Sandra Hill - [Vikings II 04] (35 page)

The younger man stepped up then, a mirror image of Ragnor except that his hair was blond and his eyes brown, while Ragnor’s hair was black and his eyes blue. “Torolf,” he said joyfully. “I ne’er thought we would ever be reunited.”

“You are a sight for sore eyes.” Torolf kept hugging him and pulling back to look him over, then hugging him again. In the end, he held him at arm’s length, then observed, “You wear a Navy shirt, and your head is practically bald. Why is that?”

“Because I have just completed Navy SEALs training. I am beginning to wonder … hmmm … perchance were you in that program? And didst you leave of a sudden?”

Torolf nodded slowly.

“By the gods, I underwent all this torture in your place. Now it finally makes sense.”

Torolf slapped him on the back, laughing. “Oh, this is rich. I get to go to the SEALs teams without all the hard work. That is better than any prank we played as young men back in the Norselands.”

There was no time to puzzle it out then as Ragnor was overrun with all his brothers, sisters, stepmother, cousins, uncles, and aunts … some of whom he had not seen for eleven years, some of whom he’d never met. It was overwhelming.

But not so overwhelming as it must be for Alison, who stood at the edge of the parking area, watching the reunion unfold. How could he have forgotten about her? He walked over and took her hand, leading her to the group.

“Father, I would have you meet my betrothed, Alison MacLean.”

Alison was making that cute little gurgling sound of hers again at the word “betrothed.” Come to think on it, Vikings were especially good at making women gurgle.

His father’s jaw dropped. “In such a short time,
you have met a woman you want to wed?”

“Not just that, but we are going to have a baby,” Ragnor blathered on.

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle!

“I can’t believe it. Already you are outdoing me,” Torolf complained, a grin on his lips. “Betcha her brother Ian is livid, especially if he thought you were me.” He grinned at that statement, too.

“A grandfather? Me? I am too young,” his father proclaimed, but the smile on his face showed his great pride. He hugged Alison warmly, and Torolf gave her a little wave of greeting.

Everyone else was offering congratulations afore Ragnor thought to glance Alison’s way.

She glared at him.

Uh-oh!

Leastways she no longer gurgled. He just smiled back at her and hugged her to his side.
I know the best way to make her smile again. It involves siren dresses and bare skin … and, well, what we Vikings do best to make a maid smile. I wonder if they have any broom closets here.

She bared her teeth and growled at him.

On the other hand
…

Talk about older men, younger women! …

Alison didn’t know if she was more angry or confused.

Well, the anger was only a small part of her roiling emotions of the moment. What else could she expect from the arrogant louse she had come to love? After all, he’d made the same outrageous announcement to her father and Ian. And, yes, she did love the arrogant louse. She’d known that for weeks now.

But confusion? Lordy, Lordy! Everyone talked at once. They appeared to be family … all two dozen of them. Father, stepmother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins. They were a veritable Norse version of the Beverly Hillbillies. One of them was almost a twin to Ragnor … that was what they called Max … except for the difference in their hair and eye colors. And it sounded as if Torolf had explained that he’d been injured, which she was well aware of, but that
he’d left Coronado and suffered a memory loss while off at a hog farm or something. Meanwhile, Ragnor had just bopped in and completed BUD/S for him. Simple as that. Ha, ha, ha! Amazing! Impossible! But still, amazing!

The most alarming, confusing thing of all was that, if she accepted that all these people were who they claimed to be, then Ragnor Magnusson truly was a time-traveler. She had made love with a freakin’ thousand-year-old, albeit remarkably well-preserved man.
Eeew!

Ragnor had gone off with his father and uncles and Torolf to chat some more and probably chug down beer. Alison was helping the stepmother Angela, the two aunts Meredith and Maggie, and the newly arrived Kirsten to set the tables for the upcoming feast. She’d already spoken at length with Maggie’s twin daughters, who were in pre-med at Berkeley. They had lots of questions about her own practice, especially since it involved Navy SEALs, always an appealing subject for twenty-year-old females.

“I don’t understand any of this,” she said in an aside to Kirsten, once all the tables had the appropriate china plates, silverware, and cloth napkins.

“The feast? Our fancy way of eating outdoors? Or the time-travel?”

“What do you think?” Like she would care whether they used Royal Doulton or supermarket paper plates.

“Let’s sit down,” Kirsten suggested. The other women came over, too, probably knowing all too well how Alison was feeling. They sat down on blankets that had been arranged on the grass, and Angela brought them glasses of the new wine.

Alison declined hers, and Kirsten asked her, “You really are pregnant?”

“Yep. I know some people think wine is okay in moderation, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Good thing the world isn’t pregnant or we’d be out of business,” Angela remarked drolly.

“When’s the wedding?” Meredith asked.

“There is no wedding. Max … I mean, Ragnor … is jumping the gun a bit.”

“Oh?” the three of them said at once.

“Now, there’s a surprise,” Meredith said. “A Viking taking things for granted.”

They all laughed.

“He did ask you to marry him, didn’t he?” Kirsten wanted to know, as if every man who got a woman pregnant did the “right thing.”

“He
told
me we would marry.”

“Men! They are so clueless,” Meredith said.

“Yep,” they all agreed.

“I never considered abortion once I knew I was pregnant, but, man, this little one”—she put a hand over her belly affectionately—“interferes with everything I’d always planned for my life.”

“You will marry eventually, though, won’t you?” Angela stared at her with motherly concern.

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. This happened rather fast. I still haven’t reconciled myself to who he is … or appears to be. Today’s the first time I came even close to thinking it was possible. Even then …”

“Ah. The time-travel business,” Meredith said. “What finally convinced me was all the knowledge Rolf had about that time period. Little details, like the name of a sword or a longship. I was a medieval-studies professor and I didn’t know half of what he
did. The man even built me a longboat.” She grinned sheepishly at them and took a sip of her wine.

“For me the final straw was when my daughters and I went with Jorund to Rosestead, the Viking village that his brother founded in Maine,” Maggie said. “Of course, we didn’t know it had any connection to Rolf at the time. To see him in that element, it was impossible to deny that this was what he had come from.”

Alison was having trouble fathoming how a college professor and a psychologist … seemingly intelligent women … could accept such a preposterous notion as time-travel.

“Well, I know that time-travel exists, because I experienced it firsthand.” Kirsten set aside her empty glass and looked directly at Alison. “In the year 999 a.d., my father, myself, and eight of my brothers and sisters were on a longship somewhere beyond Greenland. A strange fog enveloped the vessel, causing us all to fall asleep. When we awoke the next morning, we were on a Hollywood movie set. I was only fourteen at the time, but I remember every detail. Of course, I couldn’t put any of this in my thesis. Either my academic superiors would have thought I was nuts, or if they did believe it, they’d have sent the whole lot of us to some research lab for testing. Viking guinea pigs, that’s what we’d be.”

Alison burst out laughing at the image of a bunch of Vikings being stranded in Hollywood and at the preposterous notion of time-travel. “Honestly, how can you explain time-travel?”

“Oh, there is no explanation. It’s a miracle, that’s all,” Maggie said, throwing her hands up in the air.
“Sometimes you just have to trust that God—or the gods, if you listen to my husband—have a different plan for us.”

She must have still looked skeptical.

“Honey, do you believe in God, or some higher being?” Angela asked, putting a hand on her forearm and caressing it in a motherly way.

“Of course.”

“Why? You can’t see Him. There is no science to prove He exists. Sometimes you just have to trust.” Angela shrugged as if that said it all.

“You’re still not buying it, are you?” Kirsten narrowed her eyes at her with exaggerated dismay.

“No.”

“You will.”

After that, Alison relaxed and enjoyed herself. She loved watching Ragnor—she still stumbled over that name—bask here in his own element. Everyone, including Ragnor, kept coming over to where she sat in a cushioned lounge chair on the back patio to make sure she was okay. If she didn’t fit in, it wasn’t because she was ignored.

But Alison felt the need to get away by herself, to assimilate all the astounding news she’d been hit with today, to sort out the implications of what this would mean to her and Ragnor. Torolf would probably resume his position on the SEAL team to which he—rather, Ragnor—had been assigned. Becoming a SEAL had always been Torolf’s dream. But what would Ragnor do, assuming he was here to stay? Become a vintner? A SEAL under his own name? He was an extremely intelligent man. With some major tutoring, he could choose any career he wanted.

Where do I fit in the picture? And our baby?

It was all more than Alison could handle at the moment.

So in the early evening, while it was still daylight, Alison pulled Ragnor aside. He grinned, thinking she wanted to make out a little and pulled her into a somewhat secluded grape arbor, more decorative than utilitarian.

While he nuzzled her neck and tried to ruche up her dress, letting out a hoot of joyous laughter when he discovered that she was indeed naked underneath, she kept swatting his hands aside. “Listen to me, you lech, I have to tell you something.”

“Does it have aught to do with marrying me?”

“No.”

“Then it cannot be all that important.”

“Yes, it is. Oh, my goodness! Stop that. Someone might come in here.” He had backed her up against one supporting post and had her dress up to her waist. His big hands were palming her bare buttocks.

“You are right, as always, milady, but I am a Viking. We Norsemen know what to do in such situations.” With that, he plopped down onto the bench behind him, taking her astride him. He billowed the skirt of her dress out and over his lap and knees. “Anyone walking in unannounced will think you are just sitting on my lap,” he proclaimed proudly.

“Yeah, if they are stupid and unaware of the Viking one-track mindset when it comes to sex.”

He smiled, then reached under and touched her, thus getting the last word in, so to speak.

She almost screamed, so intense was the pleasure.

Quickly he pulled down his shorts and arranged his erection to press against her folds. “Your woman
dew welcomes me,” he informed her in a silky voice. “Like warm honey it is.”

“Warm honey on a hot rock?” she teased.

“For a certainty.” He nuzzled her neck and kissed his way up to her mouth. “Thank you,
sweet
ling,” he whispered against her parted lips.

“For what,
sweet
heart?” She rubbed her mouth back and forth across his. It had been so long since she’d been with him. More than a month. But it seemed like a year.

“For finding Kirsten. For coming here with me. For giving me back my family. For everything.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“Nay,
this
is your pleasure,” he said, thrusting himself inside her.

That is for sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure …
she stuttered mentally.

When it was all over, she still sat on his lap with his wilted penis inside her, her head resting on his shoulder, both of them panting. “I love you,
heart
ling,” he said then.

She went stiff. This was not the right time. He was speaking out of gratitude and the joy of his homecoming. Even so, she whispered back, “I love you, too, my
heart
.”

He smiled at her repeating back his endearment in her own way. “What was so important that you lured me here?”

“Hey, buster, I was the luree, not the lurer.” But then she grew more serious. “I called the hospital a little while ago to check on a patient. One of the covering physicians was called away on an emergency, and I have to go back tonight.” It was a lie, of course, but for a good cause.

“Oh, nay! Can we not wait till the morrow to return?”

“No, no, no! You stay here for a few days, or longer. I’ll drive back myself.”

“I am not going to remain here without you.”

“Now, don’t go getting excited—”

“I thought you liked it when I got excited.”

She chucked him playfully under the chin. “You need this time with your family. I need to be back at Coronado. Relax and enjoy the gift you’ve been given here. I’ll call you tomorrow night, or you can call me. Please.”

She could tell he was divided—wanting to stay, but feeling obligated to go with her.

“Really, I’ll be all right.”

“Well, only if you will give me a proper good-bye.” He wiggled his hips from side to side to show what he meant, as if the moving, hardening object inside her didn’t already proclaim the message loud and clear.

She laughed. “You know how you’re always braying about this or that famous Viking S-Spot?”

“Vikings do not bray.” Then, “You do not like the Viking S-Spots?”

“I love the Viking S-Spots.”

“Well?”

“What you do not know is there is a famous Navy SEAL S-Spot as well.”

“How would you know? You are not a Navy SEAL.”

“Ah, but I was engaged to one.”

“Hmmm.”