Wanting It All: A Naked Men Novel (13 page)

“Feel free to reenact that anytime.” Knox leaned behind her to drop a kiss on the nape of her neck that cascaded chills down both arms. “Without the Jumbotron, though.”

“Really? Here I thought men were all about anything associating them with the word
jumbo.
”

“Show, don’t tell. That’s my motto,” snickered Josh.

Riley leaned back. Crossed his ankles and huffed out a breath. “People—the press—dredge up the past every damn time. We hate it.”

To say that Madison had no frame of reference for this gripe would be the understatement of the century. She’d spent most of her life in the middle of nowhere. The thought of people with cameras trying to trail someone through waist-high snowdrifts just made her smile at its absurdity. As much as it obviously mattered to Knox, though, she’d need to wrap her head around it.

“Why do you hate it?” Still holding everything, Madison shifted to fully face Knox. “I mean, sure, they’re intrusive and annoying. But it doesn’t sound like you’re being stalked by paparazzi. You can fill up your gas tank without any hue and cry, or being forced to wear a disguise. Your day-to-day life isn’t generally disturbed, is it?”

“No. That’s not it.” Knox’s gaze did a quick sweep across the faces of his friends. None of them seemed inclined to get him off the hot seat. He cracked his neck. Tilted his head back. Sighed. “I guess they make me feel like a fraud. They tried to turn us into these heroes. These role models. They act like we’re worthy of the world’s attention for what happened those three days in the Alps.”

“You absolutely are worthy.” Now that she knew the story, Madison wanted to hug each of them. Comfort them for all they’d suffered and perhaps still did from such a life-altering experience. Not to mention give them a standing ovation for overcoming the innumerable odds stacked against them. These men humbled and impressed her. On top of all that, they were decent guys with interesting jobs and a friendship that was enviable. It wasn’t any wonder the media put them on a pedestal. They deserved it.

“No.” Knox shoved up to resume pacing. “Everything we did was self-centered. We wanted to live. I wanted to live long enough to have sex, for Christ’s sake! We didn’t risk ourselves to save a dying puppy or anything. We saved
ourselves.
We walked out of there with our lives. That’s reward enough.”

“And each other,” Chloe added softly.

Griffin gave her a peck on the cheek. “Yeah. So we definitely don’t deserve anything else.”

Okay. Fine. Madison got their self-effacing humility. She disagreed with it, but acknowledged what Knox felt. Which made the phenomenon of
Naked Men
all the more confusing. “I don’t understand the dichotomy you’ve set up. You’re not hiding from the press. For goodness sake, you willingly contracted to do an internationally broadcast show. Isn’t that counterintuitive if you want to go unnoticed?”

Riley’s hand erased the question from the air. “We don’t use last names on the blog. It got leaked a few years ago, but the furor over us being the ACSs died down and we got back to just concentrating on keeping
Naked Men
exactly what it had always been. Figured since it’s radio, we could be sort of faceless on the podcast, too.”

Seriously? Madison whipped her gaze around all of the men. Bit back a laugh. Blinked. Blinked again to garner extra time to figure out just how to call them idiots without…well, actually
saying
it. “Your photos are on bus stops. Buses. Subway cars. Who knows where else? For smart men, that’s a blindingly stupid assumption.”

There was a moment of utter silence. Or as silent as it could be with thirty thousand fans on the other side of the Plexiglas. Madison wondered if she’d crossed a line. Were the
Naked Men
the only ones allowed to call themselves out?

Then Knox chuffed out a harsh laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. It’s goddamned fucking stupid of us.” He sank onto the couch, tilted his head back, and laughed some more. Everyone joined in, all wearing the same looks of chagrin. Finally, Knox threw an arm around Madison to pull her into his side. “Thanks for pointing that out. We needed the reality check. Especially since it’s obvious this is going to happen more as the show gains notoriety. Maybe now we can try and roll with it a little more. Seeing as how we created the problem ourselves this time around.”

Whew. Madison was relieved that her semi-insulting—albeit true—comment hadn’t ruffled any feathers. In fact, this had been a remarkably productive trip to the ballpark so far. She and Knox were back together, he’d shared something deeply personal with her, she’d met and liked the most important people in his life, and she’d discovered that he took criticism pretty darn well. Definitely a whole handful of points in the
yes
column for Knox being marriage material.

A knock sounded on the door. Josh got up. “We buried our heads in the sand like ostriches and hoped nobody would notice.” He let in the caterer pushing a tray filled with silver chafing dishes that smelled amazing from across the room.

“Ostriches don’t really bury their heads in the sand when embarrassed or scared,” Chloe piped up. “They’re actually turning the eggs in their nests, buried for safety.” At Griffin’s bemused eyebrow raise, she continued. “One of those travel posters on my living room wall is for Kenya. I want to go there primarily to see the waterfalls, but there’s also a huge Maasai ostrich farm.”

“There’s an idea for your honeymoon, Griff—ostriches. Oh, wait, you need a wedding to go on a honeymoon.” Josh lifted each lid, giving the contents an approving nod.

Knox snuggled Madison closer, running his big hand up and down her forearm in lazy strokes that stirred her insides in anything
but
a lazy way. “Chloe, you ever going to decide if you want to clip Griff’s wings for good?”

“Don’t rush us,” she said calmly. “And stop poking at Griffin about it. Maybe spend a little more time on falling in love yourself. It’d do you good.”

Knox’s hand stilled. And Madison beamed at Chloe. It appeared that the day had also netted her an ally in her single-minded march to the altar.

Knox stood in the open space smack dab in the middle of the office. The leasing agent had been flummoxed by his request to knock out an entire row of cubicles and put nothing in their place. And he sure hadn’t been about to explain the sort of testing they planned to do in it. Things like today.

When he’d opened the box containing the experimental hoverboard, it’d been tempting to take it home and show the guys. But playing with it wouldn’t be enough. No, he needed to test it here, in front of like-minded nerds who would appreciate the science behind it every bit as much as the flat-out coolness of it.

“Here, boss.” Clark, a short man who wore his pocket protector with the same sartorial swagger as Knox wore his double-pointed black and white silk pocket square, handed over a bike helmet. “You should wear this.”

“No.”

Rose sneered at Clark over the rims of the orange cats-eye glasses Knox knew for a fact to be fake. She did it about ten times a day that Knox saw, which meant the actual stats were probably way higher. Guess she saw Clark as competition. Which was weird, since Davies Enterprises wasn’t a corporate-ladder type of place.

Or maybe he hadn’t made that clear? That it was all about throwing ideas into a communal pot, not hoarding your own to rocket to the top. Because one person might have a game-changing idea. But it was damn certain it’d take a whole handful of other people to see it to fruition. Translating imagination and vision took teamwork. Being brilliant didn’t exempt you from playing well with others. Was that supposed to be in his mission statement? Did he need to come up with a mission statement?

Damn it, Madison’s touchy-feely business approach was like mold spreading across his ingrained habits. She’d infected him with second thoughts. Knox
never
indulged in second thoughts. It was a matter of principle. Somebody with his brainpower simply shouldn’t require a second go-around to make a decision.

“It’s a hoverboard, Clark, not a jet pack.” Rose crouched to waggle her fingers just above the carpet. “Meant to glide mere inches above the ground. Even you couldn’t get a concussion riding it.”

Clark’s face fell. Shit. Did Rose’s constant jibes actually bother the guy? Did he have a morale problem on his hands? Knox outsourced all his HR to an off-site company. The last thing he wanted was to worry about interpersonal dynamics at the office.

This was supposed to be a place of pure science. No fantasy league betting on chess matches, no rounds at the Irish pub around the corner with the gang. It was a temple to thinking, discovery, engineering, and code.

And, of course, the place that filled his bank account. His retirement account. His mother’s bank account, her travel fund, and the secret Swiss account—because the Swiss were more classic than the sketchy offshore Caribbean accounts—that gave him the peace of mind to sleep at night.

All those things made it Knox’s happy place. Or it had been, until Madison made him start worrying about things like the interaction between Clark and Rose. On the bright side, if he stuck with his plan to sell it, they’d be outta sight, outta mind.

Still…they were people.
His
people. Ones he’d handpicked to be on his team. So maybe he was a little bit responsible for making sure they felt as good here every day as he did. If Knox had been at a club, or playing soccer, or basically anyplace besides his company, he’d never ignore someone looking so crushed. No reason making money hand over fist had to cancel out basic human decency.

Damn it. Knox patted the helmet, hand-stenciled with the
Avengers
logo, then pushed it back toward Clark with a hopefully appreciative smile. “Thanks for watching out for me. But I’d lose the respect of the entire team if I safety-geared up to ride a glorified skateboard.”

Stubbornly Clark shoved the helmet back at Knox. “The board’s experimental, at best. Full of flaws, which is why they sent it to you to debug. It could go wild and crazy and take a chunk out of the ceiling.”

Yeah.

It was going to be
awesome.

“I play soccer every week. My suits don’t fit right if I don’t have at least a handful of swollen bruises on my extremities.” Knox didn’t care about his safety. He did, however, care about his white suit. So he removed the jacket and carefully draped it over the nearest clear acrylic desk. After thinking about the possibility that things could go epically wrong, he tugged off his black tie, too. Nobody wanted their epitaph to read
strangled by tie caught in mag locks of a hoverboard.

Guess Clark managed to raise the paranoia level a bit in the room. The circle of his employees had backed off considerably once he returned to the middle of it. Chickens. They’d all be clamoring to go next once he proved it wasn’t dangerous.

“Rose, how about you record this test run? Not for Instagram,” he hollered once three other staffers whipped out their smartphones, “just for data.”

“On it.”

Knox flipped the switch. Crouched to hold the sleek metal frame just above the ground. Let go…and watched it stay aloft. Applause broke out. “Wait for the main event,” he said. Then he stepped on.

It tipped a little, like getting into a canoe. Steadied once Knox added another foot up front. Felt like it was still in the air. But it wasn’t moving. So he tightened his abs to keep his balance and put his right foot back on the ground to push off.

The thing shot forward like it had the Batmobile’s thrusters underneath. Holy shit, it could move. Knox crouched for better stability, like he did when surfing. Except that he’d never managed to stay on a surfboard for more than ten seconds. The air in his office had less wave action than the water off Hawaii, though, so maybe it’d work.

Staffers squealed, laughed, made a path as he managed to throw his weight around enough to aim down the long hallway to reception. Huh. He should’ve figured out how to stop before firing it up. Falling over worked on a snowboard. Should work on this, too. Knox glanced up to see how soon he needed to bail off…and saw Madison in the reception area, clipboard in hand.

Either the surprise of seeing her or the way she filled out the white blouse and tan skirt like the epitome of a sexy librarian was enough to kill his concentration. The hoverboard tipped enough to spill him to the side. Knox’s ass landed on the receptionist’s desk. Luckily, Amit lunged from behind and managed to grab the tip of the thing before it chunked the ceiling in accordance with Clark’s dire prediction.

Hell, it wasn’t like anyone here had ever seen a hoverboard dismount before. The fact that he’d landed on the desk ought to earn him style points. Knox’s hand automatically went to straighten his missing tie. He settled for popping open the button on his collar like it was what he’d intended all along. And yeah, he needed the extra breathing room. His heart was pounding. Not because the ride had been scary. It was just the excitement of actually
doing
something everyone else only watched on a theater screen. It’d been a techno-orgasm.

Still, being a fan of
actual
orgasms, he gave Madison his best appreciative leer. “Madison, the way you look in that outfit took my legs right out from under me.”

“Smooth move,” Amit whispered beside him.

Like he needed the help.

“That was quite an entrance.” Madison dropped the clipboard to sidle up and plant a kiss on his cheek. “It would’ve knocked my socks off—if I were wearing any.”

God, was that a hint? What
wasn’t
she wearing under that tight skirt? Knox snaked an arm around her waist to keep her locked to his side while he gave her a real kiss. A kiss to remind her just how great he was at kissing, in case he’d lost any manliness in her eyes by falling off the glorified skateboard. A kiss with tongue. Because it was his damn office, and because he could. When her leg cocked at the knee like a fifties film star, he figured he’d made his point.

“Wow,” whispered Amit.

For God’s sake. “How about you take the top-secret prototype away from the glass walls of reception and back into testing, Amit?”

“Can I ride it back there?”

“No.” Then, because he wasn’t heartless, he amended it to, “Not without wearing Clark’s helmet.”

Everybody else got the hint and cleared back into the bowels of the office. Except for the receptionist, who tapped the clipboard with her pen. “Your visitor hasn’t finished signing in, Mr. Davies.”

“You just watched me give her mouth-to-mouth clearance, Lydia. Skip the forms.”

“But the Department of Defense rules we implemented last week state—”

Knox was sick to death of the DoD forms and rules and red tape. Still in the negotiation phase, but eight hundred things suddenly had to pass clearance. Big Brother might pay well, but did he pay well enough to counteract all the hassle? And paper forms on a clipboard? Those annoyed him right off the bat. A clipboard? Like it was 1996? Unbelievable they wouldn’t let him collect the data on an iPad. If word got out there were
clipboards
at Davies Enterprises, he’d be the laughingstock of the tech world.

“Don’t worry, Lydia. I know a guy at the Pentagon.” Okay, Griffin didn’t technically work at the Pentagon. But he rubbed elbows with people who did.

He stood, with Madison still plastered to his side. “I’m a big fan of a beautiful woman dropping by to break up the workday. But I know you’ve got a less fluid schedule than me. What gives?”

“I brought you something.”

“Kisses and presents? You can drop by any day. No, make that
every
day.” He waited while she picked up a giant picnic basket. “Come on back.”

“I haven’t done a visual search of the basket, Mr. Davies,” Lydia protested.

“Then you can truthfully state that you didn’t see Miss Abbott here smuggle in anything illegal.” Knox pushed through the glass door and held it for Madison. “Sorry about that. Lydia’s been on a power trip ever since we upgraded our security clearance. She acts like she’s guarding Area 51.”

“Is she? Is that hoverboard actually alien technology that you’re just taking credit for?”

Knox loved that she’d jumped right on board with his reference. “Not ours at all. Just a side project for an old college friend. She’s having trouble working out the kinks and thought I could help.” Help fix the basic problems…and maybe juice the application beyond fun to functional. It could be an easier way to move loads for the military, for disaster relief. The possibilities were just waiting to be monetized.

“You sure know how to work out my kinks,” Madison said with a throaty purr. “Bet you’ll do the same for her.”

“Not
exactly
the same,” he choked out on a laugh. And loved that the presence of his employees didn’t dial back her flirtation one damn bit. Maybe he’d finally found someone who could play at his level. “Her problem’s more cerebral than physical. And Dr. Stacia Lazaroff doesn’t have nearly the kinks that you do.”

The eyes of everyone in the office followed them as they strode down the hallway to the very back. The least noise, the least distractions equaled the best workspace for Knox. So the vertical blinds were closed, shutting out the view of the Old Executive Office Building. The walls were soundproofed. Very well soundproofed, as he’d discovered during a building-wide fire drill that had security bursting through his door when he’d been oblivious to the alarm.

“Welcome to brainiac central, as Josh calls it.” Knox shut the door behind them. He’d never brought a woman in here. Probably because the eighteen days he’d spent with Madison were about three times as long as he’d ever spent with one woman.

Interestingly enough, Knox discovered that he liked seeing her in front of the massive whiteboard that filled one entire wall. Madison sexed up the place. Hell, she brightened the place even in those neutral colors, just with her sunlight hair and sun-bright smile. The lascivious smile aimed directly at him.

She ran her index finger over his crown, down to his nape, and along the length of his arm. “Have I ever told you that your big brain’s almost as sexy as your big biceps?”

“No. But keep talking.” Talking. Petting. Looking at him with those half-closed bedroom eyes that promised things he’d only dreamed about happening in his office as a high school nerd. Yeah, the future was even better than advertised. Hoverboards. Busty blondes. The only thing to make this day better would be a perfectly made Manhattan teleporting directly into his hand.

“I’m serious.” She thwacked his temple. “Your above-average intelligence is a turn-on for me.”

“Great. If I start reciting the periodic table, will your bra just unclasp itself?”

“Pretty much.”

“Guess I’d better be careful about our conversation when I take you to dinner at that tapas place in Georgetown tonight. I can’t have you spontaneously stripping before I get my fill of
albondigas
.”

“Maybe you should preempt that by starting now. List the elements. By weight.”

Oh, he sure as shit would. In U.S. customary units
and
metric. Knox looked around the room, gauging the best surface area. The desk could hold them easily. The treadmill was a nonstarter. Up against the whiteboard might be a great fantasy-come-true, though.

“So this is really why you’re here?” he asked. “Drop-by sex? Because if so, I just need to know what’s in the picnic basket. Lube? Sex toys? If it’s porn, we can’t use my computer. The DoD apparently frowns on that sort of thing even from their contractors.” It was a joke, of course. Knox had so many firewalls and layers of protection on his machines that he could film and edit a porno from his desk and the government would never be the wiser.

“The basket contains bread. Sourdough, to be precise. An Alaskan specialty. I baked it last night.” Madison hefted the basket onto his desk and flipped open the top. “Four loaves, plus butter and honey and jam.”

“I have no idea how you’re going to make bread sexy. But I’m totally on board with watching you try.”

“No, silly.” She snapped the lid shut, almost on his fingers. “The bread is an afternoon snack for your colleagues.”

“Huh?” Sharing bread with his employees made even less sense than trying to sexify it.