Deliciously Obedient (2 page)

“
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.

“
Hello,”
she said, walking up to him with a steady, purposeful stride that he
recognized in Lydia’s hips. She reached up for a hug and he had to
bend down, curled in a nuanced ninety-degree angle. “My goodness,
you’re tall like Miles,” she said, and Lydia laughed.

“
The
comparisons end there, Mom,” she said dryly, and Jeremy wondered
what that was supposed to mean.

As
if they called for Miles, the little red golf cart appeared and out
came a man who looked casually like Jeremy from a distance. There
weren’t too many men he met with whom he could talk at eye level,
and this one was decidedly less friendly than Pete and Sandy. With
mirrored eyes, Lydia’s brother reached one hand out and pumped
Jeremy’s as if he was starting a lawn mower. The brute strength was
fierce, and it made Jeremy stand taller, some primal comparison
putting him on guard. This was a guy with virtually no body fat, and
nothing but long, lean muscles honed through hard work. With 160
acres he imagined that it wouldn’t be hard to put in a full day’s
work with your hands, your legs, your body, all of it under the
bright sun. Jeremy, on the other hand, was quite accustomed to
spending a day in the sun—it just didn’t involve hard work. More
like women and drink.

Nothing
wrong with that.

“
It
turns out you brought a Viking home, after all,” Miles said slowly.

“
Jeremy
and I knew each other before I moved to Iceland,” she said.

“
Really?
How do you guys know each other? I’ve never heard about you
before,” Miles said, eyes staying entirely on Lydia as he said the
words.

“
We
met through a mutual friend.”

“
A
mutual friend?” Now his eyes moved over, trying to pierce Jeremy.
“Which mutual friend is that?”