Page 1 of Just Bromantically Invested

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 thatfalls 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.

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