him aware that that kind of behavior was unacceptable.”