Christmasly Obedient: Small Town Holiday Romantic Comedy Romance

by Julia Kent

  “Yes. Yes, I am,” Jeremy said, now eating straight off the cake plate.

  “Lydia is going to expect a slice for breakfast.”

  That – and only that – made the guy stop.

  Mournful puppy-dog eyes looked at the remaining cheesecake, then Mike. “But it's so good.”

  “That's what she said.”

  “She doesn't say much these days.”

  “No shit. She's terrified she's pregnant.”

  “If she's so afraid, why did she beg me to fuck her?”

  “Because she has poor taste?'

  “HEY!”

  Mike spread his arms wide. “You asked!”

  “I was being rhetorical.”

  “Sorry the truth hurts.”

  “I like you better sober.”

  Mike finished off his beer, then belched. “I don't. The world is so much easier this way.”

  “Say that to me in the morning, when the dehydration headache hits.”

  “Nah. V-8 juice, some turmeric, a little lemongrass tea for cerebral spinal fluid boosts and loads of alkaline water and I'll be fine.”

  “Bibbidy-bobbity-boo!”

  Mike thought his reflexes were good, but the alcohol must have slowed them down because Jeremy easily dodged the deck of cards in the case he flung at the guy's head.

  “We've regressed to violence? Oh, goody.”

  “I hope the baby's mine,” Mike hissed, making Jeremy halt.

  “What?”

  “I hope the baby's mine. Because you're so juvenile you might as well be the baby's younger brother.”

  “If I'm the baby's younger brother, Lydia and I broke countless laws, Mike.”

  “Wouldn't be the first time you broke laws by having sex, Jeremy.”

  That shut him up.

  Because Mike was right.

  “I don't think,” Jeremy said slowly, scraping the plate to get the last bit of gooey caramel off it, “I've broken laws in the United States.”

  “You ever get a blow job in Texas?”

  “Who hasn't?”

  “Then you're an outlaw.”

  “Please. The Supreme Court took care of that almost twenty years ago. I'm fine.”

  “Did you get a blow job before 2003 in Texas?”

  “Sure.”

  Mike shot him a smug smile, raised eyebrows and all.

  A belch was Jeremy's answer.

  Putting the dish in the sink, Jeremy rinsed it and stuck it in the dishwasher, then took a second gander at the machine. It was full enough, so he put dishwasher liquid in and fired it up. In the morning, Lydia would faint from joy that Jeremy did the dishes.

  That made Mike smile.

  “You look boozy. What's so good? Thinking about babies?”

  “No. How chores are an aphrodisiac for Lydia.”

  “They are, aren't they? Women are so weird.”

  “Men aren't any easier.”

  “Is that a crack against me?”

  “Yes.”

  Jeremy considered that. “Fair enough. I'm a pain in the ass.”

  “You're a pain everywhere.”

  “But you lubs me.” Jeremy came in for a big hug, over-exaggerating his movements, making Mike start to wrestle with him until Jeremy stepped back and laughed.

  “We're hopeless.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “The last thing we're ready for is fatherhood.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  That made him jolt. “Really, Mike? You're ready?”

  “I am.”

  “I'm not.”

  Mike pointed to his temple. “This is my shocked face, Jeremy.”

  “Shut up. Don't tell me you're seriously ready.”

  “I. Am. Seriously. Ready.”

  “Is Lydia?”

  All the words that should have come into Mike's mind decided to flee just then.

  “Remember what life was like before we met her?” Jeremy said, jumping in before Mike could even try to formulate an answer. “You were Mr. CEO Playboy, and I was – ”

  “ – nothing but play.”

  “Right!” Jeremy said brightly, as if he missed the dismissive undertone from Mike's comment.

  “All play and no work makes Jeremy a slacker.”

  A confused look was his only response.

  “And that's bad because...?”

  Mike ran both hands through his hair, then stood, plunking himself down on the couch, staring at the ceiling. “It's not. Maybe I should have played more.”

  “You were a playboy, Mike. Not exactly a stuffed shirt.”

  “All those years I spent, driven to conquer in the business space. Poof! It disappeared overnight.”

  “Our life now is way better.”

  “It is,” he grudgingly admitted. “But I want more.”

  “Did you sabotage that condom?”

  Sober suddenly, Mike turned to Jeremy and damn near decked him, pulling the punch at the last second. By the time he stopped himself, Jeremy was halfway across the room, breathing hard.

  “What the hell, Mike?”

  “No. Of course not. I would never do that.”

  “I was joking. I didn't think you would. You're all about consent.”

  “And decency.”

  “That, too,” Jeremy added as an afterthought.

  The world throbbed and spun, Mike's mood shifting as the alcohol downgraded itself from “Everywhere” to “Lingering” in his bloodstream. Unaccustomed to deep conversations like this, he nonetheless enjoyed it.

  Jeremy? Not so much.

  “If she's pregnant, what're we going to do?” Mike muttered, hating that he even had to rely on Jeremy emotionally but knowing it was better than bottling everything up.

  “We'll follow her lead.”

  Mike waited for elaboration.

  Waited a while.

  “That's it?” he ground out. “Those are your words of wisdom?”

  “They're the truth.”

  “Of course we follow her lead. It's her body! But it's our life.”

  My life, Mike thought to himself.

  My son or daughter.

  “You know me, Mike. I don't borrow trouble. Own plenty of it outright. Don't need more. So if she's pregnant, it's her burden. That's not fair, but it's basic biology. We'll be here for her every step of the way. A broken condom doesn't change that.”

  “It should.”

  Anger made Jeremy's face pull back. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It should change our conversations. Why didn't we talk about kids before this? We're getting old.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “And,” Mike continued, ignoring that crap, “life's gotten a bit dull around here.”

  “Dull? What do you mean, dull?”

  “When was the last time we did anything other than fix a building, corral an animal, eat a good meal?”

  “Add in a great shag in bed and you're describing a damn fine life, Mike.”

  “What about the beach? Sun? Art? Culture?”

  “You told me none of that mattered when you dragged me here to live.”

  Mike snorted. “No one dragged you here.”

  “No,” Jeremy was forced to admit. “That's true. But you think a baby is going to replace a sun-filled beach full of skin and lust in Thailand or the French Riviera?”

  “I think it would be better.”

  “Kids? Seriously, Mike. Kids?” Jeremy sat back down with a thump, reaching for a fresh, cold beer.

  Mike knew he'd hit his limit when the cold one didn't appeal to him. Reaching instead for a mineral water, he realized hydration was a better goal than inebriation.

  Besides, he'd already achieved the latter.

  “Lydia and I can only raise you so far, Jeremy. At some point, we have to add an actual child to the mix and quit experimenting on an immature grown-up.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Do you really think she's ready?”

  “After the damn con
dom incident, she may not have a choice.”

  “She has a choice,” Jeremy countered. Mike knew what Jeremy meant, and that was absolutely true. By law, she did.

  He knew, though, that Lydia wouldn't take that step. Could tell from the way she was acting these days. If she was pregnant, this was it.

  They were about to become fathers.

  “What was your dad like?” he asked Jeremy, who began to choke on his mouthful of beer.

  Mike waited him out.

  Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, a stray brown curl getting pushed off his jawline, Jeremy's answer surprised Mike. “Kind. My father was a kind man. Quiet. Gentle. Old,” he added, with emphasis.

  “How old?”

  “Old enough to be fully gray by the time I hit kindergarten. I was a 'hail Mary pass' baby. Mom and Dad were ancient by the standards back then.”

  “You were young when they died.”

  “Yeah. But my dad was much older than you, geezer,” Jeremy joked, turning the conversation away from the serious.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “That you've been alone for so long.”

  Jeremy's awkwardness deepened. They didn't talk like this, and Mike knew some of it was the beer.

  Okay. Fine. Most of it was the beer.

  But plenty of it was genuine.

  “Haven't been alone,” Jeremy said gruffly, eyes briefly catching Mike's. “Not since I met you, and then Lydia.”

  “I've got my mom and my sister,” Mike said softly, peeling the corner off the label on his mineral water. “Lydia's got – ”

  “A damn football team of relatives.”

  Mike barked with laughter at that one. So true.

  “Mike,” Jeremy whispered. “If she's pregnant, it'll be weird.”

  “And this threesome isn't?”

  A tilt of the head was all the acknowledgment Mike got for that.

  Out of nowhere, he crashed, the sudden wave of exhaustion too much to fight. Stumbling to the couch, he plopped down, closed his eyes –

  And left Jeremy alone.

  Dreaming about babies.

  Blueberry babies.

  5

  Jeremy

  “I gave up Jamaican sex resorts for this,” Jeremy muttered as a mama raccoon hissed at him, head poking out from rotten garbage in the dumpster behind the bathhouse near the big rig RV loop.

  From sex on the beach to trash pandas in the snow.

  Oh, how the mighty fall.

  The screaming began this morning, waking him and Mike up, Lydia still safely snuggled under two down comforters back in the cabin, her murmur of “Go help Adam and Miles” a kick in the crotch.

  Animal screams made Jeremy's teeth ache, and when Adam bellowed for help, he and Mike had grabbed coats, shoved feet into boots, and sprinted.

  Mike was slower this morning, though.

  “You got a major case of FOMO going on, Jeremy?” Caleb joked as he used a rake handle to poke the mama.

  Two little trash panda faces popped up on either side of her, curious.

  “Damn,” Caleb whispered. “Babies.”

  The word made Jeremy's gut tighten.

  Babies.

  “She's just doing what she can for her children,” Mike said tightly from behind them, wearing a face shield Miles had shoved his way, long gloves that went up to his biceps, and holding a long-handled trash picker.

  “You look like Bill Nye the Science Guy delivering a horse in a garbage dump.”

  “Shhh,” Mike snapped back, swallowing hard, then clearing his throat. “That might be on the agenda for next week here at Escape Shores Campground. Don't let Adam know you said that. He'll book it for social media rotation and give us data on the percentage increase in vacation bookings.”

  Jeremy took a step back. A noxious odor wafted up.

  He looked at his shoe.

  Apparently, the raccoon took literally the old adage, You don't shit where you eat.

  It emptied itself outside the gourmet buffet called dumpster.

  “Trash-picking Guardian of the Galaxy,” he yelled as he charged the stupid beast, ignoring Mike as he laughed, startling Caleb, who shook his head sadly, as if he'd already decided whatever Jeremy was about to do was going to fail.

  Jeremy didn't care.

  And he had no plan.

  One swift, huge kick of the dumpster's side sent pain ricocheting back up his joints, into his hip socket. Three little furry heads poked up.

  He swore they snickered at him.

  “Why can't you just leave the little animals alone?' asked a familiar, sweet voice from behind them, making the men turn en masse. Lydia's best friend Krysta stood there, hands on hips, brow down in consternation. Springy curls and soulful brown eyes topped a curvy woman Lydia's age. Krysta was high energy, always multitasking, and she had a can-do spirit that Lydia's parents adored.

  Caleb's eyes widened as he took her in. Dressed in a thick red-checkered flannel coat, a Patriots hat, and heavy snow boots, the only way to identify her was by voice.

  “If they keep eating the garbage, they'll live in there.”

  “So?”

  “And then they'll breed. We don't need the dumpster turning into a maternity ward,” Caleb cracked.

  Mike and Jeremy exchanged a glance.

  Krysta picked up on it, eyes narrowing shrewdly.

  Uh oh.

  “Where's Lydia?” she asked in that peppy voice that drove Jeremy a little nuts. How could someone be so relentlessly happy all the time?

  “Warm,” Mike snapped, advancing on the raccoon bunker with a stick, Adam coaching him.

  “She's still in bed,” Jeremy explained as Krysta came closer, craning her neck to watch.

  “Don't get too close,” Caleb warned.

  “Why not?” she challenged.

  “We don't want anyone getting hurt.”

  “If you're so worried about people getting hurt,” Jeremy groused, “why didn't you send me and Mike back to our place?”

  “Because you need to learn how to do this.”

  “Life skill acquisition: evicting raccoons from rubbish bins,” Mike muttered.

  “It is a skill,” Pete boomed, suddenly joining the group.

  Krysta went straight to him for a welcome hug, Caleb eyeing her the entire time.

  “What is my favorite bonus daughter doing here?” Pete asked, lifting Krysta off the ground.

  A cherubic, lush woman with crazy hair and a constant smile, she was a major presence in their life, and Jeremy was glad Lydia had a friend like her.

  “Hisssss!” the mama raccoon announced, as if they were unaware of her existence. One baby lifted a paw to the edge of the dumpster and got just enough leverage to topple over, ass over teakettle, onto the ground outside the dumpster.

  “Oh, shit,” Adam said under his breath, Mike tensing, holding the rake like a sword.

  “Don't hurt him!” Krysta shrieked, moving toward the baby as if Mike were planning to make raccoon-ka-bob.

  Caleb looked at her like she was nuts. “They might be rabid. The last thing we need to worry about is the physical state of invasive raccoons.”

  “But they're cute and defenseless.”

  “Hisssss!” Mama Raccoon vocalized.

  “Raccoons are anything but cute and defenseless,” Caleb yelled back. “They carry rabies, leptospirosis, roundworm – ”

  “And they bogart the joint, hog the covers, and never pay their share for appetizers,” Jeremy added.

  No one laughed.

  “They are sweet creatures!” she argued. “A group of them is even called a nursery of raccoons. How can you want to use force against such a tiny little beast?”

  “Because those beasts are just cute little versions of rats.”

  “I can't believe you want to hurt them!” Krysta yelled back at Caleb, who gave her a cocky look and began laughing.

  “You picked the wrong animal to go all lovey-dovey on, Krysta,” h
e declared, one eye on her, one on the mama, who began moving closer to Krysta.

  Caleb's instincts kicked in, and Jeremy admired the guy's swiftness. Inserting himself between Krysta and the baby trash panda, Caleb back-walked Krysta up against a pine tree as her palms went flat against his ski jacket, mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Protecting you from getting attacked.”

  “By what?”

  Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Jeremy learned by what.

  Because the what was the mama raccoon, and she decided Jeremy was the biggest threat to her baby.

  When Jeremy and Mike had first moved to the campground, Pete had insisted on giving them both big fur hats with earflaps, ungodly, unwieldy things that were warm as a toaster and ugly as sin.

  All hail Pete as King of Men right now, Jeremy thought as a flying raccoon landed on his head, claws digging in to his hat, the screams of everyone around him turning into sound confetti.

  Taking off at a run, he did the only thing his addled brain could manage:

  Flee.

  Except the damn raccoon stayed in place.

  Until it didn't.

  Suddenly, a claw landed on his shoulder, the elbow, and he found himself shaking his arm furiously, the gesture not unlike a furious masturbation session, the kind of chicken-choking that comes on the seventh orgasm of the day after hours of PornHub, when Lydia was out of town and he was stuck in the wild woods of Maine with nothing but satellite internet and a hard-on.

  “JEREMY! STOP!” Miles shouted, the roar of a golf cart engine punctuating his words.

  Looking down, he stared straight into the beady little eyes of his furry nemesis, which fell to the ground just as he pulled his leg back without thinking and kicked it.

  Dropkicked it.

  The damn animal sailed through the air like a rugby ball, landing on the roof of the golf cart.

  Miles, a baritone by nature, did his best impression of a eunuch in a Messiah choir, slamming on the brakes.

  The raccoon stayed in place.

  And then it began to rain, but only on Miles.

  “What the hell?” Jeremy gasped as Mike appeared, looking at him through the plexiglass shield over his face, turning to watch poor Miles.

  “It's – is the raccoon peeing on Miles?” Krysta screamed as Caleb raced to grab Miles out of the golf cart, the poor guy sputtering.