Wanting It All: A Naked Men Novel (4 page)

“Yes, you can. I don’t want a website that only appeals to waifs and meth moms.”

Annabeth bobbled the set of bracelets she’d been trying to pull off a mannequin. “Summer, it is amazing you not just survive, but thrive in a customer service–oriented business with the way unadulterated truth flies out of your mouth.”

“Life’s too short to live any other way.” Summer’s red lips tightened into a thin line. “I know that for a fact.”

“Come on, Madison. Join me in being one of Forever Summer’s
real
women. It’ll be fun. An experience I’ll bet you never got in Alaska.”

True. And good things were supposed to happen in threes. On her first week in town, she’d met an amazing man, scored an awesome roommate with reasonable rent, and now had lucked into the nicest clothes she’d ever owned. Madison knew it was time to take what Fate handed her and enjoy all the goodness of her new life.

“I’ll do it. And I’ll definitely owe you more than just a photo shoot and a fashion show.”

“We can haggle later. For now, let’s get you into some of these outfits that’ll drive Knox crazy.”

Therein lay Madison’s confusion. “But I already have a second date with him.”

“Exactly.” Summer hustled her back to a dressing room, grabbing outfits on the way. Including a maxi dress in twenty shades of green that Madison suddenly, desperately wanted. “We’ve got to get you ready for it.”

Okay. She was on board with spending the evening trying on fabulous clothes with two new friends. With her mom dragging her hither and yon across the sparsely populated Alaskan Bush, Madison never had the chance to develop any strong friendships. Her heart-to-heart with Annabeth the previous night had been a joy and a revelation that true girlfriends were something else to be added to her must-get list in her new life.

But Madison still didn’t understand why they were pushing her so darn hard. Clearly there was something they knew…and weren’t telling her. “Why are you doing the hard sell on Knox? He’s smart, has a wry sense of humor, and is drop-dead handsome. I don’t think he needs you pimping for him.”

Summer and Annabeth exchanged a look. One that probably filled in the piece Madison was missing. Annabeth plopped down on the ladder-back chair painted in zebra stripes in the corner of the dressing room. “Nope. This push is all about you. You came literally all the way across the country to start a new life. I want your first experience with a D.C. man to be terrific.”

“Believe me, so do I. It’s one of the reasons I came out here.”

A snort mixed with a belly laugh rolled out of Annabeth. “Better men? You came to our stressed-out capital, where men are pasty from being locked in offices sixteen hours a day, to find
better
men? That’s funny. Most of the men in town are too focused on climbing some rung of the governmental ladder to even remember their date’s name. Let me assure you, Knox is an anomaly.”

“What about all those lumbersexuals in your neck of the woods?” Summer fanned herself, a little dreamy-eyed. “Muscled men in beards and flannel. They did a whole spread on them in
Cosmo
last fall.”

“A lumbersexual is a man living…oh, say here…and growing a beard to be ironic and wearing designer flannel. Actual lumberjacks? Not so sexy.”

Necessary to the economy, yes. Well muscled? Eh, about half of them. The other half hid that layer of muscle beneath several layers of beer and reindeer jerky fat. Not to mention that none of them she’d encountered had a clue as to what the word was for the metal band that holds an eraser on a pencil. Madison didn’t just want muscles. She wanted a man who exercised his brain like a muscle.

Summer clasped a hand to her chest. “Say it isn’t so. Don’t kill my dreams. At least not my naughty ones.”

Annabeth, however, jumped straight up out of her chair. “Wait. Just wait.” She shook a red-tipped finger at Madison. “You seriously came to D.C. to meet a man?”

“It was one of my top three reasons.” It was more of a three-way tie, as she felt all the reasons were a priority. To be truly happy in life, Madison believed you needed a good job, a family, and a forever home. Washington D.C. had the best potential to provide her all three. Once she found—and met for the first time—her brand-new-to-her half-brother.

Summer unzipped Madison’s skirt and handed her a pair of coral cropped pants to try on. “That’s sort of old-fashioned.”

That was the most polite comment of the many she’d received when divulging her Grand Plan. Her thesis advisor had flat out told her she was nuts. Her mom opined that she’d never find what she was looking for anywhere, so why bother leaving Alaska? And the woman who trimmed her hair right before moving had called her a backward, backwoods dream chaser. Not one of them had phased Madison, or caused her to have second thoughts. But she did appreciate Summer being so circumspect in her assessment.

“Actually, it’s pretty modern thinking, to my mind. I’ve figured out what makes me happy, and I’m going after it. I want to find a man who wants more out of life than fishing in solitude. I want to find a man who thinks the sun rises and sets on me. One who’ll give me lots of babies and still be convinced fifty years down the road that I’m the light of his life. I want a man who needs me. Who’ll plant himself somewhere with me.”

Summer and Annabeth exchanged glances in the mirror. Annabeth sank back onto the chair. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“Knox Davies is
not
that man. I thought you just wanted a fun hookup. Knox will wine and dine you, and, if the rumors are true, make you see fireworks before he’s even gotten his pants off. That’s where he excels.”

“Well, that and making money.” Summer tied a bow above Madison’s belly button with the tails of a white shirt. “He rakes in money as fast as he goes through women.”

To Madison’s comparative eye, everyone was rich who didn’t get paid in bear meat and mossberries, like her mother had and still did. Knox was her age. How wealthy could he really be? “Money doesn’t matter. Neither does his propensity for women-hopping.”

“But Madison, he’s a player, through and through. If you’re seriously looking for a man to give you a ring, you need to look somewhere else.”

“I’m not worried.”

Annabeth shook the tails of a scarf at her. “You’re going after the white whale here. Searching for a grail that doesn’t exist.”

“I’ve set my eye on Knox. I’m big on follow-through. He gives good date so far. So I’m going to go on another one with him, see what happens. If he’s not worthy of a future, at least he’ll be fun. His kisses proved that already.”

Summer gave a knowing nod. “Knox Davies is definitely the man for that job.”

“And if I decide that he is marriage material, well, I’ll make that happen.” Madison didn’t doubt it for a minute. Others might, but she knew she’d accomplish whatever she set her mind to. “Just you watch.”

“Oh, you can bet we’ll be watching,” Annabeth chortled.

It was hard for Knox to help Madison across the gangplank when so much of his concentration was on keeping his tongue from rolling to the floor like a cartoon character’s. She looked like a million bucks—and he should know. A pale blue sundress dipped low between her breasts, and then fell in folds to swing halfway down her thighs. That left a lot of leg exposed for him to ogle. If he could tear his gaze away from her creamy breasts. And the way her acres of sunlight-colored hair tumbled over her shoulders.

Good thing he had to busy himself with untying the ropes mooring them to the dock. It gave him a chance to recite the periodic table in his head. That always pulled the blood out of his pants and back up to his brain.

“Shouldn’t you let the crew handle those?”

“I am the crew. And the pilot. This is what you call a one-man operation.”

Madison turned in a circle on the teak deck, taking in the sleek lines of the thirty-four-foot Sea Ray yacht. “This isn’t a rowboat, Knox. Stop kidding around before you get in trouble.”

“No joke. I rented her for the afternoon. Since I’ve got my license, I’ll be your captain on this scenic cruise down the Potomac. Figured it’d be nicer to get to know each other uninterrupted.”

“Holy cow.”

Uh-oh. He’d thought their first date went well. So well that he’d pulled out all the stops for number two. Had he read her wrong? “Sorry. Is this weird? Would you rather be on a tourist boat with screaming kids and cheap box wine?”

“No. I mean, that’d be fine, too. This is definitely better.” She looked at the navy cushions plumped along the seating area on the foredeck, the silver ice bucket with condensation tracking down its sides, and the low vase of white flowers on the table. Then she lightly trailed her fingertips along the wooden railing. “I’m just surprised.”

God. Knowing her background, Knox hadn’t given a second thought to putting her on a boat. What if Madison was scared? Or scared of hurling? Or both? “I can jump off and grab some Dramamine before we go, if you’re worried. Haven’t you ever been on a boat before? I thought seaplanes and boats comprised a good portion of Alaska’s traffic.”

“They do. I’m good with boats. No seasickness or anything. I can probably drive one as well as you can. Just not a boat like this.” Madison shook her head. “It’s too much, Knox.” Disapproval coated her voice as thick as bilge water.

He put a hand on the small of her back and guided her to the wheelhouse. Women occasionally got overwhelmed when he put his wealth on display. That usually disappeared within about ten seconds, and then they rolled with it as if born to it. Knox had yet to meet a single one who had any trouble spending his money in great big handfuls. She’d undoubtedly change her tune as soon as they were under way.

“Rule number thirteen—there is no such thing as ‘too much.’ Not in my life.” Moving his hands over the controls, Knox piloted them away from the pier and eased into the pre-dinner rush hour of boat traffic on the Potomac.

Madison hovered right behind his shoulder. “Never? What about too many mosquito bites?”

So she was a pusher, huh? Determined to always find the loophole and be right? Well, so was he. “They’d be proof I was outdoors having a great time.”

“Too many beers?”

“Again, proof of a great time.” It was like she’d never talked to a man before. Nobody with a Y chromosome would admit to having too many beers. Ever.

“How about too many dates with the same woman?” she asked slyly.

Aha. Knox knew his reputation. He knew that half the women he dated already knew about it, and the other half either learned about it from web searches or their friends.

Sure, he moved through women fast. But none of them denied having one hell of a time while they were with him. He didn’t leave a trail of broken hearts, because he deliberately kept things light. Fast. He never gave anyone the time to even start to get her heart involved. That was how his particular brand of romance worked. And it worked just fine. Not a single complaint, so far.

Raising an arm, he pointed out the gleaming white columns of the Kennedy Center off the aft side. “You’ve been talking to people about me.”

“Yes.”

Knox admired her unapologetic acknowledgment. He far preferred a woman who was up front, who didn’t dance around the truth until you got dizzy. “Yet you came out with me anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Sure that’s smart?” he teased.

“I wouldn’t want to be judged on what anyone said about me. I figure I’ll give you a chance to impress me—or not—yourself, rather than decide through hearsay.”

Knox reached behind him to pull her flush against his side. “So the pressure’s on.”

“A little bit.”

The edge in her voice said it was considerably more than a little bit. Which was weird, right after her whole open-minded shtick. “How am I doing so far?”

Her arms raised, and then fluttered down till her hands flattened her skirt. “There’s this whole obvious wealth thing I’m going to have to overlook.”

Knox shoved his sunglasses onto the top of his head to get a better look at her golden brown eyes. Because she sounded deadly serious. Which didn’t add up for him at all. Money was an asset. It fixed a whole hell of a lot of things. And he happened to be damn proud of how hard he’d worked to amass it. “You don’t see it as a plus?”

“Not entirely. I
am
wondering if you did all this in the hopes that my panties would spontaneously melt off my body as soon as my eyes finished bugging out at the extravagance.”

Knox didn’t get it. Not one bit. He wasn’t asking her to sweat through a ten-mile hike, or help build a house with Habitat for Humanity, like one of Riley’s dates had conned him into. How did he get into trouble for treating Madison so well? “You’re upset.”

“Yes. A little bit,” she amended. “If my panties come off, I want it to be my choice. I don’t want it to be because you hustled them off of me.”

He cut the power. Bit back his rising temper. Because that was damned insulting. Slowly, Knox said, “I don’t need to hustle a woman to get her into bed.”

“Then why are you?”

Maddening. Infuriating. Every bit as much as she was beautiful. Why was she so damn certain he had an ulterior motive for spoiling her? Had all her previous dates been jerks?

Knox took her hand. “Look, Madison, I had a great time with you. Cards on the table, it was one of the best dates I’ve had in a long time. On top of that, you’re beautiful in a totally different way from the stick-figure, fashion-obsessed types who fill these streets. So yeah, I want to sleep with you. But not until we get there. Two dates, five—whatever it takes.”

Jerking her hand away, she stabbed him in the chest with her index finger. “Then why the hard sell?”

“Because I had such a great fucking time with you!” Exasperated and probably just as pissed off now as she was, Knox shoved his hand through his hair. But he’d forgotten the sunglasses perched up there, and they flew right overboard. Great. “Yes, I wanted to impress you. To give you a date that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.” He threw an arm out toward the Lincoln Memorial as they drifted near it. “I thought I’d show you some iconic sights at sunset, and yeah, kiss you and then some. Just to put a smile on your face. Not to pool your panties on the deck.”

Those snapping eyes cooled, and then warmed again. Madison dipped her head a little, and gave him a winsome smile. “That’s actually very sweet.”

The abrupt turnaround surprised him. He sure didn’t mind, though. Nothing Knox hated more than a pouter. “Look, I can afford it. No more skin off my nose than if we grabbed pretzels off the food trucks on Constitution Avenue.” Time to reboot this date. “Can you wipe that chip off your shoulder about this boat and simply enjoy it?”

“Mostly. I believe that you just wanted to spoil me. Truly.” Then she waggled a hand side-to-side between them. “I’m still a little put off that you’d think this all would matter to me. That I’d be swept away by its grandeur.”

“Have you got some moral objection to flowers, crab cakes, and champagne?”

“Not at all.” Madison sank onto the curved white leather banquette behind the captain’s chair. “The thing is, whether you’re rich or poor shouldn’t define who you are. I don’t care to discover your bank balance. I want to know who you are on the inside.”

Knox flicked the switch to power the boat up again and steered them around to the Virginia side of Theodore Roosevelt Island. It was out of the traffic lane, so boats didn’t come there often. Then he dropped the anchor. Without speaking, Knox took her hand and led her back outside to the table with flowers. Poured them each a flute of champagne.

Out of ways to stall, Knox looked her square in the eyes. The ones that drew him in like a fly stuck in their honeyed color. “What if I told you that being rich absolutely defines who I am?”

Madison started to answer. Caught what had to be the
This is no joke
expression on his face and closed her mouth. She took another second to think through her answer. “I’d ask for an explanation.”

They had covered the whole favorites thing—music, movies, books—on their first date. Guess the second date was the belly-flop-into-the-deep-shit date. At least with Madison. Which was unusual. Sure, people asked him how he got rich. But nobody ever asked Knox why being rich mattered to him. Of course, everything with Madison seemed to be a little unusual.

“Well, I grew up poor. Really poor. School lunches were my only meal of the day on the really bad weeks. My mom worked, all the time. But having me when she was just a teenager kept her from college, and kept her from getting a job that would let her get ahead. I was the scholarship kid who got hand-me-down clothes from my friends’ parents.”

Madison laid a soft hand right above his watch. His Breitling, a four-thousand-dollar watch that probably didn’t impress her even the slightest. “My mom’s a bush doctor. Her patients rarely paid in cash. Lots of it was the barter system. Food, supplies for whatever house we rented that month, and sometimes hand-me-down clothes. Looks like we’ve got more in common than we realized.”

“Guess so.” Weird, sharing that with somebody. Knox had spent the first half of his life being ridiculed for being poor, and the second half of his life doing everything possible to expunge the memory of those days. It was rare he thought about it, let alone mentioned it. “Although I prefer our mutual passion for pepperoni and pineapple pizza.”

“So if you started out with no money, you see why it doesn’t matter.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong. That’s
exactly
why it matters more than anything. I can’t go back to those days. Every decision I make is based on whether or not it’ll be profitable. I started working back in high school. Not to make cash to take dates to the movies, or buy trendy sneakers. I did it to help my mom with the rent and the groceries. A teenage boy running his ass off on a soccer team eats twice as much.”

Madison took his hand. The soft weight made it a little easier to share the rarely told story. She curled her fingertips just beneath the edge of his palm. Knox looked down at their paired hands. Her paleness contrasted sharply against his summer tan. It made him think of her probably being the same creamy shade over her entire body. It made him think of how badly he wanted to taste that creaminess for himself. Everywhere.

“What did you do?” she asked in a quiet voice.

He appreciated the small break she’d given him before leading him back on track. “Tutored the basketball team and the football team. Wrote more than a few papers for slackers who didn’t want to be bothered to do it themselves.”

“You cheated?”

He could’ve easily stolen from his über-wealthy classmates and pawned it all. He’d been approached more than once to move drugs, as his spindly size back then would have kept him under any cop’s radar. There’d been other options open, but Knox had made sure to choose the one that exercised his brain. And hurt the fewest. It eased his guilt, as did paying for groceries every week.

“I didn’t cheat. I helped others cheat. Never more than once, and never at my school. I didn’t hit my growth spurt until senior year, so I was too little to make good money on construction. I had to work with the only asset I had: my brain. My mom already worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads. I couldn’t just sit back and watch her work herself to death.” Knox gave his head a hard, swift shake. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to drop all that on you.”

“You adore your mom, don’t you?”

“I owe her everything. She gave up her life for me. Because she
wanted
me. Now I work hard to pay her back. Bought her a house. Send her anyplace she wants to go whenever the fancy strikes her.” Shit. He’d pretty much snapped those words out like pellets from a paintball gun. Knox took a deep breath. “When I was in college I wrote a hacker’s guide to a popular video game. It sold big. Still does, to this day. You know what I did with my first check from that? I took Mom to a salon. It was the first haircut she hadn’t given herself since I was born.”

Tears balanced along Madison’s long lashes. She lunged for the napkin on the table. “Damn it, Knox, that’s just heartbreaking.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing for your life story. I’m touched, is all. I understand why you don’t want to go back to being poor.” She sniffled. Dabbed beneath her eyes in that weird way women had instead of just wiping at the wetness like a guy. “So you helped a whole bunch of people cheat on a video game.”

Damn, but she pushed his buttons. Knox grinned. “You’re a hard-ass, aren’t you?”

“Just keeping the facts straight.” Madison tucked her feet up beneath her on the cushions. “Then what happened?”

Lots of late nights banging his head against the wall. Lots of forays down avenues that got him nowhere. Until a professor at MIT told him to stop trying to think like everyone else, and think about what interested him. To have fun with the idea, the process. That sent him down a whole different path.

“I discovered a flair for making things that people don’t even realize they need. High-end widgets and designs that bigger companies pay for hand over fist. I find something that interests me, figure out how to make the next leap with it, and start a company. When I get bored, I sell it off to a bigger fish and move on to something new. Because when I’m bored, my brain might as well be a stagnant pond. Nothing moves.” He tapped his temple. “The moneymaker’s in here, and it has to stay active to make all the money.”