Mag-he reached out a hand and squeezed one of his. There were tears in her eyes…and his as well, he realized with mortification. Vikings were not supposed to cry. He wiped at the tears. “I let them die. For that I will be eternally guilty. ’Tis probably the reason for my punishment…being banished into another time. I am not even welcome in Valhalla.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she said ferociously, in that husky voice he so appreciated. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. Bad things happen. It’s no one’s fault.”
He would like to believe her. He really would. But enough of his spewing forth his confidences. “’Tis your turn. Now that you have opened a hole in my chest and let my heart hang out, tell me about yourself. What are your secrets? Why have you never married?”
“Well, the reason I never married is because Suzy and Beth’s father didn’t have marriage in his plans. When I told him I was pregnant, he suggested that I abort the babies.”
“Kill them in the womb?” It was not unheard-of in his time, but a deplorable practice, nonetheless…especially to Vikings, who prized children above all else.
“Yes. Oh, I try to be tolerant of him, but it’s hard for me to look at my girls and accept that he never wanted them.”
“Perchance he would have changed his mind on seeing them birthed, as I did.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. He had all these things he wanted to do with his life. Children—and me, for that matter—wouldn’t have fit in. He wanted to become a famous, wealthy surgeon. Set a record for skydiving. Climb the highest mountains. Race cars. Scuba dive. Whatever. Always a new challenge.”
“And were you a challenge to him?”
Her eyes went wide with surprise. “How perceptive of you! Yes, I think I was. I was a virgin when I met Judd…a twenty-one-year-old virgin. You have to understand my background to see why I was ripe for the kill. I developed earlier than most girls my age. Breasts and curves at age twelve were not welcome, believe me.”
“I like your breasts…and your curves…especially your fine arse.”
She flashed him a glare of reprimand for interrupting her…and for liking her breasts and arse, no doubt.
“Kids can be cruel, and some boys started calling me a slut. And other girls made assumptions that, if I had the visible manifestations of a sexpot, then that’s what I must be.”
A sexpot? Oh, that must be a woman who spreads her favors hither and yon. Like Rosalyn.
“Today it would be called sexual harassment. But then, teachers and my parents just put it down to harmless teasing. Well, it wasn’t harmless.”
“You never mention your parents. Where are they now?”
“They died when I was fifteen. That didn’t help, either…having no one to confide in, except the elderly aunt I went to live with. She has since died, too. The only family I have is my girls; so you can see why I am so grateful for them.”
He nodded. “Go on.”
“I got a severe throat infection when I was thirteen, which changed the tenor of my voice. A sex-voice, you called it. My classmates did, too. I started wearing clothes that hid my body, and I rarely spoke, unless spoken to, but by then it was too late. I got a reputation without ever having any of the fun…not that I would have considered sex fun at that early stage. All of these repressions lasted through high school.”
“Where did you meet this Mud person?”
“Not Mud…Judd,” she corrected with a little laugh.
“My mistake,” he said, stone-faced.
But she could tell it had been deliberate. “In college. During my senior year. Oh, he was smooth. I give him credit for one thing, though: he brought me out of my shell and made me see that my sensuality belonged to me, and no one else…that I shouldn’t care what anyone else thought of my body or my voice. So I started to dress differently and act the way my personality dictated.”
“He took advantage of you,” Jorund observed with disgust.
“I suppose he did, but he did help me in some ways, too. I can’t believe that I never thought of it that way before. And for all his bad traits, he gave me Suzy and Beth, and for that I have to be thankful.”
“And did you love him hopelessly?” He was throwing back at her the same question she had asked of him earlier.
She shook her head. “No. I thought I loved him then, of course. I wouldn’t have opened myself to him unless I did. But, in the end, I wasn’t all that upset when he didn’t want to marry me…except for the girls’ sakes. And fortunately I had a trust fund from my parents and a small inheritance from my aunt, which allowed me to finish grad school and take care of my children. Lots of single parents aren’t so lucky.” She gazed off into the air, tucking away some memory or other, he supposed. Then she concluded, “So that’s my story.”
“Can we go to bed now?”
She laughed, no longer somber with remembrance. “Stop teasing me.”
Jorund hadn’t been teasing. After all they had disclosed to each other, he really would have liked to hold her in his arms. And swive her a time or two, he supposed. The time was not right, she had told him on more than one occasion, and he did not know if that right time would ever come. Bloody hell!
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, Joe, let’s get down to what I really wanted to talk with you about.”
“More talking?”
“More talking.”
The woman talks entirely too much. He groaned.
“Joe, we have to discuss the implications of this time-travel stuff. I’ve been thinking….”
The woman thinks entirely too much.
“I don’t believe this was a random time traveling.”
“Random time traveling? What the hell is that?”
“It’s a phrase I came up with myself,” she admitted sheepishly. “If it was random, it would mean that it could have happened to anyone who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Like your brother Magnus, for example, who stood right next to you. Also, it would mean that the time traveler could have ended up anywhere and in any time, not necessarily in Galveston, and not necessarily in the year two thousand. Do you see what I mean?”
“I’m beginning to,” he answered. And that is not a good sign. “In other words, there must have been a specific reason why I was sent, and where I was sent.”
“Right.”
“So, what’s that reason?”
“I haven’t a clue. Do you?”
He pondered the puzzle for a few moments. “All I can think of is that it’s too much of a coincidence that I lost twin girls and that I came to a place where there were twin girls.”
She tapped her fingers on the table pensively. “I agree. The girls’ wishing on a star, or praying, or whatever, must have brought you here.”
He nodded. “They seem to have great need of me.”
He saw that she would have liked to argue that point. But then her shoulders slumped.
“Of course, you have great need of me, too. Did you perchance wish for me upon a star, too?”
“I did not!” she declared vehemently, but her words were belied by the blush on her fair cheeks. “The most important thing to me isn’t why you came, but what will happen to the girls when you leave…as you most assuredly will.”
Jorund wasn’t as certain of that as she was. “I suspect I will not be returned to my time to complete my father’s mission until I have accomplished some mission here. It will not happen of a sudden, without forewarning; I am convinced of that.”
“I just don’t want my girls to be hurt.”
“Methinks you are overly protective.”
Her chin shot up in the air, as if he had struck her.
“Mag-he, all your life you have tried to control life, which is an impossibility. You tried to control your sensuality as a youthling. You thought you could control a man in your first relationship. I wouldn’t be surprised if you avoid men today for fear of not being in control. And you try to contr
ol your daughters too much. Part of growing up is being hurt and learning to handle the pain.”
Her eyes were welling over at his harsh assessment.
“I do not mean to offend you, m’lady.”
“You aren’t,” she said with a little sob. “Much of what you say I already knew, deep down.”
“The bottom line, as you people say in this land, is that you must ask yourself this question: Would your daughters be better off not knowing me at all? Or would it be better for them to have had me in their lives, even for a short time?”
Jorund couldn’t believe he was actually speaking of playing a part in those little girls’ lives. If ever there was a disaster waiting to happen to his already broken heart, it was Sue-zee and Beth.
“How did you get to be so smart?” she asked, dabbing at her eyes with a tish-you.
“I’m a Viking.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t believe it!”
It was a Saturday afternoon, two weeks later, when Maggie arrived home from a half-day mental-health conference in Dallas. She’d known that Joe was bored, staying home, with no job. There wasn’t a big call for Viking warriors in the work force. But never in a million years had she expected this.
There was a hole in the side of her house. A huge hole. And Joe, dressed in jeans and a sweaty T-shirt, despite the mid-December chill, was wielding the sledgehammer that has caused the damage.
No, that wasn’t quite true. Steve was there, too, driving a small backhoe. What was he doing here…out in public? The press had been hounding him for weeks, ever since that reporter had recognized him at the Moving Wall. He’d even moved into the hospital temporarily, to protect his much-wanted privacy.
Maggie glanced around her yard. It wasn’t just Steve who was there. There were Suzy and Beth, too, along with several other outpatients from Rainbow, including Natalie, Rosalyn, Harvey, Chuck, and Fred. They were all helping to remove the debris—debris that was actually the side of her house—and putting it in a Dumpster. A Dumpster? Where did that Dumpster come from?
Fred, dressed as a Village People version of a carpenter, was looking full of himself in a hard hat and tool belt as he followed Joe’s orders. Harvey was off to the side counting the number of two-by-fours in one pile and round rocks in another pile, then tabulating his results on an official job-site clipboard. Chuck was being an elephant today, swinging his loose arms forward like a trunk as he carried large pieces of siding to the Dumpster; Maggie, who still had not diagnosed Chuck’s real problem, was not surprised to see the words on the bright young man’s shirt: It is as bad as you think, and they are out to get you. Natalie was singing, of course, as she fetched and carried, and Rosalyn looked surprisingly fetching in tight jeans and a T-shirt that proclaimed, Librarians Do It by the Book.
And, oh, good Lord, was that Nurse Hatcher in coveralls and workman’s boots, appearing for all the world as if she could take down Maggie’s entire house with just a huff and a puff? She was avidly listening to something Fred the Carpenter was telling her. Oh, no! It wasn’t possible. Was it? A love connection between Gladys and Fred?
“What do you think you’re doing?” Maggie gritted her teeth as she stomped over and confronted Joe.
His head jerked up with surprise. “Mag-he! I thought you weren’t going to be home till dinnertime.”
“My meetings ended early.”
“We wanted to surprise you,” he complained in a little-boy voice.
She felt like spanking his behind, like a little boy deserved. What did one do to a misbehaving big boy? Whack him on the butt with a two-by-four? There were plenty of them lying around.
“Surprise!” everyone yelled at once, belatedly.
Maggie turned around to see the entire motley crew, including her two grimy daughters, gazing at her expectantly, as if they expected her to congratulate them.
As if! “What is this mess?” she asked, turning back to Joe, who set his sledgehammer aside and was wiping his brow with the back of a forearm. She was trying hard to stifle her fury, for the sake of her daughters, who’d never seen their mother lose her cool. Yet.
“A fireplace,” Joe announced. “I’m building your daughters a fireplace.”
“Huh?” A fireplace? “What next? Igloos in Florida?”
“Tsk-tsk! Dost think sarcasm is called for, Mag-he?”
Maggie gave her daughters her full attention now, and they had the good sense to step back a pace, sensing her disapproval.
“We just mentioned to Joe that we’ve never had a fireplace,” Suzy explained in the whimpery voice that usually meant tears were about to flow.
“And we told him how every Christmas we have to hang our stockings on the living room archway, ’cause we don’t have a fireplace,” Beth added. Her voice was small and weepy, too.
“Where did you get the money for all this?” she demanded of Joe. There had to be hundreds of dollars’ worth of building materials scattered about her lawn, not to mention the rental of the backhoe.
“I sold one of my arm rings to Martie.”
She looked at his upper arms. Sure enough, one of the bracelets was gone. “Martie?”
“Yea. Martie Wilson. Remember, you told me one day that Dock-whore Sea-bold’s lover—”
She inhaled sharply with distress. “I never told you they were lovers.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “You told me that Dock-whore Sea-bold’s woman-friend was a trader in antiquities. I called her shop, and she came over to make me an offer yestereve when you took the girls to choir practice. She wanted my sword, but I could not sell her that. A warrior’s weapon is his boon companion.”
A headache the size of his boon companion hit Maggie like…like his sledgehammer.
“Besides, in my world, jewelry is treated the same as coin. Why else would I be wearing arm rings? Do you think I am so vain I adorn myself when going into battle, or on a seafaring voyage to rescue my brother?”
Maggie didn’t know what to think. “You shouldn’t have sold the arm ring, Joe. It was a prized possession.”
“Pfff! A mere object! ’Tis not as if I sold a limb, or anything so dire.”
“How much did she give you? Are you sure you got a fair price?”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars.”
“S-seventy-five thousand dollars!” she said in a squeal.
“Yea, and you are not to worry. Methinks Martie is an honest woman. Sometimes ’tis necessary to trust, don’t you think?” His words obviously had a double meaning. “Are you not surprised?” he inquired then, proud of himself as he waved a hand in a wide sweep to encompass the horrendous hole in her house.
The man is clueless.
Then he plastered a slow grin on his face for good measure…the one he knew made her insides turn to mush.
Well, maybe not so clueless.
“Surprised doesn’t begin to describe how I feel.” She put a hand to her forehead and counted to ten. “Do you even know how to build a fireplace, Joe?”
“Of course.” He then ducked his head sheepishly. “Well, actually, I have ne’er built one afore, but how hard could it be? Besides, Steve said he helped his brother-by-marriage construct one twenty years ago.”
“Twenty years ago!”
“And the man at the Home Station—”
“Home Depot,” Steve corrected.
“The man at the Home Deep-oh,” Joe amended, “gave us detailed diagrams.”
“I used to be a construction foreman,” Fred added, puffing his chest out importantly.
“You were?” they all exclaimed as one.
His face turned bright red, even his balding head under the hard hat.
“Well, why did you not say so afore?” Joe exhaled with disgust, and handed his sledgehammer to Fred, who almost dropped the heavy object, apparently not prepared for its excessive weight.
So, by Sunday night, Maggie McBride and her two daughters had a stone fireplace in their den. And, though she hated to admit it
to Joe, it was really pretty nice.
Even though Christmas was still two weeks off, stockings had already been hung with care…four of them. Suzy and Beth had insisted that Maggie go down to the craft store and have one made with Joe’s name on it, identical to the three they had already. Of course, there was a paw-shaped stocking for Rita, too.
She was still going to kill Joe the minute she caught him alone. He had been avoiding her like the plague. Smart man. But now she’d cornered him. He was alone in the den, basking in the glow of the fire and his newfound family.
“Uh-oh,” he said when he saw her. He pretended to cringe with fright. “Despite the warmth of my surroundings, I can feel the very coolness emanating from you, Mag-he.”
“You’ve been avoiding me all day,” she accused.
To her surprise, he nodded. “I am not a Viking for naught. I know when to stay out of a woman’s path. Only a fool could fail to see the murderous gleam in your eyes. You would like naught more than to put a blood ring ’round my neck.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself. The fireplace was a nice gesture, Joe, but you are never, ever to do anything like that again without my permission.”
“My brother Rolf advocated never asking for permission first. He said ’tis better to do the act, then apologize later, but he was probably talking about something involving sex.”
Maggie wagged a forefinger with exasperation. “Don’t try to change the subject on me. Give me your word that this won’t happen again.”
He gave her an amused, level stare, then agreed. “Whatever you say, dearling.” But Maggie wasn’t fooled, not one bit.
Joe had other plans.
Joe had a job.
The takeover of the Rainbow Hospital by Medic-All had been finalized the week before. Thus far there were no visible changes in staff or policy, but Maggie knew they were sure to come after the New Year.
Whether she would stay or not depended on how the experimental programs she’d initiated were handled. If they went, she went. Unlike some employees, she was fortunate to have a sizable nest egg that would allow her to live for an extended period without a paycheck, if need be. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
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