“Oh, Mike!” Lydia threw her arms around his neck. She knew the tale from Mike but also from her mother's recounting. Word had gotten out about how that Pete's not-quite-son-in-law had been a damn fine Santa this year. Harriet and Ruth were locals, and when outsiders helped, the locals took stock.
“And Ruth wants to know how to reach me. Santa was 'too generous' this year.”
“What did 'Santa’ give Khalil? Other than his mama?” Lydia asked through happy tears.
“I didn't give him his mama. I just made sure that she got the best care and the bills covered. But we sent him a series of electronic scales and a new microscope.”
“That's a lot! Mom said your foundation is helping with his speech and occupational therapy?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearly not wanting to go into it. “And we're giving a big grant to the local autism center.”
“That's amazing!”
“Don't know why I didn't think about it before.”
“Well, you did now. That's what matters.”
He double-thumbed a text, sent it, then powered the phone off.
“Ahem,” Mike said, holding up the negative pregnancy test, changing the subject. “We need to talk about this.”
“Talk?” Jeremy asked as Lydia moved across the room and snuggled in her place between them on the couch. Curling toward Jeremy, she put her feet in his lap, moving her toes suggestively in a way that made him groan.
Mike rolled his eyes. “Yes. Talk.”
“I don't think we need to talk,” she replied, looking up from him as she sipped from her mug, enjoying the sweet mocha goodness.
“Why are you two so dead set against talking?” Mike countered.
“Because,” she said, stretching out, her head in his lap, face a foot from his as Jeremy took the mug out of her hands. “I think we know what we all want.”
“We do?”
“Yes,” she said as Jeremy ran his hands up the sides of her body, the delicious tingle of his touch making her smile, Mike's blue eyes mesmerizing her. “And what we want doesn't involve talking. But it most certainly does involve mouths.”
“And no condoms,” Mike said soberly as he bent down for a long, lush kiss.
Christmas morning in Verily, Maine, just got a whole lot warmer.
:)
Recipe note: I'm often asked, whenever I write about Jeddy's Diner, if I have recipes for the foods I describe. I do not, but you can use Google to find similar recipes. I tend to make the dishes up as I go along, and yes — I’ve cooked some of them here at home.
If I were more talented, I'd create a recipe book with all of Madge and Caleb's fine cuisine, but alas, I am not so blessed. I can follow someone else's recipe, which is essentially a formula, but I cannot come up with my own. My creativity appears to be limited to the page. <3
Thank you so much for reading Christmasly Obedient, the newest book in Julia Kent's USA Today bestselling Obedient series. If you want more of Mike, Jeremy and Lydia, and you haven't read their series, go to Maliciously Obedient to get started. Here's an excerpt – keep flipping to read.
Excerpt: Maliciously Obedient
Getting caught reading Fifty Shades of Grey in the parking lot at work wasn’t the best way to meet her boss. A boss she didn’t know she had. A boss who now had the job she had been waiting to apply for (and win) for the past year.
So Lydia Charles was having a very bad day. And it was only 7:32 a.m.
Tap tap tap.
She looked up, startled, to find a pair of bright green eyes, shaded by a hand, peering in the window of her little red car. He caught the book cover and smirked.
Oh, screw off, she thought, shoving her car key in the ignition and turning it on so she could roll down the window. As if it weren’t bad enough being caught reading Mommy Porn (and she wasn’t even a mom), her last few minutes of freedom before enslavement as a corporate drone were being bothered by some anonymous guy.
Light brown hair with a nice wave to it and those crazy-green eyes. A perfect nose. Broad shoulders set off by one hand on his forehead, one on his hip, making his forearms pop a bit, the muscles from neck to shoulder joint stretching like an athlete’s. It was like looking at one of those guys on television, an actor in a show you watch not for the plot, but for the eye candy with a spark of smarts and wit.
If he told her he was a firefighter or a detective, she’d believe him. He had the look of a man who takes care of himself because he has to in order to function well at his hands-on job.
He works out, she surmised as the window scrolled down. Boring business-casual uniform of Dockers and a button-down shirt. Couldn’t see his shoes but she guessed something from Land’s End.
Middle management.
Which was one step above her. Gritting her teeth, she wondered what this was about.
“Hi. Could you please move your car?” A baritone voice with way too much authority gripped her gut, an internal reaction out of proportion to his request. That voice. He sounded like a ship’s captain, or a commander in combat.
She couldn’t help but begin to react, the breathless “Yes” nearly popping out involuntarily. Holding back, she wasn’t even breathing for fear she would comply like a skittish puppy, acting in deference to the incredibly unfounded request.
Who orders someone out of their parking spot? He smiled, the tight look of a man evaluating what to say next as seconds ticked by and she did nothing but stare at him.
“Why?” she asked, carefully cultivating a neutral tone, one of reasonableness without too much inquiry, as if she didn’t give a hoot what he wanted but would be polite about it. She invoked her Midwestern tone, casually acquired from being a Maine girl with parents who were from the Midwest, the voice of newscasters and documentary voiceovers for sexual harassment and government contract reporting requirements videos.
“Because it’s mine.” He threw a thumb toward the top of the skyscraper. “Head office assigned it to me.”
Not the reaction she expected. She could guess his next move, predictable among these middle management types, like a real-life version of Gary Cole’s character in Office Space. Next, he would lean on the car and do that douchey “I’m gonna need you to go ahead and...” spiel.
Lydia was having none of it. She might be just an administrative assistant, the corporate equivalent of a dishwasher or a toll taker, but two years of this was enough. A master’s degree in Gender Studies might be useless in the workplace, but here in the parking lot it meant everything. Backing down wasn’t happening.
“Why would the head office give you my parking spot? They’re numbered.” She pointed to the sign defiantly.
His face remained neutral. Instead of leaning on the car, he reached one golden arm in and aimed for her right hand. Of course he was perfectly, evenly tanned. Of course.
“I’m Matt Jones. The new director of social media. And this is my numbered spot.”
“What? There is no director of social media job here. Not yet, at least. They’re announcing it soon, and—” A wave of cold horror hit Lydia. Director of social media. Director of social media? That was the job she was supposed to apply for! Except no one had told her that the job had been created yet, and now here stood the new hire?