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‘‘Yes, I am. I want you to give Finn a chance.’’
‘‘I have a boyfriend, remember?’’
‘‘Darling. Simon Graves is a lovely man. But if he was really all that important to you, I doubt you would have spent Midsummer’s Eve with Finn.’’
Liv felt her face flaming. Okay, okay, maybe some of her fury at Finn was misdirected anger at herself. What she’d done with him four nights ago told her things about herself she really didn’t need to know.
‘‘Finn,’’ Ingrid said, ‘‘is, after all, the father of your child.’’
Liv groaned. ‘‘Please. It was only one night—to my lasting shame. And it’s way too soon to—’’
‘‘No, it’s not. What happened to you always happens to the Freyasdahl women when—’’
‘‘Mom. Let’s just…not go there, okay? I’ve been over it with Brit and Father and Finn. I really don’t feel up to going around and around about it with you, too.’’
Her mother’s eyes were very bright. ‘‘There will be a baby. Deny it now, if you feel you have to. But that won’t make it go away. And yes, I am… supporting Finn in this, in his effort to get to know you better. In his willingness to try and do the right thing. He seems a lovely man to me and he’s welcome in my home. I’m only too happy that the father of your baby was well-brought-up, is well-to-do and wants to marry you and give your baby his name.’’
‘‘Oh, Mom…’’ Liv knew she was softening. How could she help it, seeing the way her mother looked right now, that gleam in her eyes, the glow on her cheeks?
Liv supposed her mother’s reaction wasn’t surprising. A new baby in the family, to Ingrid, would mean new hope for the future, someone on whom to lavish all the love she’d never be able to give her lost sons.
‘‘Darling, I’m not saying you should marry him just because of the baby. This is not Gullandria and you know your family will support you, whatever steps you feel you have to take. I’m only saying, what can it hurt to give Finn a chance?’’
At dinner, by tacit agreement, they kept things light.
Finn entertained them with stories of his adventures during his first day in Sacramento. Yes, he confessed, he had once or twice driven over the speed limit.
‘‘But, as luck would have it, no one was hurt.’’
He’d eaten lunch at McDonald’s. ‘‘Excellent French fries.’’ And pumped his own gas at a Jiffy ServeMart. ‘‘There was a small market beyond the pumps. I went inside. Rows of muffins and biscuits, individually packed. Racks and racks of crispy snacks made of mysterious ingredients the names of which I found difficult to pronounce. And self-serve beverages. They offered something called a Super Huge Gulp. A massive plastic cup and you fill it up yourself. In my rental car, along with the computerized mapping system and the state-of-the-art stereo, there’s a small device between the seats for holding beverage cups. Not big enough to hold a Super Huge Gulp, however. I was forced to drink the entire thing before I dared to get back behind the wheel.’’
Ingrid suggested teasingly, ‘‘And from this you learned?’’
He laughed. ‘‘Absolutely nothing.’’ He asked Ingrid about her work. Liv’s mother owned an antique shop in Old Sacramento. He listened, rapt, as she described how she’d sold two French Empire armchairs with bronze sphinx mounts and a Winged Victory gilt candelabra.
And then he turned to Liv. ‘‘And how are things at the Attorney General’s Office? Did they manage to get along without you for an entire week?’’
Liv admitted with a good-natured smile that somehow they had.
There were candles on the table, tall white tapers in her mother’s favorite silver candlesticks. Liv looked across at Finn. His eyes met hers, gleaming more golden than amber with the candle flames reflected in them. She thought of the two of them, on Midsummer’s Eve, dancing like moonstruck fools around that blazing Viking ship, the rim of the red Gullandrian midnight sun dropping at last below the horizon. Her pulse quickened. Her whole body was too warm.
She felt a smile quiver across her mouth as she accepted the fact that he was here, in Sacramento, that he really did seem to want to make it work between them. And even if she didn’t believe it could work, even if she didn’t really believe she was pregnant, even if the last thing she needed in her life, at her age, with her career goals, was a baby…
Well, if by some crazy trick of fate it turned out she was pregnant, her choice would have to be to keep the child. She had plenty of money, a loving family to provide emotional support and she was strong and self-directed. For her, it would be a coward’s act to do otherwise. Yes, it would slow her down a little, as far as her goals were concerned. But it wouldn’t stop her. Nothing would stop her. She meant to make a difference in the world, no matter what curves life decided throw her.
So all right. She would…work with Finn on this, on getting to know him better. After all, if it did turn out she was pregnant, whether they married in the end or not, she would still have to find a way to get along with her baby’s father.
‘‘Good night, darling. Drive carefully,’’ Ingrid said, presenting her cheek for a kiss. ‘‘Finn will walk you to your car.’’
Liv hardly needed an escort out to the back driveway, but she didn’t argue with her mother’s obvious attempt to throw her and Finn together.
Side by side, she and the prince walked down the back steps and over to her waiting car. Liv found herself all too conscious of the way his arm twice, and oh-so-lightly, brushed hers.
The thick branches of an old oak had swallowed the light intended to brighten the area between the porte cochere and the garages. When they reached her car, they were in deep shadow.
She stopped before crossing around to the driver’s side and leaned back against the passenger door.
Finn, as if invited, moved in close. ‘‘Do I detect a certain…softening in your attitude toward me?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ she confessed, ‘‘I suppose you do. You and my father and my mother have worn me down. I still don’t think I’m pregnant, but I’m willing to accept that it’s a possibility. I’m willing to do what you suggested back in Gullandria, to spend the next few weeks getting to know you better, just in case we end up discovering that there’s a baby on the way, after all.’’
‘‘Clearly a fate worse than death.’’ He said the words lightly, but there was a note of rebuke in them, too.
She shrugged. ‘‘Well, I have to tell you, a baby was just not on my to-do list for at least another decade or so.’’
‘‘Sometimes,’’ he whispered, ‘‘life refuses to go according to plan.’’
They were quiet for a moment. From the corner of the yard, a cricket chirped steadily. And a block or so away, some lonely dog let out a long, sad howl. The night was clear. And warm. The white disc of a full moon rode high in the sky, partly obscured, from where they stood, by the branches of the oak overhead.
As the dog’s forlorn howl faded to nothing, Finn laughed. The sound was low and achingly sensual. ‘‘I have an idea.’’
She looked at him warily. ‘‘Oh, no.’’
He put a hand to either side of her, resting his palms on the car behind her, trapping her gently between his outstretched arms. ‘‘Let me come with you to that house on T Street.’’ He smelled of lovely, tempting things. A hint of heather, a suggestion of musk…
‘‘How do you know I’m staying on T Street?’’
‘‘I asked your mother. She told me everything I needed to know—address, house phone, cellular phone. I have it all. I can call you or find you at my will.’’
‘‘You know no shame.’’
‘‘So I’ve been told.’’
‘‘And I have to ask…’’
‘‘Anything.’’
‘‘Don’t you have any responsibilities in Gullandria? Can you really afford to just take off out of nowhere and stay on for weeks in another country?’’
‘‘Liv darling, you’ve got your Puritan face on—your eyes narrowed, your nose scrunched up, that beautiful mouth of yours pinched up tight.’’
She stuck out her chin at him, scrunched her nose harder and pinched her mouth up all the tighter.
‘‘Gruesome,’’ he said, and they laughed together. Then he explained, ‘‘I have estate managers. I pay them. They manage. And should there be a terrible crisis of some sort, they know how to reach me. I also expend a considerable amount of effort—much more than I would ever admit to any casual acquaintance—managing a hefty stock portfolio. For that, in the past few years, all I need is a computer with an Internet connection and a telephone or two. Your mother has been so gracious as to give me one of the upstairs rooms to use as an office during my stay in America.’’
‘‘You’re admitting then, that you actually do work.’’
‘‘Please don’t tell anyone.’’
‘‘My lips are sealed.’’
‘‘Ah. Your lips…’’ He leaned a fraction closer.
She brought a hand up, palm out, between his mouth and hers. He made a low, impatient noise in his throat. But he did back off. And she asked, ‘‘What about family? I seem to remember, at some point during the time we spent together in Gullandria, you mentioned a sister and a grandfather?’’
‘‘Yes.’’ He shook his head. ‘‘My sister, Eveline, is sixteen. She lives at Balmarran. She’s utterly unmanageable, I’m afraid. She drives tutors and companions away effortlessly, usually on the day my grandfather hires them. And then there was the recent upheaval over the groundskeeper’s boy. The two decided they were in love. The boy is totally unsuitable for her, of course.’’
Egalitarian to the core, Liv put on her most socially superior expression. ‘‘Because he’s a mere freeman?’’
‘‘Not really. I think my grandfather and I are enlightened enough to accept that my sister might someday decide to marry a man without a title.’’
‘‘Then why?’’
‘‘You’d have to meet the boy. Cauley is completely uncivilized. He was ten when the groundskeeper and his wife adopted him. It was probably a mistake that they took him on. He was angry and aggressive, couldn’t read or even write his own name. He’s seventeen now. Under all the hair and the surly attitude, I’d venture to say he’s a handsome young man, if a trifle too thin. But he remains woefully undereducated and socially inept. He’s good in the gardens, though. His father has him working with his top assistant, Dag, learning the ropes, as they say.’’
‘‘And he and your sister?’’
‘‘She seems, I’m somewhat relieved to say, to have tired of him.’’
‘‘Only somewhat relieved?’’
Finn shrugged. ‘‘I can’t help but pity Cauley. He’s hopelessly in love with her still. She’s hurt him terribly and he’s pulled into his shell even deeper than before.’’
‘‘Back to your sister.’’
‘‘If you insist.’’
‘‘How has she been allowed to become so unmanageable?’’
‘‘My mother died when she was born, and my father soon after, of a broken heart. My grandfather is her guardian. He’s never been able to refuse her anything.’’
There was, she realized, so very much she didn’t know. ‘‘Your grandfather, what’s his name?’’
‘‘Balder.’’
‘‘A true Norse name.’’
He laughed. ‘‘How would you know?’’
‘‘My mother taught us the myths—at least the major ones. Balder, as I recall, was the son of Odin and Frigg. He was much beloved by the gods. His mother fixed it so nothing could kill him.’’
‘‘Except a dart made of mistletoe.’’ He leaned in closer again. ‘‘Take me home with you….’’
She breathed in the intoxicating scent of him, admired the shadowed shape of his mouth, felt the pull of his gaze through the darkness. His suggestion did tempt her—far too much. ‘‘Uh-uh.’’
He bent closer. ‘‘Allow me the opportunity to convince you….’’ His mouth was an inch from hers. So far, she’d resisted the desire to kiss him. But she was weakening. And with his mouth so close, she couldn’t keep herself from thinking that if she were to move toward him a fraction, their lips would meet.
‘‘I don’t…’’ She hadn’t the faintest idea what she’d meant to say next.
‘‘Like this.’’ He leaned forward the necessary minute distance. His mouth touched hers—too briefly. And then he pulled back. ‘‘What would you like, Liv?’’
‘‘I…’’
‘‘What do you want?’’ As if he didn’t know very well. ‘‘A kiss?’’
How was she supposed to make a rational decision, with his arms on either side of her and his wonderful, hard body brushing the front of her and his lips no more than a breath away?
No doubt about it. It was happening again, that distressing problem he so easily created whenever he was near: the problem of a precipitous drop in her IQ….
And just look what he had done, after tempting her so thoroughly? He’d ended by making it, undeniably, her choice.
She wasn’t as strong as she probably should have been, as strong as she’d always considered herself until recently—recently being ever since she’d met this particular impossible, too-charming man. ‘‘Oh, Finn.’’ And then she was leaning into him, capturing that wonderful, skilled, hot mouth of his.
He took care of the rest. Those lean arms closed around her and his body pressed close. And his mouth….
With a small, lost cry of surrender, Liv wrapped her arms around his neck.
His tongue entered quickly, sliding along the top of hers, pushing all the way in, then slowly, teasingly retreating.
No way could she stop her own tongue from following, into the hot, wet cave beyond his lips. His teeth closed, lightly, and her tongue was captive. And then there was his tongue again, slipping beneath hers in a liquid, oh-so-lovely caress.
Oh, how did he do it? When Finn Danelaw kissed her, she went spinning, deliciously, out of control. His hands moved, pressing, rubbing, down over the curve of her bottom, and back up, insinuating themselves under the hem of her gauzy blouse, so he could rub and stroke her up and down her spine. Her skin burned and tingled everywhere that he touched. His mouth held hers captive as his tongue worked its hot magic. One hand curved possessively at her waist while the other was slipping around to the front of her, then moving, oh-so-slowly down….
And down…
And if they kept on like this, they’d end up stretched out naked on her mother’s driveway.
Uh-uh.
From some source of good sense she’d almost forgotten she possessed, she slid her palms down to his chest and exerted a light but definite pressure.
After a moment, with obvious reluctance, he lifted his head. She saw the white flash of his teeth in the darkness. ‘‘Change your mind?’’
What mind? ‘‘About?’’
‘‘Allowing me to come home with you.’’
She sucked in a calming breath, let it out very carefully and shook her head.
He looked at her for a long moment. Finally he asked with rueful good humor, ‘‘That wasn’t a no, was it?’’
‘‘It was.’’
‘‘How discouraging.’’
‘‘But tomorrow night—’’
His teeth flashed again. ‘‘At last.’’
