Down, boy. Down.
What had he been thinking in there, smearing mud all over her body? He’d been thinking he wanted to do the same thing with her nak*d form, hands going to wet thighs, mouth following, exploring her. That line of thinking wasn’t helping with his tight suit, damn it, so he stood and forced himself to adjust his chair, thinking about Diane. That was always good for a wilted willie.
Settling back in, he let his mind grind through the past hour. She wanted him. He wanted her. Why not connect? The cat and mouse game was a bit much for him, something he’d engaged in twelve or even fifteen years ago. Being more mature, his sexual transactions tended toward the more direct kind, though the kind involving financial transactions had ended years ago, thank goodness. A few stupid years of hedonism had ended with a hefty dose of antibiotics and a medical lecture that did its job. Scared straight, Jeremy had become a near monk.
And an exaggerator.
Six months. He’d been in a lull, wanting what he, Mike, and Dana had just a year ago, searching for someone with that expanded view of sexuality so few women possessed. So few, in fact, he’d only found one.
And she’d been temporary.
He felt like a eunuch, stuck next to Lydia as his dick throbbed in his swimsuit. A eunuch with a pulsing appendage. Even worse than having it cut off and unusable was maintaining it and being unable to use it. The pain of blue balls was a steady reminder that what Mike wanted most in the world was resting beside Jeremy in the Iceland sun, a light coating of gray mineral dust clinging to her skin, begging to be washed off in a shower with him standing behind her, washing her back, hand snaking down between her…
Throb.
Cursing himself, he turned over on his stomach, nearly yelping in pain. Pain was better than frustration. In pain, he could find relief from torment.
Or so he told himself.
Chapter Eight
“Name three things you like better about Iceland than you do about home, Lydia,” Sandy asked. Actually, it wasn’t a question—it was more like a verbal water-boarding. The problem was that Lydia couldn't come up with three—at least, not three things that went beyond the trivial. Like how she felt when she sat on top of a coffee house, in the rooftop garden among flowering bushes, small plants, little herb gardens; the hippie feel of the kind of place that had been regulated out of cities like Boston and Cambridge.
The little coffee houses charmed her, made her feel like she had entered into a different era, one that was both timeless and aged, where all she was was a young woman with no past and no future, sitting with her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, staring at the clear blue sky, the sun warming her as she sipped a latte.
If she told Sandy that, her mother would simply say, “We have coffee here!” and Lydia would reply back, “You just don't understand, Mom,” and Sandy would say, “Then explain it to me so I can.” And they would enter into the endless loop of misunderstanding and frustration driven by the ongoing tension for unconditional love and independence, the two caught in a tug-of-war that left no victors, only raw, sore hands, aching shoulders, and hurt feelings.
Lydia could easily tell her mom three things she missed about the United States. Number one, though, wasn’t home—it was Matt Jones, or, rather, Mike Bournham. Two and a half weeks here had been just enough for Lydia to develop what she thought was a mild culture shock. Everything except the coffee was terrible here. The men were too tall, bland, and seemed already committed. And if they weren’t, there was no easy way to flirt, to connect, to test the waters. The idea that she would find a hot Viking was now laughable. The only way that would happen would be to ask someone the time while they sat in a thermal spring.
The food was overpriced and quite terrible, with a few exceptions. And even then it was the quality that was good, not the price. Twelve dollars for one hot dog and a Coke wasn't her idea of fine or affordable cuisine. And so she clung to the coffee shops as her buoy in a storm. The perfect storm, one of her own making. It combined three elements: scandal, disappointment, and impulsiveness. The scandal was self-evident. By the skin of her teeth she’d escaped it, this Diane taking her place. A place Lydia had never wanted, and never intended to be in.
Not quite true, a voice whispered. You certainly wanted to be there, you just didn’t want to be videotaped.
Fair enough, another voice in her mind said. This happened a lot without a confidante. And although Krysta was only a phone call away, it wasn’t the same. She had arguments in her head—most of them leading, like conversations with Sandy, to frustration.
Disappointment? Disappointment came from her mother, who she knew mourned Lydia’s move. After what happened to Luke a year and a half ago, she knew it pained her to have a child even four hours away. But a continent away, or damn near close? That was too hard.
And impulsiveness. That one was a hundred percent on her. She jumped at the chance at first, and then ran from the scandal, not giving herself the time to weigh the gravity of such a last-second decision. Hers was thoroughly a first-world problem. The poor little corporate drone, making six figures now, living in a foreign country, all expenses paid for now, until her relocation allowance was spent, with a title most people couldn’t dream of until they were ten years older than she.
And then there was Jeremy…
“Lydia, are you there?” Caught in her thoughts, she dragged herself back to her conversation with her mom.
“Three things, okay, Mom. First, there's the coffee—”
As if on cue, Sandy said, “But we have coffee here!”
Lydia just nodded to herself. “Second, there’s the salary.”
“Well,” Sandy demurred, “we definitely can't match what you told us you’re making. But you can have unlimited lobster and steak nights with the tarragon butter sauce your brother makes. We’ll even throw in free flourless chocolate torte and some Michaelson’s ice cream on the side. How’s that for a bonus?”
The laughter that the two shared filled Lydia’s heart in a way that really did make her homesick.
“So, what’s the third, Lydia? What’s the third thing you like better about being there than you do about being here?”
Jeremy.
“Uh, not being henpecked by my mother,” she blurted out.
“Too bad. At least they have phones there, so I can henpeck via fiber-optic cable,” Sandy shot back. “I have to close the office now, honey. I love you, and you better come back for the talent show. I mean it.”
Lyda got off the phone quickly, smiling to herself, weaseling her way out of a commitment. It felt like all the parts of her life had been put into a blender and set on high.
Forever.
Racing thoughts filled her mind suddenly, a frantic, rat-like frenzy that filled her eyes with tears at the chaos of it all. Two minds, two thoughts ran in parallel tracks through her frenzied brain. What she said was, “The thermal hot springs,” and Sandy groaned in jealousy. But what she thought was, I don’t have to face my growing need for Michael Bournham if he’s not here.
But then there's my growing interest in his best friend who is here.
The torture of missing not only what they’d had, but also what she imagined they could have, and now a third imagined world of what she could have had with the real man behind the bright green eyes, the one with laser-beam sapphires, nearly snapped her in two. Michael Bournham had been her celebrity crush for years, and she knew damn well that was part of what attracted her to Matt Jones. The similarity, the way they stood with their hands on their hips, arms flexed, eyes smart and focused. The crafty smile, the curl of lip that said this was a mouth for pleasure, the hint of it in a sultry grin caught on camera.
She'd had endless hours to mull over their final conversation, to absorb and analyze what Michael Bournham had confessed to her in that brief, shining moment before she'd ordered him out of her apartment. Years ago, when she’d first been hired, she’d gone to some ridiculous employee orientation event that wasn’t required, but that all the good do-bees went to, to try and impress whoever it was that you were supposed to impress in that setting. She hadn’t gone for the same reasons as everyone else. Lydia had gone because the human resources orientation specialist had hinted that Michael Bournham might attend. In the days that followed, she had carefully cultivated her outfit, her hair, her makeup—everything. Wanting it to be perfect, not because she had some hope that he would find her attractive—she was a realist. But the princess in her, that little part that held onto fantasy long after it should have been driven out by the ugly reality of relationships gone sour, of nasty comments about her weight and appearance, of men who openly had told her, “Pretty face, nice ass, but no second date.”
That princess wanted a chance to meet the guy who fueled so many battery-operated-boyfriend orgasms. Tapping on her car window that morning—had it really only been a month ago?—“Matt Jones” had walked in like a pale photocopy of the prince. His royal tester, his stunt double. She’d been more caught off guard by how much he resembled Michael Bournham, physically and in mannerism, than she had been by his snatching her job.
All of it was a ruse, she now knew, every damn word. How many interactions with him had been set up, a script that he followed for ratings, for television notoriety? What part of Michael Bournham and his Hollywood cronies thought that she would be a willing participant in all this? Krysta had urged her to seek out a lawyer, to sue, because that video had been taken without her permission. But once Diane stepped forward and claimed that she was the brunette in the video, Lydia had decided she didn’t want to poke the sleeping bear. Filing a lawsuit would just put her name out there, and right now she was protected, living with her own private shame.
While that was its own kind of hell, having her name splashed across countless gossip websites and magazines and newspapers because she chose to sue for their failure to get her permission would be a kind of reputation suicide that she didn’t want to take on. Living with the injustice of what had happened, and the emotional aftershocks, was more than enough for her to bear.
God, she missed him.
And he’d been attracted to her too, years ago.
How could she miss someone she barely knew? And yet she did. How could they both have denied themselves that early interest? There was an ache in her that started from the moment she realized she was awake in the morning, until she drifted off, and sometimes she felt it in her dreams. Chemistry like this was as foreign to her as the Icelandic she heard spoken nonstop throughout daily life here in Reykjavik. Every look from him had been like ten thousand stares. Every touch from him had been enough to keep her sated for three lifetimes. And yet, never enough. Stolen kisses had turned her world topsy-turvy. Because in those moments she was the real Lydia, her authentic self, and yet they had to be captured and claimed and enjoyed in private, hidden from the corporate shell that held their drone selves.
And then there was Jeremy…
Even his creation of Matt Jones spoke to the ludicrous duality, the aching need for something real in Michael Bournham’s life, she supposed. Letting those cameras film him, dyeing his hair and wearing colored contacts, assuming a role that he could toss aside a few weeks later when the filming was done, all for the sake of…what had he said? Boosting corporate profits? It was so fake, so sociopathic, and so contradictory to the very piercing, vibrant sensuality and connection that she felt with him, that it made it easier to set aside his assumed self, this persona of Matt Jones, precisely because it was so false and so over the top. That didn’t stop the pain in her heart, or the longing for what had been real.