Deliciously Obedient

  Deliciously Obedient

  by Julia Kent

  Copyright © 2014 by Julia Kent

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

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  Chapter One

  If Lydia thought that coming home from Iceland would solve all of her problems, she was sorely mistaken. No job, no income, no idea what came next in her life and, still, no Mike. Jeremy planned to meet her in Portland and fly in direct. In a few hours she’d pick him up at the airport. How could she pine away for Mike even as she looked forward to seeing her new—what? Her new…boyfriend? Her new…lover? Her new…friend with benefits? Whatever word she was supposed to use for Jeremy didn’t suffice.

  When she’d told her grandmother what had really happened in Iceland—because Grandma was the only person she could tell other than Krysta—Madge had given her a wide-eyed smile and simply said “atta girl.” Knowing way too much about her grandmother’s sex life with Ed, Lydia had kept her mouth shut. Madge would leap at any opportunity to reveal too much information. Right now Lydia had her hands full with her own sexual proclivities; she didn’t need to add geriatric gymnastics to the images and emotions she already struggled with.

  Still no Mike. His radio silence had gone from distressing to disturbing to infuriating, and now it had settled low in her belly, beneath her navel, like a hot ball of steel pressing down, weighing on her, making it harder to move, as if the memory of him were palpable, something she could touch deep inside, could feel moving around, gravid and dark. Jeremy, on the other hand, was all lightness and fluff, fun and joy, with an edge. She’d tried to get him to talk more seriously about his life and he’d flirted around the edges of it. There was so much more to him. She looked forward to getting to know him.

  As she passed through the New Hampshire tolls, Portsmouth a beautiful oceanside blur, the ships to the right in the harbor always a marvel, she knew she had about an hour before she would see Jeremy. Tall, dark, handsome and goofy. Not exactly what she would have predicted for herself when it came to her type. Mike fit the bill more—but Mike wasn’t here, was he? And Jeremy hadn’t fucked her on camera and then magically forgotten, as if she had somehow cast a spell on him. How does one of the biggest CEOs in the world, a rising star of a media conglomerate, which he assembled stitch by stitch like a patchwork quilt made of gold, just disappear? If anyone could manage it, it was Michael Bournham.

  The radiant golds and vibrant reds of the leaves greeted her as she pulled away from the ocean and drove farther north. Maine was awash with color this time of year, and she knew that the campground would be awash with people, too. It was leaf-peeper season, the best time of the year, and her parents would be absolutely overwhelmed with work and utterly inspired by all that came to the campground for this monumental event. The talent show. The Great Charles Family Talent Show. Her dad would be playing his ukulele ten times a day, mastering some new, silly Tom Lehrer song. Miles would be working on some new clown costume to keep the kids laughing, probably figuring out how to juggle six balls at once. Sandy was the audience. She never developed a talent of her own, or if she had one she never let on, but her laugh would guide the hundreds of people in the Great Hall, curling upwards with joy, like a prayer of happiness. You could hear that laugh whenever you went to the campground, day in and day out. Lydia missed that laugh. It was the sound of comfort, of amusement, of everything being right with the world, and as she guided the car along its journey to Jeremy, she realized that she was pointed toward Sandy, too. Thank goodness, because right now Lydia needed something comfortable, something solid and safe and secure in her life. She also needed to talk to Mike. But it looked like that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  Her phone rang. She wavered—she hated to be on the phone when she was driving, especially on a highway, but it was too important to ignore. What if it was Jeremy? What if his flight was late? Reaching for her phone, she opened it, hit speaker and said, “Yes?”

  “Can you grab a couple of bags of mini-marshmallows? We’re out and we need ’em for the talent show.” Pete’s gravelly voice cracked on her phone, the connection weak.

  “Absolutely, Dad. Anything else?”

  “No, honey, just that. It’s the only thing that we don’t have in stock here at the store, and the shipment’s not coming in until next week. The suppliers are late.”

  Talk about familiarity. Her dad weaved business and family life into one whole cloth. A few years of corporate life had shown her that most people absolutely did not live that way. It suited Pete, and Sandy, and the whole gang. Everyone except her, because Lydia was an outsider, but maybe it really was time to come home for good.

  Speaking of coming home, she found her exit to the tiny Portland airport and smiled nice and wide. Maybe she really did find that Viking after all.

  Airport security had been a bitch. Long accustomed to being the that guy who gets pulled aside for a search after some, ah...poorly thought-out decisions in Asia, this time had been no different, even when he had taken pains to reduce his chances. A carry on, no belt, and no computer – easy peasy, right? Instead they treated him like a shoe bomber with a machete and a clown mask.

  The welcome from Lydia was worth the hassle, though, as her soft, ample body had invited him to explore Maine – and her – with a kiss that made him forget all about the government-sanctioned hands that had just cupped him...oh. They’d sped to the car, making him thankful for no checked luggage, and the hour or so on the highway was filled with verbal catch-ups, longing glances, and a gradual ratcheting up of Jeremy’s anxiety about meeting her family.

  Maybe the TSA patdown wasn’t so bad in comparison.

  Jeremy remembered campgrounds like this, as Lydia pulled her little red car to the right, turning onto a gravel driveway. The cheesy billboard sign, hand-painted. The flags of many colors all indicating solidarity and patriotism—but the rainbow flag was a wonderful, progressive touch to see in the middle of what he would have called Maine’s version of the middle of nowhere. His hand rested on Lydia’s thigh, and she slowed the car to a creeping crawl.

  5mph, the sign said, and she was going exactly five miles per hour. He could see why; the gravel road was deeply rutted, probably by choice. She’d said her family owned 160 acres here in a thriving oceanfront campground, so he guessed the road was in terrible shape on purpose; it calmed the traffic. Can’t fly and be a danger to others when you might break an axle. The kind of thinking that went into that made him stop and reassess his preconceived notion of Lydia’s parents.

  Parents. He hadn’t met a woman’s parents since early college. Forgive him if he was out of shape. Ten years, plus or minus a few, meant he was rusty. When she’d first suggested that they come to the family’s traditional talent show, a little voice in his head told him to run screaming, and grab a flight to Thailand, and then her eyes had begged him. Pleaded, really. He’d watched her mouth move as she asked him, describing the fun, the camaraderie, the connection that everyone had. She’d told him about the ocean, and the cabin they could use, and how her parents would be thrilled to meet him. She’d nearly cried when she spoke of missing the talent show, and in that moment he wavered. Unable to be the reason she would skip such an important family tradition, and also unable to
let her go without him, he had relented—and now, here he was.

  Most parents hated his guts. He’d learned that in high school at his first Homecoming, when Margie Nicholson’s dad insisted driving them after taking one look at the imposing, six-four Jeremy. Having a mouth with no filter hadn’t helped, either. When Mr. Nicholson had asked him what his intentions were with his daughter, Jeremy had laid them out in stark detail—first, second, third, fourth base—turning Mr. Nicholson fifty shades of red. He was, he hoped, a bit more tempered than his old adolescent self, but a small voice inside questioned that. What if they don’t like me? he thought. The voice unfurled inside him like a cold, dead ribbon. This was the voice of a fear that he had tramped out more than a decade ago, or so he’d thought. Travel, playing it safe by playing the risks, and just letting loose and having fun had been all fine and good for ten years, and it also kept that voice at bay.

  As Lydia smiled, radiant and happy, pointing to various buildings along their crawling journey toward her parents, he swallowed, an audible click coming from his dry throat, and realized that you never can go back home again the same—and while this was her home and not his, he had made a decision in Iceland that he had no desire to reverse. Something in him anchored itself when he looked at her. Something in him latched into place when he listened to her voice. Something in him wanted to wake up next to her every day for the rest of his life when the warmth of his palm rested against the heat of her thigh. The one thing that Jeremy was absolutely terrible about was staying in one place, and it was the one thing he needed to learn to do most if he had any hope of being with Lydia.

  “The community gardens are over there,” she said, pointing, her arm stretching across his face. They hit a rut and his nose rammed against her elbow. He was curled over it, almost in a ball, in her tiny Honda, and it felt a bit like a clown car. Another little vehicle, painted red, shot past. It wasn’t hard to go faster; at five miles an hour he could have walked at a fast clip and done just as well.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing at the little golf cart that zipped by with a man who looked remarkably like him, curled into it like a pipe cleaner twisted into a tight spiral.

  “That’s my brother, Miles,” she said, waving frantically. Miles tootled along, not noticing them.

  “Your brother Miles—which one is he?”

  Her face darkened a bit. “He’s the keeper of the secrets.”

  “Oh, so he’s the one who figured out—”

  “Yes.” The smile that had twitched across her lips faded.

  He squeezed her thigh. “Don’t worry, I’m sure that your parents won’t know.”

  It was more than the smile that faded. Something in her muscles slipped from taut excitement to sad resignation.

  He said what she didn’t. “It’s okay, Lydia. It’s okay to miss him.”

  She braked, stopping right in the middle of the road, and turned slowly to Jeremy with haunted eyes. “That’s the problem, Jeremy,” she said, eyes combing his face. “When I look at you, I don’t want to miss him.”

  Lydia had known she wanted to come home for the talent show, but she hadn’t factored in just how much she missed this place. Living in the city all these years was a form of rebellion, and in the past, coming home was a diversion. It was what you did for holidays and an occasional weekend—and, of course, the famous talent show. Driving down the scarred dirt road, taking care to watch out for children on bikes and the occasional loose dog, Lydia felt with each roll of the wheel, with each wave at a familiar face, that this was where she was meant to be. Thousands of appeals from Sandy, and hundreds of smaller ones from Pete, had fallen on deaf ears all these years. Lydia had wanted to be her own person. She’d moved far away and found her own career. What that career had done to her life and to her heart was one thing. What coming home did for her soul was quite another.

  She reached instinctively for Jeremy’s hand and squeezed it, the warm strength of his fingers grounding her even more. As Miles’ little red golf cart zipped off to the right, like something out of a children’s television series, she smiled. It was contagious, for Jeremy smiled, too.

  “Your eyes light up when you’re here,” he said, watching her with a serious expression that she rarely saw in him. Being studied felt new. Being studied by someone who had spent the last ten years doing nothing but leaving felt like a kind of victory. What was she doing? Mike was just gone and Jeremy was just here. Her heart felt tugged in three directions. One part toward Mike, one part toward Jeremy, and one part right here, at the campground. Could you live in three worlds? Was it possible? How much freedom did she really have to create her own reality, to forge a life shaped and honed by heat and struggle? Was there any other way? Could she live a life that someone else designed for her? One that was pre-made and handed to her, a way of being that just involved following rules and a predesigned path that one never strayed from. That didn’t sound right either, although a part of her thought that maybe it would be simpler—easier to just do what you’re told, to follow what’s expected and to collect your pats on the head, your handshakes and your complicit smiles for doing and being what everyone else wanted.

  A long look shared with Jeremy, as she searched his eyes to understand him more, told her that this was no pre-fab man. Jeremy had spent most of his adult life designing his own existence, and whatever she might think of it—however frivolous it had been on the surface, at least—for the most part, she respected him. She respected him because he had chosen the path with most resistance and found a way to make it work. In many respects he was just like Mike, who had done that in his own way, and yet now seemed to have dropped out, disappeared, disengaged. Lydia’s unmooring, her gradual unraveling of everything she had spent her young adulthood seeking, left her with so many unanswered questions.

  As she pulled into her trusty parking spot, and turned the car off, she turned to Jeremy and said, “Here we are.”

  Oh, how his eyes seemed to try to answer those unanswered questions of hers, and then his mouth did, too. “Are you ready for this? Are you sure?” His voice went low and a little dark.

  With a half-smile she squeezed his hand again and said, “Are you asking me that question, Jeremy, or is that question for you?”

  His laugh was contagious as they sat in her tiny little car, the same one that she had stewed in the day she met Matt—Mike. Her shoulders relaxed, her cheeks went up and nervous laughter filled the space.

  “I suck at this, Lydia,” he said.

  She just nodded. “I pretty much assumed that.”

  He rolled his tongue around in his mouth and then stretched his neck in various ways, all nervous little tics that she knew were just delaying tactics. “I don’t do well meeting dads.”

  “What happened the last time?”

  “Let’s just say it involved a flying fist.”

  “Yours or the father’s?”

  His eyebrows went up. “The girl’s.”

  “Oh, you’re going to have to tell me about that sometime.”

  The air changed as Jeremy leaned in and whispered softly: “If your brothers and father and mother don’t kill me, I’ll tell you all about it tonight.” And then his lips were on hers, the kiss sweeter than she’d expected. The kind of kiss a guy gives you when he realizes he’s falling in to yet another layer deeper than he thought he ever could.

  She tasted so good. The problem was he could still taste Mike on her lips. He couldn’t blame her—it really had been such a short time, and the way that things had ended with Mike hadn’t exactly been smooth. As far as he knew, Mike was somewhere safe. In fact, he was the least of Jeremy’s worries, and the scandal had died down enough. Lydia’s extraction of herself from the mess in Iceland had been simple. Deceptively simple. Mike couldn’t have made it more obvious that it was a sham position if he had waltzed into the office and assembled the IKEA desk himself.

  Here Jeremy was now, picking up the broken pieces, and the question that went
through his mind, even as Lydia’s hands stroked his upper arms and slid back over his shoulders, as that bewitching vanilla scent of hers filled everything he knew, and as their lips tried to say more than their words could, what he wanted to know was: did she think he was just her rebound guy? He didn’t want that, and as they pulled away from each other, the kiss ending naturally, as if they both had agreed silently to part, the words were on the tip of his tongue, those dark eyes locked with his, and as he opened his mouth to say it, a voice shouted her name.

  “Lydia!”

  Jeremy froze, his balls becoming two little ice cubes. That was the sound of a dad. A tall man with ruddy cheeks, brownish-black hair, and green eyes lumbered over to the door, opened it for her, and she scrambled out, hugging him. That must be Pete. Jeremy unfurled himself from the tiny little car and stood, walking over, his legs made of lead. This was what you did when you put someone else equal to yourself. This was how it felt with Dana, sort of. Okay, not quite. This was how he wished it had felt with Dana, except for the awkward part.

  Shaking the man’s hand, Jeremy did all of the right things: made eye contact, smiled, shook firmly and said, “Hello, it’s good to finally meet you.” There was a script here, and it felt as if it had been handed to him—except the entire thing was written in Aramaic or Chinese, and so he could follow the non-verbal cues, but the words just completely faded out when he needed them most. Pete combed him with the eyes of a father, and Lydia slid one warm arm around Jeremy’s waist and snuggled in. They walked in that loopy sort of way that a shorter woman and a taller man have to walk—left foot at the same time, right foot at the same time, bodies uneven but trying to find the right rhythm. But he felt off kilter, awkward and clumsy, and it wasn’t just their gait.

  When Lydia’s mother came out of the front store, this quaint little shop and reception desk all rolled into one, he felt a little more at ease.