by Tami Dee
"I saw people give you money tonight, you put it in your apron, rather than in this box, why?"
Kat had to fist her hand inside the pocket of her apron to keep from reaching out and smoothing the frown lines that marred his forehead. "That money is called tips, if a customer is pleased with the service I give them, they will leave a tip as a sort of thank you. Of course Uncle Sam takes his share of my tips at the end of each year."
"You said you have no one to protect you, yet now you say you have an uncle. Why does he not provide for you?"
The cresses in his forehead became deeper as he struggled to understand. Kat strove to keep her answers simple, yet not so simple as to insult his intelligence.
"My Amma is the only family I have. Uncle Sam is a term we use for the government. In our time, everything is taxed, even our own hard earned money." Kat shrugged, "But what are you going to do, that's just the way it is."
"Why don't you simply take what you need from someone who has it?"
She'd done more than her share of that the last five years, but Kat figured it would only confuse him if she told him so. And, she thought a little alarmed, the last thing either of them needed was for him to decide to play Robin Hood for her to end up getting arrested. "In this time taking what you want without paying for it is considered a crime. They lock people up for years if they catch you doing that." She debated a moment, and then decided to take the moral high road with her line of reasoning. "No Leif, we have to work for what we need, and if we decide we want things that we don't really need, well, we have to work harder and then hope that someone with the viewpoint like yourself doesn't come along and try and take it from us."
She softened her rebuke with a smile, her conscience pricking her just the slightest bit.
Leif reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. The slight touch of his fingertips against her cheek left a tingling trail. He was looking at her intensely, the smoldering flame she saw in his eyes sparked a responding flame deep with in her belly.
Heat flooded her cheeks. Argggh! She really had to learn to control her responses to this guy. And he, she thought with a frown of her own, had to stop with the smug arrogance that marked his expression every time he noticed her reaction to him. It was embarrassing.
"Let me change and we'll get out of here. You must be beat." Not giving him a chance to comment, she hurried to the back room. Rosie waylaid her as soon as she entered their small changing room, also affectionately known as the broom closet.
"Don't even think you're getting out of here without telling me what's going on, sweetie."
"Oh Rosie, I'm going to have to fill you in tomorrow," Kat protested. "I'm worn out and I have to be at the dry cleaners by six. I've got to get going."
"Is Hercules going home with you?" Rosie asked, her golden eyes wide with disbelief.
"Leif will be my guest for a week or so," Kat told her, pointedly ignoring her slack jaw. "And it would really help me out if you could take a good look at him and see if you can come up with some clothes for him while I'm at work tomorrow. He can't go around dressed like that or he'll end up getting arrested."
"You don't have time to tell me what in Sam Hill is going on and now you want me to dress him for you? What's going on with you Kat? Are you crazy?"
"No, I'm not crazy. Or, oh, maybe I am, I don't know any more. Maybe I'll get lucky and this whole day will have just been a bizarre dream and I'll wake up drooling in my subway seat, find that I've had my wallet stolen, and shake my head at my over-active imagination. But just in case it's not a wacky dream, I'd better lift a few wallets on the way home tonight. I'll give him the cash to give to you. He doesn't understand about our money so you'll have to make sure he doesn't get cheated."
Her conscience bypassed pricking and went directly to stabbing. So much for her moral high road. She winced. But she really had no choice. He needed clothing, and she felt responsible for him. After all, if it weren't for her ancestor, he wouldn't even be here. Period. She would simply make sure he knew nothing about her committing a tiny little misdemeanor to help care for his needs.
Now that her conscience was semi-soothed, she got back to the matter at hand. "I have a feeling he'll need every thing, if you know what I mean." Kat raised and lowered her brows a few times to convey her message.
Rosie didn't laugh like Kat expected and she had to force herself not to fidget under Rosie's long, considering gaze.
"I thought you gave up pick-pocketing a couple of years ago?" she asked quietly.
Kat did fidget now. Guilt caused a quick surge of anger to color her voice. "Do I have the money to buy this guy clothes?"
Rosie shook her head, the knowing eyes holding hers flat. "Guess not. You could let me get them for you."
Kat opened her mouth to lay into her for even suggesting she finance her. Rosie stopped her tirade before it began with a slim hand held in front of her.
"Never mind. Just don't get caught, because he's not coming to stay at my apartment while you're in the slammer."
"So you'll do it?" Kat pressed, ignoring the insinuation that she might get caught.
Rosie shrugged her shoulders. "What are friends for, Kat girl?" She smiled and her eyes lit up with a mischievous gleam Kat knew well and usually enjoyed seeing.
"So tell me, should I stick around and make sure everything fits all right? After all, if the little that you've said about him is true, he most likely will not know how to dress in our ever so modern clothing."
Kat swatted her with the apron she just removed. "Hands off, Rosie girl. He's married. Or at least he was about a thousand years ago. Just get him the clothes. Please."
Rosie shook her head. "You better fill me in the first chance you get, girl."
"First chance." Her voice was muffled as she pulled on an oversized royal blue turtleneck sweater. Kat pulled a pair of jeans from her tote and tugged them on, then dug for her Nikes.
Rosie was grinning. "Mary Poppins and her carpet bag don't have a thing on you girl. Is there anything you don't carry in that tote?"
Kat shrugged, "Galoshes. These are going to be soaked by the time I get home." She held out her foot, looking dolefully at the now dry shoes in question.
"I guess I won't have to worry about you taking the bus this time of night for a change. I don't think anyone will bother you with your Viking in tow."
"Norseman Rosie. Raiding Norsemen went aviking, they were not Vikings. Get it straight girl."
Rosie rolled her eyes.
*****
The bus ride was a tense affair for both of them. Kat couldn't help but be impressed by Leif's efforts to not show fear as the double-decker bus maneuvered through the sharply rising and dipping crowded streets that made up San Francisco. She guessed that it was only his fierce pride that kept his face set in a casual expression and his spine straight during the thirty-minute ordeal.
Fortunately, most, if not all the other middle of the night passengers were either too tired or too drunk to pay much attention to the jarl in his decidedly eye-catching outfit. Her dark-age nemesis came equipped with what Kat could only assume were standard warrior toys, including, but she was sure not limited to, a long-sword stretched across his back, battle axe at his hip, several knife hilts tucked into various paces within his wide leather waist band. Gee, where were all the muggers when you were prepared for them?
Two transfers later they reached the Mission district
Katla patted her tote, comforted by the extra weight of the six wallets that were now safely tucked away within it. She had almost forgotten how much easer it was to lift a purse or wallet than it was to break her back working fifteen hours a day.
"Hay Kat, who's the eye-candy in tights?" A slurry female voice called out as they made their way along the shadowy sidewalks.
"Never you mind, Yvonne," Kat called back as she hurried him along Prostitute Lane, nearly tripping in her haste, cursing herself for bringing him this way. Now every hooker in the city, m
ale or female, would be speculating on which one of them could peel the wrapper off said eye-candy.
She turned to explain the dangers of these women only to see him shake his head and give her one of his aggravating half smiles.
"I am well aware of how they earn their coin, Kat," he said. "No need to explain."
He wasn't smiling about twenty minute's later as she put her key into the lock of a tall, dark building sporting graffiti on almost every reachable space of its brick walls. Katla squared her shoulders and swung open the door. The dimly lit entryway seemed to shrink the minute Leif stepped over the threshold and Kat realized that she had better get used to the sense of claustrophobia that now assaulted her, since her apartment was even smaller than the hall they now stood in.
Shame swamped her as she noted his now clenched jaw and sharp eyes taking in the walls of the hallways, each with their own brand of graffiti painted on them from baseboards to ceiling. Funny, she had never really noticed just how many bullet holes there were or how strong the stench of urine was thanks to the many drunks that slept it off in the entryway and along the stairwells. For a so-called secure building, it seemed that everyone and their uncle had a key.
Kat pointed the way to the endless flights of stairs before them. The elevator was off limits due to crazy Nix running his drug dealing business from within its confines, having it equipped with a small refrigerator, a hot plate for coking his drugs and a recliner. Everyone knew he packed a rod and nobody messed with him or his business because he was just crazy enough to use it if provoked. Kat never let herself think about how many bodies were probably piled up at the bottom of that elevator shaft.
"Only fifteen flights," she announced with forced cheerfulness. "I used to live on the third floor when I first moved in here. But bullets kept flying in, either through the floor or from the walls of the apartments next door. It got to where I spent more time ducking bullets than sleeping. Then I figured out that, thanks to Nix the drug dealer commandeering the elevator, the higher up I lived, the less shooting I had to put up with." She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
Nothing. His face was an unreadable mask as the two trudged up the squeaky stairwells. Since the light bulbs had burned out on the twelfth and fourteenth floors, Kat guided him by memory past the steps that had all but rotted, "As big as you are," she explained in a rush. "If you catch a weak step you're going to end up a heap of gorgeous mangled Norseman right back at the entryway we started from." Ohmygod, did I just tell him he was gorgeous?
As she had predicted there were no drunks passed out in her hallway, the last one they had passed having been snoring away on the tenth floor. Remarkable really, that he'd made it that far.
"Well, this is it." Kat pulled out her key ring and unlocked the door.
Kat flicked the switch just inside the threshold and the soft glow of the room's one lamp bathed them in gold. Instinctively, Kat stomped the startled roach that scurried across the threshold, heading towards the small crack between the wall and baseboard. Crunch. The mighty jarl at her side visibly flinched as the rubber sole of her Nike connected with the crisp shell.
Chapter Six
Leif cringed at the loud crunching of the large, crawling insect she stomped so skillfully. Stepping fully inside the dimly lit hovel, he immediately felt as if the paint chipped walls were closing in on him. One thing was certain, he thought as he scanned the small living space. She had not been exaggerating about her shelter not being big enough to hold him. He moved to the center of the sparsely furnished room, resisting the urge to duck his head as he strode underneath the low ceiling.
As Kat busied herself re-fastening the lock on the door Leif hesitantly took a breath. He had been holding it as much as possible since stepping foot inside this atrocity of a building. He had seen enough of this time to realize that his own had less to offer in the way of material things, but even in the wattle and daub quarters of his slaves, there was not the stench he had encountered in the stairwell they had just climbed. To his immense relief now, within Kat's small box of a shelter, there was a clean scent.
Finishing her task with the door, she sidestepped past him. Leif forced himself not to smile at how carefully she avoided making any contact with him as she did so.
His leather clad feet made no noise as he stepped across the small, smooth, blue squares that ran throughout the dwelling and, despite his distaste for her living conditions, he could appreciate that the floors of this century were not hard packed earth as in his time. Squinting his eyes against the concentrated circle of brightness sitting atop a small wooden table pushed against a wall, he moved closer to the odd-looking stick with a glowing object perched at its top. This was different than the long cylinders that lit the dinner.
He reached out a finger to touch the glow, only to have his hand slapped away.
"You don't want to touch the light bulb; it will leave a nasty burn. I've been meaning to get a shade for this lamp, but I just haven't had time," she explained with a half smile and a shrug.
When she looked up at him with those wide, thick-lashed, sea-blue eyes, it was all Leif could do not to haul her into his arms and make her his. He knew that if he allowed himself to think over much on the matter, it would not be at all difficult to convince himself that, as a direct descendent of the woman he had married this morning, a woman that, according to this Katla lived over a thousand years ago, he had every right to claim her as his own.
Yes, if she kept looking at him like that, he could easily decree it so. After all, he was a jarl and as such, his word was law.
"I guess I should show you around," she said grudgingly, her fists balled at her hips and her eyes flashing up at him. "Keep in mind I warned you that I didn't have any room for you, so don't even think about complaining. Got it?"
She tapped her strangely clad little foot against the floor as she waited for him to reply. It took every ounce of control Leif possessed not to laugh in sheer joy at the adorable sight she made. For someone her size to be equipped with the nerve she possessed -- standing up to him and speaking to him as if he were common -- well, he could only admire the tenacious little wench.
"I have an excellent memory, Kat," he deliberately let his eyes drop to her full lips. He was rewarded with a blush that turned her cheeks scarlet. Oh, yes. Before he returned to his time, he would have her. And, if for some reason he could not return to his own time, he would have her, and keep her. Forever.
The thought took him by surprise and shook him. Never in his life had he wanted to share more than a bedding with a woman. Why, it was a common practice for kings and jarls to have several wives, and as many concubines as they could afford. Yet Leif had shunned the practice. It was only due to his desire to claim Iceland as an ally, knowing that Rollo was a man worthy of the honor, and because his brothers had constantly hounded him to sire an heir that he agreed to Rollo's treaty and married his daughter.
And just look where that had ended.
"Oh, let's get this over with," she said on a weary sigh. "I need to get to sleep. Over here is the bathroom..."
Leif was impressed and stunned as she hurriedly explained the uses for the bathroom, and was equally impressed by the functioning of what she called the kitchen.
"This is a TV." She went on in a rush, standing in front a large box that had some sort of thin metal objects coming from behind it.
Leif peered over her shoulder, allowing his lips to brush the delicate shell of her ear. He had to clasp his hands behind his back to keep from reaching for her as he noted a shiver slip through her with the brief contact. His body tightened in response to her unguarded awareness of him.
"Ahh, anyways," she said, her words suddenly tumbling over one another, "I'm going to show you how to use this so you won't be bored out of your mind tomorrow while I'm at work. Oh, and by the way Rosie will be stopping by sometime tomorrow to drop you off some clothes. Just take them from her in the hall. There's no need for her to come in, I'm sure yo
u'll be able to figure out what goes where."
"Are you sure about that Kat?" he said, unable to resist teasing her. "After all, your world is much more complicated than mine, I can only assume that your clothing will be complicated also."
She gave him an impressive frown and continued, her tone nearly hiding her irritation. "I'll give Rosie a call in the morning and have her bring you some food, too."
Then, for the second time tonight, she looked him up and down with such unexpected boldness that it all but knocked the breath out of him.
"A lot of food."
He nodded his head. "My thanks to you, lady, but tell me, how do you plan to pay for these clothes and the food she brings? Did you not say that every thing has a value and that you have little coin to trade with?"
"Well yes," Kat said, flushing, "but don't worry about it, I'll work it out. All you need to do is figure out how you're going to get back to your time. Okay?"
Leif thought a moment, then ventured, "Kat, do jewels have a value in your time?"
"Of course they do, but I don't happen to have any to trade."
Leif pulled out a knife from his belt and held it between them. Kat's swoosh of breath as she caught sight of the gleaming jewels that adorned the hilt filled the room.
"Wow, that must be worth a fortune," she whispered in awe.
"Is there a place where I can trade this for coin?"
"I could take you to a jeweler after I get off tomorrow, but... I think you'd get more from a collector. Not only are the jewels on that thing worth a fortune, but that is an honest to goodness Viking knife." Her eyes sparkled and a dimple appeared on her left cheek as she smiled up at him. "You're going to be rich, Leif, and, it looks like tonight will be the only night we need to spend together," she told him. "After you sell your artifact, you'll be able to afford any hotel you want, and believe me, you'll be much more comfortable somewhere else," she ended on a laugh that held more than a hint of relief in it.
