Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 04] (24 page)

“I like your curly hair.”

“Do you?” she said, inordinately pleased with his compliment. She’d always hated her red, curly, Little Orphan Annie hair, but maybe it wasn’t so bad.

“
All
of your curly hair,” he added.

She made a tsk-ing sound at his crudity. “You’re a dangerous man, Mr. Magnusson. Softening me up with teasing and flattery.”

He gave her nape a final squeeze and sat back in his seat. “Dangerous, huh? Give me half a chance and I can show you real danger.” He winked at her.

“I like you, Max,” she blurted out, then smiled at him.

“I like you, too.” He smiled back at her.

“So, where to? I’m your servant for the day.”

“Oh, sweetling, you should not make such offers to me. A love slave for the day? Odin must be smiling on me.”

Love slave? Holy moly!
“Enough fooling around! Which library do you want to go to?”

He shrugged. “An adult one. JAm’s betrothed-to-be is a lie-berry-anne in a school for young children. That would not do for me. Is there another kind?”

“Yep. San Diego Public Library should do for a start. If that doesn’t have what you want, we can try one of the college libraries.”

“First, I would also like to stop somewhere to buy
more of those books and tapes you got me before … especially the tapes. It is easier for me to understand the spoken word.”

She nodded.

“Can we hurry, though?”

“Why? You don’t have to be back till oh-twenty-hundred, do you?”

“Yea, but once we are done at the lie-berry, I have other plans for us.”

She didn’t ask what he meant.

She knew.

His life was an open book, or so he hoped …

They’d been at the library for two hours and Alison was getting increasingly more concerned and confused.

Max had difficulty reading text, but his mind was sharp as a whip. He could remember the call number of all twenty reference books they’d skimmed through so far, as well as repeat back verbatim the material she read to him about ancient Vikings. Either he held a doctorate degree in late tenth- and early eleventh-century history with an emphasis on Vikings, or he was a freakin’ time-traveler, which was of course impossible. Still, he knew even the minutest details about the culture, the geography, famous and lesser known figures of the time, clothing, even the sagas.

He gazed about the shelves of books with wonderment, as he had been doing incessantly since they’d arrived. “So many books! Dost know how rare they are in my time? Why, only kings and men of vast wealth have any books at all, and then only one or a few. Except for the monasteries, of course, where the
scribes prepare the illuminated manuscripts, taking as much as a year to complete only one.”

What could Alison say to that? He was correct about the method of writing or copying books then. Printing presses didn’t exist in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Heck, there wasn’t even any paper, per se, just thick parchment.

“Tell me how to find Olaf Trygvasson,” he said.

She pulled the name up on the computer catalog and saw at least three dozen books listed. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the amazing man was instantly memorizing all the call numbers as they flicked by.

When they went to the stacks and found the books with the information he wanted, Max was further engrossed.

“This is the guy you claim is your great-uncle or something, right?”

He nodded. “My grandfather’s brother, the all-king of Hordaland, which is known as Norway today. I was hoping that in some discourse on King Olaf, my uncle, there might be mention of my family and what happened to them.”

Suddenly Alison realized why they were there. Max, in his conviction that he had time-traveled, was attempting not only to prove his theory to her and himself, but to find the key to his future. If he found some historical reference to his immediate family, including himself, he would know whether he would stay here in the future or return to the past. For example, if the book listed his name or that of his children, it would mean that he would return to his own time.

Aaarrgh! I sound as if I actually believe this nonsense. Which I don’t. Not even remotely. Poor Max!

“Listen, sweetie, let’s take some of these books home with us,” she suggested.

“Will they allow us to do that? Do I have enough money with me to purchase them?” Max had been paid today, and he had no concept of dollar values, as evidenced in the bookstore earlier where he had handed the clerk three hundred-dollar bills for fifty dollars’ worth of tapes.

“Yes, and there is no cost. They’ll lend them to us, on condition we return them in three weeks.”

“Amazing!” he said, caressing one of the covers as if it were a precious object.

“These books, on top of the tapes we already bought, should do you for a couple weeks. Besides, I’m hungry and I know an ideal spot where we can have a picnic lunch.”

“I know what a pick-nack is. Cage often talks about pick-nacks back in Cage-hun land, usually by the water. Our pick-nack better not have sand within shouting distance. I am sick up to my eyeballs of sand.”

“No sand,” she said, chucking him under the chin. “How would you feel about a picnic in bed?”

He just smiled.

Whining over wine …

They stopped at an upscale wine and cheese shop to gather items for their picnic lunch.

Alison put into her basket warm French bread, brie and Stilton cheeses, various fresh fruits, olives, and hard salami, while Max wandered the wine aisles. She found him standing rather dumbfounded in front of a display of Blue Dragon wines.

“Max? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said softly, putting both hands over his heart as if he were having trouble breathing. “Blue Dragon,” he murmured as if rolling the words on his tongue, seeking answers.

“Blue Dragon? That’s a California vineyard, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried their wines. Have you?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side, reached
forward to touch one of the bottles, then drew back sharply as if he’d gotten an electric shock.

“Come to think of it, your family are vintners, aren’t they? Is this theirs?” she asked.

“My family is dead, and my father was a farmer. He ne’er grew grapes that I can recall. And Frisian wines were the only ones I ever saw at his table.”

She could have sworn she’d read something different in his file, but perhaps she was mistaken. “Then what’s the problem?”

“I don’t know. It’s just … I don’t know … odd, I guess. I feel drawn to this section of the merchant’s stall. There is some connection … I sense it … something important … but I cannot place it.” He threw her a sheepish look. “You must think I am totally barmy now. First time-travel, and now bonding with a bottle.”

“No, I don’t think you’re barmy,” she said, throwing an arm over his shoulder and giving him a squeeze. “You’re rather adorable, actually.”

“Adorable?
Adorable?
” he protested a short time later as they left the shop and headed back to the car. “Vikings are not adorable. Unless …” He deliberately let his words trail off and gave her a lazy, half-lidded look.

“Unless what?” she said, laughing.

“Unless you plan on doing something particularly wanton to show your adoration.”

“For sure, baby. For sure.”

Baby, you move me … or is it your vibrating recliner? …

Ragnor tried to hide his distress from Alison as they returned to her keep. She had gone off to prepare
their pick-nack feast, and he wandered aimlessly around her front solar, touching things, glancing out the window, thinking, thinking, thinking.

He was lost in time; there was no other conclusion he could come to. For a Viking whose uncomplicated life usually amounted to eat, sleep, make love, fight, or go a-Viking, it was particularly alarming not to know what he should do next.

After declining an invitation from Mistress Lillian and Doctor Fine-gold to partake in a backyard feast of beefsteaks cooked over hot coals, they’d come up to Alison’s apartment.
People today have all these modern conveniences, like electrical stoves, my-crow-waves, and toast-hers, and what do they do? Cook outdoors over a fire, like people of my time do. Demented, that’s what they are.

On entering her apartment, Alison checked her answering machine, which had been thankfully silent of Breather calls ever since she’d changed her number. The conclusion she had come to regarding that silence was that her Breather must have been making random calls … in other words, she was not necessarily the target. Ragnor was not so sure about that.

But he worried more about other things.

He had crammed so much information into his brain of late that he felt as if his head might explode.
American history, world history, math, English, science, daily news, football, baseball, hockey, shooting a gun, using a fone, driving a car, birth control, natural childbirth … was there any other kind? Like unnatural childbirth? Ha, ha, ha! On and on and on. Why did modern people need to know so much?
He was nigh killing himself to succeed in a program he was not even sure he liked.
A man
should really, really want to be a SEAL to suffer so. Shouldn’t he? Or as the chieftain often said, “Ask not what the Navy can do for you, ask what you can do for the Navy.”

If he had indeed time-traveled, whether due to some scientific marvel or a whim of the gods, he had to wonder why. What was the purpose for his being here? He had thought he was sent to save someone—Alison, in particular—but she had folks aplenty to help her here. Mayhap she was not his destiny, after all.
If not, for the love of Odin, who or what is?

More important, would he be slung back in time one day as quickly as he’d been slung here? Without prior notice? And did he want to return?
Bloody hell, I hope I do not have to drown again.

He just did not know. Anything.

Suddenly tired, he sank down into the velvety chair and leaned it into a reclining position. To his surprise, when he inadvertently pressed a button on the side, the chair began to vibrate softly under his buttocks and back.

He grinned to himself and thought,
I have an idea.

But then he drifted off to sleep. The idea imbedded itself into his dreams, though.
Holy Frigg!

He was so excited by her, he fell asleep …

Alison lit a dozen candles, laid an old checkered tablecloth over her bed, and prepared for a sumptuous indoor picnic. Wine rested in an ice-filled bucket. All the tempting foods were laid out, along with silverware and plates. She was ready.

But when she went to get Max, she found him fast asleep in the Lazy-Boy. And it was set on “low vibration.”
Whoo-ee!

She smiled gently as she stared down at him. Poor guy! He had to be exhausted. SEAL training was physical and psychological torture under the best of circumstances for even the fittest men, but Max was suffering the additional mental stress associated with whatever memory problems assailed him due to his concussion. His arms were crossed over his white T-shirt, his ankles crossed on the footrest. He breathed evenly through slightly parted lips.

What was it about him that appealed to her so? He was handsome, of course. And funny, in his own way. Sexy … oh, yeah! But it was more than that, and she just couldn’t pinpoint what.

Leaving Max to sleep for a while, she got herself a glass of white wine—one of the Blue Dragon vintages they’d purchased. Carrying the wineglass with her, she went over to the sofa and began to peruse the library reference books on the coffee table. Ancient-history books tended to give little information about individuals or families unless they were big shots for that time. Yes, there was stuff about Olaf Trygvasson, his wives and children, but nothing about his siblings and their families. But wait, in the acknowledgments at the back of one book, she saw mention of a thesis written the previous year by a UCLA student astonishingly named Magnusson … Kirsten Magnusson. It was titled: “A Study of an Old Norse Family in Eleventh-Century Vestfold.”

Hmmm. Usually theses weren’t widely published, and she wasn’t about to travel to Los Angeles to go looking through the library stacks for a copy, but maybe … just maybe … she might find some information on the Internet. Moving on automatic, she grabbed her laptop, set it up on the coffee table,
connected it to her phone line, and soon booted up. A quick search of Kirsten Magnusson on Google brought up two links. One, a website about her thesis. The other, weirdly enough, was connected to Blue Dragon Vineyards.

She clicked on the first entry. There wasn’t much there, just the author’s name and e-mail address, a short bio describing her as a twenty-five-year-old teaching assistant at UCLA who’d written her master’s thesis on this small segment of Viking history. Alison decided to write a short e-mail to this Kirsten Magnusson, identifying herself as a physician at the Naval Amphibious Base at Coronado, asking if there was any chance she might download a copy of the thesis. As she hit “send,” she looked up and noticed that Max was still in the same position on the recliner, but his eyes were open and staring at her.

“I fell asleep. Sorry, sweetling.” He yawned widely as he spoke.

“That’s okay. You needed the rest.”

“I have so little time with you. ’Tis a waste to spend any of it sleeping.”

“Well, I got some work done. Do you want to hear what I found out?”

“Not now,” he said, opening his arms to her in a beckoning way. “I have a better idea for making the best use of our time together.”

“I’ll bet you do.” She shut down her computer and walked over, letting him lift her by the waist so she ended up straddling his lap. “You’re throbbing, honey,” she pointed out with a little laugh.

“It’s the chair.”

“I don’t think so,” she disagreed, swaying her hips
from side to side to show him just where she sensed his throb.

“By the by,” he said, chuckling, “I have been wondering all day what you are wearing under that siren dress.”