Midsummer Sweetheart (7 page)

“I knew your Mom had passed away,” she answered smoothly, alleviating his worries. “Someone told me at Sam and Jenny’s wedding. How long ago?”

“Six years.”

She unclasped her knees and crossed them, shifting her body toward him to give him her attention. “I’m sorry. That’s really hard. I lost my Dad three years ago. I was in nursing college, and my mother called to say that he’d been in a car accident. Just like that. Gone. I was nineteen.” She shared this softly, but without tears. “I miss him. There were times it was almost unbearable, you know? But, mostly the years go by and you find you can think about them and talk about them without those crushing, drowning feelings taking over every morning. Now, I remember the good times. I remember his smile.”

Erik was surprised. He didn’t realize that Kristian and Katrin’s father had passed away. He didn’t remember meeting their father at Jenny’s wedding, but there were so many new faces, it hadn’t really occurred to him. He thought of Katrin on her wedding day, already emotional that her father wasn’t there to walk her down the aisle, only to be abandoned by the second-most important man in her life, her fiancé. Scumbag. He narrowed his eyes, shaking his head over the unfairness of it.

Her hand on his arm jerked him back to the present. “Hey. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” he blustered, looking down at her small, white, delicate fingers that looked cold, but were surprisingly warm on his skin. He was instantly distracted and had to shuffle through his thoughts to remember their chain of conversation. “I’m fine. I’m just—I’m sorry about it. Your dad.”
And your creepy, stalker, alcoholic fiancé.

“And your mom. For both of us.” She took her hand away and uncapped the water she was holding between her legs, taking another sip.

“It was the worst for Jenny. Youngest. Only girl.”

“It probably just seemed that way. I’m sure it was just as hard for you.”

He glanced out his window to the left, away from her, pushing away thoughts of his mother’s broken down body. He had helped Jenny care for her as she deteriorated steadily, slipping away a little more hour by hour before his eyes. He could still hear the moans whenever she had to be moved or touched, her restless sleep when she cried out for Erik’s father. Picking her up so that Jenny could change the sheets and feeling less and less of her in his arms. His Pappa, who couldn’t bear it, who couldn’t watch, who spent more and more time in the park as his wife lay dying, abandoning her to—

Erik shuddered, shutting down his memories and shifting his focus back to Jenny instead. “It was a really bad time. It changed her. I’m pretty sure she would have just ended up alone in Gardiner if it wasn’t for Sam. He woke her up. He rescued her.”

He heard Ingrid’s words in his head: “You’re rescuing her today.”
Katrin. Like Sam rescued Jenny?
He chased the uncomfortable thought out of his mind, and squirmed in his seat, wishing he could just turn on the radio and they could quit talking. This conversation was too deep, too personal, too intense, dredging up memories he’d just as soon forget, making him feel things he didn’t want to feel.

“Jenny and Sam…so romantic,” Katrin sighed, a wistfulness in her voice that he recognized and that instinctively repelled him. “Are
you
a romantic, Erik?”

“No way!” He blurted out, lowering his window. The cool breeze felt like heaven on his suddenly hot face.

She turned sharply to look at him. “I didn’t ask if you’re a drug smuggler or a gangster, for heaven’s sake! Would it be so
terrible
to be a romantic?”

His shoulders felt tense and his hands tightened on the wheel. “I guess that’s okay for some guys, but not me. I’m not one. Romantic. I’m not. I don’t really even, you know,
do
commitment.” He scoffed, staring ahead. “All that silly, sappy flowers and poetry and Valentine’s Day and sh-sharing feelings and that crap. That’s just not me. Not who I am. No picket fences.” His words came out in a nervous rush and he felt like an idiot.

“No picket fences?”

“You know. Little house. White picket fence. Coming home to the little woman. Trapped.”

“Huh! Wow!”

“I don’t need that. I don’t want to be tied down.”

“I see!” She crossed her arms over her chest, staring out the window. She made a high-pitched noise like “whew” and sounded annoyed.

“Am I upsetting you?”

“
Upsetting
me? Erik, I don’t even
know
you. I met you, like, a minute ago. I mean… Do I think you might have some commitment issues? Uh, yeah. But, that’s none of my business. You’re entitled to think what you want to think. I don’t have a right to judge you.”

“Doesn’t sound like you much like the way I think.”

“Does that matter?”

He didn’t know how to answer her question. He felt like the words “Not really” should have flown off his tongue without thinking, but they didn’t. And he tried to say them, but couldn’t. And it didn’t make sense.

Katrin turned to face him with a slight smile, her dimple little, tentative. She spoke softly. “You know, it’s okay to be scared. Putting yourself out there is scary.”

Yeah, look what happened to you, for God’s sake!

“I’m not scared of anything.” He answered too quickly and he knew it.

“No?”

He glanced at her, and spoke deliberately, as if to a child. “I’m in law enforcement, Katrin.”

She nodded, doing that annoying half-smile thing girls did when they knew they
had you
in an argument. He’d seen Jenny and Ingrid do it his whole life. He knew what was coming.

“Mmm. Seems to me white picket fences scare
you
, Erik.”

“Just don’t want one to have and to hold.”

She surprised him by chuckling at that comment, blessedly breaking the tension between them. He sighed with relief, looking aside at her, feeling grateful, feeling confused,
feeling
—

“Okay. Listen.” She turned to him and her tone was candid with a peppering of playful. “We don’t know each other very well, but I’m not much into subterfuge, so just in case this is
you
, being direct with
me
? Let’s make this easy and set some ground rules, because we’re going to see each other from time to time, right? And we’re both single, and maybe you’re trying to tell me something here.”

“So, I’m just going to put this out there: I get it. No picket fences for you.” She paused and looked over at him, aqua eyes pulling no punches. “Which is
perfect
, as far as I’m concerned, because I’ve had sort of a tough year so far, and you know what I could really use, Erik? A friend. So how does that sound?”

“Good to me.”
Sort of.

“Phew. Good. Friends?”

“Friends.” He said it, but it bothered him, even though it was for the best with Ingrid’s warning still fresh in his head.

“Great. Then that’s settled.”

She smiled at him then shifted her body to look out the window.

Erik exhaled, feeling like he’d just lifted weights for an hour, exhausted by the range of emotional topics they’d just covered. He had dated that girl at UGF for months, and she had no idea his mother had died, or anything else deep and personal about his life. They had confined their conversations to small talk about college, the current Vikings season and a host of other safe, mundane topics.

Why had he allowed his conversation with Katrin to get so personal so fast?
It unnerved him. He considered this for a moment and decided that it was the family connection that must have made such intimate subjects feel like fair game. The family connection. They were just family friends.

But, looking out the window at the beauty of Flathead, he suddenly heard her sleepy voice in his head asking
Am I your sweetheart?
in Swedish. He thought of the graceful curve of her extended neck with that pounding pulse point and the sound of her giggle when he told her not to call him
Minste
. Those two marvelous dimples that he ached to kiss…

Erik felt a burst of rebellion against calling Katrin Svenson a “family friend,” and an unexpected pang of regret to be closing the door on anything more than friendship with her, despite Ingrid’s clear request that he leave Katrin alone
. I barely know her, but I know this: She doesn’t feel like a friend, and she sure as heck doesn’t feel like family
.

He had a sudden wild instinct to turn to her and tell her he might be wrong, that he wasn’t sure he just wanted to be her friend, that ever since the first moment they touched hands, she felt different to him than other girls, that he felt instantly attracted to her as he couldn’t ever remember being so intensely drawn to another human being in all his life. That being friends would suck because it meant he couldn’t touch her, couldn’t kiss her, couldn’t hope to feel her body under his someday, her legs wrapped around his waist as they—

He glanced over at her and her hand was out the window being buffeted by the wind. She wasn’t smiling, but that sweet tiny pucker in her cheek attracted his eyes like a beacon, as the cold air pushed and whooshed against her little hand. He jerked his eyes back to the road.

Friends, Erik. Family friends. With no risk of a romantic mess that would affect more people than just you and Katrin. You’re getting exactly what you want. No girl suddenly expecting anything of you. No relationship. No commitment. Just a friend—a family friend at that, who’s had a rough time, poor thing…and that’s that.

He took one last look at her, flaring his nostrils in frustration before returning his eyes to the road.

In other words,
You made your bed, Minste. Time to lie in it.

CHAPTER 5

Erik didn’t know how Ingrid had described Skidoo Bay to Katrin, but he was sure of one thing just by looking at her face as they pulled into town; Katrin and Skidoo Bay were a match made in heaven. Her face brightened with delight as she exclaimed over little details: the cobblestone sidewalks, the brightly colored restaurants and boutiques, the cheerful, bright-pink hanging geraniums that lined Main Street, hanging from old-fashioned, shiny, black wrought-iron streetlamps. She pointed out a creperie serving French pastries and lattes. She oohed and ahhed over charming courtyards with quaint, landscaped pathways that led to fashionable art galleries.

I bet those dimples haven’t seen this much action since last year
, he thought, having a much better time watching her than admiring the charming town of Skidoo Bay.

He smiled at her unobserved, admiring her fresh, unsophisticated prettiness. Her cheeks had some color from her excitement, and her ponytail, which had dried in a cascade of soft, blond curls, had a lost tendril or two that caressed the skin by her ear.

She was so…distracting. He frowned, looking away from her. Erik didn’t want to be distracted by her. To his disgust, however, he was swiftly losing that battle.

They turned off of Main Street and pulled up in front of 73 Hoyt, on a well-kept side street. Erik parked the car, turning to her.

“Hey,” he said, trying to keep his tone serious, but unemotional. “Before you go, I just wanted to say again that I’m not far away if you need anything. Just call or text me and I’ll be here, okay?”

Katrin turned and smiled at Erik, her face registering surprise, then tenderness. Without warning she leaned over and gently pressed her lips to his cheek. He froze, unable to move, unable to think, unable to focus on anything but the touch of her soft lips against his skin. His heart slammed in his chest and his eyes closed, like an untried schoolboy, like someone who had never been kissed before. Her touch was no more than a breeze against his skin, a feather, a petal, but he felt the imprint of her lips, the heat of her breath, even after she moved her away.

When he opened his eyes, she was leaning back, her eyes wide. He saw the uncertainty in her eyes at first, followed by wonder, as she murmured, “Oh.”

He stared back at her. He could feel his face flushing hot and red and he wrinkled his brows together, frowning at her, confused by the raw intensity of his feelings. He didn’t know what to say. “I…um…”

She licked her lips, flicking her glance to his mouth, then turned away sharply, placing her hand on the door handle. Before she got out of the car, she turned back to look at him, her wobbly smile trying to match her carefully polite eyes.

“Thank you, Erik. That’s all I was trying to say.”

He watched as she closed the door behind her and heard his breath come out in a hiss. He’d been holding it? Y
ou’ve
got
to get away from this girl. The sooner, the better.

He popped the trunk and met her at the back of the car. He was so preoccupied getting her bags out, he didn’t notice the man approaching them from the front entrance of the building.

When he looked up, his heart dropped to his knees. Dr. Martin wasn’t the white-haired, wizened, old army doctor Erik had somehow expected him to be. He looked about thirty-five: tall, tan, lean and strong, with deep, warm dark brown eyes focused with happy fortune on Katrin Svenson.

Erik’s brain turned on a dime to caveman mush, and all he could think as he closed the trunk with more force than required was:

Screw “family friends.”

I saw her first.

***

“You must be Katrin!”

The man approaching her was not what Katrin had expected. First of all, there’s no way his given surname was really “Martin” unless he had been adopted. His bronze skin, straight dark hair and deep brown eyes belied a Latino or Native American heritage, and why in the world hadn’t Ingrid mentioned he was so young and buff and good-looking?

“Yes. I’m Katrin Svenson. Ingrid’s sister-in-law.”

Dr. Martin put out his hand and Katrin took it in hers. He smiled at her easily, showing off a set of white, perfect teeth that matched the brightness of his white t-shirt, tucked into a pair of black jeans. “José Martinez.”

“
José
? Ingrid told me—”