Chapter Seventeen
All she had said was, “You go ahead. I’ll come down when I’m ready.”
She got back a pained sigh that was so Rolf. Like she was being unreasonable and wasting his time. What was she doing with such an arrogant, impossible man?
“What? You’re ready and I’m not.” And yes, maybe she had dragged her feet with her shower and brushing her teeth. She hadn’t expected him to come back after disappearing to his own room to tidy the edges of his beard and brush his own teeth. She had been toying with not going down for breakfast at all, just eating a cereal bar and writing for an hour.
Even though she was starving. At one point last night, they had shared her take-out sandwich and salad from Lazy Suzanne’s, fighting over the last sunflower seed in the tray before lounging in her tub for an hour. They hadn’t talked much, too blissed out from sex. It had been nice.
Now they were at odds again.
“Explain the problem,” he said. “You don’t want people to speculate about us? Then don’t sneak around, making them guess. We sleep together. So what? Are you worried your father will say something?”
“Like what? He thinks you’re paving our hallways with gold. As far as he’s concerned, if you want his firstborn, you’re welcome to her.”
His lids lowered halfway, mouth twisting. “Why is your relationship with him so passive-aggressive?”
“Because it’s easier to blame him for where I’m at than admit to my own failings. You’ll have to teach me how to embrace my faults and not give a damn about them.”
He was leaning on her desk, arms folded, and looked to the ceiling. “If you want to take shots, at least do it over coffee and eggs. I’ve had a hard night. I’m not at full strength.”
She couldn’t help smiling at that. Smugly.
“Poor you. Still jet-lagged, too.” She crossed to lean in to him, wrapping her arms around his waist, liking the smoky way he looked at her mouth while hooking an arm around her lower back. “Is that why you want me to come with you? Too weak to get down the stairs on your own?”
He grew serious. “I don’t have a lot of time to give you. We have to take it where we can, not waste it playing hide-and-seek.”
She set her forehead against his chest, conceding, “Fine.” It wasn’t an easy decision, but she was addicted enough to this license to touch him to take the beating of public opinion.
As it turned out, they were so late getting downstairs, the dining room was empty. The crews had all gone off to start work and the breakfast buffet had been taken into the kitchen.
“I’ll go in and ask them to heat a couple of plates of whatever was left,” Rolf said. “You sit down.”
“Really?”
He gave her a look that said, You had a hard night, too. She bit back a smile, lust-drunk. They were both strung out on post-orgasmic oxytocin.
Lina, the barista, was in cleanup mode, but gave Glory a cup from the regular drip-brew and said she’d make Rolf’s double-shot and bring it over. Glory was dying to do it herself and draw a spent penis on his foam, but resisted.
As she settled into the corner seat of the far table, out of the sun but against the window, she flicked on her phone and checked her mother’s social media pages.
“Damn. We took too long,” Trigg said as he entered the dining room with Ilke.
He was wearing jeans and a clean T-shirt. She was hideously beautiful in a pair of khaki shorts and a ribbed tank that hugged her lithe body with perfection. Her blonde hair was damp from her shower, the choppy style tomboyish, which only served to make her plump lips and blue eyes that much more feminine and sensual.
They both looked flushed from exertion. Hmmph.
“I’ll see what they have left in the kitchen. Go sit with Glory,” Trigg said with a nod of greeting.
Ilke did a subtle double-take. “Really?”
“Yeah, they’ll crack a few eggs for us if they have to. Two Americanos when you get a chance, please, Lina?” He held up two fingers as he crossed through the pantry into the kitchen.
“Trigg and I went for a run,” Ilke said, standing behind the chair opposite Glory. Her fingers rolled through a light drum on the chair back. “Dry land training. We shared a coach, back when he was still skiing. That’s how Vivien knows my mother.”
Indeed. Glory sipped her coffee.
“Rolf is unhappy with my bringing Vivien here.” She glanced toward the entrance, ensuring she wasn’t being overheard. “I was trying to smooth that over. If I’ve come between you two—”
“You haven’t.” Why did it feel so good to say that with such a blithe lack of concern? She felt positively bitchy in the most superior way and loved it.
“Brilliant.” Ilke pulled out a chair in a mild, go fuck yourself, then smile.
Glory deliberately went back to looking at her screen, but this was a stand-off between two territorial cats and she wasn’t flinching a single whisker.
Rolf came out of the kitchen with a huge plate of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and a fruit cup. He grabbed a second plate and cutlery on his way past the caddy. Then he came to stand at the end of the table, shoulders back and brows up.
“Really?” He packed a lot of latent aggression into that one word.
Glory rolled one negligent shoulder. I’m not scared. She was shitting bricks, but no one needed to know that, least of all Ilke.
“Here’s your coffee,” Lina said as she came up behind Rolf with three mugs on a tray. Rolf’s had a pretty mandala on it.
“Nice work, Lina,” Glory said sincerely, but she couldn’t resist sliding a glance to Rolf as he sat down.
“Would you shut up about that?” He set the empty plate in front of her and let her take what she wanted from the full one, then tucked into the lion’s share she’d left him.
She had just decided she needed one more hash brown and poked it with her fork when Trigg appeared. He stopped dead in his tracks halfway to their table, watching her close her lips over her tines.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
No one gave that man enough credit. He acted like an idiot, but he missed nothing.
Glory chewed very slowly, lips sealed tight. Her cheeks warmed.
Rolf didn’t react at all, even when Trigg set two full plates on the table for himself and Ilke, but stayed standing, arms folded in confrontation.
Ilke looked at the sausage and bacon on her plate alongside eggs and biscuits with gravy. “I guess it’s cheat day.”
Trigg yanked his chair back and dropped into it. He began eating as though each fork into his pile of scrambled eggs was a stab, each swallow a live heart from his enemy’s chest.
Glory didn’t believe Trigg had been the least bit serious about her, but the way he was acting brought back all her insecurities about being just one more bone of contention the brothers were fighting over. She braced herself for a smirk of superiority from Rolf, which would kill her—it really would.
“Did you talk to Nate about moving the temporary office to the other side of the site?”
Trigg waited a beat, then said something about a setback from the creek. “We nailed a few ribbons into the ground. It’ll work.”
“I’ll have a look.”
They all continued eating. No one spoke until they were almost finished.
“When are you leaving, Ilke?” Rolf asked as he pushed his plate away and reached for his coffee. “Shall I say goodbye now?”
Wow, darling. Glory scratched her upper lip, flattered by his desire to protect their budding relationship, but that was pretty ruthless.
“It depends on whether Vivien needs me. What are her arrangements?”
Rolf swung a look to Trigg who smiled benignly. “I’m leaving for Chile. She plans to stay until I get back.”
“In three weeks?” Rolf’s tone said, Fuck that. He checked his phone, then drained his coffee. “Nate needs us at the site.”
Rolf and Trigg both rose.
Rolf leaned down to press Glory’s thick braid against the back of her neck with the cup of his hand. He kissed the top of her head. “If it gets to be lunch and you haven’t seen me, text me. I’ll let you know if I can make it back. If not, save me one of the roast beef sandwiches, will you?”
“Happy to.”
“Thanks.” He held eye contact an extra heartbeat, long enough to send a kick through her pulse.
“Have a nice day at work, dear.”
He gave her braid a light tug, then walked out with Trigg.
She ogled the way Rolf’s jeans cupped the shape of his butt, riding high into the valley between cheeks lovingly carved from what looked like solid oak.
When he disappeared into the foyer, she dragged her gaze back to discover Ilke had also craned to admire the departing men.
“What?” The blonde beauty sipped her coffee. “I’m not dead.”
Sharp as her appetite had been when she arrived, Glory decided she was done. She nudged her empty plate away and drained the last of her coffee.
“Is Kathleen Cormer really your mother? Like, the author?”
Glory pinched the handle on her empty mug, maintaining a neutral expression. “She passed away, but yes. Why?”
“I love her books.”
The world tilted under Glory’s firmly seated ass. Fangirl moments happened. She adored when people made a fuss over her mother’s work. It tickled her silly, but she hadn’t pegged Ilke for an avid romance reader.
“She would have loved to hear you enjoy her stories,” she said, kind of by rote, mostly because she didn’t want to like Ilke, but how could she hate her now? If she was being sincere. “Do you read a lot of romance?”
“What’s a lot? Two or three a week, depending on my schedule. It’s my go-to stress buster, especially when I’m competing. Takes me out of that noise.”
Glory didn’t ask about the quarter-turn Rolf had given her, but now she was curious. “Do you read in English or German?”
“I’m Swedish, but I do read German, plus French and Italian. Reading romance is how I perfected all my languages. Sometimes the translations are abridged and there’s more selection in English, so I prefer to read them in English.”
Glory really wanted to hate her braggy, perfect multi-lingualism, but she was too impressed and intrigued. “Who else do you like to read?”
*
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It’s not up for discussion,” Rolf said as they walked to where the ATVs were locked up overnight. Murphy zigzagged in and out of the tall grass at the edge of the parking lot, keeping pace with them.
“Oh, it is.”
Rolf sent him a look. It was straight from their father’s playbook, the one that said there was a line and Trigg was standing on it.
Trigg planted his feet, crossed his arms, and tried to stare him down.
Rolf mirrored it. “You weren’t serious.”
“And you are?” Trigg scoffed.
“I’m serious right now. Back the fuck off.”
The dog came up and batted his tail against their legs, weaving between them, but they stayed exactly as they were.
“How did she even—She thinks you’re forty, you know. Way too old for her.”
“I’m not forty!”
Trigg rolled his shoulder and turned to unlock his machine. “I’m just repeating what she said.”
Rolf knew he was being rolled. His brother was getting his digs in the only way he could, but—Oh, fuck it.
He strode back into the lodge. Women’s laughter drew him back to the dining room where Glory was still sitting with Ilke, leaning forward and clearly enjoying herself. “I know, right? I full on hated him for the first ten chapters and then—” She stopped as she noticed him. She sobered. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not forty.” Why was she still sitting here? Laughing with Ilke? Her cup was empty.
“I never said—Oh, yeah I did.” She wrinkled her nose. “Tell your brother I’m not going to watch his dog if he’s going to throw me under the bus whenever it suits him.”
“Have you met Trigg?” Ilke asked dryly, picking up her own mug only to notice it was also empty.
“Kind of his M.O., right? You want more coffee?”
“Sure, if you have time.”
“What are you doing?” Rolf demanded.
Glory blinked at him. “Chatting. Why?”
“About books,” Ilke said, ice-blue eyes lifting long enough to tell him to get over himself.
As long as he lived, he would not understand women. Glory had cried last night about her mother’s books after ripping him a new one over Ilke. Now they were beste freundinnen, bonding on this topic?
His phone pinged. Trigg was down at the base, asking if he was coming or ‘busy.’ Took the time to throw quotes around the word and everything.
“I have to go. I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Roast beef sandwich. I remember.”
“I’m thirty-six.” Almost thirty-seven, but, “Not forty.”
Relationships were for the birds. He left for the base.
*
Family dinner? For reals? Ugh.
Glory had to unzip the garment bag of conference clothes at the back of her closet and dust off her makeup case and everything.
Rolf came in as she was smoothing moisturizer onto her freshly washed face. She peeked around from the bathroom to see him pouring schnapps into a pair of glasses.
“Do I need that?”
“I do.” He looked yummy in tan trousers and a crisp pale-blue business shirt with the buttons open at his throat. Both items looked tailored, sitting beautifully against his muscled form as he crossed toward her with the glasses, making the bottom drop out of her stomach. He smelled good, too. Like shampoo and aftershave, even though he’d only cleaned up around his beard.
“You look really nice,” she told him.
“So do you.” He hooked a finger in the belt of her robe, not pulling it open, but threatening to as he dropped his head to kiss her on the lips. He tasted sharp and hot, like schnapps.
“If you get me into that bed, I’m not getting out,” she warned. Please do, she invited with a sultry lift of her lashes, taking the glass he offered.
“I’m tempted to make use of other furniture, but she’ll only come looking for us.” He touched the edge of his glass to hers and sipped, then moved to the blue armchair she’d grabbed from a garage sale in Haven for twelve dollars. It came with a hassock. He crossed his ankles on it and leaned back with a sigh, elbow on the arm, gaze on her.
“How come Vivien gets to boss you and no one else does?”
“Do you want to come to this dinner?”
“No. It feels too soon. Don’t you think it’s too soon?” She spun, glad he was seeing they were way too new for something like that.
“And yet, you’re going.”
“Why?”
“That is the unstoppable force that is Vivien.”
Glory tsked and set her glass next to the bathroom sink while she dabbed then blended her foundation. “It’s Ilke’s fault, you know. Vivien came in to ask me to organize tonight, which I was totally happy to do. Then Ilke was all like, ‘You’ll be coming with Rolf, won’t you?’”
She had buried her smile behind the refill Glory had bought her. Just when Glory had been starting to like her, too.
It had been kind of funny in a tragic sitcom way. Vivien had been in full Lady Of The Manor vibe with her hair done, her makeup flawless, her linen suit not yet creased. Her gaze had widened in a double-take. In a blink of her false eyelashes, she had reassessed Glory’s lack of makeup, her damp hair that took a solid two hours to fully dry, her periwinkle T-shirt, and complete lack of jewelry.
“I wish these boys would tell me things,” she had complained in a huff.
Rolf sent her a circumspect look. “Are we talking about the Ilke who was roped into driving Vivien from Bozeman after flying twenty-some hours from Queenstown despite living in Stockholm?”
“Really? Vivien made it sound like this trip was Ilke’s idea.”
“And I’ll get the credit for hosting the Last Supper, even though I only called your chef and offered her two hundred dollars to pull out all the stops, just to get Vivien off my back.”
Glory paused in applying eyeliner, debated a moment, then went for it. “Do you hate her? Because of your mom?”
He met her reflection in the mirror with a flinty look, one that warned her this was basement-level stuff. He grimaced and scratched into his beard. “The thing with Vivien is, you want to hate her, but you can’t. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
She bit back a smile. “Were you awful to her when she married your dad?”
“Briefly. Then she sat me down and said she loved my dad. They had had an affair and she moved back to America to have Trigg because she didn’t want my mom to find out and put me through a divorce. She was sorry my mother was gone, but Trigg deserved to have his father in his life now that it was possible. Surely I had better things to do with my time and energy than to be a little shit about it.”
“She said that?”
“Word for word.”
“So you were nice to her after that?”
“I chose to put my time and energy into skiing. She put hers into family dinners and dragging us here to America every summer, so Trigg wouldn’t miss out on his heritage.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”
“Profoundly. But my father was a self-involved ambitious CEO. Remind you of anyone?” His smile was flat and self-deprecating. “If Vivien hadn’t been in the picture, he would have sent me to boarding school after my mother died. I asked him to, more than once, but Vivien insisted we were a family. Dragged herself out of bed to dress up and drive my ass to practice, watched every race.”
“Acted like a supportive parent? What a nightmare for you.”
“You see my predicament.” He sipped, watching her brush color onto her eyelids.
She was probably going to like Vivien, once she got past the airs. She definitely liked this side of him where he provided insight into the people who had shaped him. She forced a casual tone as she asked, “What about your wife?”
“What about her?”
“How long were you married?”
“I’m thinking I should have gone with sex on the edge of the sink.” He went to refill his drink.
He came toward her with the bottle, but she’d barely touched hers. He left the bottle on the night table and sat down again.
“Not up for discussion?”
“There’s not much to say. She was frustrated that I was always training, wanted more commitment. I thought that meant marriage and surprise, surprise, it made no difference to my schedule. The only thing that changed was, when I was away, she thought I was cheating. I would never do that to a woman. Not after my father and Vivien.” His finger tapped the edge of his glass. “I said that if she couldn’t trust me, we should get a divorce. She took what was hers according to the pre-nup my father had made her sign. I don’t hate her, but I don’t have any affection for her, either.”
She paused in applying blush, thinking about him saying that he had ignored texts from women he knew while he was away because he was with her now. It made her feel funny. Squiggly. Like things realigned themselves inside her, locking them closer together, which conversely made her feel more vulnerable.
“What about you?” he asked. “Have you been married?”
“No!”
“Just because it wasn’t reported online doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. We’ve covered my significant relationships. Tell me about yours.”
“Your ex-wife and Ilke are your significant relationships? Why do I feel like you’ve skipped a few?”
No reply.
She sipped her drink, feeling it burn away some of her nerves. “Starting with losing my virginity?” she asked, pretending to be blasé about it. “That was freshman year at college. Bradley was a virgin, too. Came from a small town and a really conservative family. Hadn’t had a lot of options with dating and neither had I.”
High school had been so crappy after the journal incident, she had only kissed one guy in the stock room at the coffee shop by the time she started college.
“What kind of name is Bradley? Sounds like a tool.”
“He was nice. A science major, but we had a communications class together. He had a lot of questions about how women’s bodies worked and I was dying to know what sex was like. We weren’t in love, but we were friends. Shared some graphic conversations. Fooled around, which turned into practical demonstrations like masturbating for each other—”
“What now?” His leather shoes hit the floor with a clap.
“—because we were not getting it right when we messed around. I mean, how funny is that? We were like a pair of kids playing doctor.”
“Why haven’t you and I done that? We can do that. I want to.”
“Because it’s so hot?” She rolled her yes.
“It’s very hot. I’m serious,” he insisted as she shook her head.
“It paid off in the long run. By the time we did the deed, it was actually pretty good. For a first time. In my opinion. But we fizzled right after. All we really had was friendship and curiosity, not…” She shrugged. “We still catch up online sometimes.”
“I’m serious. We should do that. Tonight.”
“Let it go.” She talked around applying lip-liner and lipstick. “I didn’t do that with my one other boyfriend, and things seem to be working out even better here, so…”
“One?”
“Pathetic, right? After Bradley, I dated a bit. Tried to be a party girl for about five minutes, but I couldn’t bring myself to sleep with idiots. I was more interested in guys who had something intelligent to say. Those ones didn’t have much of a social life, too busy studying, but by fourth year, I had a really nice boyfriend. Stephen. We used the l-word and everything.”
“Stephen,” he repeated, as if trying it out, then rejected the name with a curl of his lip and a shake of his head. “Sounds French. What happened?”
She blotted her lips. “Mom. I needed to move home. I couldn’t hold him back waiting for me when he was graduating and starting his career so we broke it off.” She had. He had wanted to keep seeing her and cried when she insisted they were over. “He’s married now, has a little girl.” Buckets of money, too. A life that could have been hers, if she hadn’t been worried about settling down too soon, before she had done everything she wanted to do.
“And then I accidentally fell into bed with a Viking with an attitude…” Also a doomed relationship, but she was happy to row this ship until it sank.
She dropped her robe and walked to the bed where she had left her dress.
His gaze followed her, taking in her lacy blue thong. There was plenty of heat in his gaze, but puzzlement, too. “Are you serious that you’ve only had two lovers? Or did you skip some that aren’t worth mentioning?”
“Three counting you, so I guess we’re tied?”
“Why would you do that to yourself? You’re very sensual.”
“I’m picky.” She pulled her dress over her head. It was a long, body-hugging T-shirt dress in dusky blue silk that fell to mid-thigh, deceptively casual-looking until it was on. Then it became ridiculously flattering, always making her feel sexy, yet not over or under-dressed.
She flicked her hair free of the collar and stepped into silver gladiator-style heels. She was already wearing silver hoops and slid two silver bangles onto her left wrist, then struck a pose with her hand on her hip. She pivoted so her back was to him, showing him the cut-out down the back from the top of her spine to her tailbone. She came back around to shift her weight to the other hip.
“Will I do?”
“Perfekt.” He stood, set his glass aside, and took her hand to guide her through another slow spin. “How is it possible you’ve only taken three lovers? Are you being straight with me?”
“Does it matter?” She met a gaze that was decidedly hungry and possessive, putting delicious tension in her abdomen and heat in all her erogenous zones.
“No. Yes. If I can’t be number one, I want to at least be on the podium. Don’t make me find out later that I was fooling myself. I want this.”
That made her laugh. What an idiot. “Take your victory lap then, champion.” She leaned her hands into his chest and lifted her mouth.
He made a face at the clock, fingertips grazing the bare skin of her back before he set a rather chaste kiss on her forehead. “Later. Eat fast.”