Stockholm Diaries, Caroline 2

by Rebecca Hunter

  His eyebrows shot up. “Really? What point are we at? Because I’m ready for you to come with me to Sweden. I want—”

  She broke in before he could take either of their imaginations further. “What did your agent say today?”

  His words faded out. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and rested his forehead on one, large scarred hand.

  “Fine,” he growled. “Tom says there might be a spot for me on the Red Wings. If I play it right.”

  Whoa. Caroline froze in her chair. The frustrations from the moment before shifted into feelings she couldn’t begin to identify. She searched for something to say.

  “What happened? Why the change?”

  “That’s a long conversation,” he said tightly. “Let’s focus on the part about us right now.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “Why the hell did you keep that from me?”

  “Because I want you to come to Sweden with me,” he said flatly. “I thought if you knew that option first, you would be less likely to say yes.”

  “Want to know what really makes me less likely to go?” she spat.

  “Finding out I kept that part from you?” he said, his voice hard.

  “Yep.”

  The waitress chose the lull in the conversation to approach the table. Caroline watched Niklas order. He managed to fully compose himself in a matter of seconds, while she could feel her cheeks burn with anger and hurt. She looked down at the menu, trying to concentrate on the words in front of her.

  She ordered, and the waitress left them in silence.

  Niklas’s gaze was fixed on the table, his eyes dark and brooding. How had the conversation spiraled out of control so quickly? She had avoided the topic of their future, but now everything had come spilling out, all at once, too suddenly for them to recover, to gently find their way to each other. The topic had jumped so easily to an impasse, as if they’d instinctually known it was there.

  The lines on his forehead, his surprisingly long lashes, the tension in the thick muscles of his arms all called to something deep inside her. She could feel herself soften toward him. She reached across the table and rested her hand on his arm. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t look at her, either.

  “Niklas, my life wasn’t terrible back in Detroit. I had a relationship that was okay and a job that was okay and some friends, but I wasn’t happy. It took all of me to do something about it.”

  Niklas nodded, but he still didn’t meet her eyes.

  “When you left Detroit, were you planning to go back to that lawyer when your trip ended?”

  “Brad? I don’t know.” She sighed. “Maybe. But that’s not going to happen now.”

  Niklas lifted his gaze, frowning.

  “What we have isn’t enough?”

  The hurt in his voice brought back the twist in her gut she had tried to ignore all day.

  “Niklas, right now my heart is telling me to do whatever it takes for us to be together. Run away to Sweden, whatever. But I think that would be about the worst start for a life together.”

  “Why, Caroline? Why is this a bad start?” he growled, no longer holding back. “You’re what I want. That’s why I followed you to the Stockholm airport, and that’s why I’m sitting right here.”

  She looked down, not wanting to meet his eyes. “But falling in love doesn’t make people happy for the rest of their lives.”

  He threw up his arms. “Why the hell can’t it?”

  “There are other things that people need, too. Career, stability—”

  He cut her off with a humorless smile.

  “Maybe what I’m offering you isn’t enough,” he said coldly.

  “Stop, Niklas,” she hissed.

  Caroline closed her eyes, trying to bite back the tide of frustration that grew, threatening to drown out their connection. She could hear the uncertainty behind his provocation, and she couldn’t let herself exploit it.

  “This has nothing to do with what you’re offering,” she said, her voice breaking. “You can dismiss how important my personal goals are because you already have a path, a direction. But I’m just figuring that part out for myself.”

  Caroline took a couple breaths, trying to slow her pounding heart. The lines on his forehead grew deeper, and she briefly wondered why her statement seemed to hurt him. She gentled her voice.

  “I can’t just follow you, Niklas. The idea strikes at all my feelings of self-worth.”

  The corners of his mouth tugged down.

  “I followed you,” he said, simply and quietly.

  “It’s not the same,” she whispered.

  He didn’t say anything. Caroline swallowed and laid down her last card.

  “Niklas, what would have happened if you had fallen in love with someone back in Sweden right when you signed with the Red Wings, right as your career was taking off?”

  Niklas froze.

  “Is that how you feel?” he asked carefully.

  Caroline bit her lip.

  “I’m not sure if it’s the same,” she said. “But you know I’m getting a good response from the expat photography project I did. When I get back to Detroit, I’m meeting with another friend about some other project leads she has. If I drop everything to move to Sweden with you, I’m scared that in a few months, after you’re immersed in your own life, I’ll be back where I was before I left Detroit. On a career path I don’t like, just because it fits into my boyfriend’s life.”

  She already knew what it meant for her to be that woman. Directionless. Depressed. A pushover.

  Niklas’s frown deepened.

  “Can’t you work on a career from Sweden?”

  “I have no connections there, nothing to work with. I’d be completely dependent on you.”

  Niklas leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. He looked out the window, and for a moment Caroline wondered if he wasn’t going to say anything. Finally, he turned back to her and gave her a little smile.

  “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I don’t mind if you’re dependent on me,” he said. He sounded resigned. “So if I ask you to come back to Sweden with me, you’ll say no?”

  Caroline wasn’t sure if this was a question or a statement.

  “How about ‘not yet’?” she asked, trying to avert the sudden threat of tears.

  “You don’t think I can give you the life you want.”

  He said this quietly, almost to himself, as if it were no longer a question. Every word hurt, pushing her tears to the surface.

  “Please don’t say that. That’s not what this is about.”

  He nodded, but it looked more like acceptance than agreement. She squeezed his arm, planted hard on the table. She rested her hand on his bare skin, trying to find her way back to him.

  Chapter 2

  THEY WALKED THE San Francisco streets, through Little Italy and Chinatown. Neither said much, and Caroline barely remembered what they passed along the way. Her mind was busy playing back their conversation in the restaurant. She glanced over at Niklas and saw the sadness her words had caused still etched on his face.

  They turned and headed back up the hill to their hotel. A few months ago, if someone had told Caroline she would end her trip at the Ritz Carlton, she would have laughed. Even putting aside the impossibility of the expense, it wasn’t at all what she had in mind for her summer.

  And yet here they were, ordering room service and rolling around in absurdly soft sheets. Her days of gritty, adventurous photojournalism had ended. She and Niklas were no longer uncovering new places for stories to tell. Instead, they had become the sort of pampered tourists who skimmed the surface of a city through the windows of the limousine that picked them up from the airport. What bothered Caroline most was the part of her that enjoyed the luxury. The ease. The pampering. Exactly the opposite of what she had set out for when she left Detroit.

  Now, after a day back in her hiking boots with her camera a
round her neck, she couldn’t have felt more out of place as they walked up to the hotel’s stately entrance. The place really was meant to be entered by car, not on foot, in sweaty clothes.

  “This place looks like the White House, and right now I’m nowhere near dressed for an evening with the president,” she whispered as they walked up the half-moon driveway.

  Niklas stopped, taking her hand so she stopped as well. He tugged a little until she turned around and came back to him. He wrapped his arms around her, staring at her as if they weren’t in front of this high-end hotel, in the presence of doormen and drivers helping expensive guests out of limos. As if they were alone again, just the two of them.

  “I think you look beautiful, Caroline.”

  He stroked her cheek and brushed his lips against hers. Just that light touch made her insides stir.

  “I chose this place for the view,” he continued, “but we can go somewhere else. Anywhere you want.”

  “Thanks, Niklas, but I have to admit I’m enjoying it, too,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist. “How do you go in and out of this life so easily, Niklas? I don’t think I’d ever feel at home somewhere like this.”

  She gestured at the enormous white hotel. His other arm slipped lower, pulling her closer.

  “Nothing about being here is easy,” he said. “Only when I feel like it’s just you and me.”

  His statement felt so simple and clear. Her breath caught in her throat, and she swallowed back the lump forming.

  Don’t think about the end. Don’t think about the end.

  She pulled his head down for a soft, lingering kiss. He took a moment to respond, letting her take the lead. Her lips held her apology and the raw tenderness that the aftermath of their argument had left. He shuddered under her slow movements, hinting at the fears he kept well-guarded.

  The shudder seemed to trigger a rush of desire in him. He moved his hand to the back of her neck and ran his tongue along the seam of her lips, begging entry. She recognized this hunger, built on emotions pushed aside during the course of the day. After traveling together, through the inevitable frustrations, confusions and misunderstandings, she was intimately familiar with it now. For Niklas it tipped from want into need, and Caroline couldn’t stop herself from welcoming it.

  But almost immediately, he broke off the kiss, leaning his forehead on hers, stroking her arms with both hands. His rough palms smoothed over her skin, reminding her of more intimate ways his same hands had touched her. Reminding her that they were standing outside the Ritz Carlton, in view of the steady flow of patrons and employees in the front drive.

  “We should go in,” she whispered.

  Niklas nodded, but he didn’t move. He waited, letting his breath slow. His hands stilled on her shoulders, and he leaned down and kissed the base of her neck.

  “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

  She hadn’t just imagined it—people stared at them for a moment too long, though they did a good job of pretending not to be interested. Was it their scruffy clothes? Or the fact that she had just been caught in a less-than-decorous kiss? Niklas either didn’t notice or didn’t care. His hand rested on the back of her neck, his thumb gently stroking her skin. When she glanced up at him, his gaze was focused on the ground in front of them.

  They walked through the lobby, not speaking. The room sparkled in golden-white and chandeliers. She looked down, trying to find a way across the distance this place could drive between them. She focused on the desire building in her with each step closer to their room. The aches in her legs from the long, steep climb faded away. As they stood in the over-decorated hall, waiting for the elevator, his hand slipped lower, down her back to the top curve of her rear. She heard the hiss of his breath. His fingers cupped her, pulling her closer, but he still stared at the ground, not looking in her direction.

  The elevator doors opened, and he nudged her forward, following close enough to brush against her. Before the door had fully closed, he planted his feet on both sides of hers. He put his hands on her hips and pulled her against him, making his intentions perfectly clear. His lips brushed the skin below her ear, sending a wave of arousal straight to her core.

  “Fuck, I want you so badly, Caroline,” he whispered, his breath coming in pants. “I need to be close to you again.”

  She reached for the button with their floor number, pressing a few others along the way. Niklas chuckled at the evidence of her disorientation.

  “What do you want, älskling?” he said, his voice heavy in her ear.

  “You, Niklas. Only you.”

  This was the truth. At that moment, she wanted nothing on earth more than she wanted to feel his hot skin on hers. His erection throbbed against her, and his hands tightened around her hips. From somewhere in the haze of arousal, she smiled. They could find each other again, despite all the things that had pulled them apart.

  Regardless of what she had said back at the restaurant, Niklas was made for her on some fundamental level that had nothing to do with marriage or what their futures looked like. She had felt this from the beginning, when she sat in the Stockholm airport, trying to tear herself away from him. Only a few weeks after meeting him, leaving his apartment had hurt worse than leaving her four-year relationship with Brad. It had hurt physically in a way that it shouldn’t, in a way she hadn’t understood was possible.

  And the feeling hadn’t dampened at all. After the intensity of the day, she craved his skin, his scent, the weight of his body on hers. She craved their connection, the way they came together again and again. If he had held their future over her at this moment, coaxing her to come to Stockholm right now, she might have said yes. She wondered if Niklas knew this.

  The elevator dinged at an earlier floor, one that Caroline had mistakenly pushed. Niklas’s breath came fast in her ear, and her own cheeks burned with arousal. Niklas turned her around so she faced the doors and he stood behind her, doubtless to hide the clear bulge in his pants. Just in time, because the doors opened to another young couple waiting.

  The guy looked from Caroline to Niklas and raised an eyebrow. Were they that obvious?

  “Going down?”

  Did she detect a whiff of double meaning in this guy’s question, or was her mind taking that turn all on its own? Niklas’s erection throbbed hard against her. Caroline swallowed and shook her head. Niklas turned his head away from the couple and stifle a laugh, and behind the laugh was a promise that sent a spark straight to her core.

  Caroline elbowed him in the stomach as the doors closed, and she felt him chuckle silently against her. She turned around to face him, and he pulled her back against him.

  “Don’t say it, Niklas,” she said. “It’s straight out of a bad pop song. And I think that guy heard you laugh, judging from his expression.”

  Niklas just smiled.

  “It’ll give him something to think about. But you were thinking it too, weren’t you?” He bent down to kiss the sensitive skin where her jaw met her neck. He knew the answer already, but he wanted her to say it.

  “Weren’t you?” he repeated.

  He was waiting for her to respond, and if she knew him at all, she knew he wouldn’t let it go.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes, I was thinking it.”

  He answered her first with his body, his hands slipping down over her hips the way he held her in other, more horizontal positions.

  “And it turned you on,” he growled.

  He knew he was right, of course, but he was waiting for her to admit it.

  “Niklas, that’s never a problem between us.”

  As the words left her mouth, she slipped her hand between them for one, long stroke of his hard length. His head fell back against the elevator wall.

  “Jesus.”

  His raw growl spurred her to do it again. His fingers clenched against her hips. If they went any further, she would stop caring whether or not they made it to the room. And N
iklas looked like he was already past the point of caring.

  She tried to take a step backwards, to get some distance, but that clearly wasn’t what Niklas had in mind. He slipped his hand under her shirt, but she caught his wrist.

  “We need to stop,” she panted.

  The corners of his mouth quirked up a little. His hand lay on her bare stomach, and he didn’t push it further. Instead, he circled his thumb over her bare skin, teasing her.

  “I could list a few things I need right now, and stopping isn’t one of them.”

  “I’m NOT having sex in an elevator. I’m not into sex in public places.”

  His smile widened.

  “Unless it’s in an entryway on a deserted street in Stockholm? Or on a white-sand beach just before sunrise on a little Greek island? Or in—”

  “Okay,” she laughed, covering his mouth. “You’re making me sound…”

  “Really tempting?” he mumbled beneath her hand.

  Caroline shook her head, laughing harder.

  “No public sex in the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco. We’re back in the U.S. now, Niklas.”

  She felt Niklas’s mouth lose some of its smile. She pulled back her hand and stroked his cheek. She didn’t have to ask. Their trip was almost over, and each reminder hung in the air between them, tingeing the connection with sadness. Niklas’s thumb no longer teased her stomach. Instead, he simply held on, his touch intimate and gentle, keeping her body against his.

  He brushed a kiss over her lips as the elevator stopped at their floor. The doors opened, but he didn’t let go, and she didn’t want him to. Every step forward meant a step closer to Detroit.

  The doors began to close. With a sigh, Niklas reached for the button to open them again. She wanted to snatch his hand off the button, put it back on her and close her eyes, letting the rest of her senses take over. Instead, she laced his other hand in hers and walked out of the elevator, into the empty hallway.

  They said nothing as they walked to the room. Niklas fumbled in his pocket to find the key to the door, but he didn’t let go of her hand. He opened the door and walked straight over to the bed, pulling her against him again, the way they had stood in the elevator just minutes before. But the tone had shifted. His erection still pressed firmly against her—that part hadn’t changed—but the playfulness was gone.