Having It All

by Christi Barth

  “We are.”

  “Would you tell a ‘real’”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“date that you felt guilty for keeping him out past his bedtime?”

  Damn. She was the one putting the brakes on, if unintentionally. “This is harder than I thought it would be. Even though I want it. Very, very much.”

  “Good to hear we’re on the same page.” His smile was loose and easy, but heat blazed in his light blue eyes.

  There. That.

  That flare wasn’t something that happened with a casual fling. It brought intensity. Intimacy. A reminder that they were already twenty steps ahead of a run-of-the-mill hookup. Then why was this rougher than roller-skating over asphalt?

  “Isn’t us being friends first supposed to make this easier?”

  “It is. You’re comfortable enough to be leaning on me.” Josh bumped her hip with his. “And I notice that your hand’s in my jacket pocket.”

  “Your pockets are fleece-lined. They’re more effective.” Annabeth bit her lip. What if they’d muzzled their lust too much? “Do you think this is difficult because we took the sizzle factor out? What do we do if we don’t kiss?”

  “Who said we don’t kiss?” Josh wound her braid around his hand to steer her face even closer to his. The heat from his lips was palpable even before they touched her. Josh leaned into the kiss. It was firm, chewy, explosive. It left no question about the amount of sizzle between them.

  “My head is definitely in the game now,” she murmured.

  “Great. We can skip the twenty questions of where do you work and what are your friends like. Which is a huge relief. Repeating that stuff—and avoiding questions about our accident back in freaking high school—is the worst part of first dates.”

  Josh and his roommates were famous for their bus crash in the Alps. It had made international news when they were rescued. They were dubbed the Americani Calcio Sopravvissuti, or the ACSs. American soccer survivors.

  Thanks to all of them being über-photogenic and successful in interesting fields, the media revisited them over the years when milestones were hit. Graduations. Griff’s promotion to lieutenant. A couple of times when Riley was the onsite NTSB agent at a major celebrity crash. And, of course, whenever Knox bought and sold another company for an obscene profit.

  She’d followed their story since it happened, being just a few years younger. Annabeth even had a low-level crush on all the guys after their first spread in People. But she’d never asked him about it once they became friends.

  “Does that mean the subject is off-limits? The crash, I mean?” she asked carefully. Because they’d gone without mentioning it this long. If it was a potential date minefield, well, Annabeth would circle a full football field around it.

  But Josh immediately shook his head. “For you? Of course not. For total strangers who’ve only known me for twenty minutes and want to take a gawker slowdown past the most traumatic experience of my life? Yes.”

  “There’s something I’ve been wondering. I know Griffin was gung ho to make sure you guys were rescued. It doesn’t take the college degree I don’t have to figure out that helped inform his career as a rescue pilot. The same thing for Logan pushing for three days to look for you in horrible conditions. Now he does disaster recovery. What about you? How did the crash shape your life?”

  “We’re diving deep, aren’t we?”

  Wasn’t that the point? They already knew they clicked on a surface level. But for something this big and painful, Annabeth could wait, too. “We don’t have to. You can take a pass and we can skate another lap.”

  “No. I want you to know the answer. And nobody will overhear if we stay here.” Josh pushed off the ice to curve around her body sideways, tucking her legs between his and pulling her into an embrace. “It made me a cook.”

  Oh, that was fascinating. “How?”

  “We didn’t have anything to eat. Not even a smushed bag of chips or candy in our jackets, because they’d burned up in the school bus. All I could think about was food. Comfort food. I craved a grilled cheese. And when we all talked about what we wanted to eat, it made the guys smile for a few seconds.”

  “Grilled cheese, huh?” It made so much sense. And it was like discovering an Easter egg in a beloved movie. “So your grilled cheese food truck’s the ultimate dream come true?”

  “I never wanted to be hungry again. Learning to cook seemed to be the obvious way to ensure that. Discovering that I was good at it was the ego boost I needed. High school was rough, even after my dyslexia was diagnosed. It felt like everyone was smarter than me.”

  Annabeth actually gasped, it hurt so much to hear the words. “You know that’s not true, right?”

  “Objectively? Yeah.” Then Josh shook his head. “Getting an extra twenty minutes to finish a test while your buds were outside kicking a soccer ball still didn’t feel good. Hell, I still feel dumb today when Griffin skims the movie listings and decides on a time when I’m still struggling through each title. But cooking? Nobody cared about my reading and writing when I cooked.”

  A dream come true and a way to escape the embarrassment and hurt. Cooking hadn’t just been a calling for Josh. Annabeth figured it had been his salvation. It was the Christmas season—she could think that, right?

  She squeezed his wrist. “I’d call it the perfect fit.”

  “Then I put together that food makes people happy. I was useless as fuck to my family’s company. I could, though, still contribute to society by cooking. Not as flashy as Griff’s life-saving routine, or how Logan rebuilds entire communities, sure.”

  “Food is fuel. It gets people through their days. And if they eat your delicious food, they do it with a smile on their faces. That you put there.”

  “That’s how I see it.” His grin flashed, lightning fast and just as hotly electrifying. “I help power this whole city. One that some would say is the most powerful city in the world. That’s how almost dying in the Italian Alps shaped my life. Now I help keep the movers and shakers of D.C. alive.”

  Except…suddenly their conversation on Thanksgiving Eve didn’t make sense. “Then why not do more? Why not branch out into a whole fleet of food trucks? There are so many neighborhoods where your truck would be a hit. You’d get to help train a bunch more at-risk kids, too. It seems like a no-brainer.”

  “It is a no-brainer.” Josh’s tone was sharp, and ice seemed to crackle off each word. “A no-brainer of a no-go.” He let go of her. Even though he skated only a few inches away to line up elbow to elbow along the railing, it felt like a giant chasm had split open between them.

  It was a conversation. A back-and-forth. At least, it was supposed to be. Suddenly, though, Annabeth was getting a distinct vibe of stop. Or drop it. If this was a standard first date, she’d back off. If it was just a hookup, she’d change the subject without so much as a blink.

  Tonight was supposed to be different. Dating took you out of the shallows. It was supposed to be an all-access pass. Annabeth refused to be shaken off so easily. Not if they were going to have any chance at moving forward.

  “But why? Why can’t you do it?” she pressed.

  The tight harmonies of Pentatonix swelled into O Holy Night from the rink’s speakers. A short man in a hat with earflaps careened into the railing, making the whole thing shake. Josh took the opportunity to put a little more distance between them. The shorty landed on his ass, laughing hysterically.

  Josh did not laugh at all.

  “I covered this last week.” He jabbed out his arm, index finger extended. They were far enough apart now that Annabeth didn’t even flinch. Or worry about being poked. “You were less than five feet away when I argued about it with the guys.”

  Did he think she’d back down just because he got a little testy? This mattered. As a friend, she’d damn well point out that he was being an idiot and making a mistake. As a girlfriend—or at least, trying to operate under that title for the first time? Well, calling him an idiot wouldn’t
be strategic. Annabeth cared. She cared about Josh, and she cared about how much good he could do.

  The trick was to remind Josh that he cared, too.

  At least, that’s what he’d said. But it wasn’t enough for him to want her, for him to say he wanted to give this a shot. Actions not only spoke louder than words—they mattered twice as much.

  Annabeth shoved her hands into her pockets. It seemed less confrontational than fisting them on her hips like she wanted to do. She also plastered on an attempt at a calm, understanding smile.

  It felt like the grimace she made at the dentist for the polisher. “I remember the conversation. I just don’t understand it. If there’s a way, any way at all to make this happen, it’d be a great thing for the community, and for you.”

  His face hardened into a mask. An emotionless, shuttered mask that might as well have yellow crime scene tape on it to warn people from coming any closer. “There isn’t a way.”

  “Really?” Okay, her temper snapped a bit. Josh wasn’t listening. So raising her voice really made the most sense. “Because three of your closest friends ratted you out already. According to them, you’ve got the money and then some.”

  “I’m not touching that money.”

  “Damn it, Josh, why not?”

  “I’m not talking about this anymore.” He almost skated off. He had to jam a toe pick into the ice to stop after half a push. “Let’s go have a drink.”

  They skated off the ice together, but not. Not hand in hand. Not wanting spiked hot cocoas now for at all the same reason as when they’d gotten here. Annabeth would have one, would go through the motions, but it was clear. He’d frozen her out.

  This date was a bust.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Josh was the first to bang the door against the wall as he flew out of the bathroom. But he heard it slam four more times, echoing down the hall as his friends copied his lead.

  The crap mood he’d been in for two days—ever since the lousy date with Annabeth—meant Josh was spoiling for a fight. He viciously crumpled the red velvet hat in his left hand.

  Did he feel like an idiot striding through the halls of Satellite Entertainment Radio half naked? Oh yeah.

  But he didn’t have a choice. At least it was marginally less humiliating to have Griff, Knox, Riley, and Logan looking equally stupid in their baggy red Santa pants and black boots. They all piled into the big brick and glass room where they recorded every week. A cover by Weezer of The Christmas Song pumped out of the speakers.

  Lara, their producer for the Naked Men podcast who was a dead ringer for Kate Upton, fisted her hands on her hips. Glaring at them with all the disappointment of a teacher calling out the whole class for not being prepared for a pop quiz, she asked, “Why didn’t you wax your chests?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us we wouldn’t have shirts?” he shot back.

  Sighing, she ran her gaze over each of them in turn. Seeing as how Lara’s motor revved only for women, it was easy to read her lack of, ah, enthusiasm for their naked chests. Hair clearly wasn’t the real issue. “I told you it was a sexy Santa photo shoot. There’s nothing sexy about a big red coat stuffed with a pillow. This way, you’ve got the hats to look festive and the admittedly ripped abs to get everyone’s attention.”

  “The name of the podcast is Naked Men,” Riley said with exaggerated patience. “Referring to us being emotionally naked. Not fucking literally.”

  Yeah, his patience got away from him a little at the end there.

  “Are we going to have to do this dance for every single promotional campaign? I’ve never seen men so loath to be in the spotlight.”

  “Because we hate it,” Griffin said. A quiet intensity infused those four simple words. Still didn’t come close to touching how much their experience with the world press since the crash had honed their loathing. “We only want to promote the podcast. Not ourselves.”

  “Sorry to tell you, Lieutenant Commander, that you are the podcast. It doesn’t exist without you five.” Lara tip-tapped her red stilettos over to where Knox stood, arms crossed and a murderous scowl on his face. She laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten why you agreed to let us video the podcasts. We told you that the audience would flip for seeing your handsome mugs. Bigger audience means a more committed advertiser pool. More money for the show is more money in your pockets that a little birdie told me you’re first putting behind an effort to get seat belts on school buses.”

  “You’re not making hay off that, too, are you?” Logan growled.

  “No. That’s a secret within SER. Knowing it, however, gives me the patience and the wherewithal to talk you off this ledge. You want to do good with the money? We want you to make loads of it. Which means luring in viewers and listeners. Like it or not, your rippling pecs will do the job more effectively than anything else we could come up with.”

  “We don’t like it,” Knox ground out between clenched teeth.

  “Duly noted. But it’s for a good cause. Your cause. So we shoot in five.”

  Josh threw his hat on the round table as the door snicked shut behind her. “We were just fucking handled.”

  “Yeah.” Griff yanked out a chair and sat. “She’s right, though. We all want the same thing. That means sucking up this ridonkulousness.”

  Sure. To a point. Josh spun around to aim his index fingers at his other blond friend. “Knox, you handled our contracts. I want a rider added.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I don’t care if they pose us in front of the cherry blossoms with our shirts off. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with our shirts off. I do want it in writing that none of us will ever wax anything.”

  Riley pounded his fist on the table. “Seconded.”

  “Thirded,” Griff added.

  Knox held up a hand. “Done.” For a long minute, they all just glared at each other. United in pissyness.

  He hoped that sexy Santas weren’t expected to smile.

  But then, with a snicker, Riley said, “Josh can’t afford to lose his body hair. In case there’s any truth to that old story about Samson.”

  “What are you talking about? The Bible story?” If this was Riley’s lame attempt to lift the mood of the room, he’d blown it. Since when was religion funny?

  Logan bounced his hat from the white pompon on the end. “Isn’t he the guy who loses all his strength—and virility—when some sneaky woman cuts off his hair?”

  “Yeah.” Josh tugged at his sandy-blond hair. It wasn’t regulation high and tight like Griff’s, but it more than counted as short. “So what? Happy to have the contractual language against having my chest hair ripped out, but I’m as virile as they come. Ask anyone.”

  “Not what I hear.” This time a sly, sideways glance accompanied another snicker. “I hear you’ve lost your mojo. As a friend, obviously, I worry about you embarrassing yourself and losing even more of it.”

  Josh did not like where this was going.

  The last thing he wanted to discuss was how whatever had been brewing between him and Annabeth hadn’t so much as come to a simmer. But before he could figure out a way to change the subject, Knox tossed his hat at Ry. “Convoluted and confusing. What’s going on?”

  “Annabeth told Summer that her big date with Josh was a dud. Our guy blew it. Big-time.”

  Laughter rang out in the acoustically engineered room. Griff elbowed Josh. And since he was still standing, it hit mid-thigh. “Whoa. How the mighty have fallen.”

  Knox made that clucking noise with his tongue that should be made only by Midwestern housewives lamenting the bad crop…in the 1880s. Josh jumped at the opportunity to pass on the humiliation. “Careful, Knox, your old-timey geek is showing.”

  “Dude, I handed off my crown as mattress king of this town to you just a couple of months ago. How’d it all fall apart so fast?”

  Fuck. No getting out of this interrogation. Accepting the inevitable, Josh boosted himself onto the table. Leaned back on his pa
lms and crossed his legs. That looked casual, right?

  Like hearing Annabeth complain about their date didn’t fucking sting like cheap tequila on a canker sore?

  “It didn’t fall apart, Knox. Your crown is being kept polished and your legacy lives on. I could bag a date with any woman in this building with nothing more than a five-minute conversation. Less, if I’m strutting around like this.” He slapped his bare ribs. “What happened with Annabeth—it wasn’t my fault.”

  If he could make his friends believe it, maybe Josh would believe it, too. Eventually.

  “Really?” Riley’s fingers tunneled through his perfectly combed, styled, and sprayed dark hair. “This isn’t some stranger we’re talking about. There’s no convincing us that the lady in question is some dumb bimbo or a high-maintenance PITA. Smells like you screwed up, bud.”

  “How could you not make it work with Annabeth?” Griff asked. “We’re all friends.”

  Finally. Josh leaped on the excuse Griff had just handed him. “Exactly. That was the problem. Not me. The friendship angle. In fact, we should do a podcast on that. How it’s flat-out impossible to go from being friends to lovers.”

  “I don’t buy it. Being friends meant you were already halfway to getting her into bed from the start.”

  Bed. That was the problem. No bed. He’d packed his own balls away when he’d made that offer. “I knew taking sex out of the equation was a dumb idea. That’s the only way I screwed up. You don’t take a knife out of the hand of a sushi master. You don’t make Jordan Spieth play a round at Augusta National without a golf club.”

  “You think dragging her into bed on the first date would’ve made it go better? Hell no.”

  And then his friends all laughed again. Like they were in on a secret that Josh wasn’t.

  Fine. He’d spent two sleepless nights trying to figure it out. So he’d do what they always did. What had begun as a blog to deal with their lives and morphed into the podcast. He’d put the question to the guys and hope that they could damn well explain whatever it was he’d missed.