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 sh
ould 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.”
Riley slammed a bucket into the sink and turned on the water. “They can sort it out—or not—themselves. Why do you have to get involved? Why do you have to risk your friendship with Logan? Hell, with all of us?”
“Because for once?” Knox paused. He’d had three nights to sort out his feelings and gotten pretty much nowhere. Mostly because he’d concentrated on work to avoid working through them. “This thing with Madison? This relationship has gone way beyond sex. Or even dating.”
“Like you’d know. You with the ‘No Leftovers’ policy,” Riley taunted, putting the words in quotation marks with his hands. “Being with the same woman for a month doesn’t make it special. It barely makes you average.”
Knox deserved every jibe they could throw at him. It didn’t change these new feelings he sure as hell didn’t know how to deal with. “I’m crazy about Madison. She matters. How she feels, when she’s hurt, it all matters. And I know it shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t want my best friend’s little sister.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Josh said grimly.
“Because look what happens when you go there.” Riley rolled up his sleeves. “You’ve got to choose between your best friend…and his little sister. You’re fucked. You basically strapped on an emotional double-headed dildo and screwed yourself. Without lubing up first.”
Scrubbing his palms over his eyes, Josh groaned. “Why would you go and put that image in my head?”
“To make a point. To show Knox there’s no way to resolve this well. You ripped Logan a new one. That’s unacceptable. So just don’t let this thing with Madison go any further. Period. Should be easy for you. She’s way past the expiration date for your bed.”
Did they really imagine he hadn’t thought of that? That with Knox’s genius level IQ and double degrees from MIT he hadn’t realized that he’d walked into and set up freaking camp in the middle of a minefield?
“I’ve been trying not to. Trying to keep it simple. Prepping to work through all these feelings and work them out of my system before Logan ever gets back. I told her from the start that I wouldn’t commit. That I wouldn’t stick with her a season, let alone forever.” God, this tin can on wheels gave him no room to pace. All the words, the feelings he didn’t know how to spit out, jittered like spiders on his nerves. “But Madison got under my skin. I can’t shake how much I want her, need her. Not for sex. Just…I want her in my life.”
Riley slapped off the water with enough force to send the faucet spinning to the side. Something else to fix before tomorrow. “Damn it, Knox. There you go again. Wanting it all, just like always. Except this time, it won’t work.”
“Ry’s right.” Josh planted his feet wide. Crossed his arms. “What will ever be enough for you?”
He owed them an honest answer. “I don’t know.”
How did you shake your greatest childhood phobia? Yeah, he’d had more than his fair share of nightmares about burning alive after escaping from that fiery bus in the Alps. An equal number where he lost all of his friends in various and sundry horrible, mutilated deaths. But Knox’s biggest fear, the one that didn’t wake him up in a cold sweat, but rather didn’t let him fall asleep in the first place, was of not having enough money.
Not being able to give his mom everything she wanted. Not being able to grab any- and everything he wanted. They were right. On paper, Knox had enough. Had, in fact, enough for several lifetimes. So what would be enough? What was he still reaching for?
“I’m not saying I agree with this bug Madison planted in your ear about not selling the company. But it’s another fine example.” Riley held up his right hand and ticked off points on his fingers. “You’ve got more money than you and your mom could spend in three lifetimes. You’ve got the houses, the cars, the clothes, the toys. You’re selling the company to turn a quick dollar. But then what? What would happen if you kept it? Tried to grow something all the way to full flower for once, instead of just snipping it at the bud?”
Why did they have to keep poking at him? Knox shot Ry a steely glare. “We’re talking flowers now? Did Jerry lay out panties and a bra for you to wear today, too?”
“I mean, what if, for freaking once, you tried giving something back.”
Fine. Instead of snapping, Knox took a moment to honestly think about what Josh and Ry were proposing. He didn’t hate it. In theory. “I’m okay with giving away, giving back. I think. There’d just have to be a damned good reason.”
“You’ve got the money, Knox. And you’ve got us. But if you pick Madison—who I guarantee won’t stick, ’cause you don’t bother to make that happen—then there’s a good chance you’ll lose Logan. Break up our circle. How is that possibl
y worth it?”
“Decide what you really want, Knox.” Josh held up a hand. “And the answer can’t be ‘all of the above.’ ”
Chapter 22
Madison looked down at her phone. Scrolled through the seventeenth version of the email she’d been crafting for the last four days. There simply weren’t any ways left to rearrange the same words that she hadn’t tried at this point. What started out as thoughtful mulling had morphed into flat-out stalling, about five versions ago.
She smoothed her tan skirt. Straightened the collar of her black cotton blouse. Then squinted her eyes shut. How ridiculous. It was an email to her brother, not a video message. Logan couldn’t see her. Still, it was a big moment. Momentous. Big. Aaaaand, there she went stalling again.
The first email she’d sent him had mattered, of course. But it had been a reach-out to a stranger. This email was different. This was an actual conversation. Now Madison knew what Logan sounded like. She could picture—albeit in a limited way—what his facial expressions might be as he read it.
Stalling. Sick of herself, Madison stabbed the send icon with her index finger. Dropped the phone onto the leather seat. A second later, she snatched it back up. Silence, the quiet to reflect on everything she’d just set in motion, was not what she needed right now. She dialed home.
“I’m running out the door in five to head to work. What’s up?”
Madison absolutely adored the way Annabeth didn’t bother to say hello to her on the phone. She loved that they were comfortable enough with each other, close enough, that social niceties could be skipped over. Loved how sisterly it felt. “I sent the email to Logan.”
“Which one? Version seven that you liked, or version fourteen that I preferred? Notice I’m automatically assuming you ignored Summer’s vote for version six. That was weak. Too gushy-girly-gag-me.”
Madison swallowed her giggle of agreement. It felt disloyal to Summer. “None of the above. I enlisted some professional help to come up with the final version seventeen.”
“Professional…oh. You asked Chloe,” Annabeth said flatly.
Wanting It All: A Naked Men Novel Page 25
