by Sandra Hill
“I would have you know my grandfather was a high noble in the Norselands. My great-uncle was king. I am a jarl. My lineage is as high as your family’s any day, in any country, in any time.”
“That’s another thing. This time-travel nonsense you keep spouting. I’m ordering a complete mental and physical reassessment of you when we get back to the base.”
“Whatever you choose,” Ragnor said. “I know what I know, and it has naught to do with some head injury.”
“Why don’t you just ring out, Magnusson, and save us all a heap of trouble?”
“Because you want me to.”
“What? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that you push and push me, hoping I will quit. That just makes me more determined to finish. We Magnussons are a stubborn bunch.”
“And stop trying to fix me up with your sister.”
Ragnor grinned.
“And stop grinning.”
“So grinning is against the rules now, too?”
“Shut up!”
“By the by, wouldst thou give me Alison’s new tell-a-fone number?”
“No. Have you heard a word I’ve said to you? Stay away from my sister. I don’t want you contacting her. She doesn’t want you contacting her.”
“Did she say that?” His heart constricted painfully.
“She said you were just a passing fancy. In fact, her exact word was ‘cookie.’ You were a cookie that happened to be available at a time when she had a sudden sugar craving. She’s probably on a diet now, though. Most women are, most of the time.”
“Alison referred to me as a passing fancy … a mere cookie?” Ragnor felt the oddest lump lodge in his throat.
“Yep. You’re not the only one who dodged the love bug.”
“She is my destiny,” Ragnor insisted.
“Ships that pass in the night,” the chieftain insisted back. “A little sugar to satisfy her sweet tooth. That’s all.” The chieftain just smirked then, as if finally he’d scored some points in the battle betwixt them.
Ragnor asked for permission to be excused, which was given. As he walked back to his seat, he remained silent, but what he thought was, Beware, m’lady, you will find out just how this cookie crumbles.
Chapter Fourteen
If you want sweet, I’ll give you sweet …
It was past midnight when Ragnor made his way to a coin tell-a-fone in the corridor of the sleeping hall.
Using a code of numbers that Cage had given him, he got the sequence for Alison’s landlady from a woman whose name was, oddly, Information. He knew that because when she answered his call, she said, “This is Information.” He dialed the number she gave him.
“Hello,” a female voice answered groggily.
“Greetings. Is this m’lady Lillian?”
“M’lady? Max? Is that you? What time is it?”
“Sorry I am if I awakened you, but ’twas the first opportunity I had to call. How is Sam?”
“Just fine. He’s stopped barking at every moth and mosquito that goes by, but now he has this chewing fetish going on. He’s especially partial to chair legs … thinks they’re bones, I guess.”
He laughed.
“How can I help you, dear?”
“Can you give me Alison’s new number?”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure I should be giving out a private number.”
“Alison would want you to give it to me,” he said, not at all sure of that fact.
“Well, if you say so.” She gave him a series of seven numbers. After hanging up, putting more coins in the black box, and dialing again, another sleep-ridden voice came on the line.
“Hello.”
“Alison?”
“Max?” Her sleepy voice sounded immediately alert. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Where are you?”
Aaah, she must care about me if my safety is of concern to her. “Nay, I am not hurt. I am in a corridor outside the sleeping hall. We got back today from San Clemente Island, but the chieftain and his cohorts have been watching me like a hawk to prevent my going to you. They even followed me into the privy.” One time he had ducked into a stall, crawled over the top, come out stealthily, and ended up behind the chieftain. An ill-humored man, the chieftain was; he had not been amused. Not even when he’d told him he’d been practicing escape-and-evade tactics. “This is the first chance I’ve had to escape their scrutiny.”
“You’ll be in trouble if you get caught making an unauthorized call.”
“Pffff! I am always in trouble. And if I hadn’t gotten through to you on the tell-a-fone, I would have come to your keep. That would have been a UA, an unauthorized absence.”
“I know what a UA is, Max. I’m in the Navy, too.”
“I forgot.” When I see you in my mind, sweet witch, I see you naked with me atop you, panting with lust. I do not see you in uniform, sword in hand, ready to do battle. “In any case, a UA would mean even bigger trouble for me, so you are not to worry over a mere tell-a-fone call.”
He imagined she was lying in her bed while they talked. Preferably naked. I certainly have naked on my mind tonight. Well, every night, where you are concerned, Alison. More likely, she was wearing one of those big tea-ing sherts. But she would be naked underneath. Thank you, Odin, for the gift of male fantasy, he thought with a grin.
“How are you?” she asked. Her voice was soft and caring as she spoke.
Oh, yea, naked for sure! “Fine, now that I am talking to you.”
“Have the tapes and books helped at all?”
“Yea, they have. Thank you very much. Though they raise more questions than answers about this new time I have landed in.”
She sighed. “You’re still persisting with the time-travel stuff?”
“Of course. By the by, I do not relish the idea of being likened to a sweetmeat.”
“A what?”
“Sweetmeat. Your brother told me I am naught more than a cookie to you. That a nibble satisfied your appetite, and you are no longer hungry. For me.” Give me a chance, and I will show you just how much of a sweet craving you have. My fellow trainees wolf down candy bars to get a “sugar high.” I will show you a sugar high, all right … more like a Ragnor high.
“I’ll kill him.”
“That is a good idea.” Or match him up with Madrene. He thought a moment. Why do I keep thinking about the chieftain and Madrene? ’Tis odd.
“I was trying to explain to Ian how I could have behaved in such an uncharacteristic way. I don’t engage in sex indiscriminately, you know.”
“I would think not, if you waited five years for me.”
She chuckled, and was probably shaking her head at his hopelessness. “Just out of curiosity, what prompted Ian to say such a thing? I mean, he couldn’t have said something like that out of the clear blue sky.”
“He was asking me if I loved you.”
Her silence rang out like thunder.
Finally he inhaled for courage and said, “I do.” Ragnor was no dummy. He had realized, the minute he’d told the chieftain that he barely knew Alison, it had been the wrong answer. Betimes he needed to remind himself to be charming.
She laughed. “You liar!”
So much for charm! “Well, I told the chieftain that I did not love you, but now that I’ve had a chance to think on it, I have decided that I do.”
“Liar!” she repeated.
“I think I love you. I probably do. I should.”
He could hear her laughter through the tell-a-fone. He was not sure if he should be offended or not. “And you, milady? Dost love me?”
“I like you, Max, and that is saying a lot. There hasn’t been a man that I’ve cared enough to get to know, let alone love, in a long, long time.”
“That is something. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is something.” Her voice was so low, steeped with emotion, that he barely heard her words. He was making inroads. He could tell. Vikings had a way with female inroads. “But I’ve
been thinking—”
“Nay, nay, nay! Do not start thinking. A woman’s thinking is a man’s doom.” There go my inroads!
“I’ve been thinking,” she continued, despite his protest, “that it was good you had to go away this week. We needed some time apart. Everything happened way too quickly with us. Fast and furious is a sure path to disaster.”
“Fast and furious is not necessarily a bad thing.” In truth, I can think of several scenarios where fast and furious would be a decided advantage.
“We did things in reverse. Most people get to know each other first, decide whether there is an attraction, then they may or may not make love. We skipped all those steps and jumped to the finish line.”
And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?
“Now, the only recourse we have is to start all over, or end things.”
Panic overtook him of a sudden. “Do not dare to suggest that we end things. You are my destiny.”
“I wish you would stop saying that. It’s no more believable than your being in love with me.”
“Stop being so unbiddable. If I were with you now, I would convince you otherwise.” He closed his eyes for a brief second, picturing what he might do. It was a very nice picture.
“Making love isn’t the answer to everything.”
Is she reading my mind now? Over a tell-a-fone? “Nay, but it makes women amenable to a man’s reasoning.”
“And a man’s reasoning would be that hopping in the sack solves everything.”
Time to change the subject. Get her off guard. She is too sharp by far. “I dreamed of you last night, sweetling. I swear, I could smell your skin. You were making that soft purring sound when you arch your back.”
“Are we about to have phone sex?” she asked shakily.
He liked the shaky part. And the sex part, too. “Fone sex? Hmmm. That sounds intriguing. In fact, have you ever … ? Oh, bloody hell!” Just then, Ragnor saw the night patrol man approaching. He put the phone back in its cradle and stepped back into the shadows.
Give me a buzz, baby … and I mean a real buzz …
The line went dead.
Alison stared at the phone, then put it back in its cradle. She had to admit to being intrigued by the train of Max’s last words. Do I purr? Really? Well, so does he. Sometimes. Just thinking about purring is making me feel like … purring. God, I am pathetic. But, God, I love it! She lay back on the pillow and smiled, thinking. Just as she was drifting off to sleep, a smile still lingering on her lips, the phone rang again.
“Max, what happened?”
“The night patrol came by, probably with special instructions to check on me. I had to hurry back to my pallet and pretend to be sleeping. I snored a bit just to be convincing.”
His childlike demeanor softened her. “You shouldn’t have called back.”
“I wanted to. Don’t you want to talk with me?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. This is such a mistake. You and me.” But it feels so right. Really, how can something so obviously doomed to fail feel so right?
“Can we have fone sex now?”
Talk about a one-track mind. To her surprise, she liked that about him, whereas she would have been repulsed by it in any other man. “No, we cannot.”
“Talk to me, then. I feel so lost here, except for you. You have become my anchor.”
I do not want to be your anchor. My life is weighted down with enough baggage as it is.
“Because you are my destiny, of course.”
And I do not want to be your destiny either. That calls for responsibility and commitment and way too many other important things that I cannot give at this time. Still, it is a compliment. Isn’t it? “Do you tell that to many women?”
“How could more than one woman be my destiny?” He seemed genuinely perplexed by her question.
“Max, Max, Max. What am I going to do with you?”
“I have a few suggestions. But for now, just talk to me, dearling.”
“About what?”
“Yourself. Why you are a doctor. Why you are in the military. Why you want to be a SEAL.”
She nodded, as if he could see her. “I grew up in a family of men. My father, Rear Admiral Thomas MacLean, is a member of the U.S. Government’s Task Force on Terrorism. You already know my older brother, Ian. My younger brother Ross is a Navy pilot, and my still younger brother, Clay, is a midshipman at Annapolis. My mother died of cancer when I was eight. Because Dad was a Navy lifer, we traveled all over the country. There aren’t many military bases where I haven’t lived at one time or another. By the time I was sixteen, we had lived in twenty different cities in four countries. Luckily, I was really smart. Not a prodigy or anything, like you might be, but smart enough to graduate from high school at sixteen and med school by twenty-two. Because we had no mother and because we moved so much, my family became very close-knit. Navy Brats ’r Us. We were our own best friends. It’s partly why Ian is so overly protective of me.”
She grew quiet, pensive with memories.
“Go on,” Max prodded.
“I’m probably boring you.”
“Nay, I enjoy learning about you. I like hearing your voice. Why did you choose the healing arts?”
“Well, my brothers and I are very competitive. Doesn’t matter if it’s sports or school or whatever. My dad was a SEAL. One of the early webfoot warriors. From a young age, it’s all I wanted to be. Ian, too. Ross and Clay will probably become SEALs someday, too. We’ve grown up knowing firsthand what a threat terrorism is to our country, and the SEALs are some of the best fighters of terrorism.”
“But they won’t let you in because you’re a female.”
“Right. So my second choice of career was medicine, Navy medicine, and, really, it’s not a bad choice. I love medicine. If I’m barred from SEALs much longer—I’m already approaching the age limit, you know—I hope to be assigned to some teams as auxiliary staff. Often they need medical personnel to go out on field ops.”
“That could be dangerous, couldn’t it?”
“Of course.”
“I do not like the idea of my woman placing herself in danger.”
She sat up straight in bed, miffed at his wording.
Before she had a chance to voice her outrage, he said, “Oh, do not get your back all stiff over my calling you my woman. ’Tis how I think of you, no matter what you say. By the by, what do you think of tattoos?”
“Huh?” His change of subject startled her.
“I am thinking about getting a tattoo. What would you think of that?”
“First, it’s none of my business what you do to your body.”
“I beg to differ. My body is your body … so to speak.”
“Second, it would depend on what kind of tattoo.”
“Well, many of the SEALs and trainees have frogs on their arses or other body parts. ‘Frogmen’ was the name for SEALs in prior generations of the Navy,” he told her, as if giving her a history lesson. It was adorable of him, really. “But I do not favor frogs all that much. Too many warts and slime.”
“Hey, I’ve kissed a few frogs in my time.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. How about a Viking in a horned helmet?”
He made a sound of disgust. “We Vikings do not wear horned helmets. But a sword or battle axe would not be amiss. I like the chain tattoo on Cage’s upper arm, and Flash has a heart on his shoulder that is rather attractive. Do you have any tattoos?”
Once again, he’d disarmed her with his quick change of subject. “No.”
“We could go get tattoos together.”
“No way! Ear piercing is the extent of my body mutilations.”
“When can I see you?”
Another change of subject. “I don’t know. I said from the beginning that we need this time apart, to reevaluate our relationship.”
“I was ne’er much for rethinking. I want to make love with you again.”
She said nothing. What could s
he say?
“Are you angry with me again?”
“No.”
“But you do not want to make love with me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ahhhh.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
“We need to slow this train down, honey.” She could have bitten her tongue for her inadvertent endearment.
“Honey? I like that. We have a half day off on Saturday. Will you do something with me?”
“No.”
“Not that. Well, leastways, not totally that. I want you to go to a lie-berry with me.”
“Why?”
“JAM told me about lie-berries. Methinks there are answers to some of my time-travel questions in a lie-berry.”
“All right,” Alison said. What harm could there be in going to a library with him?
“And then mayhap we could go to a furrier.”
“A furrier? Whatever for?”
“I have a strong desire to lie with you in a soft, silky bed fur.”
He hung up before Alison could say anything more. No matter. She was speechless.
I like you, you like me, knick-knack paddy-whack …
Alison picked Max up on a street corner outside the naval base on Saturday afternoon.
With a wave and a smile, he opened the passenger door of her Mazda and slid inside. His six-foot-four frame filled every inch of free space in her compact vehicle, and then some.
She leaned down to help him adjust the seat. On the way back up he put a hand to her nape and tugged her closer, planting a sweet kiss of welcome on her lips.
“I missed you,” he said huskily.
“I missed you, too,” she admitted. Probably not a wise thing to say, but damn, it was the truth.
“What kind of garment is that?” His eyes swept the bare skin of her shoulders and arms and her legs from the knees down to her sandals. There was a mixture of appreciation and disapproval in his scrutiny.
“A halter sundress. You don’t like it?”
“I like it way too much, but I am not sure I will like other men looking at all that exposed skin.”
