Chapter 1

Madden

I love a Seattle summer. The weather is fucking perfect, the gardens are growing like gangbusters, and my dick enjoys a good breeze more than any other time of year.

I'm humming as I spread soil evenly across the backyard. The rest of our team has left with the excavator, and I'm giving it a last-minute level before we lay the turf tomorrow.

The business might only be a few years in, but we're growing, and one of the reasons is because I'm such a fucking perfectionist. It drives my best friend, Penn, wild, but what does he want me to do? Leave people to have shitty landscaping on their beautiful homes?

No can do. The gardens should be as much of a talking point as the house. It can make or break a frontage, and not enough people seem aware of that.

They want to lay any old grass and? —

My ears prick at the sound of tires on gravel from out the front of the house, and I check my watch.

Four o'clock.

The owners aren't supposed to be home for another half an hour.

With dawning realization, I look down at myself. Sweaty, filthy.

Naked.

Fuck .

It's not often I'll strip down at a job, but the two guys we contract for excavation know I'm a nudist and have been totally fine with me working in my birthday suit, so whenever the homeowners are out, so is my dick.

Penn's going to kill me.

Blah, blah liability. Creepy flasher. No one will want us on their jobs … in their homes …

My heartbeat picks up some more as I dart from one side of the yard to the other, but since there's nothing but dirt left, I'm getting the gut-clenching feeling that my clothes aren't here.

And as I strain my memory to figure out where I left them, I picture, vividly, my shorts flung over the seat of the truck the excavator left on.

There are footsteps inside. And voices. Getting closer.

And I'm fucking trapped in a seventy-by-fifty-foot cage.

Stress sweat is breaking out on my forehead and neck.

This will be fine. I'll reasonably and maturely explain that they're now forced to look at a man's penis, against their consent, because of an accident. A misplacement of garments.

Indecent exposure isn't something I've ever worried about before because first, it's not illegal in Seattle, and second, I'm not yet at the stage of my naturist life where I leave the house naked, and if I did, I have no interest in doing anything that falls under "lewd" or "obscene" in order to get arrested. Or a bad rating for our business.

A surprise egg-and-sausage attack in someone's own backyard though? The law doesn't specifically cover that.

Oversight on their behalf, I'm sure.

I'm all ready to play it off in an "I won't say anything if you don't" way, even though my gut is squirming so hard I might hurl, when I spot something that might just be my saving grace.

Their fucking dog kennel.

It's not huge, but it is Madden-sized, and with the landscaping happening, Fido has been relocated for the week.

The entrance is narrow-ish, so my legs go first, and it's a real panicked squirm as I wriggle my way inside. For one heart-stopping second, I think my shoulders are too wide, but with a desperate plea and a body covered in sweat, I make it.

I hold my breath as my heart pounds so aggressively I pull a Xander and wonder if this is a heart attack.

The back door opens, and the couple who own the house step outside. Penn has dealt with them for the most part, so other than the quick introduction I made this morning, I know next to nothing about them. And they know nothing about me.

Including the fact I'm folded over inside their fur baby's bedroom with my bits out.

Sweat runs down my back from the humidity in here, and the smell of dog is strong. Too strong.

Which, you know, is totally fine, considering I'm only going to be here for another eight hours until these guys go to sleep and I can hightail it out of here and go streaking down the road.

"Oh, wow," the woman says. "It looks so different already."

"I know. Does it look smaller to you?" the man asks.

"Maybe? Probably because it's all been cleared out. "

He makes a noise like he's thinking while I mentally beg them to go inside go insiiide.

"What was going on the left again?" he asks, and I close my eyes, head dropping forward against the wood. We've sent them all the renderings of how this thing will turn out. They know what's on the left. Can't they go inside and bone or something?

There are footsteps on the stairs right beside me.

My eyes snap open, and I turn toward the opening, ready to pass out at the sight of his shoe.

"Don't go out there," the woman calls. "They've got it all smooth."

"They haven't even finished it yet."

Well, I would have if someone didn't come home so goddamn early.

"Figures," the man mutters. "Head off early before they're even done for the day."

"Maybe they left to pick something up?" she suggests.

He grunts, obviously not happy, but I can't care about that right now. I need them to go so I can get the dog stench out of my nose and some fresh air into my lungs.

And clothes. Clothes would help too.

The shoe disappears, and I have this whole brain-spinning moment as the ridiculousness of what I'm doing catches up with me, and now I have to figure out how the hell I'm going to get out of this.

In hindsight, staying out there and having them find me working with my bum out was probably the smarter option. Too late to turn back now though.

My whole body is damp with sweat by the time they head back inside and the door closes behind them with a soft thump .

Right. First things first. I need my phone, which is in my bag on the other side of the house. If I can get out of here quietly, grab my phone and my water bottle, then I can dive back in here and get a plan into place.

I can't see the deck from my hidey-hole, so I wait as long as I can, straining my ears for noise, and once I'm sure enough time has passed to take a gamble, I ease my head out again.

Thankfully, there's no one there, so I hold my breath and wriggle my shoulders back through the gap.

I've almost got my arms out when I face-plant into the dirt. Urg. Fantastic. I spit it out, struggle free, then quickly clear the imprint with my foot while I brush off my face, and creep my way along the house.

The first thing I do once I reach my bag is drain my water bottle, and then I pull up my best friend Penn's number, crouch by the corner of the house, and hit Call.

I'm holding my breath while I wait for him to answer, and even though I know he's going to yell at me, I also know he'll do everything he can to help.

"Hey, all done?" he asks. He's at his other job right now since we still haven't gotten our business to a level where it can support us comfortably. Penn is our landscaping engineer who does all the computer work, while I'm the numpty with creative vision who does all the grunt work. It plays to our strengths, and since the grunt work generally takes longer, he has part-time hours for an interior design company on his days off.

It also helps him find leads for us as well.

"Umm," I whisper. "Done as in I can't do anything else today? Yes. Done everything I was supposed to? No."

There's a pause. "O … kay?"

"I might have gotten myself into a tiny bit of a predicament."

"Of course you did."

"The guys were here with the excavator—" I explain.

"As they should have been."

"The clients weren't home?— "

"Not liking where this is going …"

"And the guys might have taken off with my clothes, the clients are here, and I'm hiding in their backyard so that they don't see my willy."

The silence is even silenter.

"Don't judge me!" I whisper-shriek, drawing a small chuckle from him. The kind that makes my heart all blippy even when it's galloping with fear.

"I'm not, I'm not. It's just taking me a minute to work out how my day got to this moment."

I glance back up at the house. "Right. Well. You might want to take a moment when I'm not crouched in a stranger's yard with dirt all over my balls. Can you bring me some clothes?"

He hesitates. "I'm not supposed to finish up here for another half an hour."

"You can't leave me here for half an hour!"

"You really don't have any clothes there? Nothing?"

I remind myself that I need him to do something for me so now isn't the time to point out that he's asking stupid questions.

"I have nothing except my bag and my phone. Can you please figure something out?"

"What? None of your Bertha brothers available?"

I roll my eyes. "Penny …"

"Urg, fine. I'll be there. And for the love of my sanity, stay hidden ."

Stay hidden. Right. Back into the dog kennel, I go.

"Thanks, man."

He hums which is a combination of "you're welcome" and "why am I still putting up with you again" before he hangs up the phone, and I dart back into my hiding place.

I love Penn Jackson.

We've been best friends since high school, went to the same college on the East Coast, and then moved to Seattle and eventually combined our talents into this business. He's been there for me through my baseball injury, dealing with my parents, coming out, and while I embraced my calling as a nudist. It's been a process, but he's always had my back.

I sometimes worry that I get more out of our friendship than he does and that he'll get sick of me one day. I don't think I'd ever recover from that. I need Penn. He's my best friend.

I love him … too much.