What Were You Expecting? (27 page)

“What happened to you?” she murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve changed.”

“Maybe a bit,” he conceded without a fight. “I did—”

“—a lot of thinkin’ in the park,” she finished. “About what?”

He seemed to turn this over in his head for a moment, staring at her briefly then looking away as he used to. But instead of keeping his eyes from hers, he surprised her, by looking back up again quickly. “A lot of things, Maggie May. I’ll be at your place tomorrow at seven. We’ll learn everything about each other that there is to know.”

He put his hand out to her—his big, calloused, tan hand that would make electrical currents trail up her arm like lightning hitting a tree branch the second she took it. She knew this and stared at it for an extra second, wondering if she had the strength to bear the heat, or if she would combust the second they touched.

“A truce,” she replied. Then she reached out, touched him and let herself be electrified.

Chapter 13

After they shook hands, Nils had left the café quickly the night before, sticking around only long enough to agree that tomorrow night it would be his turn to make them dinner. He’d gotten a lot of what he wanted from Maggie without much of a fight and he didn’t want to press his luck any further. Since he had the rest of the week off after the long tour, he could be at her place as early as five o’clock to prepare it. She’d given him a key with tentative approval, requesting Swedish meatballs.

“Wait a minute,” she’d added as he headed for the door, “I’ll try to get Bethany to come at five. If I dinna get anythin’ else out of this marriage, I want that recipe. Dinna start until I get there, aye?”

He’d tried one of Lars’s moves and winked at her from over his shoulder, nodded once, and shut the door behind him carefully.

After sleeping in long past his normal, early wake-up and showering leisurely to enjoy every drop of hot water on his body after weeks of going without, he headed to Arnold’s for groceries.

Swedish meatballs could be made, he supposed with derision, with frozen meatballs and brown sauce from a packet, but that’s not how Britt Lindstrom had made hers and it’s certainly now how she’d taught her children to make theirs.

He strolled through the spice aisle, picking up nutmeg, allspice and ginger, then over to the baking goods where he chose a small bag of white flour, brown sugar, black pepper, and salt. He chose fresh ground pork and beef from the butcher case and a Vidalia onion from produce. Finally he picked up a carton of eggs, heavy cream, butter, and sour cream from the dairy section. He doubled back for egg noodles, whispering “
Jag är ledsen, Mamma
” because he knew full and well that meatballs should be traditionally served with mashed potatoes, not noodles. He couldn’t help it. He was a man who loved his noodles.

He paused then, wondering if he should get something for dessert and realized, with some surprise, that he had no idea what sort of dessert Maggie liked best. He could learn that tonight.

He felt his face soften, thinking about her eyes last night when he’d walked into the conference room at Beck’s office. Oh, she’d been furious with him, but she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him either. And it had done something to his insides; he’d already resolved to figure out a way to make space for Maggie in his life romantically, but hearing her soft gasp? Seeing her eyes track down his body like a full blown body scan? It had set his blood on fire, made him harden and flex inside, but it had also reassured him.

She was still…winnable. She wasn’t lost to him, and his relief was fierce.

But Beck had certainly thrown a wrench in his plans. Lars couldn’t quite figure out their relationship, because if she was with Beck, she wouldn’t have looked at
him
like that, would she?

He decided to skip dessert and headed to the checkout line, which snaked all the way back to the produce area with housewives doing their Monday morning shopping. He didn’t mind. He nudged his cart up slowly, still thinking about Maggie. It didn’t matter if she was with Beck or not. He intended to make his feelings known over the course of the next few weeks. Thanks to their truce, he’d have her all to himself, every day, every night, and he would show her, he would wear her down, he would win her back. But first, he needed to find out—as subtly as possible—how she felt about adoption. Not
being
adopted, though he cared about that also, but adopting children…someday, of their own.

Sometime on Sunday night he’d realized that adoption was the loophole he’d been looking for.
There are so many ways to have a family, Nils.
That’s what she’d said when she revealed her own history to him. Would she consider adopting children? Would she give up the chance to have her own biological children in order to be with him? Was it possible? Maybe it was. Maybe it was even fate that Maggie, herself, had been adopted, because it might make her more amenable to the idea. Children, now the most significant stop-gap to them being together, might not have to be the wedge between them after all. They could still have them if adoption was an option.

Which left only one, final wedge: If he told Maggie the awful truth of what had happened to Veronica and Jens, would she still want him? Would she still be able to love him?

He pushed his cart forward and offered a friendly wave to a friend of his father’s, still mired in thought.

He’d never know unless he took the risk of telling her. Not tonight. Not right away, of course. He had weeks to re-secure her affection for him and hope that it was enough. Enough to love him in spite of the terrible tragedy of his eighteenth summer.

“All good, Nils?” asked Palmer Jones, as he scanned items and carefully bagged them.

“Good enough,” answered Nils, offering a polite smile to the white-haired proprietor of the store, who he’d known for most of his life.

“I’m guessing meatballs tonight, eh?”

“That’s the plan.”

“You Lindstroms ever going to share that recipe?”

Nils chuckled lightly. “Only with family, Palmer.”

Family. Like his Pappa, his sister and his brothers. Like Paul, for all that they weren’t blood. Family like his
wife
, like Maggie.

***

No matter how hard she tried to think about something else, all she could think about throughout the day was five o’clock. She’d make a cup of coffee and check the clock. Reconcile bills and check the clock. Place an order for more paper cups and filters and check the clock. There was no escaping the moment the hands would align and she’d exit the back of the café to find Nils on her doorstep again. She glanced at her watch for the umpteenth time: Four forty-five. Her shoulders bounced up merrily with anticipation as she watched Bethany, who was a senior at Gardiner High School and had been recommended by Paul to assist her over the summer, handily make a tray of cappuccinos. The girl had been very responsible.

“Hey, Beth,” started Maggie, untying her apron. “I’m goin’ to need a bit of help throughout August. Might spend a weekend or two in the park and I was thinkin’ of leavin’ early in the evenin’s. You have a friend who could help pick up the slack? I’ll make you assistant manager and give you the keys and a wee raise too, so you’d be in charge when I’m not here.”

Bethany’s big blue eyes widened and she grinned, nodding at Maggie. “Would you mind my sister, Miss Campbell?”

No matter how many times she asked the teen to call her Maggie, Bethany insisted on calling her boss Miss Campbell. Maggie had a passing thought that Mrs. Lindstrom would be more accurate, but shushed it. “Not if she’s just as responsible as you. What year is she?”

“She’ll be a junior, but she just turned seventeen. Her name’s Summer.”

“Have her stop in tomorrow, aye? I’ll be off now.”

Maggie shoved the folded apron under the counter and popped into her tiny office at the end of the bar, looking at herself in the mirror. She took a brush and lip gloss from her desk and brushed her hair, then swiped some goop on her lips so they glistened. Frowning at her reflection, she wiped the goop off. She wasn’t trying to look sexy, was she? A truce didn’t mean she’d forgiven Nils for kissing her and leaving. A truce didn’t mean he had true feelings for her and even if he did, it didn’t mean he was ready to acknowledge them. Tonight wasn’t a date. It was reconnaissance. That’s all.

He wasn’t waiting for her at her back door, as she’d predicted. She found him in her kitchen, dwarfing a chair at her kitchen table with his massive body that wore banged-up, frayed jeans. They probably felt as soft as they looked, and even from behind she could see that the white t-shirt he wore was going to show off his assets in front like a Greek god. Her fingers twitched, remembering the feel of those hard muscles under her palms as he kissed her. Oh, Lord. She sighed lightly to herself, wondering how she was going to make it through a night with him, let alone four weeks.

“You’re here.”

He turned in the chair, revealing her
Cosmopolitan
magazine in his hands. “I didn’t hear you come in. I thought I’d…do some, you know…research.”

Maggie’s lips tilted up, catching the cover story in bright pink. “On how to please your man in bed?”

“Do you read this?” he asked, a little wide-eyed.

“Faithfully.”

“Maggie May, it’s…explicit.”

She felt the heat in her cheeks, but this was part of who she was and the whole point of these evenings together was to get to know one another, right? “I read romance books, too. The dirty kind.”

She dumped her purse on the kitchen counter and turned to face him, raising one eyebrow in challenge.

“I didn’t know,” he said softly. “Did you read that one about, um, fifty shades…?”

“Fifty Shades of Grey
?” she asked, amused that he knew about that book at all. She sat down across from him at the table feeling sassy. “You bet. All three.”

“What was your favorite scene?” he asked, placing the magazine on the table and leaning toward her.

She looked down at the table and chuckled lightly, thinking that this was totally unchartered territory. She and Nils had always enjoyed polite conversations at the café and over euchre, and even though those conversations sometimes touched on their families or feelings, they’d never discussed anything remotely sexual, for all of the tension that existed between them. When she looked up, the searing heat in his eyes made her mouth water, made her smile fade a little, made the muscles between her thighs contract a lot.

“In the first, second, or third book?” she asked in a low voice.

“The first.”

“The elevator scene,” she murmured, placing her hands flat on the table before her, inches away from his.

“Mm-hm. In the beginning. I liked it, too.”

“You liked…” Maggie’s mind grappled with the meaning behind his words. “You mean, you…”

“Ask me
my
favorite part.”

She was still trying to get her head around this conversation, let alone the fact that Nis had actually read
Fifty Shades of Grey
. The sheer intimacy of it, of knowing they’d both read the deeply sexual books, made her breath catch. Who had he thought of as he’d been reading? Her heart raced and her breathing quickened, shallow, like soft panting in her head.

“What was your favorite part?” she asked, wondering if he noticed the slight tremble in her voice.

“In book one?”

“Y-yes.”

“Their first time.”

“Th-their—”

“He tells her: ‘You are mine. Only mine.’ Remember?”

“Yes,” she murmured. Maggie’s breath was so fast and short now, she knew he could hear it, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t look away from him. Couldn’t look away from the ice-blue eyes that were so scorching hot, she wondered how she hadn’t burst into flames. Wondered how in God’s name she’d ever look at those eyes again without remembering him quoting Christian Grey.

Suddenly he grinned at her, flicking his glance to the groceries on the counter and gesturing with his chin. “Meatballs?”

She blinked twice. And just like that, her shoulders relaxed, she slumped down a little in her chair and started giggling for no reason at all. Except for this: she was happy. For the first time in months and months and months, she was happy.

“Meatballs,” she agreed, smiling up at him.

***

He couldn’t think of another way to get out of the conversation. It’s not like he’d intended to launch into a conversation about his occasional habit of reading highly sexualized romance novels, but that was the whole point of the next few weeks, right? It’s something his wife should know…plus, once her cheeks had colored, he hadn’t been able to resist. She looked so cocky and adorable, challenging him, wanting to prove to him that she was so naughty. He couldn’t resist shocking her right back.

As they unpacked the two bags of groceries, her hip brushed against his and he sucked in a quick breath. Damn, but he wanted to reach out and pull her up against him, especially after that charged conversation. But, demanding too much from her too fast could destroy the tentative truce between them. He needed to bide his time.