Maliciously Obedient Read online

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  Perfect, in other words, for Mike Bournham, rising Fortune 500 CEO and soon-to-be billionaire.

  “I can give you fifteen more, Jonah, so get to the point. ”

  “OK, then. ” Calm, slow sip of his iced coffee. A simmer built in Mike, who knew a power play when he saw it. Jonah needed him. Not the other way around. Not quite true – twenty percent spike in sales! – but Mike reminded himself anyhow, because the dynamics right now were slipping out of his favor.

  He had quite enough of that already in his life, with Lydia.

  “Wed like for you to work on poking her,” Jonah paused imperceptibly, a small grin at the corner of his lips, eyes on Mike, weighing out whether to let the joke be acknowledged. Whatever he saw in Mikes face told him not to. “Like a feminist dealing with a Don Draper-type boss. ”

  Second reference to Don Draper in one week. And he looked nothing like Jon Hamm.

  “Liberated feminist meets 50s throwback?”

  Jonah grabbed his smart phone, eyes wide. “Im totally stealing that! Mike, youre a natch at this. ”

  “Thats why Im the CEO. ” Jonah mistook the sarcastic comment for bonding and grinned as he typed. Oh, brother.

  “Here. ” Jonah produced a sheath of papers. “New script. ”

  “Cant you just send me a PDF? My admin can do the printing, and this way I can read it on the road. ”

  Tap tap tap. The man turned away and buried his face in the glowing screen, then shouted, “Done!” with a flourish, his finger smacking the “Send” button as if achieving orgasm.

  “Anything else?”

  Jonah grinned slyly. “Any chance you and Linda might – ”

  “Lydia. ” The slow simmer turned to a low boil. Jesus Christ, man, get her name right. She was part of the series, like it or not. A light bulb went off. “Hold on. How do you secure permission to run these shows if the people who I interact with dont know abut the cameras?”

  The grin turned smug. “We ask after the fact. Blur out their faces if they refuse. Most people though, man,” he shook his head slowly, contemplative suddenly. “They dont say no. ”

  “Their fifteen minutes of fame?”

  “Something like that. ” He clapped Mike on the shoulder as they stood, the familiarity a bit too unctuous. “Im sure shell consider it a privilege when she finds out. ”

  A privilege.

  Right.

  Chapter Four

  Three hours of yoga. Two hours of careful breathing meditation. One pint of Ben and Jerry’s and she thought that she was calm enough to handle the presentation. She had done the research. She knew how to assemble the various components of social media and, by God, she was having a great hair day to boot.

  So, as she smoothed out the skirt and pulled her shirt over it, her curves covered by nicely tailored clothes, she stared herself in the eye in the mirror and said, “Your inner goddess can do this. ” Then she grinned maniacally.

  Matt Jones had changed everything, that’s for sure. Everything. She had tried to talk to Dave about why the job got filled and he claimed to know even less than she did. That “somebody at corporate had just sent Matt down” bullshit – without a word of warning – left her about 50/50 on whether she was going to believe him or not. Dave could be cagey. Hed lied to her on both personal and professional levels, so as far as she was concerned Dave was an obstacle.

  A powerful one, unfortunately.

  Dave was the epitome of the corporate ladder climber, an early-30s guy with a Harvard MBA and an ego the size of the tuition price tag. She was taking a huge risk by doing this presentation because if Dave liked it he would co-opt it. In that sense, she was glad to have Matt there because if Matt were a decent guy – where to put him on the continuum from hero to asshole? – as long as he lived somewhere in the middle third, she figured he’d back her up if Dave decided to run with the credit. If Dave didn’t like it, the idea was dead in the water. Although, she supposed if she wanted to go job hunting she could use it as an example of the quality of her work. But really, who was she? She was a twenty-five year old with a Masters degree in a subject that corporate America considered to be hippieland, or worse – threatening.

  Men in middle management took her gender studies graduate degree as some sort of threat, depending on age. Anybody under thirty seemed to just find it interesting or novel, or maybe patronizingly cute. Anybody over fifty suddenly got nervous – and sweaty – because what did “gender studies” mean? Then there was that ‘in the middle’ where Matt and Dave lived. Reactions seemed to depend on upbringing, temperament, where they were in the corporate structure and where they were on that continuum from hero to asshole. Dave leaned more towards the asshole end.

  If she could get Dave to agree that her project was valid then she had a chance at the director of – oh, shit.

  And that was the problem. That’s where Matt Jones had gummed up the works. When she was honest with herself she had to acknowledge a parallel gumming of the works where he made her heart stand still and beat out of her chest at the same time. Where he made her cheeks flush, not with embarrassment, not with condescension, but with arousal. Where he made her hands twitch, not eager for more work, but needing the feel of his skin.

  Matt Jones had taken what was supposed to be a simple presentation today at two o’clock and turned it into a very, very complicated issue. In Lydia’s world, everything was typically quite simple. She knew what she wanted, she worked hard, she put her nose to the grindstone and she just did what she needed to do. She didn’t have Ivy League degrees, she didn’t have well-connected parents, she wasn’t some great beauty. In fact, her weight was a disadvantage.

  She wasn’t quite fat and she definitely wasn’t close to thin. Stuck in between what people would call zaftig or voluptuous, she wore a medium/large at J. Jill and had a body type that could fit in sizes anywhere from a twelve to a sixteen (OK, eighteen). She didn’t have enormous breasts; they were quite fine and proportionate to her rib cage and to her nipped-in waist. But she had an hourglass figure that was the epitome of a pear with a “great big booty” as Krysta called it, and hips that screamed peasant.

  Her mother had always said, “You’ve got hips for birthing, so you need to have four children or more. ”

  Lydia had looked at her in horror and said, “Four children! Whos crazy enough to have four children?”

  The mother of six had replied,“I guess I’m fifty percent crazier than that. ”

  For all of her flaws, for all of her insecurities that popped up here and there about her body, she really was firmly centered within herself. At peace with her issues, at peace with her bountiful self, and through her studies, research, and analysis she had come to distinguish between what society said about a woman’s body and what a woman herself could believe. With deep, conscious effort Lydia had worked to carve out a space within that no one else could touch. That no one else could judge. That no one else could frame for her and impose on her and make her feel bad about anything.

  Smoothing that blouse against the pooch of skin between her hips, she squared her shoulders, tightened her bra straps, and finger-combed her long, brown silky hair, observing the almond-shaped eyes that stared back at her, the slight pink on her cheekbones, the well-placed lipstick that made her face bright.

  All of it said Lydia. And that was good enough.

  As he watched Lydia set up her Powerpoint, checking the screen to make sure that the controllers all worked, lining up her notes, he realized just how nervous she was underneath it all. He was rooting for her, both as Matt Jones and as Michael Bournham because, although she had been touchy the other day when she came to him with this project and he hadn’t heard the entire story, he was pretty sure that whatever she was about to dump on his and Dave’s heads right now was smart, well thought out, carefully planned, and ready to be executed in a way that would help the bottom line here at the company.

  It didnt hurt that she
was so fine to watch, her shapely body bending and twisting, silk and wool and cloth clinging to the parts he loved most, her movements professional, skin so soft and approachable he could barely stand it, a hunger welling up in him that he needed to tame. Dating “toothpicks with boobs” – Jeremys catch phrase – had become too much of a trend for him. The lush appeal of her body, with a bright mind and sharp tongue to match, was making it harder to control his runaway lust.

  And that was something no Botoxed, surgically-enhanced, cantaloupes-under-chest-skinned women had provoked in him in a very long time.

  If ever.

  She looked at him as if he were a nemesis, sidelong glances from those topaz-speckled eyes, looks he wished were driven by a sultrier appeal and not by worry or competition. Each look came not with a guarded focus, but with a righteous anger, a chip on her shoulder the size, he imagined, of her student loan debt. The size of all the guys before him who had come and gone and taken the jobs that she wanted. Or of the grad school colleagues who had snatched up classes, plum assignments as research assistants, and well – he knew the drill. He had a sister. He had seen her struggle and knew that as much as he wanted to think that gender politics weren’t an issue in the workplace the past few days here – my God, had it really been a week? – had shown him just how out of touch he had become.

  Being at the top of the building, literally and metaphorically, with the executive suite flying high over the city meant that he had his fingers in nothing that resembled average American daily life. He was driven wherever he needed to go. He ate food prepared by other people and generally of the finest quality. He wore bespoke suits tailored specifically to his body, to his tastes, to his needs. Women molded themselves to what they thought he wanted in an effort to please him, to snag him, to carry bragging rights. Mike wasn’t sure anymore. Real love hadn’t entered into the picture in years. He couldnt quite count his friend Jeremys steadfast presence.

  Not quite.

  Daily life was all a churn. He met with other CEOs, with high-level investors, with fund managers and with federal regulators in an endless spiral of more of the same, all with the singular goal of generating more money for someone.

  Preferably that someone was him.

  Here sat – no, stood – no, sat – Lydia the fruitfly, hyped up on the meth of anxiety and possibility. The metaphor was apt; from his point of view she looked so nervous, impossibly anxious. Her hair down and flowing, her makeup perfectly applied, her face fresh and alert and closed off, the stakes were so high in her world that she couldn’t bear to let one sliver of her authentic self escape.

  In his world this was nothing. He viewed it as an exercise in understanding more about Dave, about how his upper middle managers handled daily life at work. Was workplace mobility really that constricted? Had Lydia been right, that there really was a gender issue? He didn’t know, but he was about to find out.

  With cameras rolling. Jonah’s script be damned. He had actually looked through it before, briefly, when the email Jonah sent popped up. Mike had laughed, rolled his eyes, and snorted with disgust because Jonah had wanted him to “accidentally” spill a cup of coffee on Lydia’s front and then take a napkin and start to wipe it up.