Wanting It All: A Naked Men Novel (7 page)

Griff threw out the first pitch. “What the hell, Knox?”

“Since when do you have second thoughts about anything?” Josh thumped him on the back of his head. “You’re Split-Second Decision Guy, thanks to that oversized brain of yours.”

True. Mulling wasn’t something he ever did. It took him no time to size up a situation, assess the pros and cons. Knox pounded another combination into the bag. But the rest of the world did it. Why couldn’t he mull something over for once? Add it to his very own new experiences list?

Riley piled on. “You decided to do this weeks ago. You announced it at the Memorial Day barbecue on the roof deck, remember?”

Josh grabbed the bag to still it. “You said you’d rake in a huge profit and have time to find something more fun to do.”

Griff stopped the volley of words with a sharp glare around the circle. Then he directed it straight at Knox. “What the hell turned off your business radar?”

That was just insulting. “I told you. It’s a prudent reconsideration of all the facts. My radar’s working fine.”

“What facts?” Josh’s tone was way more confused than combative. “Besides that you’ll make more money on this deal than I’ll make in my lifetime?”

Knox dropped his arms to his sides. Because it was exhausting defending a decision that he wasn’t even sure about. “The fact that maybe there’s a bigger picture to be seen than simply how much money I’ll make.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Since when do you think about anything beyond the bottom line?” Riley tilted his head sideways. “Do you even know there
is
something beyond the bottom line?”

For fuck’s sake. Usually when Knox even mentioned his work, they all put their hands over their ears and ignored him. Now they suddenly had opinions? The one single, solitary time he was the slightest bit unsure of his own?

He paced over to the padded bench and took a seat. “No. It hadn’t occurred to me. But Madison brought up a few points that are worth at least thinking about for a couple of days.”

Griff threw his hands up in the air. “That explains it.”

“Yep,” Josh nodded meaningfully. “It’s the Pussy Pause.”

That got a reluctant laugh out of Knox. “What the hell is that?”

“When you pause something in your life to impress a woman.”

“You made that up,” Knox said with a certainty.

“Yeah, but it works.” Josh took a swig of water before continuing with his explanation. “Maybe a guy temporarily quits watching baseball games every night, or switches his charity donations from Little League teams to saving feral cats. When the pussy goes away, the pause ends and life gets back to normal.”

It made sense. A lot of sense. And made Knox reconsider his reconsidering. “We should talk about it on the
Naked Men
podcast tomorrow.”

“Interesting. ‘Do you put your real life on pause for a woman? Or does the right woman fit into your real life?’ ”

“That sounds like something out of a women’s magazine. Just call it the Pussy Pause. Gets right to the point.” Josh snorted. “Trademark pending.”

Riley cut a hand across in front of his throat. “Don’t even bother telling your lawyers to put a hold on drawing up those sale contracts. The minute Madison is out of the picture, you’ll come to your senses.”

“And with or without the trip to Nationals Park, we know this Madison has an expiration date stamped on her undoubtedly bodacious booty.” Josh swung his arm into an umpire’s
You’re out
gesture.

Griff gave an eye roll. “No kidding. Knox doesn’t stick with any woman longer than it takes him to fill a laundry hamper.”

Damn straight. If he stuck with one woman too long, he’d miss all the others out there, waiting to be had. Madison was different, but not different enough to make him change his lifelong course. He’d finish having his fun with her and move on before their butler made the sweep through Knox’s room for his weekly trip to the cleaners. He’d move on with the sale, he’d move on with his life, and he’d move on to the next woman who caught his attention on a sidewalk.

Well, maybe not right away. Despite his strict No Leftovers policy with woman and food, Knox still appreciated a cold turkey and stuffing sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. It was his once-a-year exemption. Madison could be his annual dating exemption. Because Knox had something special in the hopper for their date tomorrow. And Chloe would appreciate someone to talk to at the Nats game.

But right after that, it’d be back to business—and bed-hopping—as usual.

Knox readjusted the straps of her tote bag on his shoulder. And glared at Madison. “This is heavy.”

“Nobody asked you to carry it for me.” Although she kind of adored his ever-present manners. They made her feel special. Ultra-feminine. Something that didn’t happen too often to a woman who hit six feet when she put on wedges.

He held back a low-hanging tree branch on the narrow garden path. “My mother raised a gentleman.”

Did she ever. Madison wanted to give Mrs. Davies a Fruit of the Month Club basket for what she’d accomplished with Knox. But sparring with him was too much fun to resist. “You’re definitely a man, and I’ve seen all the muscles you hide beneath those fancy clothes. Don’t whine.”

“I just don’t see why you brought anything.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Anything, that is, besides a smile and that lace bra and panty set you promised me.”

“Because I pull my own weight. In life, at work, with my roommate, and in relationships.” Yeah, she saw him flinch at the R word. Knox covered it by adjusting her bag again, but even in the growing dusk she wasn’t blind. Aversion therapy seemed the way to go. Just keep dropping words like
wedding
and
relationship
and
commitment
into the conversation until Knox stopped reacting like they were big, hairy tarantulas. Not that she’d decided yet if Knox was The One. But she needed him to be far less allergic to the possibility just in case he did end up being the man who stole her heart. “Good thing, too, since I don’t see any basket full of goodies for this picnic you promised me.”

“Don’t rush me. Didn’t you learn that on the boat? Good things, worth waiting, etc. You were antsy about how long it took to get here, but it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

Madison took in the small sliver she could see of the natural beauty that comprised the four hundred and twelve acres of the U.S. National Arboretum. Green in every direction, far enough that it seemed impossible to believe they were right on the outskirts of D.C. They were passing through a formal garden, with hedges and bushes in an ornate pattern. They’d already come through what Knox told her was the Friendship Garden, with a large statue of Demeter surrounded by bamboo, and skirted a large moat brimming with lily pads, each wider than a manhole cover. It was beautiful and peaceful. She already wanted to come back in the sunlight.

“Yes. Totally worth it. You’re right again, Knox. But don’t expect that to always be the case.”

“It always is.”

His simple arrogance astounded her. Of course, he had built himself a nest egg that could apparently finance a small country with brainpower alone. Arrogance was to be expected. But good golly, that didn’t mean Madison had to let it ride without comment. Did everyone else let him get away with it?

Sugarcoating her disagreement would keep him off balance. Madison patted the bulging side of her tote bag. “For instance, you’re going to be wrong about thinking I didn’t need to bring anything. As soon as you sink your teeth into my Irish cream brownies, you’ll realize you’ve got a powerful need for them.”

“That’s what’s making this bag so heavy? Did you bring along the glass pan you baked them in, too?”

“I’ve got an umbrella in case there’s a summer squall. Bottles of water, because you should never go into nature without hydration.”

Knox burst out laughing at what Madison knew to be perfectly sensible precautionary provisioning. “This isn’t an endurance hike. It’s a full-moon walk. Well, almost. The full moon’s tomorrow, but that’s when they lead the official hike. I wanted us to have the place to ourselves.”

“I thought I told you that throwing your money around wouldn’t impress me.”

“Which is why that’s not why I did it. You don’t care about my money, fine. I still use it as I see fit. So when I have an idea for something fun, that
I
want to do, I make it happen. Don’t be impressed. Just be with me and enjoy yourself.”

It made sense. If Knox did it for himself instead of for her, who was she to quibble? The man didn’t have to scale back his lifestyle on her behalf, just as much as he didn’t need to flaunt it. Then a thought occurred to her. “Hang on. Did you buy the whole arboretum?”

“Of course not. My Sundays are jam-packed. No time for the lengthy negotiations it takes to buy government property.”

Smart-ass. Knox absolutely cracked her up. “What did you do?”

He shot her a sideways look. Didn’t answer right away. Which struck her as highly unusual for the man who hadn’t been at a lack of words for a single moment since they met.

“This is going to sound…uh, odd.”

“Good. You’re too perfect on the surface, what with the smarts and the buckets of cash. You need a patina of odd on top of all of it.”

Knox stopped walking. “I’m not perfect, Madison. Not by a long shot.”

It was the most serious she’d heard him be. Even more serious than when they’d fought on the boat. It shocked her. And Madison wasn’t at all sure that he’d meant to reveal that much about himself.

Sure, his arrogance hadn’t thrilled her. But she hated the thought of whatever pain put the ring of truth into his statement. Beneath the impeccable pale yellow shorts with the thin gray stripe and his gray plaid button-down, what inner turmoil haunted him?

Madison hated that she’d brought whatever it was to the forefront of his mind. Well, she wouldn’t let him dwell on it now. With a flirty toss of her low-cinched pigtails, she said, “A man admitting he’s not perfect. I do believe my lady parts are fluttering.”

He brought her hand to his mouth. Dropped a slow, openmouthed kiss on the back of it that made her catch her breath. Guess Knox was back to his fine, flirty self. “I do what I can,” he murmured in a voice that caused the fine hairs on her arm to stand up.

Determined to keep things light, she poked him in the chest with her other hand. “Then get back to telling me what you did today.”

“I recorded a podcast with my friends.”

Smothering a giggle, she said, “Not odd. Nerdy, definitely.”

He stopped again, one foot on the slate square and one on the grass. “No, this wasn’t us with a coat hanger and a coconut radio in our basement. We do a weekly podcast for Satellite Entertainment Radio. It’s called
Naked Men.
”

“Are you? Naked when you do it?” Madison gave him the full head-to-toe, leering once-over. “Because that’s a visual that would just be wasted on radio.”

“We’re naked, but not in the way you think. Although I do like how you think.” He tried to grab for her waist to pull her in, but Madison sidestepped the move.

“Stick to the story. You’ve got me interested now.”

With an exaggerated sigh, Knox heaved her bag to the grass. “It all started as a way to keep in touch with my friends when we went off to different colleges. Guys aren’t good at calls or emails. Instead, we did a group blog. Called it
Naked Men
because we didn’t hide anything. Threw our uncovered thoughts and feelings out there for everyone to see.”

“These are your friends from high school?”

“They started out that way. We’ve been through, uh, a lot together. Even took a blood oath under a full moon one year. We’re brothers now.”

The tips of Knox’s ears were pink. It was all kinds of adorable. Nice to see that genuine feelings, not merely proximity, kept these friends together through all the tumultuous years of growing up. They sounded like exactly the kind of group that Madison wanted to create here for herself.

She traced his strong jawline with one finger. “That’s really sweet.”

“Don’t ever say that in front of them,” he warned.

“I think I want to meet these friends of yours.”

“Funny you should say that. Because I’ve put your name on the list for the Nats game on Friday night. Everyone will be there.” Knox jerked a shoulder. “If you want to come.”

Talk about progress. He’d thought to introduce her to his friends before she even brought it up. The serial-dating commitment-phobe voluntarily took a step to twine her deeper into his life. This date was off to a fantastic start. “Of course I want to come. But what’s with the list?”

“It means you don’t have to stand in line. You’ll enter the stadium at Potomac and Capitol, right behind home plate, and then come up to our box.”

The over-the-top absurdity had her closing her eyes for a moment. “Of
course
you have a box,” she murmured.

“My world, remember? Come have fun in it.”

“I don’t know if I have the right clothes for a fancy-schmancy box.”

“As long as you don’t wear an Orioles jersey, you’ll be fine.” He grabbed her hips and pulled her close. “As a matter of fact, you look more than fine in what you’re wearing tonight.”

Yes, she’d put on the bra and panty set he’d requested, but Knox had no way of knowing that. All he could see were her same old denim shorts, tennis shoes, and a ribbed white tank. When Knox said a picnic, she dressed accordingly. But she’d take the compliment, seeing as it came with a deep kiss and an extremely slow and satisfying exploration of her ass in said shorts.

“All right. I won’t hassle you about the box. If I’m going to meet your friends, however, I’d better hear the rest of the story about this blog of yours.” Madison stayed in his loose embrace. She couldn’t think of a better place to be on a warm summer evening than with those thick-veined forearms looped around her waist and their bare thighs touching below the hem of their shorts.

“Well, as the years went by, it kind of grew.”

“Define
kind of,
” she demanded. Because there were a ton of blogs on the web, and most of them didn’t end up with satellite radio podcasts.

“Okay, it exploded more than grew.” He cocked his head with a look bordering on disappointment. “You’ve really never heard of it?”

She tried to take the sting out of bursting his bubble by going on tiptoe to drop a line of kisses along the side of his throat. “I’m a librarian, Knox. I bury myself in books in my free time, not surfing for cat videos or pinning pictures of cake disasters. If you blogged about which Brontë sister wrote better, I’d be all over it. Otherwise, you’re off my radar.”

Not to mention that she’d been working to support herself all through college and grad school. A full course load along with shifts at the library mixed with Saturday nights waitressing at a bar for the mega-tips didn’t leave her time to peruse the Internet. But she didn’t want to bring all that up. Madison didn’t need pity for her hard work. It got her to her dream job in an amazing city. She had no regrets.

“Since you asked, yeah, the blog’s a big deal. If you’d asked ten random people in the POV Bar last week, eight of them would’ve said they’d heard of it, and probably five would be followers. Not that I’m bragging. It’s just fact. Or so the marketing people at SER tell us.”

“So they turned your blog into a podcast?”

“
Added
the podcast,” he corrected, with a sharp squeeze to her ass for emphasis. “We keep the blog going separately. We believe in it, in exposing all the shit guys are scared to talk about. We have fun with it. The podcast is an extension. Just us sitting around shooting the breeze on a topic. Which is honestly how we’d spend every Sunday afternoon anyway.”

“And people who don’t know you listen to this?”

“Yeah. A lot.”

“That
is
odd.” Why not hang out with your own friends, instead of eavesdropping on others? It went against all of Madison’s instincts. She believed in finding your own close, special circle and hunkering down with them. On the other hand, geez, how lonely did you have to be to live vicariously through someone else’s friendship? Maybe
Naked Men
did help people. She’d have to tune in and assess for herself.

Knox shook his head. Laughed and threw his arms out to the sides. “So my celebrity and my money don’t impress you. What’s left?”

Thinking about the inner strength it took to turn his life around, his loyalty and tenderness to his mother, Madison answered, “There’s quite a bit left to impress me, Knox. If you’ll let me in enough to discover it.”

She turned away to figure out just how much more to say, when the view made her gasp. Across the lawn, at the top of a rise, stood a rectangle comprised of enormous and ornate marble columns. “What are those?” Without waiting for the answer, Madison grabbed Knox’s hand and tugged him toward them.

“Those are the original columns of the U.S. Capitol building from 1828. Once the dome got added, those magnificent Corinthian columns just didn’t look right, so less than forty years later they removed all twenty-four.”

The sheer majesty and history overwhelmed her. “They are magnificent.”

“Glad you like the view. That’s where we’re picnicking.”

Having worked at the Library of Congress for only a week, the thrill had yet to wear off. Madison, in fact, made her back ramrod straight and almost tiptoed when she walked past the Supreme Court on her way in to work every day. And the view of the Capitol dome out of her office window still took her breath away. So the thought of sitting among the columns made her more nervous than excited.

“No. We can’t. We’re allowed that close?”

“Yep.” Knox held a finger to her lips. “Before you fly off the handle, it has nothing to do with me throwing money around this time. They’re just part of the Arboretum. Totally accessible for everyone to enjoy.”

Madison tried to stop at the edge of the stone platform to wallow in the moment, but Knox urged her to keep going by pulling on her arm. The dusk was turning into velvety darkness now, but the nearly full moon made the columns glow. Cicadas kept up a steady buzz.

At the far side of the columns, Madison gasped. Again. Because steps lined with round paper lanterns led down to a reflecting pool, rimmed with candles. At its edge was a low table covered with a white cloth. A traditional wicker picnic basket sat on top. Blankets and pillows surrounded it, along with about a zillion more candles. The lavish yet casual romance of it blew her away. Knox might claim that he just tossed out money to make things happen. But there was an attention to detail, a thoughtfulness to his actions, that belied his modest approach.