Chapter 6

Logan shifted from foot to foot on the scarred linoleum. No matter where he landed in the world, going through customs sucked. There was always a line, always a fuck-ton of stupid people, and he always would come close to wishing he was anywhere else, including stuck in quicksand (been there, done that, and escaped before he’d sunk any deeper than his crotch). At least he got a good story out of quicksand to impress chicks. Nobody wanted to sit through his airport bitching.

Dulles International had air-conditioning. That made it better than at least half the airports he’d visited. But being so close to his destination and yet stopped from getting there was fucking torture. Especially after the two extra countries he’d hit in his leapfrogging flights since leaving Dominica, trying to evade the remnants of Hurricane Danielle.

He shuffled half a step forward with the rest of the line. Great. At this rate he might get lucky enough to meet his sister before she had grandchildren. Shit. Did Madison already have kids? Just because she was letting Knox poke at her didn’t automatically mean she was rug-rat free.

Huh. It’d be cool to be an uncle. To take the kids to the ballpark. Teach ’em how to sled down Capitol Hill. Maybe hit one of those giant corn maze things at Halloween up near Frederick. Then he’d have an excuse to eat a candy apple without feeling like a douche.

What the fuck? Logan almost dropped his duffel. The only thing that stopped him was not wanting to take any chance of alerting the customs agents to his existence. Reality check. Madison might still be pissed at him. After all, she turned down his offer to get to know him while on an all-expenses-paid vacation. Who did that? Unless she was harboring a serious grudge over the way he’d iced her out during their first conversation…

Logan gulped the water he’d flirted from the flight attendant as they deplaned. Maybe Madison wouldn’t like him. All he knew about her was that she was from Alaska. What kind of man was she used to, up there? Yeah, he could build a dam and frame a house and even set a broken leg if there wasn’t someone more qualified around. But he couldn’t wrestle a walrus or shoot a bear. He could snowshoe. Was that enough? It was only July 24. Would they have to wait until the next January blizzard to actually bond?

Shit. Too many hours on too many planes made him antsy. Itchy. Cranky. Unsettled. Hell, he’d been unsettled ever since the phone call from Knox announcing the surprise addition of a twenty-four-year-old bouncing baby sister to his life. But now he was close to clawing out of his skin.

No use beating around the bush. It was Brooke. She was the rash on his subconscious.

Or rather, leaving Brooke the way he had.

Funny how they’d picked up right where they’d left off almost ten years ago. Easily slipped back into teasing and talking like the good friends they always had been. Connecting in a way he did anymore only with the ACSs. And given the short amount of time he spent in the States, that was too rare for his liking.

Months at a stretch on a site meant being too exhausted to talk about much more than the basics of Are we out of TP yet? and Hey, my fourth blister in a day just popped. Months away meant drifting apart from a lot of his friends. He’d soaked up Brooke and her sweet smile like a sponge dropped into a freaking reservoir.

So yeah, he’d hated leaving her in a rush. The hurricane gave Logan an excuse to dial back his focus on getting home and how the hell to meet Madison. Being with Brooke was something out of time, in a crazy magical place. If he had to be honest with himself, he hadn’t been near ready for that time with her to end.

Life charged forward, ready or not. He’d sure learned that in disaster zone after disaster zone. Shit happened. You couldn’t plan for it. Couldn’t prepare for it. Could only deal with it. That’s where he was now.

The toddler behind him threw himself at Logan’s legs for the nine thousandth time since getting into line. At this point, the obnoxious kid couldn’t make his mood any worse.

Meeting Madison had to be like…like what? Going to the dentist. You dreaded it, but…Ah, nope, you still felt like crap after. Fucking hygienists always went after his gums like they were working on commission for his winces. Thinking about meeting Madison had to be worse than just getting it over with. Like a flu shot. Yeah. You dreaded it, it hurt, but then you knew you wouldn’t feel like a walking corpse that year, so it ultimately counted as a win.

Worrying about how and when and where…“Fuck,” he said under his breath. No way could Logan meet her in his present condition. Since he probably still smelled like sex. And shit if he wasn’t tempted to sniff at his arm to see if it still smelled like Brooke.

First impressions mattered. Especially when you were forced to wait twenty-four years to make them. So a shower was in order. First. Fresh clothes. Maybe even borrow some of Knox’s snazzy duds before heading…

“Fuck,” he said again. This time the white-haired woman in front of him turned around and scowled before walking over and handing her passport to the customs agent. Guess that one hadn’t been so much under his breath.

Head where? All he had from Madison was an email address. Which meant opening up his phone and enabling Wi-Fi for the first time since he’d bought it five time zones ago. That’d bring a fuck-ton of messages flooding into his in-box. With one finger, he turned on the phone and started the Wi-Fi.

By the time the agent was giving him the head-to-toe hairy eyeball, his phone was dinging every half second with notifications. Great. Practically sounded like a bomb timer. Just what he needed in an international airport. Logan stuffed his passport in his shirt pocket with a sincere thank-you—because those guys truly had a shit job and didn’t deserve the attitude everyone threw at them—and hot-footed it out of there. The line at the taxi stand gave him the chance to glance down at whatever blew up his phone. A jillion and two emails.

And a calendar notification.

Of the weekly Naked Men podcast taping, starting in an hour.

Oh, yeah. He could let out all his aggression on Knox and wrangle Madison’s address out of him at the same time. Perfect. Their audience expected real and honest. “Naked” thoughts and feelings exposed to the world. Well, they were about to get a metric shit ton of the way Logan honestly felt about Knox—one of his best friends—fucking his baby sister.

Logan pushed through the front door of Satellite Entertainment Radio hard enough to bounce it off the exposed brick wall. Too bad. He was a man on a mission. A mission forgotten for at least three whole seconds as he took in the bigger-than-life-sized poster of his four best friends covering the entire wall behind the reception desk. Along the top it said Turn on the Naked Men.

What the ever-loving fuck?

Yeah, he’d easily put that in his top three things he’d never expected to see. Right up there next to a Red Sox first baseman wearing a Yankees cap in the off-season and the Chicago Cubs holding a World Series trophy. They looked like they belonged in an ad for overpriced vodka: all in dress pants and open-necked shirts and laughing at some joke. Or laughing at themselves for being in the stupid ad in the first place.

They’d avoided press like the plague since the accident. However, they had no trouble opening up on their own blog. The key? They talked about what they wanted to on the blog. They didn’t let parasitic paparazzi dig in and ask questions about stuff that none of them wanted to share. Plus, they didn’t use their last names on the blog. Sure, it wasn’t a state secret, but they kept it low key enough to not get very many comments. But this? This was a one-eighty.

And why the hell wasn’t he on the poster?

“Where are they?” he asked the skinny dude with dark skin behind the desk.

Easy to tell he was back in D.C. The guy didn’t look phased by his angry tone and undoubtedly angrier glare. He just swiveled the chair to smile at the poster. Then he swiveled back, lifted an eyebrow, and said, “In my dreams, every night.”

If he’d eaten in the last day, Logan would’ve thrown up a little in his mouth. The ACSs starring in wet dreams? No. A million times no. They were his brothers, not sex objects. This, this was reason number eighty-seven why they’d avoided doing press. “Good luck with that. But I mean, where are they right now? Aren’t they scheduled to be here?”

That got him a nod. “They’re here. All on time, for once. Up in their studio on the third floor. But they’re taping. You can’t go up there.”

“I go where they go,” Logan said grimly. Even if it meant slapping his face next to theirs on the side of a bus. “Always have, always will.”

Realization washed across the younger man’s face. “OMG! Are you the fifth Naked Man?”

“Yes. Although we may be down to four again by the time I get finished up there.” Logan took the futuristic clear stairs two at a time. Yeah, he relied on the chrome bannister more than he would’ve normally, but he was running on fumes and adrenaline at this point.

The bright red light made it easy to spot the studio. That and the giant glass wall that showed him Griffin Montgomery, Knox Davies, Josh Hardwick, and Riley Ness kicked back in leather desk chairs at the round table. Logan felt the same punch of relief he’d felt that day in the Alps coming across them in the snow. Thanks to a ritual they’d cobbled together from Indian mythology and horror movies (that hurt way more than any of them had anticipated), they’d been actual blood brothers for more than a decade. Now, back with them, he was finally home.

As quietly as possible, Logan turned the knob and slipped into the studio. A blond woman who was a dead ringer for a supermodel shot out of her seat. Gesticulated wildly behind another wall of glass that must front the control room. She probably didn’t like anyone interrupting the podcast. But he belonged. Right here.

Griff spotted him first. Probably with that eagle-eye he used as a Coast Guard rescue pilot. He half rose from his seat. Hinged at the waist to keep his mouth right on the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this podcast to make a very special introduction. Our wandering brother is back in the fold. Please welcome the fifth Naked Man, Logan Marsh!”

The room filled with the squeaks of four chairs shoving back simultaneously as all the ACSs jumped up. They sacked him like he was a quarterback in the final seconds of the Super Bowl, at fourth and goal. And Christ, four grown men all over six feet dog-piled on top of him made it impossible to breathe. Didn’t stop him from laughing and backslapping everyone.

Riley was the first to get to his feet. He extended one hand to pull Logan off the floor while smoothing his dark hair with the other. Even when off-duty from the NTSB, Ry kept himself pulled together tighter than a rubber-band ball. “About time you came home. We missed you.”

“Missed you guys, too.”

Josh drilled an elbow into the stain in Logan’s shirt he didn’t remember getting. Or at least, he didn’t remember which country he’d been in when he’d gotten it. “You look like four-day-old crap on toast.”

“Really? On toast? You had to go there?” Logan laughed. Laughed because it was so damned normal—like he’d never left. Josh ran his own food truck. Somehow he managed to work food into just about every conversation. Even when it didn’t belong.

A muted thump on the glass had all their heads turning. The frantic-looking blond chick held up a paper that said STILL LIVE in big letters.

Shit.

Logan didn’t realize the podcast went out live. He figured they taped it, if for no other reason than to bleep out all of Josh’s cussing. That’s why he hadn’t given a second thought to running straight in.

Griff propelled Logan into an empty chair at the round table. “Sorry if the sound went haywire there, folks. We’re back in front of the mics now, so you won’t miss a single second of Logan Marsh’s first official podcast.”

“You’ll also be up close and personal to listen to us ream him out for staying off the grid for so long,” Riley added, retucking his white polo before taking his seat.

They hounded him every time he came home. They were proud of Logan’s work. Almost as proud, coincidentally, as they were annoyed that he didn’t bother to stay in touch. Not just at disaster sites, which was pretty damned excusable, in his book. But after. When he took his time to shake off the mission and clear his head.

He’d never admitted as much to them about why he needed the middle-of-nowhere alone time as he had to Brooke. Honestly? Logan didn’t want them to think of him as a pussy for letting all the death and suffering get to him. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn’t. But more importantly, he also didn’t want any of his shit to rub off on them. To drag them down into the darkness he worked in, day in and day out. Logan never came home until there was zero chance he might bring down the mood of the house.

Except this time.

“Yeah—you’re definitely paying for dinner for all of us as punishment.” Josh held up one hand to ward off Logan’s inevitable complaint, and then flipped it palm up. “But you get to pick the spot. You were living off the dry cardboard that’s MREs, right? Gotta get you back into the swing of real food. What have you missed the most? Burgers? Sushi? My famous Big Tex melt? The one with barbecued brisket, mac-n-cheese, jack, and avocado?”

“You guys.” Shit a fucking brick. If he kept up like this, the ACSs would ask him where he stowed his purse and lipstick. What a girly thing to say. The answer had slipped out without any thought. Yeah, Logan missed hot showers, cold beer, eight channels of twenty-four/seven sports. Yeah, Josh’s menu at his food truck, the Capitol Grilled, was off the hook. No, it did not at all suck when their butler, Jerry, took care of sending out their dry cleaning.

But the God’s honest truth was that when Logan was gone for months at a time, he always had a little pocket of fear in his heart that he’d lose the guys. Just like he thought he’d lost them ten years ago. He hated it, but he couldn’t make it go away. Gave up trying three therapists ago. Right after all three called it PTSD, topping off a fear of abandonment.

Which was utter bullshit. Nothing happened to him in the Alps. A long walk. A broken wrist. Big fucking deal. He didn’t watch anyone die. He didn’t spend three days assuming he was going to die, like the other guys had. Logan didn’t accept the diagnosis of PTSD because there was nothing traumatic to be stressed about. Not like the others. No comparison.

Griff snagged a bottle of water from the mini-fridge in the corner and passed it to Logan. “Damn it, Marsh, we missed you, too. A lot’s been going on here.”

“That’s Griffin’s way of glossing over the fact that he’s in love,” smirked Josh.

Wow. That was big news. None of them were serious-relationship types. Their house, an enormous rehabbed rectory, basically had a revolving door where women were concerned. Each of the eight bathrooms held a crystal bowl filled with a half dozen condoms instead of potpourri. “For real?”

“He’s permanently off the active roster. No longer available for wingman service. Except, of course, when the Coast Guard requires him to be an actual wing man.” There went Ry, being a stickler for detail, like always.

“Grab on to your jock strap, Logan—he even bought her a ring,” Josh continued. “The only problem is that Chloe hasn’t decided to use it yet.”

Griff’s hand fisted on his own bottle of water, making the plastic squeal. “You know, we’re still on the air, Hardwick. How about you stop sharing so damn much that has nothing to do with you?”

Wait—what? Did that mean Griff had gone all the way and proposed? And the woman was holding out? On a freaking bona fide hero of a rescue pilot? Logan had to meet this woman. Nobody ever managed to tie the easygoing Griff up in knots.

All wide-eyed innocence, Josh insisted, “I’m just trying to catch Logan up. Give him the download on all the District doings.”

“Save the highlights for dinner.” Griff tapped the mic menacingly. “Or else I’ll tell the world how your date ended last Thursday night. The one with the trick handcuffs Jerry had to saw off your—”

“All right already. Someone else take over filling in Logan.”

He’d better get Josh off the hot seat. But Logan couldn’t wait to hear how that story ended. “Griff, are you sure? Is this woman really it?”

“Yeah.” The blond man’s face softened all over, like a candy bar left out in the sun. A little self-consciously, he tugged at the collar of his Washington Nationals jersey. “Chloe’s amazing. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”

“Okay. Sure. Let’s do that.” Logan had trouble wrapping his head around it. Still game, though.

Riley cleared his throat. “You’ve been out of touch for exactly three months, one week, and six days. Are we going to have to implant a chip in you like dogs wear just to keep tabs on you?”

“I’m sure Knox could invent one before the appetizers hit the table tonight,” joked Josh.

Knox. Oh, him. The dark-haired silent man lurking in the corner. His best friend. The one who hadn’t said a single word to him since the initial scrum of a greeting. The only one of them who hadn’t taken a seat in front of a microphone.

Knox. The reason he’d barged in here, in the middle of a live podcast. The man who’d betrayed him in a way Logan hadn’t even thought possible before a week ago. Joking with the guys, pretending there wasn’t an overarching reason why he’d hightailed it off a site before the job was done? Not gonna happen. They had shit to deal with first.

Drumming his fingertips on the table, Logan said, “I hear Knox is too busy banging my baby sister to invent anything.”

Aaaand…mic drop. If he’d been holding it, anyway, instead of them being on a moveable crane-like thing coming out of the ceiling.

If they hadn’t been in a soundproofed room, Logan would’ve said he heard nothing but crickets for probably way the hell too long for live air. Riley looked shocked. Griff’s mouth tightened as he looked down at his sneakers. Finally, Josh pulled his mic closer and said in a low tone, “So I guess that means you don’t need to be caught up on the other big news…”

Logan swiveled to look at Knox. Because the pussy wouldn’t come around and meet his eyes or say anything. “You’re the guy chock-full of the ten-dollar vocabulary words, Davies. How about you pick a few and try them on for size?”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he murmured.

“Too. Fucking. Bad.”

Knox jammed his hands in the pockets of what was, for him, Sunday casual—yellow shorts and a dark blue shirt with a freaking pale blue tie. A tie. With shorts. For fuck’s sake. His roommate would strap on a raccoon as a bolo tie if someone called it high fashion. “I’m serious, Logan. I know we have some shit to work out, but—”

Nope. Not gonna listen to him try to weasel his way out of a perfectly legitimate fight. “Don’t candy coat it. Did you or did you not sleep with my baby sister?”

“I didn’t know Madison was your—”

Logan tightened his grip on the arms of the chair. “Did you?”

A shallow, shameful head dip that said way more than the single word that followed. “Yes.”

At least he owned it. “Did you bang her after you found out she’s my baby sister?”

“Yes, but—”

“Are you still banging her?”

Knox’s head jerked back up. “Hey. Stop saying that I banged her.”

“This is satellite radio. No bleeps,” interjected Riley. “Anything goes.” Amazing the guy didn’t have laminated rule sheets on the table.

Even better. Because he figured the shit was going down in the next few minutes. Having never fought with his best friend before, Logan wasn’t so sure he could keep it PG-rated. “So, Knox—are you still fucking her?”

“Enough,” Knox ground out in a voice full of gravel. “Have some respect for Madison.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Logan had had it. He launched himself out of the chair, turning to face Knox head-on. “After the way you treated her, you really think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to respect?”

“You haven’t been here. You don’t have clue one as to how I treat her. Plus, you’ve watched me with women for years. You know I treat them well. The best restaurants. Expensive gifts. Nobody ever walks away mad or unsatisfied.”

“Those are other women. They aren’t my baby sister. Yeah, I know how you treat women. You treat them like fucking tissues. You blindly grab, use, toss away.” Now Logan would make Knox cop to the full horror of what he’d done. “Didn’t you get named the Washingtonian’s bachelor three years running? Don’t you have a map almost filled in with women you’ve fucked from every state? Didn’t we get you stock in a condom company because you were buying them in bulk?”

Josh held up one hand. “To be fair, those were for the whole house. Not just for Knox.”

Logan whipped around faster than an angry sidewinder in Baja. “You really want in on this, Hardwick?”

This time Josh raised both hands, as if Logan were holding him at gunpoint. “Nope. Just keeping things straight for the listeners.”

“Josh. Shut the hell up already,” Griff ordered.

Pointing a finger of warning, Knox said, “I treated other women like that. Not Madison.”

“Why should I believe you? You’re so full of respect all of a sudden? When you pull the ultimate dick move and fuck your best friend’s sister?”

“I told you not to talk like that about her.” Knox took one step forward, kept his weight on his front leg exactly the way Logan had taught him, and threw a right hook that connected with Logan’s cheekbone and eye socket.

The part of him that had spent a solid six months working combinations with Knox in their high school weight room felt pride at the perfect execution. The rest of him just felt an explosion of heat, followed by throbbing pain. Logan saw stars for a couple of seconds. He used those seconds to stumble forward and grab Knox by the shoulders.

Surprise—and an extra ten pounds of muscle that showed the difference between the computer nerd and the guy who lifted rocks every damned day—helped him to toss Knox onto the table. It shuddered under the impact. The other ACSs sprang to their feet. Chairs skittered to hit the walls.

“You picked pussy over our friendship,” Logan bellowed as he delivered a solid uppercut to the bottom of Knox’s jaw. It hurt his knuckles. The impact zinged pain up his arm. It was totally worth it. He heard the door slam open. Dimly registered Griff yelling at them to cut it the fuck out.

On a grunt, Knox managed to roll them off the table to thud onto the floor. “I’m in love with her, you asshole.”

“What?” Surprise numbed Logan’s whole body better than Novacain. He watched Josh pull Knox off of him as Riley yanked him to his feet. The hot blonde from the control room stood there, hands on her hips and mouth agape.

Griff got right up in her face. Eyes as dark as the hurricane had been over Dominica, he thundered, “This—this—is what you want to stream live in HD? Onto freaking eighty-five-inch plasma TVs? Might want to rethink that, Lara.”

Knox swiped at the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “I love her. She’s wearing a three-carat engagement ring on her finger right now. I’m sorry about the way it all unfolded, but we’re getting married. Period. You’re going to have to deal with this.”

Never in a million years, in any possible scenario, would Logan have imagined that his best friend with the No-Leftovers policy toward women would be the first of them to get engaged. Or that he could even say the word love without breaking into hives. It was the ultimate blindside.

“You’re marrying my baby sister? The one I haven’t even met yet?”

“Yeah. And you’re damn well not going to for a while.” He shook off Josh to point at Logan with one arm. “Don’t you dare go near Madison until you cool down. Until you can say my name to her without going ballistic. She’s got this notion in her head that you’re perfect. That you’re the brother of her dreams. Don’t you go breaking her heart.”

Logan looked around. Nobody else seemed surprised at the news. So they’d all known. They’d let him shoot his mouth off, bloody Knox’s lip, and look like an idiot.

Unbelievable.

Elbowing Riley aside, Logan walked out of the room without a word. Because he didn’t know up from down, right from wrong, if he was beating up his best friend. And he sure as hell didn’t know what to say.