Her breath hitched and went shallow, her neck tightened, and she flushed all through, but not in a good way. Not aroused as she had been with Matt just hours ago, their bodies pressed together, flesh intertwined, his fingers seeking the heart of her and entering –
“Lydia? You need to sit down.” Krysta's hands were on her elbows now, leading her to a chair at the kitchen table. “Breathe,” Krysta intoned. Lydia tried, but couldn't. Pant pant pant. Pinpoints of white and dark filled her vision line.
What had she done? Her entire life was at stake. She was twenty-five and had a graduate degree and needed to work to pay her bills. Matt stoked something in her, exposing embers that had smoldered away, hot and bothered but thoroughly buried, for years. Ah, those hands on her, hungry and claiming, owning her flesh as his mouth had dominated her, practically ordered her to kiss him back and –
“BREATHE!” Krysta suddenly blew a puff of air in her face, the way lifeguards tried to revive a swimmer before performing CPR or how mothers would stop a toddler's tantrum. Some reflex kicked in and Lydia's air drained out of her lungs in one slow, steady hiss, then whoop! she inhaled deeply, so swift a ragged edge of air dried out her throat, starting a coughing spasm.
“Oh, thank God,” Krysta muttered, rubbing the base of Lydia's neck. “You were gonna pass out.”
Hot tears filled Lydia's eyes and throat, salty and wet and demoralized as Krysta added, “Lydia, I...I’m sorry I didn’t mean to – oh, shit.”
All Lydia could think about was how stupid she’d been today and that whatever she felt for Matt made absolutely no sense. Wave after wave of something – sorrow? fear? disgust? – washed over her as she cried big, ugly tears that only a best friend like Krysta could watch without judgment.
“I can’t explain it,” she sobbed. “There’s just this, this, attraction. I know, I know,” she said, holding up her hands in protest. “I sound like every other woman in the world. And yet, I really, truly cannot explain it, Krysta.”
She wiped the tears from her eyes, the skin under her bottom lids feeling like hot, wet tissue paper. “I’m a cliche. I own it. But man, let me tell you, I kind of get it now. The rush, the boldness, the need, Krysta. Damn! The need to touch him. To kiss him. To let my mind go to places that they haven’t gone before. To want those hands on me. I just – ”
“Oh, gross, Lydia!” Krysta shook her head in mock outrage.
“What?”
“You know I haven’t had sex in over a year! This is torture. It’s bad enough to listen to you talk about practically throwing away your entire career for some desperate kiss in a supply closet, but to have to listen to you talk about it like that – ”
Krysta’s shoulders relaxed, and she slumped forward. “I’ve never felt that way. No guy has ever triggered anything like that in me.” She sighed, and looked at Lydia with a beseeching look. “If that’s what you felt in those few hours of knowing this guy, then I can’t judge you. In fact, I think I’m a little envious.”
“What?” Lydia sat there, stunned, staring at her best friend. Was Krysta validating her feelings? Telling her it was OK to be attracted to Matt, to give in to this strange chemistry that made no sense? Compelled by some force she didn't know existed, she wanted him ferociously, the need primal and severe, almost violent. How could that be safe? Acceptable? Proper?
Professional?
“Normally, you’re the one I’m counseling on these issues,” Lydia smirked. Tears dried, she cocked her head and shot her friend a withering look. “Do you have any idea how many walks of shame I have talked you through when it comes to guys?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Not lately, though. Betty White gets more than I do, these days.”
“Betty White probably gets more than both of us combined.”
“Like your grandma,” Krysta said.
“Don't talk about Grandma's sex life! Ewwww.” Her grandmother was in her eighties and had a steady boyfriend. Probably did get more than either of the twentysomething women.
“But none of those walks of shame ever involved something or a feeling like what you’re talkin’ about, Lydia,” Krysta confessed.
Fuck! She was right, but the last thing Lydia wanted to do right now was reckon with reality, with the tension between how she should act and how she did feel. To an outsider, the whole mess must seem chaotic and banal, trite and achingly stereotypical. Who would have guessed that Lydia Charles, third-wave feminist with a second-wave kick, would end up doing something so cloyingly cliché as falling for her boss?
Her very hot, alpha-male boss who acted like he not only owned the place, but he also owned her.
“You need to call your mother – ”
“I need to call my mother – ”
In unison, Lydia and Krysta spoke the same thought, the words effortless and resignedly true. Damn it! Calling home meant getting tons of advice from her mom, all of it warm and helpful.
With a dose of begging to come home that would knock out a horse, because Lydia's mom didn't do subtle when it came to trying to get the one stray from her flock to come home. She was a one-woman army, gone to battle with the world that Lydia so desperately wished to conquer – one Director of Social Media position at a time.
Lydia the Black Sheep.
Sandy and Pete Charles had created their own little world on the coast in Maine, a world Lydia had fought tooth and nail to escape as soon as she'd graduated high school. Owners of the Escape Shores Campground, her parents had poured their life savings into the only place Lydia could remember from the time she could talk, having been raised there with her five brothers. Leaving home for Boston had been a betrayal.
Going home meant admitting defeat. Sandy would view it as a victory, wanting desperately for all her kids to take part in what she and Pete viewed as a family venture. Managing 140 acres of prime oceanfront property, a data center, a heated in-ground pool (in Maine!), 230 campsites and RV pull-ins and all the entertainment, retail, and environmental issues that went with what Lydia called “home” meant that her brothers kept pretty damn busy helping to run the largest campground on the northeastern shoreline. And the most tech savvy, but they could thank Lydia for that.
Sandy wouldn't let her forget it. Lydia knew that reaching out to home meant being love bombed. That seemed to be exactly what she needed. She knew it and Krysta knew it. Groaning, she reached for the phone. Krysta smirked and had the decency to fake needing to check her own phone. At the top of her “Favorites,” Sandy's number was one tap away.
“Hello? Lydia?” That flat midwestern voice, melodic and friendly, eager to hear her speak. Ah, Mom. Thirty years in New England hadn't changed her, the “r” intact in her words. Mainers thought her odd but warmed to her generosity and general can-do attitude. That she and Pete had created more than fifty much-needed jobs in their tiny community helped, too.
Knowing she needed to just get it out, Lydia sighed. “I didn't get the job.”
“The one you've been waiting to apply for now for over a year?” Control your glee, Mom, she almost said, Sandy's voice a mixture of fake commiseration and little-kid joy at the news. Here comes the onslaught.
“Yes. I came into work one day to find I had a new boss. Matt Jones.” Tears filled her eyes, and blood rushed to her cheeks. Elsewhere, too, making her squirm. Not now! Not now! Damn it, if Matt could have this kind of impact on her while just saying his name, what would –
“You didn't even get a chance to apply?” Sandy's voice changed to outrage. Relief flooded Lydia. Anger she could handle. Righteous indignation she could feast on. A riled-up Sandy would give her the ego boost she needed. What she could not, would not handle right now was being begged mercilessly to come home and manage public relations and social media for the campground.
Sniff. “Nope.”
“Bastards. Hey, Pete!” Lydia could imagine her mom, talking on her cell phone while manning the register in the little store on site, calling out to her dad, who was probably helping some guest with an RV question, or teaching a child how to play pool in the table in the hall behind the main store, or riding past in one of his blue golf carts that roamed at an ever-safe five mph that had bedeviled her and her brothers (we can run faster than those things, Daddy!).
Ruddy cheeks and a straw hat with a draw string under his chin, Pete Charles was a tower of a man, but a gentle soul who derived so much pleasure from growing a business with his children. Except Lydia.
And he, like Sandy, wanted her back in the fold, though his methods were a bit less obvious.
“Why won't they give her a chance? She's smarter than all of 'em!” she heard him shout. He was probably wearing paint-splattered Dickies that hadn't been washed in months, a nice, crisp button down, and that old hat. He was careful not to be too disheveled these days, though he refused to change his work pants. Always said it made it clear that while the campground was a place for travel and fun and frolic, he had work to do, too. The serious work of moving and maintaining and keeping an enormous “small” business functioning properly. Like biochemistry, if one enzyme went missing, one chemical went astray, the body would dissemble.
Pete used that against Lydia, for they were losing the battle in an increasingly-online world, and while her brother Dan was great at business software, he was lousy at online PR and advertising. Lydia would provide a key service if she were home.
She just didn't want that. A standoff of epic proportions, and calling home right now meant giving her parents some heavy-duty ammo for working every guilt button she possessed.
Her Matt Jones button, though, was big as well. Red, right now. Absolutely throbbing. Leaning forward to shift some of the renegade flesh in her nether regions, the wiggling only made her all the more aware of how helpless she'd become. One week with a guy who stole her job (not intentionally, but her emotional truth was as important as facts, right?) and she was turning into a puddle of sensual goo. Not fair. Not fair at all.
Home was starting to look pretty good, and that is what made her hair stand on end and turned the freak-out dial up a notch.
“Tell Dad he's more transparent by the day.”
“What do you mean?” her mother asked, all innocent and disingenuous. Sandy knew exactly what she wanted and wasn't going to give a millimeter.
“You, on the other hand, are a giant piece of Saran Wrap, Mom. I'm not moving back.” Her voice turned to a growl on the last sentence. “What I need now is an ego boost.”
“You're so amazing that Escape Shores needs your expertise! We pay a living wage and you get free muffins and espresso, hand-crafted by these brilliant men who live here.”
“I've washed their socks, Mom, and seen them hungover. One of them barfed in my car and I helped another one unglue himself from his own bike. My brothers aren't brilliant; they just stayed, so you love them more.” This was an ongoing joke in the family, ever since Lucas was IQ tested in third grade and declared a genius. To spare the others' feelings Sandy had announced that all of her children were brilliant.