Suspiciously Obedient Read Free

and she wasn't going to let him get away with it.
    “So the sex was that bad!”
    “What?” That brought him back to reality. At the table to their left was a couple who looked like they got married during WWII, wrinkled faces stretched in a look of surprise, the woman covering her face with one hand and giggling into it. The old man looked at Matt and just shrugged.
    “You didn’t answer my question.”
    The old man leaned over and stage whispered, “Bad sex is better than no sex, bud. Don’t ask me how I know that. And,” he said, rheumy blue eyes peering at Lydia, “get as much of it as you can while you can.”
    “Marty!” his wife shouted.
    Thump. “Ow! You kicked me,” he growled at her.
    “You deserved it!” she snapped. The waitress looked at them nervously, standing in front of them with a heaping pile of soba noodles. Both dug into their food while Lydia and Matt tried not to laugh.
    “Shall I kick you under the table?” she joked.
    Matt just blinked, studying her. “You’re not my wife,” he said with a sigh.
    “Then you have no excuse for having bad sex,” Marty quipped. Thump . “Ow.”
    “Mind your manners,” his wife grumbled, her mouth full of wontons and noodles.
    Too polite to laugh in their faces, Lydia and Matt just ignored them.
    “So, where are you from?” Matt asked her. She chuckled at the “first-dateness” of the question and he seemed to recognize it too, laughing a bit as well.
    “I’m from Maine,” she said.
    He nodded. “Portland?” Nearly everyone from Maine she’d met in Boston had come from Portland, so she wasn’t surprised by the question.
    “No, a little town farther north called Verily.”
    “Verily? Sounds Mayberry-ish.”
    She rolled her eyes with a smile. “Something like that. My parents own a campground up there.”
    “Really? A campground? Did you grow up there?”
    “Yeah, I did.”
    “And you have brothers and sisters?”
    “I have five brothers.”
    His hand froze. This wasn’t an uncommon reaction and his eyes locked with hers, mouth going slack in a look of surprise and a bit of awe. “Five brothers?” His brow furrowed. He said, “Let me guess—they’re all older.”
    “Not quite. I have one who is younger. I’m right in the middle, the fifth kid.”
    “So you have…wow, I have all sisters,” he said.
    “So, you know what it’s like,” Lydia replied. “Being the only one.”
    “Yeah but…from the other end.” He paused and thought for a moment. “Five brothers. This is going to get grim.”
    Her heart soared. That kind of comment meant that he was thinking about more, and until now, she had just been thinking about each moment, one by one, unfolding. The past few hours had been a heady rush of everything all at once, heart, mind, soul, and now here he was, talking about meeting her brothers. She wasn’t sure what to say.
    “You ready to get out of here?” he asked, eyes darting back and forth across the room.
    Full, and very much interested in spending more time with him in private, Lydia smiled and said, “Sure, want to…” She paused, then looked him right in the eye, with the most determined look of an invitation that she had ever given a man. “…Come back to my place for a drink?” Her middle finger traced circles around the top of her glass.
    His eyes broke away from hers and stared at the motion, transfixed. His neck and shoulder muscles relaxed and he reached for his wallet, pulling out a credit card to pay the bill. When he motioned for the server to come and handle the transaction, he found her eyes again. “I would love a nightcap.”
    “How about a morning coffee?” she said.
    The grin that spread across his face was shaky at first, and then, with a deep, gravelly voice, he answered, “Even better.”
    They left, the old man from the couple waving with a lecherous smile, as they departed, Matt’s arm around her waist, her stomach filled with butterflies. How could she still want more? she