Valhalla Cupcakes (14 page)

She could see that didn’t reassure him and put her hand back on the steering wheel, pointing out how to open the window if he wanted, and telling him he could choose the music. Once a breeze blew through his hair and he had a thundering rock song playing, he visibly relaxed, even tentatively holding his hand out the window to waggle his fingers against the rush of air.

They were running short of time, so she had no choice but to pull onto the freeway. “We’re about to go faster,” she said.

“Oh, good. I think I’m enjoying it now.”

She kept a surreptitious eye on him, entertained by the looks that passed over his face. Still traces of nervousness, amazement, joy.

“I never could have imagined something on land could move so swiftly,” he mused. “How fast are we going, exactly?”

She glanced down at the speedometer. “Sixty-five,” she told him.

“But what does that mean?”

She smiled, utterly charmed by his curiosity, and wished she could hold his hand, but didn’t want to risk it. He was a Viking after all, and had a reputation for bravery to uphold. She didn’t want to crumble the tenuous grasp he had on his courage by taking her hand off the steering wheel.

“It means we can go sixty-five miles in an hour at this speed,” she explained. “If you want, we can look it up later to see what the equivalent is in knots or furlongs or whatever you used back in your day. It’s probably close to twice as fast as the fastest horse, though, if that helps.”

His mouth dropped open. “The marvels I’ve lived to see,” he said. “Thank you for this, Audrey.”

Unfathomably, tears sprang to her eyes at his tone of wonder. That such a simple thing as trying to get to an appointment should bring him so much happiness made her heart feel like it was on the brink of bursting. It felt very close to love. The next feeling she had felt very close to terror when a jerk on a motorcycle swerved in front of her, causing her to slam on her brakes to keep from hitting him.

She leaned on the horn and shouted out the window, and the jerk tossed a middle finger in the air, swerving in front of someone else in the carpool lane. She swore again, slowing down a little until her heart rate returned to normal, and turned to see Erik clutching the dashboard, eyes wide.

“That was road rage,” she explained. “Driving sucks. I’ll be glad to be rid of this heap.”

“It seems to offer only tenuous happiness, that’s for sure,” he agreed, keeping his hands planted on the dash until they arrived.

The man who was interested in buying the car had his mechanic friend look it over in the parking lot of the mall. Erik stood in his battle ready stance a few feet away, never taking his eyes off them and barely blinking. She felt bad about it at first when it was established they clearly wanted to buy a used car and not add anymore bodies to their basement freezer, but then found it so funny she had to keep pacing away to keep from laughing.

He took his responsibilities seriously, no matter what they were, and she found that endearing.

“You’ve had this car four years and it only has this many miles on it?” the mechanic friend asked.

“I live in town, so I mostly walk everywhere,” she explained, hoping they wouldn’t think she was lying and it had already rolled over onto its second hundred thousand miles. “It’s never been out of the city limits.”

The two conferred and she took Erik’s arm, trying to get him to stop looking so frightening now that they were on the verge of a decision. No one else had called on the ad yet, and she didn’t have enough time to sift through offers anyway. She needed cash, and fast.

The man tried to haggle her down a few hundred, but she had already looked up the car’s worth and placed the selling price several hundred lower to begin with. She was bitter enough about having to sell it, and mentally crossing her fingers for luck, said she couldn’t go any lower.

Erik stepped forward like he might offer his opinion and she shook her head, but apparently he only had to listen to her if she spoke her orders out loud.

“Is the price Audrey set for the car fair?” he asked, glaring at each of them in turn.

The mechanic friend laughed nervously and scrolled through his phone. “It is, actually,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with it, Danny. You probably won’t find another car with this low mileage for this price. If you can quit getting in wrecks, you got a good ten-fifteen years with this car.”

She looked at Danny, the car wrecker, and almost pulled the plug. She should be the one having the good ten or fifteen years with the car, not him. The visit from the thug was still fresh in her mind. She wondered if he wasn’t there for his girlfriend at all, but to subtly intimidate her while checking to see she hadn’t fled town. The promise of their return in three short days sent her into such a tailspin she almost lowered the price, but realized Danny had already agreed.

“Well, okay, then,” she said, shaking his hand.

They arranged for him to pick it up at the bakery the next day, and she instructed him at least four times to bring cash. She couldn’t risk the bank holding a check for any length of time.

“I’m sorry you had to sell your vehicle,” Erik said, once he was tightly buckled back in. He peered out the window at the brightly lit signs of the shopping mall. “What is this place?”

“A bunch of overpriced stores mostly. Food, too.”

“Should we go in?” He rubbed his stomach. “For food?”

She couldn’t face an after work shopping crowd, and realized this was the last night she’d have a car.

“I’ll take you somewhere better,” she promised. “We can get food on the way.”

After she went through drive-through and got him a bucket of chicken, she made him close his eyes, secure he wouldn’t peek because she expressly told him not to. They were already halfway there, and after a few minutes she pulled into one of the closest parking spots in the nearly vacant lot. Scurrying around to open his door for him, she helped him get out while he managed the chicken and side dishes with his eyes still closed.

“Just a little bit further,” she said, but he stopped in his tracks and no amount of her strength could budge him. “What is it?” she asked.

“We’re at the sea,” he said softly, smiling.

“You looked,” she accused disappointedly.

“I didn’t. But I have ears and a nose. I can hear the waves lapping at the shore from here, and smelled the salt air before you even opened the car door.”

He still stood with his eyes resolutely closed, seeming glad to let his other senses take it all in.

“Go ahead and look,” she said.

She got an old blanket she put in the trunk years before, when she thought she’d be going on impromptu picnics with her boyfriend of that time. They’d both been too busy and the blanket was never used. This was her first ever impromptu romantic picnic, and she was glad she’d never used it before, glad that this memory would belong solely to her and Erik.

He opened his eyes and looked left and right, a serene happiness settling over him. It was possible to feel how much he loved being near the water, just by the way he held his body more relaxed. She followed his line of vision and tried to imagine what it would be like to be away from the ocean for a great length of time.

She’d always lived within minutes of it, and it featured heavily in many of her best childhood memories. She planned to get married with it in the background, right at sunset. It must have been part of Erik’s everyday life, his livelihood. She tried to picture him in his old life, his real life, standing tall in the bow of a ship and giving orders instead of taking them.

She followed a few steps behind him as he walked across the sand, until they were a few feet away from the waterline. It was past sunset, but there was a dusky golden glow at the horizon, and the sky above was still a deep blue, not yet faded into night. She realized she had taken this marvel of nature she was lucky enough to live near for granted lately, always too busy to join Seda for drinks to watch the sun go down, or the yearly bonfires her old high school friends still had. For a moment she felt like the landlocked tourists who came and gawked at the ridiculous beauty before her, some of them breaking down in tears at the sight.

Erik put the containers of food down and took her hand, still quietly staring out to sea, and she felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes, pleased she’d decided to make the detour, even though there was still work to be done at home.

“I’m grateful to see it,” he said. “It’s different from what I’m used to, much more vast, but no less lovely.”

“You were from Norway?” she asked, thinking he’d said that was his native language.

“I am from Norway,” he gently corrected. “And I shall return one day.”

This pronouncement hit her like a low punch to the gut, and she took a long, slow breath to ease the hurt she felt. Completely unfounded hurt, she told herself.

She was the one from this century, she knew a few nights of amazing sex didn’t mean anything, but she found she had come to enjoy his company, and worst of all, rely on him. No matter how she tried to fool herself, it was going to sting when he left, and it was worse knowing it didn’t seem the same at all for him. But of course it wouldn’t be. She was keeping him there by force of an ancient curse. Of course he would be glad to be free of her. God, she was an idiot sometimes.

“Still want to get revenge?” she asked.

“I must,” he said simply.

For some probably crazy reason, that cheered her up a little. So, it wasn’t necessarily something he wanted to do, but he felt he had to. That meant she either had to change his mind or become so important to him he’d come back to her after he got his pound of flesh or realized it was impossible after so much time had passed and gave up.

She was really leading the crazy battalion tonight, with her wishful ideas. She’d have better luck tossing a pebble into the ocean and finding the same one again. Get your wits about you, girlfriend, she thought. She’d have her fun, get those loan sharks out of her business, and then commence living her life as a reclusive cupcake baker, stirring frosting round the clock, no time for love.

“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, looking at the food in much the same way she’d probably been looking at him a second ago.

“Starved,” she said forcefully.

She spread out the blanket and they ate the nearly cold chicken and coleslaw as the waves lapped inches away from them. The lights from the condos and hotels up above winked on as the sky grew darker, and by the time they finished eating, it was full dark, and chilly out.

He stuffed their trash back into the fast food bag, shaking the sand off the blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders.

“Can we walk a bit?” he asked hopefully.

The bowls that needed to be washed danced in her thoughts, but when he put his arm around her, she nodded and leaned against him as they made their way up the beach toward a tiny glowing light.

The closer they got, she saw it was a couple huddling around one of the small hotel fire pits. She waved politely, thinking it was time to turn around and head back anyway, but the woman called out to her.

“You look frozen. Want to warm up for a minute?”

“It’s just a minute, Audrey,” Erik urged.

She looked him up and down. He didn’t seem affected at all by the nippy night air, but he looked eager to join them. It hit her that he was a social butterfly, the complete opposite of her. It was probably why he took so well to working with the customers. As usual, she found she couldn’t deny him anything. She wondered who was the one under the curse, as they made their way toward the fire.

The dry crackling heat felt wonderful and she shrugged off the blanket. The man introduced them as Lily and Devon, and Erik made their introductions, helping her onto the log as if she was a princess.

“Are you newlyweds, too?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Erik answered immediately, linking his fingers with hers and looking pleased.

He really needed to stop his little games, they were going to get her hopes up even higher than they were, which would make the crash back to earth that much more painful.

“We can spot our own kind,” Lily said, snuggling up to her real husband. “Which hotel are you staying at?”

“We live here,” Erik said. “My wife runs Valhalla Cupcakes in town. We’re going to take a proper honeymoon when we have more time.”

Hearing him call her his wife sent shivers up and down her spine. She liked it way too much. It was probably due to the fact that they were at her dream wedding location, mixed with the cozy picnic, mixed with the fact that they were hunkered down next to a romantic fire. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was head over heels for him. Nothing at all.

“Oh, I love cupcakes. We’ll have to go, won’t we, honey? And what a cute name. Is it because you look like a Viking?”

“I am a Viking,” he said, not seeming to care when the couple laughed at his supposed joke.

Erik looked at her, proud of himself for advertising the shop, and she squeezed his hand.

“We were just about to roast some marshmallows, do you want to join us?” The kind woman held up a jumbo bag. “Save us from ourselves,” she urged.