by Kris Tualla
When George first mentioned the amount she should ask for, Hollis was shocked—until he explained that he set the number high enough to prompt Sage into negotiating a settlement, rather than risk losing that much in court.
“So no panic yet,” she murmured.
“Right.” George’s tone was optimistic. “And if he agrees to half—nine hundred thousand—then after court fees and commissions you should end up with over half a million.”
Hollis had to admit, “That’s a lot of money.”
“And—don’t get your hopes up yet—but I’m trying to convince the firm to cut their fees in half. This is a high profile case and could be great advertising for us.”
Wow. “What would that mean for me?”
“You’d be looking at about seven hundred thousand, or thereabouts.”
Hollis fell back in her chair. “Seriously?”
“Yep.” She could practically hear the smile in his voice.
Reality poked her. “But I could lose the suit and get nothing.”
“That’s true,” George admitted. “But nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Hollis smiled for the first time in hours. “What would Jane do?”
George laughed. “Exactly.”
*****
Sveyn was waiting in her car when Hollis left work. She got inside and started the engine before he spoke.
“She saw me, Hollis. She looked right into my eyes.”
“That’s what you want to talk about?” Hollis turned and stared at him. “Really?”
Sveyn twisted in his seat. “You do not understand. No one, and I mean not one single person, has ever been able to see me outside of my twenty-two previous manifestations, going all the way back to when this first happened to me.”
Hollis folded her arms. “No one.”
“No.”
“Not even the slightest glance in your direction.”
“Never. I swear to you, Hollis.”
She lifted her chin. “Have you ever been that angry before?”
That stopped him. Sveyn rubbed his forehead and stared at the floor of the car.
Then he began to slowly wag his head. “No.”
“Really?” Hollis pressed. “Nothing made you that angry? Even the guy who didn’t speak to you for twenty seven years?”
He met her gaze again. “I was irritated. And bored. But nothing like the sort of anger which I experienced today.”
Hollis gave him an unconcerned shrug. “So that explains it, I guess.”
His brow was puckered and his cheeks drawn. “Do you truly believe so?”
“How should I know?” she scoffed. “This is centuries newer to me than it is to you!”
Hollis shifted the car into reverse and hit the gas. The car shot backwards and she jammed on the brake before throwing it into drive.
“You are still upset with me,” he said.
She shot him a look. “Ya think?”
“Please don’t kill yourself over it,” he said carefully. “I would miss you.”
Hollis stilled.
She took a breath.
Then she drove to the end of the employee lot and parked.
“You were mean to me, Sveyn,” she said without looking at him. “You hurt my feelings.”
“I was not being mean, Hollis,” he stated with authority. “I was being honest.”
“Said every rude asshole ever.” She slid her gaze sideways toward him. “There is a difference, you know.”
Sveyn was quiet. He seemed puzzled by her statement, but didn’t ask her to clarify it. Then he shifted in his seat to face her more squarely.
“I have three things to say about our situation.” He held up one finger. “First of all, yes. I am jealous. I love you more intensely than I believed possible, and the simple idea of you being affectionate with another man is nearly intolerable to me.” He paused, regaining his composure. “I must, however, tolerate this, because I have no choice.”
“Sveyn—”
“Second.” He held up another finger. “I will make no additional comments regarding Matt, and I will endeavor to stay out of your way and allow you to do what you must.” He paused again. “I know you, Hollis. You will not ever be able to finally let go of that man unless you follow this path which you are so determinedly set upon.”
In spite of the clearly negative outcome included in his promise, Hollis knew how hard this was for the Viking.
Apparently he was more advanced than she had given him credit for earlier.
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” Sveyn dipped his chin, and then held up the third finger. “And lastly, when you reach that moment when Matt shows you his true character, and your heart is broken once more, I will do everything in my power to comfort you. And after that I will never mention his name, or this conversation, ever again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hollis shook her head. “You’re very confident, aren’t you?”
Sveyn’s expression didn’t change. “Yes.”
Hollis was faced with an unexpected conundrum. If he was wrong—as she hoped he was—then she would be forced to choose Matt over Sveyn. Though that would be the obvious choice to make, the idea of doing it made her sad.
But if Sveyn was right, she was facing heartbreak even more hurtful than the first one. Having Matt crawl back to her, admitting he was wrong to leave her in the first place, satisfied that part of her that demanded justice. Having him fail her again, however, made her twice the fool.
“I honestly don’t know if I want you to be right or wrong,” she admitted.
His expression transformed from resolution to empathy. “If I am right, you will have certain misery ahead.”
“But then our illogical love wins out,” she countered. Her smile faded. “And if you’re wrong…”
“You will marry Matt.” Sveyn’s gaze dropped his hands in his lap. “And I will be forced to listen to you tell him how much you love him over and over. I cannot stop hearing.”
Hollis gasped. “I hadn’t thought of that. That’s horrible.”
“It is the hell to which I have been condemned.” He returned her gaze to hers. “And yet, for you to live with me is to never fully live.”
True.
Ca-rap.
“This situation will have to play itself out, and what will be, will be.” Hollis shifted the still-idling car into drive. “I think this night calls for a bag of garlic knots and a big bottle of red wine.”
Sveyn’s mood lightened a little. “I do like that. I can smell the garlic.”
Hollis drove toward the pizza place without talking. Sveyn’s words were sadly accurate—his current existence was a special sort of hell. And, although she would never tell Sveyn this, she didn’t completely trust Matt. How could she? The man had a lot to prove.
Hollis pulled up in front of the pizza shop and went inside to order her food. Just like the last time, Sveyn wandered around the kitchen, watching and sniffing.
Stevie had called him a good-looking man. As Hollis watched him she wondered if Stevie held anything back in her appraisal, or if Sveyn was so achingly handsome in her own eyes because Hollis knew the man so well.
The ridiculous idea that she would choose to turn away the flesh-and-blood Matt in favor of an apparition with no certain longevity taunted her. Dream sex was fine for her body, but left her soul lacking.
Then there was the inevitable of course: she was going to continue to age. If he stayed with her for the rest of her life, the time would come when the thirty-four-year-old Sveyn would be tethered to a seventy-year-old Hollis.
How pathetic would that be?
Hollis’s number was called and she collected her food. Sveyn followed her to the car and they drove to her condo in continued silence.
When she poured the wine and unwrapped the food, however, Sveyn spoke up. “Would you allow me to try and taste the food?”
Obviously the Viking’s thoughts had been focused on a c
ompletely different subject than hers. Typical man. He clearly thought their unprecedented and uncertain relationship quandary was a completed discussion.
“Um, sure.” Hollis held up one of the knots, the dripping butter pooling in her palm.
Sveyn leaned over and stuck out his tongue. The tip of his tongue passed through the knot.
I am so not eating that one now.
His brows pulled together. He did it again, more deeply this time. Then his eyes jumped to hers. “It is a sharp taste. With salt. Am I correct?”
Hollis stared at him. “When was the last time you tasted anything?”
“Am I correct?” he repeated, his tone and his gaze growing more urgent.
“Yes.”
Sveyn sucked a huge gasp and staggered back. His expression was so shocked it could be funny in another setting. But not here. Not now.
“Never. Not since I—I need to sit down.” Sveyn took the three steps required for his long legs to move from the bar-height counter to the dining table and he dropped into the nearest chair.
Hollis scooped up the food and followed him. “How are you dizzy?”
“I do not know that I am.” He looked up at her as she dumped the fragrant load onto the table. “I just felt—weak.”
Hollis turned around to retrieve her glass of wine. “That doesn’t make sense either.”
“I know.” He rubbed his forehead. “I am lost.”
Hollis sat in the chair beside his. “Do you want to try it again? Or maybe the pizza?”
His hand fell to the tabletop. “Yes.”
Hollis held out the same knot he had licked before. Sveyn heaved an airless breath, then leaned toward the twist of garlic-butter-and-salt-coated bread. He closed his eyes and pushed his tongue through the knot, slowly and completely.
Watching him was oddly sexual and her body responded very inappropriately for the occasion.
Later.
Sveyn paused, then opened his eyes. “I believe a little heaven has just entered my hell.”
Hollis smiled softly. “Try the pizza.”
She held up a slice—another piece of her dinner she definitely wasn’t going to eat. “There’s garlic in the pizza, too. And cheese. The red stuff is a sauce made from tomatoes, but you didn’t have those back then.”
Sveyn nodded his understanding and tasted the thickly piled slice. “Salt. And there is another flavor. Smoke.”
“That could be the sauce or the sausage.”
“And a spice of some kind.” He shrugged. “I do not know it.”
“Oregano, maybe. Do you taste the cheese?”
Sveyn shook his head. “No. And I do not believe I can taste the tomatoes. Those few flavors which I can discern are very distinct and separate.”
Hollis set the slice down. “It’s probably like smelling things—it’s starting with strong scents and strong flavors.”
Sveyn pointed at her glass. “May I try the wine?”
Hollis hesitated. “Let me pour some on a saucer.”
Sveyn’s lips quirked. “You do not want to have my tongue in your food.”
She felt her cheeks tighten with embarrassment. “Well you have to admit it’s a little weird.”
The Viking’s amusement lit up his face. “You cannot catch what I have, you know.”
“I know.” Hollis stood and went to the cabinet to get a saucer. “But this will be easier. I won’t risk spilling it.”
She poured a splash from her wine glass into the saucer and pushed it in front of Sveyn. “Do you want me to hold it?”
“No. This will do.” He bent over and laid his tongue in the liquid.
Hollis wanted to laugh because the Viking looked so silly basically face-planting on the tabletop, and took a slow sip of her wine to keep from doing so. But when he looked up at her again, the look of bliss on his face made her want to cry.
“I have not tasted wine for nearly a thousand years,” he said. “Now I know for certain that heaven has joined me at last.”
“Do you want to try more things?” Hollis jumped up and went to her refrigerator. “Let me see what I have…”
Her meal forgotten, Hollis hauled out anything she could find that had strong flavor. Pickles, onions, orange juice, mustard, salad dressing, strawberry jam, maple syrup, sharp cheddar cheese, salsa, dark chocolate.
Sveyn tasted item after item, some with success and others without.
“Acid seems to be a key ingredient,” Hollis decided, looking over the tabletop strewn with more than a dozen saucers of food. “And sugar is a no-go at this point.”
Sveyn grinned and patted his flat belly. “It is a blessing that I do not feel hunger, or my inability to eat any of this would reinstate my hell with a torturous vengeance.”
At his mention of hunger, Hollis’s stomach rumbled. “I never ate my dinner!”
Sveyn waved an arm over the messy table. “Please eat it, if you can find it. I would gladly clean all of this away for you if I were able.”
Hollis laughed. “Maybe that’ll come next.”
Sveyn’s expression sobered. “I do not see how.”
Too late, Hollis realized her joke was thoughtless. “I’m sorry, Sveyn.”
He gave her a polite smile. “Have no worries. Please eat.”
Hollis cleared a space and helped herself to a fresh slice of the cooled pizza. It was still delicious.
“So now you can smell and taste. And sometimes be seen or heard. What do you think that means?” she asked between bites.
“I have no idea, Hollis. I truly do not.” He gave a small shrug. “Perhaps it is because I am with you.”
As much as she liked hearing that, logic still pushed her to ask, “Why would that have anything to do with it?”
The Viking looked into her eyes. “Love perhaps? Intense emotion?”
That was possible. “Intense emotional feelings prompt physical feelings of a sort?”
He nodded, his fingers drumming silently on the table. “It is the only connection that I have been able to discern.”
An unhappy possibility dawned on her. “So when you manifest forward, or you fall out of love with me, you might lose these abilities?”
Judging by his expression, Sveyn had not considered that. “I suppose that could be true.”
Hollis hated that she had to press the point, but she couldn’t let this opportunity slip away. She had to know what might happen and now was the time to ask—or lose her mind obsessing over possibilities.
“And if I marry Matt. What then?”
His gaze cut to hers. “Will I stop loving you?”
“Yes.”
Sveyn looked at his fingers, now tapping at half their speed. “I would have to believe that it was possible for me to stop loving you to ponder that question.”
Hollis clenched her hands under the table. “If I do marry Matt, could that make you manifest forward?”
Sveyn’s fingers stilled. His eyes didn’t move.
“Do you know the answer?”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes still fixed on his lifeless hand. “I do not.”
He looked at her then, his cheeks pale and drawn beneath the scruff of his beard. “But if God sees my situation, then it would be a great mercy if I moved. Then I would not have to watch and hear another man love you as I long to, but am not able to.”
Hollis took another bite of the pizza, but it tasted like cardboard in her mouth now. She dropped it back in the box and started cleaning up the mess.
Sveyn stayed in his seat, staring at nothing, his clenched jaw muscles rippling his cheeks. When she finished removing the last traces of the tasting whirlwind, he rose and stood in front of her, so close that she had to tilt her head back to look up at him.
“What?” she whispered.
He ran a finger down her cheek, leaving a faintly tingling path. “I will love you tonight, Hollis. I will take you someplace very special, and love you until you cannot breathe.”
Chapter Twenty-Fi
ve
Friday
December 18
“Vikings were dirty.” Stevie looked up from her list. “True or false?”
Hollis looked at Sveyn, ready to repeat his answer for Stevie.
He shook his head. “We bathed every week.”
“Really?” Hollis blurted.
“What?” Stevie asked.
Hollis turned to her co-worker. “They took baths every week.”
Stevie typed the answer into the children’s book manuscript. “Are you kidding? That’s so awesome!”
“The people whom we encountered on our raids thought us vain.” Sveyn chuckled. “Or exceptionally foolish.”
Hollis repeated his words.
Stevie nodded and kept typing. “Ask him why they were they so—exceptional—for the era.”
Hollis turned back to Sveyn. “Why were you so clean?”
He grinned. “Longhouses.”
Hollis knew what those were, of course. “So because so many families shared the same living space, you all washed to keep it from stinking?”
“Can you think of a better reason?” Sveyn countered. “And once a man is accustomed to being clean then he is more aware of the discomfort of filth.”
Hollis wrinkled her nose. “Not to mention lice.”
“What did he say?” Stevie prompted.
Hollis told her, then asked Sveyn, “After the Roman Empire collapsed, there was a millennium where European societies descended into filth and ignorance. Why did your society thrive and grow?”
The Viking looked at her like that was a stupid question. “We traveled.”
“Travel,” Hollis repeated for Stevie. “You interacted with other cultures and their people and learned from them?”
“Yes. My people traveled to this continent, and to what are now called Europe and Asia.”
“You went as far as Asia?”
“I did not,” Sveyn clarified. “But others did.”
Hollis looked at Stevie. “The sunstone allowed them to navigate on the sea, as well determine their direction on land and rivers.”
Stevie smiled as she typed. “We have seen that before in our work. Cultures that are isolated don’t progress like those who explore.”