by Day Leclaire
She glanced up, startled. He stood there, a tube of salve in his hand, staring at the ugly abrasion on her shoulder. The tautness returned to his mouth.
“It would have been a lot worse if the lettuce boxes had hit me,” she said, trying not to feel too self-conscious.
“I’m not so sure.”
“I am.” She cleared her throat. “Your shoulder. Is it okay?”
“Just a scratch.” He seemed frozen in the doorway and she held out her hand, gesturing awkwardly toward the tube. “Is that for me?”
“Yes.” He stepped into the room. “I’ll do it for you,” he offered.
Her hand dropped to her side and she stood motionless before him. “Thanks.”
He squeezed some of the ointment onto his fingers and her eyes fell shut. Gently he rubbed the cool balm into the scrape. “Where else do you hurt? Here?” He lowered his head, his lips touching the joining of her neck and shoulder, just above the bruise. His hands spread across her back, tenderly probing, seeking each sensitive area.
“My hip,” she gasped, shivering in his arms. “And near my knee.” Carefully he anointed her bruises, one after another. By the time he’d finished her aches were long forgotten, desire a welcome substitute.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered. “Don’t make me wait any longer. When I think what could have happened today . . .” His arms tightened around her. “You could have been killed.”
Her eyes darkened. “Or you.”
“Then be my wife.”
There was no decision involved and only one possible answer. She loved him. She wanted to give her marriage a chance, to commit herself to him in every way. She didn’t care about the past. Only the future counted. And she’d fight for a future with Thor.
“Yes, please,” she said, as politely as though she’d been asked to tea.
There was nothing in the least polite about his response. He scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed. He lay down beside her and, with infinite patience and loving tenderness, showed her the true meaning of marital bliss.
“ W hy didn’t we do this sooner?” Andrea asked, curling up beside her husband.
“You didn’t want to.”
“I didn’t?” She thought for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me what I’d be missing?”
He chuckled. “It loses something in the translation.”
“Perhaps if you’d explained better, I would have understood.”
“I can explain it again if you think it would help.”
Considering how well her reply had worked last time, she repeated it. “Yes, please.”
“ . . . t hink he’d have preferred a son. Maybe if I’d been one, he’d have given me a better grounding in the business.”
“I doubt it. My father didn’t.” Thor rolled over and rested on an elbow. “After his injury, I really had to hustle. We almost lost it all.”
“You should have told me.”
He shrugged. “What’s to tell? I had a duty to my father and to my family. You don’t discuss taking responsibility. You just do it.”
Her brows drew together. “And is that what I am? A responsibility?”
He smoothed a tumble of wheat-colored curls from her face. “You’re the best kind of responsibility,” he said with a smile. “You’re my wife.”
“I don’t want to be another duty or obligation,” she whispered. “I want more than that from a marriage.”
He remained silent for a long time. “Sometimes you have to take whatever’s available and make the best of it.” He turned to her. “Why don’t we make the best of it now?”
She grinned. “Yes, please.”
“ . . . t ook me about four hundred hours to build the one in the living room.”
“Four hundred?”
“At a guess. There’s a lot of little pieces.”
“You carved them all?”
“Every last strake.”
“So, this . . . what is it exactly?”
“It’s a longship.”
“A longship. You make it to scale?”
“Yup. I have a friend who’s a shipbuilder. He showed me how and offered some assembly tips.”
She tried to imagine the amount of time and effort, not to mention sheer determination, such an undertaking would require. “Why do it?”
His brow creased in thought. “I guess because it represents my Norwegian heritage, a heritage I take very seriously. The Vikings were an incredible group of people, and I’m related to them. Look at all they accomplished. It reminds me of what’s possible with the right kind of drive and ambition.”
“You’re an amazing person, Mr. Thorsen.” She glanced at him shyly. “I’m glad I married you.”
His eyes blazed. “So am I.”
She leaned toward him. “Before you ask . . . Yes, please.”
“ . . . t old you about my ships. Explain all those prisms.”
“That’s easy. They’re rainbow makers.”
“And rainbows stand for . . . ?”
“Hope for tomorrow. Hope everything will work out in the future.”
“Faith?”
She nodded. “Faith. Trust. But mostly hope.”
“I like that.”
“Me, too.” She touched his gold hammer earring. “Strength and power?” she guessed.
He shook his head. “Determination.”
“You keep hammering away until you win?”
“Not win. Succeed. There’s a difference.”
She looked at him quizzically. “There is?”
“Yes. When you win, someone else loses. When you succeed, you overcome obstacles and obtain an important goal. It’s a subtle difference, I’ll admit. But an important one.”
“Hope and determination,” she murmured.
He gathered her in his arms. “Together they’re an unbeatable combination, wouldn’t you say?”
“The perfect combination,” she agreed.
“ . . . y ou never mentioned. What did Joe Milano say that changed your mind about our marriage?”
She sighed. “That you’d approached his father about breaking their contract with Constantine’s. That you wanted them to deal directly with you, instead. And since Caesar wouldn’t agree, our engagement was a shrewd business move. It would prove quite an advantage in the negotiations.”
“Milano said that?”
“Don’t blow up at me about it. You’re the one who made the deal in the first place—”
“I did not,” he interrupted in a clear, precise voice.
“—and no, Joe didn’t use those exact words. He said, and I quote, ‘This makes very good sense. Yes. Very practical and good business. I like it. My father, he likes it. My brothers, well, they don’t like it, but I—’”
“‘Smack them upside the head for being stupid.’”
She giggled. Then her laughter died. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. “I wasn’t going to be used as a commodity. I wanted to marry for love, not business.” Her tone turned sardonic. “You see how long that lasted.”
Thor gathered her into his arms again. “I didn’t plan on telling you this, but I think it’s important you know.”
She traced his chest with her hand. “What?”
“Nick offered you as a bribe to ensure the Milano deal. That’s how much he wanted our business. He said he could guarantee your cooperation. I don’t know why he made the offer, but I think he knew I cared for you and thought making you part of the transaction would keep me off balance during the negotiations.” He cupped her chin, his gaze steady. “Milano wasn’t referring to our engagement as a shrewd business move on my part. He meant it was a shrewd business move on your father’s.”
For the first time, she believed him. For some reason, Nick
had felt compelled to use her for a bargaining chip. She’d probably never know why. She slanted a quick glance at Thor, wondering if her eyes mirrored her hurt. “What did you say to his offer?”
“Not a single word. I kept my mouth shut and hoped like hell it would all work out in the end.” He sighed. “Maybe I should have backed away from the deal and not signed the contract with Constantine’s. I don’t know anymore.”
“Then why did you ask me to marry you, if not for business reasons?”
He leveled her with an intense blue gaze. “Because I wanted to marry you.”
Andrea hardly dared breathe. “Why?” she asked again.
Chapter 9
“ B ecause—”
Thor’s cell phone rang, shattering the moment. With a muffled oath Thor rolled over and grabbed it. “Yeah, what? Damn. No, no. I’ll be right there.” He hung up and tossed aside the bedcovers. “There’s a problem at one of the stores. I’ve got to go.”
“You’re not leaving?” Andrea said in disbelief, sitting up and clutching the sheet close.
He spared her a brief glance. “There’s an emergency at work. I’m needed.”
“But . . . but I need you. We haven’t finished our conversation.” They’d barely started the conversation, at least the important part.
“I know, sweetheart. We’ll finish it later.” He pulled on a shirt and jeans with quick economical movements. Returning to the bed, he dropped a warm kiss on her mouth. “We have plenty of time. This has to come first.”
She couldn’t believe her ears. “First, before us?”
“No. First, because that’s where the current priority is.” He smoothed her hair from her face. “There’s a problem only I can handle, which means I have go. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Wait a minute. You can’t just walk out like this!”
A frown furrowed his brow. “You wouldn’t argue if Marco had called.”
She started to kick back the sheet. “The emergency’s at Constantine’s?”
“No, but that’s not the point. Next time it might be. You knew when we married there’d be occasions like this. No business runs itself. And now we have two of them to worry about.”
She froze, staring at him in alarm.
How many times in her life had she heard her father use that line? No business runs itself. He’d always say it right before missing an important event in her life: the school play, her birthday, graduation, or a multitude of other events, both large and small.
“Andrea . . .”
Tears gathered in her eyes. Tonight had been another important event. How could Thor get up and walk away as though nothing had happened? She licked her lips, trying one last time. “Thor, please . . .”
He seemed torn, but resolutely shook his head. “I can’t, sweetheart. You know why I won’t let them down.”
Yes, she knew. His father’s accident. He couldn’t live with himself if something similar happened again. She truly sympathized, not that it changed how she felt.
“I understand.” She forced out the words.
He kissed her again, his mouth lingering. “Thanks. I’ll try not to be long.”
She fell against the pillows, watching him leave. Wasn’t this a fine pickle she’d gotten herself into. A pickle? A whole mess of pickles. A whole flock or swarm or herd of pickles. And they’d all landed square in her lap.
She’d done precisely what she’d sworn she’d avoid. She’d fallen in love and, to make matters worse, married a man just like her father. A man who put business before her.
She was almost as bad. He had only to mention Constantine’s and she’d been ready to bolt from the bed. She buried her head in her arms. Even on their wedding day, they’d put business first. And tonight, on their true wedding night, business once more came between them. Well, why not? She’d married him for that very reason, hadn’t she?
It made her slightly ill that, not only was her husband like Nick, she was fast becoming like him, too.
T hor didn’t come home that night.
The next morning, Andrea got up and dressed for work. She glanced in the mirror and groaned. Exhaustion and a multitude of bruises from her rude encounter with the concrete dock had left their mark. Tempted to crawl back into bed and sleep for a week, she forced herself to walk from the house. Worse, she forced herself to do it coffee-less.
Only then did she realize she’d left her car at Constantine’s and her cell phone beside the bed. Screaming won’t do any good, she told herself. She cut loose with a bellow of frustration, anyway. Let the neighbors think what they liked.
She stomped into the house, snatched up the phone, and dialed. “I’m calling a cab, and I’ll never, ever drive home without my car again.” She paused, glaring at a philodendron. That didn’t sound right. “Be driven home without my car. Be without my car. Dammit, I know what I mean!”
“I’m glad you do, lady, ’cause I haven’t a clue. You after a cab or what?”
“You’re a cab company, aren’t you?” she snarled. “Why else would I call, if not for a cab?” The line went dead. “Hello? Hello?”
“Hello, yourself,” Thor said, dragging in through the bedroom door.
She shoved her phone into the pocket of her jeans and spun to face him. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Half-past six.”
“I don’t mean that time. I mean, do you realize how late it is?”
He blinked. “I thought six-thirty was early.”
“Well, it’s not! It’s late. Where were you? What took so long?”
“At work, working.”
“That’s it? That’s all I get? We make love for the first time in our lives and you leave, only to slither back in with that pitiful excuse?”
“Forgot the coffee again, huh?”
She ground her teeth. “And what if I did?”
“Maybe you should write it down or something, so you’ll remember next time.”
Good. A fight. She’d worked up a full head of steam and was raring to cut loose. How kind of Thor to offer her the perfect opening. “Let me tell you what I’ll remember to do next time—”
He grinned sleepily. “Sounds great. Don’t worry about work. Everything’s fine. I’m going to bed.” He tossed her his keys and yawned. “Take my car. I’ll call a cab when I wake up. ’Night.”
“You— I— We—”
She watched, openmouthed, as he stumbled toward the bed, fell facedown onto the mattress, and began to snore. She debated for two solid minutes whether to leave him that way. No. She couldn’t do it. Shoes had to come off at the very least.
By the time she’d finished, she’d removed far more than his shoes. Thor lay in the middle of the bed, a coverlet wrapped around him and a blissful smile on his face. She stormed from the room, furious with herself for wilting over that smile. She’d turned into a total pushover.
She took his car without a single qualm and found things at work humming along. Thor’s changes had wrought miracles, she acknowledged, checking the coolers before heading for her office. Okay, so he put business first and she’d prefer it otherwise. He had his reasons. A lot of people depended on him. She sat at her desk and gave her prisms a little spin. That didn’t mean, given time, they wouldn’t resolve their problems. She still had hope.
Or so she thought until she opened the notice from the bank.
She stared at it in disbelief. This couldn’t be right. Ten days to pay off the loan? What were they talking about, ten days? Loans didn’t work like that. There must be some mistake.
She called the loan officer listed on the request, drumming her fingers nervously against the clean, shiny, empty surface of her desk.
“Mrs. Callum. May I help you?”
“This is Andrea Constantine—Thorsen,” she corrected quickly, relieved that Thor hadn’t been around to he
ar her slip. “From Constantine’s Produce. I received a notice in the mail requesting payment in full on our loan. I think there’s been an error. You see I’ve—”
“One minute, please.”
The wait drove her crazy. Didn’t the bank know what requests it sent out? How many loans this size did they have? Darn it, this information should be right at her finger—
“Ms. Constantine?”
“ Thorsen . Mrs. Thorsen.”
“Quite. I’m afraid there’s no mistake, Mrs. Thorsen. We did send you a notice, and you do owe us the, ah, figure mentioned.”
Discreet. Very discreet. The witch. “But this is an ongoing loan,” she protested. “How can you just call it due? I’ve been making payments.”
Mrs. Callum gave a light laugh. “Of course you have. Otherwise we’d have foreclosed on your business long ago. The point you’re missing is that you don’t have a loan.”
“What do you mean I don’t have a loan?”
“Temper, temper, Mrs. Thorsen. Getting angry won’t solve a thing.”
Except give her an immense amount of satisfaction. The loan officer remained ominously silent, and Andrea gritted her teeth, knowing what the rotten woman expected. Pride truly was a horrible demon. “I’m sorry.” She pushed the words out with more effort than it took to move a mountain of spuds. “You were saying?”
“Yes, well,” she continued smugly. “What you have is a line of credit. There’s a difference, you know.”
Andrea shut her eyes. “No, I didn’t know. Why don’t you explain the difference to me?”
“Certainly. A loan is a set amount of money we lend you at an agreed upon interest rate for an agreed upon length of time,” she defined officiously.
I’m not an imbecile! Andrea almost shrieked. “I’m not an im—” She clenched her hands into fists. “Er, following you. Isn’t that what my father did?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. He set up a line of credit. That’s money available for his use any time he needs it, up to a certain amount. If he dips into that money, he must make monthly payments as you’ve done. Once a year, the balance comes due and we decide at that time whether to extend the line of credit for another year.” There was a long significant pause. Then she added, “As you’ve noticed, we’ve decided. And we’re not.”
