Giving It All

by Christi Barth

  “Good enough.”

  Josh bent his front leg into a deep Achilles stretch. “So…back to Logan’s helpful note on choosing a podcast topic.”

  Logan appreciated the bailout from a conversation he was definitely over. “Yeah, a helpful note about topics would’ve been great. Or, you know, a heads-up that I had to choose one.”

  “Where would the fun have been in that?” Knox smirked.

  “Asshole.”

  “Scaredy-cat.”

  Logan felt better already from the familiar exchange. “Really? That’s the best you’ve got?”

  “I’m saving the good insults for the first time you blow an on-goal kick.” Knox did a hard, high practice kick in the air.

  “You’ll be holding that in for a long time, then. Here’s the thing—you and Griff are involved. Involved with good women. I’ll assume they’re probably sensible, not too high maintenance, or you wouldn’t be with them. But women nonetheless. Which means they can get their panties in a twist without our even knowing why. So its CYA time. We can’t discuss anything that’ll come back to bite us in the ass.”

  Griffin dismissed his suggestion with a quick shake of his head. “Impossible. We talk about sex and relationships. Everything could come back to bite us. For God’s sake, our first podcast was on Chloe’s virginity.”

  “Her what?”

  The other guys hooted while a look of extreme discomfort settled on Griff’s face. The same one he always wore when he tried to hold in a fart. “It’s a long story. We’ll save it for later. Over Scotch. Lots of it. The point is, it sounds like you screwed things up with Brooke.”

  Griff could redirect all he wanted. But no way was the sun setting tonight without Logan getting the full details out of him on his virgin almost-fiancée. “Yeah. Big time. Even though I didn’t mean to. I took pains not to use her name. Or any identifying features.”

  “Not calling her ‘the redhead’ doesn’t mean people can’t put one and one together when they see you as a couple,” Josh said. Then he frowned. Which rarely happened. “Shit. I didn’t realize you guys were so serious. Sorry.”

  Riley nodded his agreement. “We should’ve headed you off.”

  “Yeah—now that you’re actually in the same time zone, you’ve gotta keep us up-to-date. Hell, you haven’t latched onto a woman for more than a couple of weeks since college, right? How were we supposed to know?”

  “Great. There’s next week’s podcast topic. How talking to your friends can fix foot-in-mouth disease.”

  They all laughed. Riley said, “See? You’re a natural at this.”

  Knox balanced the ball on the top of his foot and then switched it off to the other one. “All kidding aside, Logan, you need to make it up to Brooke. Well, we all do, but the majority of it has to come from you.”

  “Nah. We’re fine now. We talked it over.”

  Griffin winced. Sucked in a sharp breath. “You may have put the pin back in the grenade, but the thing’s still sitting there on the bed.”

  That made zero sense. Logan reached behind to grab his ankle for a thigh stretch. “I apologized. She accepted. Then I gave her an orgasm. Two, actually. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

  His friends laughed. They laughed hard. So hard they bent over, hugging their bellies. Hard enough that tourists walking by lugging gift bags from the Museum of American History stopped to watch.

  Finally, Knox caught his breath enough to talk. “Dude, you aren’t in the middle of no-where-i-stan anymore. A worthwhile apology means dropping some serious cash, time, or both.”

  “You’re telling me a bunch of flowers are better than an orgasm?” This coming from the guy who used to drop hundreds of dollars on couture shoes to give his one-night stands when he didn’t call them back.

  The thing about being friends with a multimillionaire? It meant Knox tended to fall back on using money as a solution. Logan’s day-to-day life was mostly full of people with zero money—or any material possessions—making gestures to communicate their feelings. And a double orgasm sure seemed to him like one hell of a gesture.

  “I assume—if you’re even coming close to treating Brooke right—you’re giving her the orgasms every time you see her,” Josh said. “Which means they aren’t special. In terms of an apology, anyway.”

  Huh. That did sort of make sense. Yeah, he could bring Brooke a bouquet. With another orgasm on the side.

  “You’ve got to bring the romance,” Griff said flatly.

  Logan had this one in the bag. “I took her to Screen on the Green,” he said smugly.

  Knox blew a raspberry. One wet enough to spray Riley, who made a production out of wiping his face with the hem of his NTSB tee. “Which means you sat on the ground surrounded by literally thousands of other sweaty people. Do I need to explain romance to you?”

  “Please. I taught you everything you know.”

  “It’s like you gave me the starter pack of Legos. Which I then built into the Death Star, Hogwarts, and the one-hundred-three-story Empire State Building with my own expansion packs.”

  Riley straight-armed Knox out of the circle. “Dude. Dig deep. Be original. Don’t listen to Knox. Don’t search the Web for ideas. Think of something that’ll matter to Brooke.”

  Yeah. His friends were right on the money. As usual. Logan dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I’ll come up with something to make her all warm and fuzzy on the inside.”

  “You know what’d make me all warm and fuzzy?” Josh ran backward onto their makeshift field, tossing the ball from hand to hand. “Scoring two goals past Logan, and one past G-man. And then having Riley pay for dinner while Knox springs for Johnnie Walker Black.”

  “Keep dreaming, Josh. You haven’t scored on me in a month,” Griff scoffed as they all jogged into position.

  Logan fell into the comfortable banter. “I hear Josh hasn’t scored on anyone in a month.”

  That earned him a glare. “What do you know, Marsh? You haven’t even been in the country a month.”

  “No kidding. You’ve been failing so epically at hookups that word even spread all the way to Kazakhstan.”

  Josh flipped him the middle finger. “Screw you.”

  “Nah.” Laughing so hard he could barely get the words out, Logan said, “I’m not going to be the one to break your no-sex streak.” And then he raced down the Mall with the ball.

  Yeah.

  It was good to be home.

  For as long as it lasted.

  Chapter 19

  “Tonight feels very official,” Brooke said as Logan helped her out of the car in the quiet neighborhood near Embassy Row filled with Federal-style brick homes with painted shutters. She assumed he’d borrowed the car from Knox for the night, since (1) it was a vintage bottle-green Jaguar just right for Sean Connery’s James Bond, which probably cost the moon and the stars, and (2) Logan didn’t even own a car.

  “It is official. I learn from my mistakes. You weren’t clear that Screen on the Green was a date. My bad. So I didn’t want there to be any lack of clarity this time. Plus, I wanted you to break out the sexy date perfume.” Logan leaned down to sniff at her neck. And when he caught a whiff of the jasmine and gardenia mix of her Bvlgari perfume, he burrowed even deeper into the crook of her neck with nips of kisses and growls that had her giggling too hard to walk.

  “Oh, I appreciate the unmistakably clear heads-up. You called to invite me on this date, with two full days’ notice. You texted to confirm. You handed me a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers when you knocked on my door.”

  He led her along a brick wall to black gates topped with a gilded sheaf of wheat. “I noticed you like yellow. They’re cheerful. They seemed to match you.”

  His casual observance made Brooke’s heart stutter. There he went, surprising her with his attention to what would make her happy. The gates clanged shut behind them. Brooke twisted around to see a uniformed guard doff his cap and then fade back into the tall bushes. She was still mystified by where th
ey might be.

  “Then you capped it off by so thoughtfully giving me the low-heeled-shoes dress code.” She stuck out her foot from beneath her yellow, pink, and green striped maxi and wiggled her toes at him. Since they were walking up a long gravel drive, she appreciated the footwear recommendation. “I feel like you’ve got a typed-out itinerary somewhere. Did Griffin have a hand in this, with all his military regimentation?”

  Logan struck his sternum with his fist. With a healthy dose of exaggerated dramatics. “That’s the thanks a guy gets for putting in some effort? You give his roommate the credit?”

  Whoops. Brooke didn’t want to hurt his feelings, even accidentally, when he’d clearly gone to so much trouble. “You just seem more like a spontaneous, go-with-the-flow sort of man. Which works just fine for me, by the way. That’s the only reason I’m caught off guard.”

  “Like I said, I learn from my mistakes. I made one with our blurred lines between friendship and dating. I made a big-ass one with the podcast. My biggest one, though, was not making you feel as special as you deserve. So yeah, tonight’s—hopefully—special.”

  If Logan kept dropping romantic bombs like that, Brooke wouldn’t be able to keep from admitting that she loved him. Which would be stupid. Pointless, as they had no actual shot at a future. Not to mention potentially embarrassing for both of them. Still, she couldn’t wait to tell Katrina everything about this night, down to the tiniest blooming flower. Because Brooke had a feeling it would be one for her own personal record book.

  “Apology accepted.” Because, really, it was a head-over-heels romantic gesture. Not only did it get him out of his past transgressions, but likely gave him a cushion for anything boneheaded he did in the next couple of weeks.

  If they had that long together.

  “Don’t you dare. We’ve got the whole night in front of us. If you forgive me for everything now, I’ll have no choice but to turn around and take you home.” Arm around her waist, Logan half lifted her off the ground until Brooke squealed and pushed at his arm.

  “I take it back. You’ve behaved abominably. Now put me down and let’s get on with it.”

  “All right, then.”

  She looked up at a historic, multigabled mansion. Their path led around the corner of it. “Where are we?”

  “Dumbarton Oaks. Well, that’s the name of the house-slash-museum, but we’re here for the gardens. Where we’ll have a much better, much more private picnic.”

  They crossed a verdant lawn. Anywhere else, it alone would’ve been the entire garden to go with the mansion. Beyond the walls of the terrace were spectacular views of the city, which surprised Brooke. The District always felt flat—unless you were biking it or on a private hillside like this one. A few steps led them down to another enclosed terrace, a rectangle full of boxwood and ivy, like a classic Italian garden. And, as Logan had promised, they were completely alone.

  Gaping, Brooke asked, “How did you do this?”

  “I can’t take the credit for anything but the idea.”

  “Trust me, you’re getting full credit and props for that.”

  “Well, in D.C., it’s all about who you know. Dumbarton Oaks—the research library, pre-Columbian museum, and even the gardens—are all a part of Harvard. Dad’s a totally hooked-up alum. He belongs to the Harvard Club, and God knows which secret society from back in the day. If there’s anyone between the ages of thirty and death in the District who sports the crimson and gold, he knows them. So I got his assistant, Margaret, to drop his name with the Director of the Gardens and here we are.”

  Interesting. Brooke looked up at him, so handsome in his peach Cuban-style shirt and khaki shorts. A fresh shave, too, which both impressed her and made her wistful for the titillating rasp of his usually thick evening stubble. “I think that’s the most I’ve heard you mention your father since we’ve seen each other again. I was beginning to wonder if you two’d had a major falling out.”

  Logan winced. “Sort of. Another mistake of mine that we’ll get into tonight.”

  His sudden openness shocked her. “Will we?”

  “Yeah. For a couple of reasons.” Logan paused as they went down more flagstone steps into an enormous rose garden. Ruthlessly formal, the roses were corralled into triangular and rectangular sections by color, ranging from white to pink and red, then transitioning to oranges and yellows. Their heady fragrance enveloped Brooke, and she spun in a slow circle to take it all in. A spiral boxwood at least fifteen feet tall marked the center of this level. Logan took her hand and led her to it, where she could see the garden spreading in all directions.

  “You deserve to know what’s fucked up in my life, because you shared your shit with me.”

  Okay, it wasn’t the most romantic wording in the world—pure Logan—but the honest emotion behind it touched her. “Thank you. That is how relationships work best. Or work at all, come to think of it. Equal sharing.”

  “Well, the other reason is pretty selfish.” He looked down at their joined hands. Lifted them to kiss the hot pink painted tips of her nails, one by one. “You’re easy to talk to, Brooke. Whenever I do, I feel better. Settled. Calmer. Happy. Which confuses me more than ever. So I’m going to tell you all this stuff in the hopes it’ll solve things. Or at least help me figure out what to do.”

  “I don’t think that sounds selfish. I’m honored, and more than willing to help.” This was obviously a huge stretch for him. Maybe a new one. Maybe both. As gestures went, it was even better than the private picnic in the fairy-tale garden.

  Majestic twin staircases took them down to an oval sunken fountain. Beyond it, purple wisteria canopied over a long arbor. But Logan kept pulling her onward. With the same grim determination of a man marching to the guillotine.

  “Would it be too much of a downer if I got it off of my chest right now? So it isn’t hanging over us all evening?”

  Brooke squeezed his hand. Loved so much that Logan was finally showing her his vulnerable side. “I’m here. I’m listening to whatever you want to tell me.”

  He swiped his palm across his mouth, as if trying to figure out exactly where to start.

  Boy, did she ever know that feeling.

  Pausing by one of the lead cherubs spitting water in the matching fountains, Logan said, “I love my job. I love saving people. Helping them rebuild their lives, their communities. I feel like it matters. Like I matter. Like my being there can mean the difference between life and death. That probably makes me sound like a pretentious douche bag.”

  “No.” How could he think that for even a second? Brooke continued in a rush, eager to allay his concern. “Not at all. It sounds like a fact. It sounds like you’d do anything, go to any lengths, to be sure that nothing is left undone. That no one is left unrescued. That if you and your Foundation go to the trouble to go to a disaster site, you darn well won’t so much as blink until everything is done to fix every broken house, broken road, broken person that can be.”

  Maybe her answer was too effusive. But Brooke didn’t really think it was possible to be too effusive about Logan’s amazing dedication. The way he gave up his privileged life here for months at a time, at the drop of a hat, to live in Third World conditions. To risk his life, his health, for strangers. For people on the other side of the world who shouldn’t matter to him—but did.

  For a long moment, those golden-brown eyes just drank her in. Then Logan pulled her into a tight hug. “You really do get me. More than anyone besides the ACSs. Thanks.”

  That pulled those three little words she didn’t dare utter all the way to the tip of Brooke’s tongue. To keep from saying them, she did a complete one-eighty. Broke the intensity of the moment with a tossed-off “I’m happy to shower you in compliments anytime.” Followed by a friendly pat on the back.

  Geez, that was lame.

  Happily, Logan followed her lead. And winked as he let her go. “I like your willingness in that department.”

  “Once a cheerleader, always a cheerl
eader.”

  “Well, there’s more to the story. See, I have to be on-site to do all that. But when I came home this time, my dad dropped this bombshell that he wants me to stay put. For good.” Logan jerked out of her grasp. Started pacing in between the two fountains and then back again. “He wants me to take over running the Foundation. Not even that he wants me to, not that he asked, or that I get any say. He fucking announced it as some goddamned joke of a promotion.”

  “So I guess I don’t have to ask how you feel about that,” she teased.

  He sank all the way into a crouch, wrists draped over his knees. “Useless. That’s how I’d feel.”

  Which just about broke her heart. Brooke dropped to her knees to put her arm around his wide shoulders. Water fountained behind them in an oxymoronic joyous burble. “Logan Marsh, you are the least useless man I’ve ever met. Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. That won’t fix anything.”

  “Dad wants to ground me, Brooke. No different than when Griff’s commander pulled him out of the sky for two weeks to punish him for being reckless.”

  “A promotion isn’t a punishment,” she said cautiously. “Couldn’t you still do good by being in charge of the whole thing?”

  “From behind a fucking desk? How am I supposed to save anyone’s life from behind a desk?”

  She understood. Logan was the man who needed a spear, a bow, a sword—or the modern equivalent—in his hand, ready to charge off and save the day. He was one hundred percent a selfless hero. Nobody told Lancelot to stop searching for the Grail and just listen to the complaints of his serfs. Nobody ordered Legolas to give up fighting Sauron and just sit around the elf kingdom combing his hair.

  It’d be a waste of his considerable talents. A waste of his bravery. Not to mention a waste of his years of experience.

  But she’d met Adrian Marsh. He loved his son. He’d poured his life into the Marsh Foundation and its worldwide disaster relief. Brooke couldn’t imagine him pushing for this change without a good reason. And certainly not to punish Logan. She put aside Logan’s frustration and anger and thought about how to make him see the other side of the argument.