“If we don’t use something in here, what happens?” I asked, pouring a bowl of cereal from a box I knew I wouldn’t finish before we left.
Neil leaned against the counter and considered as he chewed a bite of his tempeh scramble. How he managed to eat that stuff first thing in the morning, I had no idea. “I assume the housekeepers take it home with them.”
“Could you make sure?” Maybe it was my recent return to my roots that had reminded me of all the times we’d had just enough food to get by. I hated to admit it, but I’d become one of those people who forgot what needing money was like the second I didn’t need it anymore. “I just don’t want it to go to waste.”
He nodded. “Certainly. You could leave a note, if you’d like.”
“Will they understand it? I mean, since I can’t write it in Icelandic?”
“I could write it for you, if you’re concerned. But, as far as I’m aware, my staff here speaks and reads English.”
“As far as you’re aware?” I frowned. “You don’t speak English with them?”
He looked like I’d just asked him why he didn’t have a tail. “No. Sophie, I lived here from age seven until I went to university. When I’m here, I speak Íslenska.”
“Oh.” I had meant to get Rosetta Stone or something to try and learn Neil’s second language, but the year had been kind of busy. Now, I felt a mild stab of panic. “Your brothers speak English though, right?”
“Yes, of course. They spent more of their childhoods in London than I did. Anyway, you’d be hard pressed to find someone here who doesn’t speak English.” He pointed his fork at me and narrowed his eyes in a playfully stern scowl. “But it wouldn’t hurt to try. With the family, that is. Not the general public.”
“I remember ‘Merry Christmas,’” I said with a laugh. “That’s going to have to do.”
“Do you now?” He took a sip of his coffee. “And how do you say it?”
“Gleh…um. Glehk-ee-leck yo?” My face got hot as I tried to contain my embarrassment at murdering the greeting.
He sputtered and set his coffee mug down, laughing as he reached for a napkin to wipe his face. “That might be the worst I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, excuse me,” I huffed, only partially offended. “You know, at least you didn’t have to learn a foreign language to meet my family.”
“Oh, didn’t I?” He chuckled ruefully. He set his plate on the counter and reached for me, snagging one arm around my waist as I moved to put the soymilk back in the fridge. He pulled me up against him, and I put the carton on the counter with a weary sigh. But I couldn’t be too mad, because he leaned his head and kissed me.
Even with his coffee breath, I couldn’t resist him.
He raised his head, arms still wrapped around me. “It’s Gleðileg jól. And Happy New Year is Hamingjusamur Nýtt Ár.”
I hesitated a moment, then giggled. “No, I’m not even going to try that one.”
Neil’s life in Reykjavik was completely different from his life in New York or in London. At the Belgravia house, we had a staff of five people. On his country estate, well, I had no idea. There were too many to count. And in Manhattan, he just had a housekeeper and a driver. Here, things seemed so…normal. Nobody waited on us, apart from stocking the kitchen and cleaning before we arrived. Nobody cooked our meals, and if I put down a dirty cup and walked away, it would still be where I left it when I returned. It was like real life, and I could have found myself getting used to it.
After we cleaned up our breakfast, Neil showered while I put on my makeup. It was almost eleven-thirty before the sun rose, and I watched the sky lighten over the bay as I dressed.
“Can you zip me?” I asked Neil as he emerged from the bathroom, a towel riding low on his hips. I held my hair up so he could pull the zipper on my red lace Dolce & Gabbana A-line dress. At my throat, I wore the diamond necklace Neil had given me for Christmas the year before. “This isn’t too much, is it? I don’t know how fancy your family is.”
“It might be too much, but don’t let that stop you,” he said, leaning to kiss the back of my neck before I let my hair down. “This is the first time they’re meeting you. Let me show you off a bit.”
Neil drove us to his brother’s house, about an hour outside of the city. Neil looked amazing in a dark berry-colored sweater and brown corduroy trousers. Our parkas were tossed in the backseat of the Range Rover, and I relaxed into the ride, eager to see some of the sights.
What I could see from the car, anyway. One minute, we were in the city suburbs, the next, scattered industrial buildings. We took the highway past a huge lake, and then we were off on some alien planet. The countryside outside of Reykjavik was a snowy white wonderland dotted with brown grasses, black rock, and rolling gray hills.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I marveled, gazing out at the dim white horizon. “It’s beautiful. You’re right, it looks nothing like where I grew up. It looks…totally bizarre.”
“Fewer trees,” he said, and it made such perfect sense, I wondered how I’d missed that detail in the first place. But there really weren’t as many trees as I was used to seeing from the highway in the US, where they kind of blocked the view. I felt like I could see forever from the car windows.
Though we arrived just a few minutes late, the sky had already started to dim when we pulled up the long, two-track drive to the house.
“It’s getting dark,” I said with a frown, gazing at the sky above the pines. There were more trees here, practically a forest. Probably because of the small, private lake Neil had told me all about. His brother Runólf owned seventy acres in a sprawling plot. “His only neighbors are some archaeologists working on a Viking settlement on the other side of the lake,” Neil had told me. “Runólf is very private.”
Since he lived out in the middle of nowhere on way too much land, I’d expected Runólf’s house would be a log cabin or a sod house. But we parked on a circular drive paved with cobblestones, in front of a house with an A-frame center and two long, half-sunken wings. The exterior was sided with cedar set at angles toward the apex of the roof, and large windows revealed a warmly lit interior.
“This is the place,” Neil said as he turned off the ignition. But he didn’t get out of the car. He sat for a moment with the keys in his lap, totally zoned out.
“Are you okay?” I had a weird, queasy feeling suddenly. Was he embarrassed of me? Did he not want to introduce me to the rest of his family?
He looked over to me with a benign smile. “Yes, absolutely. Perhaps a touch jet-lagged.”
That didn’t set my mind at ease. I knew him too well.
We grabbed our parkas and pulled them on, then went to the back of the vehicle and unloaded the duffel bag full of presents we’d brought. He had gifts for Emma and Michael, and for his new niece, but he and his brothers didn’t exchange presents.
Neil and I had made the same agreement this year, as well, but I’d totally cheated; I just hadn’t given him his gift yet. He’d probably cheated, too.
He knocked on the door, and a man about as tall as Neil, with the dirty blond hair color Neil had before the chemo, answered the door. Same green eyes, same elegant facial features, the only real physical difference between Neil and his brother was that Runólf was a bit pudgier around the middle and in the face.
A difference Neil must have pointed out a time or two, because Runólf grabbed Neil’s midsection and said something in Icelandic that I couldn’t understand. But it carried the universal tone of big brother fat shaming.
Neil swatted his brother’s hands away and pulled me forward. “Þetta er unnusta mín—um, kærastan, Sophie.”
Runólf’s eyes went wide as he looked from Neil to me. Neil looked like he was swallowing a really big pill. What had he just said about me?
Then Runólf said, “Sophie, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Hi!” I reached out and shook his hand. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak—”
“Not at a
ll, not at all.” Runólf’s posh English accent strongly matched Neil’s. “Come on inside. Emma’s already here.”
We took off our coats and hung them in the small coatroom off the wide, open, octagonal foyer. To the left and right, hallways led off in opposite directions, and a staircase swooped in a graceful arc down to the lower level, where a Christmas tree that had to be eighteen feet tall stood in front of an all-glass wall that faced the lake. The house was built into a hillside, I realized.
“Dad!” Emma called as she thundered up the stairs. She threw her arms around Neil’s neck before he could get a word in. “I missed you. Christmas wasn’t the same without you.”
“I missed you, too.” He kissed her forehead and set her on her feet. “And I suppose Michael had to come along?”
“Daddy.” A one-word admonishment was all she needed to give him.
He held up his hands defensively. “Fine, fine. That was the last one, I promise.”
“Sophie,” Emma said, putting her arms out. “Christmas hug?”
“Of course!” I’m the huggy type, but Neil’s daughter is not. For a while, I thought it was because of our strange situation—it couldn’t be easy, having your dad date someone who was your exact age—but as I’d gotten to know her better, I’d realized that she was quite sparing with her physical affection.
I guess that just made it mean more.
Downstairs, Neil introduced me to the eldest Elwood sibling, Geir, and his wife, Helen, who was a Canadian from Winnipeg. They’d met when she’d been plying her trade as a lawyer in the contracts department of North Star Media, the company the Elwood brood had inherited from their late father. Geir and Helen’s children weren’t with them for Christmas—they were all grown and busy with their own families in Canada and England. Geir looked more like Neil’s mother. He was shorter than his brothers, and plump, and he didn’t smile as easily, though he didn’t come off as a grumpy sort of person. Helen was slender and youthful, despite the gray streak in her effortless brown bob. She talked with her hands and showed tall white teeth when she smiled.
No one seemed to bat an eye at the fact that Neil had such a young girlfriend, but when I met Runólf’s wife, Kristine, I got an inkling of why. Though Runólf was fifty-two, his wife was in her early thirties. She was a former Olympic swimmer who was 6’ 1”, had long, sexy blonde hair I was pretty sure she stole from a 1990’s Glamazon, and her arms were more jacked than Michelle Obama’s.
I had this crazy feeling no one was going to crack a “trophy wife” joke about me in Runólf and Kristine’s house.
“Sophie, so nice to meet you!” Kristine gave me a welcoming hug. “Neil has told us so much about you.”
“He has?” I knew Neil talked to his brothers often, even if he only saw them every couple of years, but I had no idea he’d talked to them about me.
Geir chuckled. “The last time we saw him, he couldn’t shut up about you. When was that, the last time we got together for Christmas?”
“No, it was when your mother was in the hospital,” Helen corrected him. “It’s nice to finally put a face with the name.”
When his mom had been in the hospital? That had been… We hadn’t even been dating at that point, just casually fucking. And he’d been talking me up to his family?
I shot Neil a look, and he coughed, cleared his throat, and turned to Michael, who stood gazing out the windows at the lake. Probably trying to remain totally still, because protective father vision is based on movement.
“Michael,” Neil said stiffly.
To Michael’s credit, he didn’t look as terrified of Neil as he used to. He nodded and raised the glass in his hand, responding, “Happy New Year, sir. And a belated Merry Christmas.”
Michael was everything Neil had probably feared from the moment Emma had been born. Blindingly handsome, well-mannered, tall, dark, and charming, he was Emma’s fairy tale prince come to life, and met every one of the high expectations she had of men. Though Neil hated Michael, there were similarities between them that I would never, ever point out to him, because I was sure it would earn me a very withering look.
“Yes. Well. Same to you,” Neil said, then turned to Runólf and spoke something in Icelandic before they both headed off to the bar.
From somewhere in the room, a baby monitor crackled with the sound of a distressed infant.
“Oh good, she’s up. Finally!” Helen jumped to her feet with the glee of a mother about to hold a child she could give back to its owners, and she excused herself to go with Kristine.
Emma sighed. “Less than ten minutes. I owe Michael twenty dollars.”
I cocked my head in query.
“Less than ten minutes before my father got bilingual to complain about Michael, in front of Michael.” She shook her head with a resigned sigh. “He said, ‘I’m going to need a drink to handle this.’ Come on.”
Emma led me up the stairs, through the foyer and to the surprisingly industrial looking kitchen.
“Maybe he meant he needed a drink to handle bringing me.” I normally wouldn’t have so blatantly hinted for reassurance, but I was starting to get a little paranoid. “He’s been acting really strange, ever since Christmas.”
“There’s a time when my father doesn’t act strange?” She grabbed a glass-bottled soda from the ice bucket on the table. “Want one?”
“Sure.” I took something that looked grape. “You don’t think he’s weird about me being here?”
“Sophie, you know him.” Emma was as pragmatic as ever, and it was very welcome. “If he didn’t want you to be here, you wouldn’t be here. But the man misses you when you go off to the toilet, I don’t think he would want to spend a whole holiday without you.”
She had a point that I mentally conceded as I popped the top off my soda.
Then, with a halt, Emma had a visible realization. “You don’t suppose… Sophie, do you think he’s nervous because he’s planning to propose to you?”
I frowned as I let that roll around in my head for a second. Neil didn’t buy new socks without serious consideration; I couldn’t imagine him proposing to me without first having in depth conversations about our future. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not? You’ve been together for a year.”
“Yeah. A year. Singular. One year,” I said wryly. “I’m not angling for a proposal just yet.”
“A hell of a year, though.” Emma pursed her lips as she thought. “Have the two of you even discussed it?”
“No. Well. Once, I think. Only in the most abstract way.” Neil had confided that he’d planned to propose to me on his last birthday, but he’d changed his mind because he hadn’t wanted it to seem like one of those deathbed/wedding bed scenarios. “We haven’t had any serious discussion, and that’s okay. We’re happy where we are.”
“I suppose.” Emma didn’t sound too happy about having to accept that fact, and I was surprisingly touched. Her father’s last marriage hadn’t ended well, with hurtful accusations that I hoped were all a huge miscommunication between two truly well-meaning people. If they hadn’t been, then Neil’s ex-wife had been a gold digger out to trap him with the child support clauses in their prenup. Neil and Emma felt the latter was the case, so the fact that she could trust me enough to be disappointed that her father wasn’t marrying me was a big deal.
We rejoined the rest of the group in the living room, where Helen was just handing a slightly fussy baby off to Runólf.
“I’ll get her a bottle,” Kristine said, less relaxed than when we’d first come in.
“Do you need help?” I offered, though I wasn’t sure what needed to be done, and I prayed “hold the baby” wasn’t going to be her suggestion.
“I’ll help her. Neil, could you take Annie just for a moment?” Runólf asked, passing the baby off to his brother without waiting for an answer.
“I would love to.” Neil set his glass aside and reached up for the infant, whose tiny limbs wobbled excitedly in the air as she was han
ded off.
“Careful, you’ve got her now?” Runólf asked, and Neil gave him an annoyed tut.
“I have actually done this before, you know.”
Neil was seated in an armchair, so I plopped down in the corner of the sofa nearest him. He held little Annie under the arms, her pigeon-toed feet awkwardly stamping on his thighs. She babbled excitedly, and a thin stream of drool leaked from her lip and onto Neil’s six-hundred-dollar sweater. He didn’t look like he minded a bit.
I leaned my head on my folded arms atop the end of the sofa and smiled over at him. I’d seen the same wonder and joy in his expression in photos of a younger Neil with Emma.
Men with babies. Even if I didn’t want a baby, I couldn’t really deny there was something sexy about a man confidently holding an infant and yes, even making stupid faces at her.
“How old is she?” I asked no one in particular, as her parents were out of the room.
“Almost seven months old now,” Helen said. “She was born on the first, wasn’t she, Emma?”
The human mind is a really cruel thing. I couldn’t calculate what time I had to go to bed to get eight hours of sleep when I had to wake up early, but I instantly snapped back seven months, to the first week of July.
Our baby would have been due in July.
In the past year, I’d found myself thinking, on a couple of occasions, about the abortion I’d had. Occasionally, I had compared myself to a pregnant woman on the street, and wondered if I would have looked like her. I’d never been weirded out in a way that made me regret our choice, though. The first week of July had been a bizarre time for me, because Neil had still been in intensive care. I would have been ready to go into labor at any time at that point, if we’d kept the baby. I’d been too emotionally stressed by the fact that my boyfriend had been in a touch-and-go health crisis. The thought would jar me out of my head for second, and I would imagine how devastating it would have been to deliver our baby without Neil by my side, because he was dying in the cancer ward. It was horrible to imagine. I was glad we’d made the right choice.
The Bride (The Boss) Page 6
