by Parker Swift
After herding the kids out of the room, I paused for a moment before leaving the house, wondering if I should interrupt Dylan to say that in fact he wouldn’t be right back, because duty was calling me away. But the whole thing just felt too absurd. You don’t say goodbye to someone you’ve just met. Or, at least, you don’t make a production out of it.
“Come on, Maddy,” I said, grabbing her hand. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t want to,” she whined. “It’s more fun here. Everyone’s listening to me. Did you hear my song?”
“I did. It was wonderful,” I told her. “You’re a wonderful singer. Who needs to go to bed. You too, Cole.” And I took both of them, protesting, up the driveway.
As I was about to hoist Maddy into the car, I heard someone approaching on the gravel driveway behind me, and then suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. Turning around, I found Dylan looking at me expectantly and letting his hand slowly slide down my bare arm to rest by his side. And sure enough, there was the world zooming out of focus.
“You ran off,” he said dryly. Maybe even disappointed?
“Sorry, but it was time for these kids to get home, and you seemed to be busy. I didn’t want to interrupt.” A conflicting mess of emotions rose in me, telling me both to run away—to escape the intense physical reaction simmering in me—and also to stay right there, looking into those preposterous eyes. “Thank you for getting me the drink. I really didn’t mean to be rude.”
He moved his hand to my forearm, holding it gently, and despite my best mental efforts to remain unaffected, the electricity of his touch coursed through my body, settling between my thighs. At twenty-four perhaps I should have been able to be around someone I was attracted to with more grace, but this was new to me, and apparently, my body would not be handing control over to my brain anytime soon.
“Are you available tomorrow night?” he asked. “I’d like to take you for a drink.” The way he said this wasn’t an invitation, but more like a reminder. As though he and I having a drink together was a fact I’d forgotten, an inevitability. I was paused in shock when I heard a screech of delight erupt from Maddy, who I’d forgotten was standing between us.
“Are you asking Lydia out on a date?” Maddy looked up at Dylan with a huge grin on her face. Oh god. I felt all heat leaving my lower half and going straight to my face. Stop stop stop, I wanted to tell my blush, but it wasn’t listening. I’d always wondered if you could actually faint from embarrassment, and I was about to find out.
Dylan looked down and replied directly to Maddy, without missing a beat. “I am,” he said. “Is that alright with you?”
Surprised and pleased with the authority just granted to her, Maddy replied, “I guess it’s ok, but Lydia never goes on dates. She’s too busy.” She recited the line I’d told her parents so many times before when they’d asked me about my love life.
“Is that right?” he asked, either to Maddy or me. I wasn’t even sure anymore.
“Do you love her?” she said. She had a huge grin on her face and practically sang the word love as she twirled in her flouncy dress. Oh god. I was pretty sure actual death from embarrassment was now on the horizon.
I tried to usher her into the car with Cole, hoping that maybe just maybe we could all pretend she hadn’t just asked him that. But she was glued to Dylan, hanging on him, waiting for an answer.
“Madly,” he said to her, completely straight-faced. He was really good. Turning to me with a hint of a smile, he asked, “Well?”
I nodded shyly—no one in my life would ever have described me as shy, but against my better judgment I found myself agreeing quietly. He moved his hand briefly to my face, brushing my bangs away from my forehead. His look was almost curious, like he was trying to figure me out.
“I’ll pick you up at The Cottage at eight thirty.”
“Right,” I said, finally finding my ability to speak. “On your white horse.”
He smiled back, giving me a knowing smirk. I had a feeling my snarky humor wasn’t fooling him. Surely he could perceive my violent blushing and flustered response. My body was completely at attention, betraying me with each shallow breath. I had to focus. I lifted Maddy into the car and quickly followed. I looked out of the window as I shut the door, and I waved as the driver pulled away. Dylan stood there looking back, hands in his pockets, appearing completely unflustered. So unfair.
* * *
The next morning I managed to get Daphne on the phone, who was all ears about the guy who had totally mystified me and thrown my body into a tailspin.
“This sounds so steamy and romantic, Lydia! What do you think he wants? I mean, you’re only there for another couple of days. Do you think he wants to have a one-night stand?”
“What else would he want?” I said. “Seriously. He was so good. He must do this all the time.”
“Do what?”
“Pick up the babysitter,” I scoffed.
Daphne was the perfect person to pick this apart with. We’d begun our inseparability sophomore year when we discovered we took the same train from Brooklyn to NYU together every day and had the same monstrous Intro to Conversational French professor. Now she was entering her second year in law school. Her career was actually under way, while mine was still in the planning stages.
“Maybe you should let him,” she said, and laughed. “I mean, from the sound of things, I might drive up there and let him.”
We’d hashed out every romantic encounter over long dinners. Or I mean, let’s be honest—her romantic encounters. My romantic encounters wouldn’t get us through the appetizers. And she was the only one who knew the extent of my recent celibacy.
“While you think about that,” she said, interrupting my brief wonder at the idea that I might actually want to have sex with Dylan, and it might actually happen, “I’m going to Google him. What’s his name again?”
“Dylan Hale,” I said. “I have no idea what he wants! And also, it doesn’t matter, right? I’m not going to sleep with a man I hardly know, no matter how attracted to him I am…I mean, am I? Gah!” Feeling this attracted to someone for the first time, well, ever had me spinning, and I was not used to spinning. “I leave here in two days. Then we’re back in the Catskills for over a week, I’m with you for a day, and then I’m off to London. It’s easier to leave this whole riotous out-of-control feeling behind me. Daphne, I was talking about knights in shining armor and white horses. I mean, what is wrong with me?”
Daphne laughed. “Ok, ok, first, stop reminding me about this whole London thing—I’m still in full-on denial mode about you leaving New York. But also, isn’t this guy British? Why couldn’t you see him again over there?” This was a fact I had been purposely ignoring. For some reason visualizing a future beyond this date with Dylan felt strangely dangerous.
“And, Lydia, look—I know that with everything you’ve had to do for your dad you’ve never been able to really…Well, it’s been easier to keep things simple. But, you don’t have to do that anymore. Your dad’s—” She paused, and I could tell she was worried she’d gone too far, that I wasn’t ready to hear what she had to say. But of course I knew she was right. There were times when the fact that Daphne knew me so well was more of a curse than a blessing. And she knew that I hadn’t let it sink in that my dad was really gone. Or what that meant for all of the ways in which I’d been holding it together for years. My dad was gone. I knew that, but she also knew that I might not be ready for my world to become one that didn’t include him. Living life to the fullest is harder than it sounds.
“It’s ok, Daphne. I know. I just…Anyway, London is enormous! It’s a city of eight million people, and I have a feeling we don’t exactly run in the same circles. Not that I even have a circle. But damn, Daph, I’ll admit that I don’t think I’ve ever found a guy this…this…intoxicating before. It was like I was a magnet, and all of my little magnetic cells were pointed in his direction or something. There was just something there. I had goo
se bumps! Plus, I get the feeling he’s trouble. He’s just too good-looking, ya know?”
“I can’t believe Lydia Bell goes to Nowhere, Canada, finally finds someone who she wants to do it with, and he’s a sexy, mysterious Brit.” There was a moment of silence while I could hear her typing. Then the typing stopped and she gasped. “Oh my god. Make that a sexy celebrity Brit! He is all. Over. The Internet, Lydia.”
“What do you mean?” I asked impatiently. I could feel my blood pumping. “You have to tell me. This place doesn’t have Wi-Fi, and my cell data doesn’t work up here. So charming until you need to Google the hot guy who asks you out, and then suddenly it isn’t.”
“Ok, ok, calm down there, lady. So apparently he is an architect and has designed a bunch of buildings in London…and in every other major city. Um…He is a prodigy of some sort—he won some big award for architecture when he was really young. God, Lydia, these buildings are pretty incredible.” I could practically hear her going into fantasyland over what she was seeing on her screen.
“Don’t get distracted!” I scolded her.
“Sheesh, ok…So there are all of these links for events he speaks at and attends, like red carpet stuff. He looks great in a tux.” I could practically hear her scanning her computer screen. “English gossip blogs and tabloid sites love this guy.”
“What else? This is all because he’s an architect? And gorgeous?” I asked, looking into the hallway to make sure neither of the kids were eavesdropping.
“I don’t think so…It’s mostly like crazy Downton Abbey shit, society page stuff,” she said. I could hear the keyboard clicking. “Dude. You should see this family crest, and this house. I think he is like old-school aristocracy…Holy shit.”
“What?”
“His grandfather is a fucking Duke!” Daphne’s voice had reached an octave I was pretty sure only dogs could hear.
“Wait, seriously?” I asked. I knew he was rich, but that seemed beyond the pale. Although, somehow it also didn’t come as a surprise. Power, independence, and status oozed from him, like he didn’t have to brook disappointment. Ever. I suddenly remembered talking to him and wondered if I’d committed some kind of antiquated royal faux pas. Should I have curtsied or something?
“You heard me. The Duke of Abingdon, which apparently makes Dylan the Earl. Leave it to you, Lydia, to get asked out by an Earl.”
“He didn’t exactly ask,” I said. “It was more like he just told me it was happening.” I was all of a sudden embarrassed by my knight-on-a-white-horse comment. “An Earl. Oh yeah, that’s just my style.”
“Says the girl who’s spent her summer riding around in a chauffeured SUV.” Sometimes Daphne could simply be annoying.
“As the help! Come on, Daphne, focus. What else?”
“Um, let’s see…I don’t have time to click on all the links, but he has his own architecture firm in London, and he’s thirty. He’s clearly very philanthropic—there’s a lot about large donations to x, y, and z. Um, everything else is about his family and, like, family history stuff. There’s clearly more to read here, but I have to run.”
“Great, so I’m going on a date with Lord Grantham, and you’re back in our normal life. I feel like we’re crossing space and time barriers here.”
“Not Lord Grantham. Or maybe like, Lord Grantham from his young wild days? Lydia.” She sighed in frustration with me. “Go have a drink with him, and just relax. Have fun with him!” I could practically hear her ordering me to let my guard down. “Just let loose a little. And if nothing happens, come home, fantasize about him, get yourself off, and get it out of your system.”
I laughed at this. But of course, that had been my idea too. “What will I do without you this year?”
“We’ll do this—gab our faces off on the phone. Every day. I gotta run, Lydia—Matt’s here.” Matt was Daphne’s long-term boyfriend, a super-sweet hipster she met in law school. “See you next week! We’ll have to make the most of our one day together.”
“Great, you can assist in my reeducation—I feel like every ounce of Brooklyn grit has been sucked out of me by the chauffeured car and dates with Earls. I need to go to a dive bar and mainline cheap beer.”
Daphne laughed. “Gross,” she said. “How about a slice at Grimaldi’s, followed by cocktails on our roof—Matt’s been bartending, and the man can make a mean Dark ’n Stormy.”
“Perfect! Tell Matt I say hi!”
* * *
When I came downstairs after my phone call with Daphne, the Franklins told me I had the morning off. I think they felt bad about my having to leave the party so early the night before, because they told me to borrow the family car and head into town if I wanted. I resolved to use the time to distract myself from the Dylan issue. After a long run around the estate to clear my head, and a desperately needed shower, I put on my best skinny jeans, ballet flats, a fitted tank, and a cropped jacket. I needed to feel like a real person, not just a professional kid chaser.
The town of La Malbaie was twenty minutes away down twisting hilly roads dotted with French road signs, tiny B & Bs, and little shops filled with local crafts. But in the heart of town was an upscale coffee shop with reliably good coffee and croissants. When I got there, I found an isolated table in the window, got myself a latte, and settled in with a stack of fashion magazines. I needed to get my brain back in gear in anticipation of entering the fashion world in two weeks.
In some ways it was ridiculous for me to be pursuing a career in fashion—I’d never been drawn to the glitz of it, and no one would accuse me of being ahead of the fashion curve—but there was just something about it. It was an arena where art met the real world. Clothes could undo things, change people, create clean slates. Even though my own artistic prowess began and ended with the drawing of spirals on the margins of my notebooks, fashion was an art I really wanted to be a part of.
But as much as I tried to focus on the magazines in front of me, my mind kept drifting back to Dylan. I was completely hopeless—trying not to think about him was like being at war with my physical body. My blood had been humming and my skin buzzing ever since I’d met him. I half expected to see him on the pages of the magazines in front of me, lounging in some fashion spread, torturing me in a Tom Ford suit or a Banana Republic field jacket.
It was no mystery why I found him attractive—you’d have to be blind not to see the appeal—but I was startled by his attention to me. It’s not that I thought I was unattractive—I knew I could work it in a pair of heels and a dress when I tried—but I was the cute, sweet, overly long–bang girl who talked with her hands. I just didn’t have that sophisticated, mysterious thing going on that guys like Dylan seemed to go for.
But, also, why him? I had dated a few guys, some of whom had been distinctly not ugly, but Dylan was the first one whose clothes I wanted to tear off his body, and quickly. Or more accurately, I wanted him to tear my clothes off.
If I closed my eyes, as I was doing at that moment, I could easily imagine his strong hands on my body, starting in my hair, sliding down over my collarbones and smoothing over my breasts. I could imagine him pinning my hips down with those muscular arms. This fantasy wasn’t one of the vague scenarios that I normally conjured in order to have a pathetic but much-needed orgasm. This fantasy was specific. I actually wanted to imagine a guy, this guy, entering me, taking me. And as I imagined just that, I squirmed in my seat, starting to feel the delicious tension pool low in my belly. The scene was getting torrid, more aggressive, and more inappropriate to be thinking about in public when I heard a coffee being placed on my table, and a familiar voice say, “Lydia.”
Chapter 4
Gah!” My eyes shot open, and I nearly fell off my chair. I found myself looking directly at the star of my fantasy. “You scared the crap out of me!”
Flustered, I crossed and uncrossed my legs and tried to regain composure. “Um, hi.” I coughed. My hands were white-knuckled, gripping the edges of my seat for support.
&nb
sp; “Hi.” He leaned forward, smirking and pressing his palms onto the table with locked arms. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Am I interrupting something?” He smiled as he said it, making me feel like he could see right through me again.
“No. Um, I mean, yes. God, are you like, everywhere?” I replied, talking mostly to myself. He smiled again, knowingly, while I resettled myself at the table. “I was just thinking about my new job, trying to brush up on what I’ve missed in the fashion world this summer.” I pointed at the towering stack of magazines in front of me, as though it was completely normal to read magazines with your eyes shut and head leaning back. Not to mention the magazines were all closed.
“Dylan!” A shrill, determined voice echoed through the small shop. We both turned towards the entrance and saw his mother and the tall blonde from the night before through the screened door, their noses nearly pressed up against it. “Did you get my cappuccino, darling? And one for Amelia?” Mrs. Hale looked at me with disappointment and then at him with impatience.
“I’ll see you tonight, Lydia. Be ready at eight thirty.” He said it so matter-of-factly, and that commanding tone did something to me.
“Wait,” I said, and he turned back to me with a raised eyebrow. “I’d prefer to meet you there, er, wherever we’re going.” For some reason I felt like I had to explain. “It’s just easier—the doorbell wakes the kids, and I’d prefer not to interfere with the Franklins’ night.” It was a lame excuse, but the idea of Dylan ringing their doorbell and picking me up for a date in front of Charles and Kate was more than I could bear. I was sure that if they saw us together, they’d know immediately what kind of thoughts I was having about him. Not to mention the risk that Maddy would mortify me again.
