High Risk

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  She shrugged.

  He chose to ignore her ambivalence. “Are you a journalist?”

  “Yep.”

  “What are you writing?”

  “I’m filing an article about the sexist T-shirts worn by the men of Kiruna,” she replied without blinking.

  Aha. He smirked at her. “In three parts?”

  “At least.” But she seemed to relax a little. The tension of her mouth relaxed, and her shoulders seemed to sink.

  “I know why you reacted like that. But that T-shirt . . . it wasn’t mine,” he said.

  She looked up at him skeptically. “It wasn’t mine in the I didn’t have sex with that woman kind of way?”

  “It wasn’t mine in the It belonged to someone else and is now in the trash kind of way,” he said firmly. When he’d seen what was written on it, he’d thought it awful himself. He raised a hand as though swearing an oath. “One hundred percent true. You staying at the hotel?”

  “Yeah, I’m staying here,” she said, and stretched. Tom’s eyes briefly focused on her breasts beneath her fluffy sweater.

  “First time in Kiruna?” he asked.

  A brief silence before she replied, “No. Are you staying here too? At the hotel, I mean.”

  “No. I’m just waiting for Christmas Eve to end. Only a few more hours.”

  She nodded and stretched her neck.

  “Stiff?”

  “Very. I lost track of time. Jesus, I’ve been sitting here so long. But it’s submitted now.”

  They looked at one another. He could have gone back to the bar. They didn’t know each other, and he wasn’t sure they would even get on. But it felt good to talk to someone.

  “I asked the kitchen to make me a little food,” he said as the silence started to grow awkward. “You want some? They had a Christmas food platter.”

  She leaned back in her chair, raised an eyebrow, and gave him a questioning look. She had pretty eyes—gently tilted, very serious, and piercing, as though she knew about most things in this world. They were green and made her look like an alley cat. “You thought we could sit together?” she asked, as though he was suggesting a foreign custom and she just wanted to check she had understood him. But then she gestured to the chair opposite. “Sure. I’m Ambra.”

  “Tom,” he said, sitting down. “So, how’s it going? With your T-shirt report.”

  She had closed the lid of her laptop when he sat down. A woman used to being cautious with information.

  “Really well,” she replied as the bartender appeared with a sigh.

  “I’ll have what he’s having, Christmas food and a beer,” Ambra said, and she took off her hat. She ran her fingers through her hair. Glossy, dark brown curls. As she plumped it up, he could smell shampoo or some kind of spray. It smelled good.

  “Where do you work? For a paper? Or are you freelance?”

  She studied him for a long moment, as though weighing whether she dare tell him.

  “Aftonbladet,” she eventually replied.

  “Last name’s Vinter, right?” He remembered reading something by her; he was almost sure he had heard the name before.

  “Yeah.” She sounded much more prickly now, more like the arrogant big-city girl he’d assumed she was. “What about you? You have a last name?”

  “Lexington,” he replied as the bartender appeared and started to place napkins and cutlery on the table. “So you’re here over Christmas?” he continued.

  “Could say that. And you, do you live here?”

  “For the moment.”

  The bartender returned with the food. Two generous plates of herring, potato, gravlax, smoked salmon, crisp flatbread, and butter.

  “You want schnapps, too?” the bartender asked with, if possible, even less enthusiasm than before. Tom gave Ambra a questioning look.

  “A small one?” she said, hungrily studying the food. “I want to celebrate being done. Let’s have both beer and schnapps.”

  Tom nodded. It was definitely that kind of night.

  Each was handed a frosty glass of liquor, pale yellow Norrland aquavit. Ambra sipped her shot, cautiously to begin with, and then she resolutely downed the entire glass. Tom did the same, and then ordered two more.

  It was that kind of night.

  They started on their food. Ambra must have been starving, because she wolfed down everything that appeared at their table. It was only after her third aquavit, the cold cuts, a hefty portion of Jansson’s temptation—the traditional salty, creamy Swedish casserole dish made of potatoes, cream, onions, pickled sprats, and bread crumbs—and another beer that she put down her cutlery and groaned gently. She took a paper-thin slice of the smoked reindeer that had appeared on the third plate. Her cheeks were slightly flushed, and when she unwrapped her scarf, he automatically looked up at her. Her breasts were small, but Tom liked them in all shapes and sizes—he was pragmatic like that. Plus, hers looked good beneath her knitted sweater. He had already decided that.

  “So why were you working on Christmas Eve?” he asked, tearing his eyes from her body. He wasn’t really the type to stare. Ambra sipped her liquor and put down the glass. The bartender had eventually just left the bottle on the table, and Tom continued to refill both their glasses. Ambra’s index finger moved around the edge of her glass, and he followed the movement. She had nice fingers. Nice breasts, nice eyes. He was definitely getting drunk.

  “I was finishing up an interview,” she replied.

  “On Christmas Eve?” It was a sacred holiday for Swedes. People worked only if they really had to.

  She gave an apologetic shrug. “I’m bad at taking time off.”

  “Workaholic?” he asked.

  She raised an eyebrow, and seemed to be thinking about his question.

  “No, I just don’t have a life or any interests,” she replied, and then she giggled. It seemed he wasn’t the only one who was drunk. When she wasn’t prickly and defensive, she was actually pretty cute.

  “No family?” he asked. She didn’t wear a ring, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. They’d made small talk while they ate. A little about the weather (cold), the hotel (drafty, according to her; standard for Kiruna, according to him), and the food (both were more than happy). But she hadn’t mentioned anything personal. Though nor had he. Tom was, by nature, paranoid. Operatives were forced to choose between two extremes, he thought as he studied her over his glass: being paranoid or being dead. He lost his train of thought.

  “I have a sister, but she’s traveling right now and we never celebrate Christmas together anyway. What about you? Why are you here all on your own?” She reached for a ginger cookie, added a slice of blue cheese, and pushed the whole thing into her mouth.

  “I haven’t celebrated Christmas with my family since I was a teen,” he said, swirling his schnapps glass. He should have called his mom, he realized now. And his sisters. His thoughts returned to Ellinor. Right now, she was probably sparkling alongside Nilas, unwrapping gifts or gazing into an open fire.

  She finished chewing and reached for more. “Do they live here?”

  “My family? No.”

  “What about a girlfriend?”

  Tom paused, but then he shook his head. “You?”

  “Nope, I’m single too.”

  The air grew charged. She twisted a lock of hair between her fingers. Tom had always liked women’s hands. Hers were small and delicate, and he found himself fantasizing about what she could do with them.

  “But are you from here? You don’t have an accent,” she asked, and he tried to pull himself together.

  “Not at all. But I did do my military service here, about a hundred years ago now. Ranger battalion.”

  “Ranger?” Tom saw her glance at his arms, and it was a real struggle not to flex his biceps. He wasn’t as bulky as he’d once been, but he was still in good physical shape, and she didn’t seem to have anything against it. He looked into her green eyes. She wasn’t just cute, she was really cute, he decid
ed.

  “When?” she asked, blinking slowly. Her eyelashes cast long shadows over her cheeks.

  “Ninety-seven to ninety-eight. I was up here a few times after that. I got into the Officers’ Program with the Military Academy, and then I did exercises up here.”

  “Officer, huh? So, Tom Lexington, are you still in the army?” Her voice was low, suggestive.

  “Nope,” he said.

  “What do you do, then?” she asked. Her catlike eyes studied him, her lips wet from the beer she had just drunk.

  Tom thought about his lonely evenings, his panic attacks, and bleak prospects for the future. This was the down side to getting involved with people, the reason he had avoided everyone since coming up here. The reason people like him preferred to spend time with those similar to them. How much should he tell her? The woman was a reporter with one of Scandinavia’s biggest papers, after all. But it was a long time since he’d last worked on anything top secret, and what he was, what he had done, that was no secret at all.

  Or: not everything anyway.

  “I’m between jobs right now,” he replied vaguely, and held up the schnapps bottle in question. It was almost empty. Ambra held out her glass. Tom split the last of it between them.

  “How do you like your job? Is it fun?”

  She leaned back and studied him, as though she knew exactly what he was doing—diversion. She sipped the last of her schnapps, and he suddenly realized what he had recognized in her, the thing that had been niggling at the back of his mind. She wasn’t just some ordinary middle-class girl. Not at all. He had seen people like this before. He just hadn’t made the connection. But he could see it now. He’d met plenty of street kids—in Asia, the Middle East, most recently in Chad. These were children who didn’t trust anyone, who were used to fighting for survival every waking second, both mentally and physically. Always reading their environment. And Ambra’s eyes had the exact same look as those kids’ usually did.

  “Working for Aftonbladet is just the best.” She sounded sincere.

  “Why?”

  “Nothing beats being present while history’s being written. Finding the perfect mix of news and entertainment. I’ve never wanted to do anything else, not work for TV or for a weekly magazine.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nope.”

  Tom couldn’t help but smile at how passionate she sounded. He recognized the feeling. It was something he usually felt himself when he was out on an operation.

  He was drunk. His emotions nicely blunted, without the slightest anxiety. It was like they were cut off from the rest of the world. The snow was falling outside and Ellinor was celebrating Christmas with Nilas somewhere, but he cared less than he had in a long time. If he focused on Ambra and avoided thinking about anything else, life was almost bearable. The alcohol helped, of course. His eyes moved over her again. That helped too. Looking at her.

  Her eyes told him that she saw the way he was staring at her breasts. He didn’t remember what they were talking about.

  Her cell phone rang.

  “I need to take this, excuse me. It’s my boss.”

  Tom glanced at his watch. It was eight o’clock. On Christmas Eve.

  “You stay here. I’ll go,” he said. He got up and went to the restroom. When he came back, Ambra was finished with her call, and she was swigging her beer straight from the bottle. She looked like a world-class reporter, with her jerky movements and alert posture, as though she might leap from her seat at any minute, wave her press pass in the air, and start to push corrupt politicians and stubborn holders of power up against the wall.

  “What did your boss want?” he asked.

  “She just wanted to check something. And see how things were.”

  “So how are things?”

  She took another swig. “I hate Christmas,” she said quietly.

  He knew that much already. “What has Christmas ever done to you?”

  “It’s not Christmas specifically. I hate anything to do with family holidays. Christmas, long weekends, Easter.”

  A frown appeared as she talked. Tom leaned forward to better hear what she was saying, and he saw that she had long, thick eyelashes and a pretty mouth. It looked kissable. Even when she spat out her questions or statements, her mouth looked soft. He already knew he was drunk; the table was covered with bottles, and he heard himself slur the odd word. But he wasn’t falling down drunk, just comfortably full and nicely woozy. Life didn’t actually suck right now.

  “I never met anyone who hates holidays before,” he said, but he recognized himself in her words. He, too, liked working more than time off.

  “My entire existence and identity are linked to my job.” She raised the bottle to her mouth, and he studied her lips as they wrapped around the neck. “I told you I didn’t have a life,” she reminded him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “Other than a sister?”

  “She’s my foster sister. We met when we were teens. What about you? Why are you alone on Christmas Eve?”

  He shrugged. “It just turned out that way. You know.”

  * * *

  Ambra nodded slowly at Tom’s words. She knew exactly how it could be. She stole glances at him through her lashes. Tom Lexington. She certainly wasn’t expecting this of her Christmas Eve, to be sitting here with a man, almost flirting. No, they were definitely flirting. She was often on the road with her job, and yes, she had ended up with locals before, both at bars and occasionally (twice) in bed. It was fun to have company sometimes, but she wasn’t the kind of social person who gained energy from everyone she met. Plus, she was relatively uninterested in one-night stands (not for moral reasons, but they were just so boring) and had resigned herself to spending Christmas with nothing but her beloved computer for company.

  Yet here she was.

  With Tom Lexington, a former Kiruna ranger who clearly had no one to spend Christmas with either.

  He didn’t look too bad. If you liked the big, serious, beer-drinking, macho type. Black eyes. Black hair and beard. Black clothes, black, black, black. He was mysterious, but that didn’t matter; it was refreshing that he talked so little about himself. He drank a lot, considerably more than she, and she had drunk far too much. He also seemed pretty low. Yes, their time together was unexpectedly fun, but she hadn’t heard him laugh even once. At most, his lips would curl occasionally, which was probably meant to be a smile. Though maybe it was just Christmas that was getting him down. God knows she understood if that was the case.

  He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he was sexy in a tough-guy kind of way. She didn’t usually fall for the strong, silent type, but she was attracted to him. Though that could just be the beer and the schnapps talking. And the fact there was no one else around. But still. There was something rugged, lumberjack-esque about him.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  “Woman starts talking to a stranger. You’ll never guess what happens next.”

  His eyes shone. She could easily see herself rolling about with Tom in her bed one floor up, imagine those hands undressing her, being pushed down by him, kissing and making love, discovering whether he was a clumsy or a firm lover. With that huge body and those hard eyes, he would have been terrifying if he hadn’t been so unboorish.

  He was definitely checking her out, even if he thought he was being discreet about it. It happened so rarely that she didn’t mind. And he was doing it nicely, stealing a glance and then quickly focusing on her face again, nodding at what she said, asking follow-up questions. She felt his eyes on every single part of her body, felt them in places she would like his fingers to be, his mouth. Yes. They were the only ones there. He seemed to have the basics of social competence, and she really was drunk. Plus, she had been writing an article about sex orgies for hours.

  “Ambra. That’s an unusual name,” he said, and his dark eyes panned down over her sweater for a nanosecond or two. She felt butterflies in her stomach.

&n
bsp; “I think it’s Italian. My mom chose it. It’s from a painting, I think.”

  “Is she dead? Your mom?”

  Ambra nodded. She didn’t want to talk about it, not now. She couldn’t remember any Christmases with her mom and dad, but every now and then she felt a faint sensation that might have had to do with them. A scent, a feeling of joy and security.

  Tom swirled his glass. The lighting in the restaurant was low, and Ambra hadn’t seen the bartender in a while. Maybe he had gotten bored of them and gone home, they had been in the restaurant for so long. There was a candle burning on the table, and the flame flickered in Tom’s eyes. When she’d seen him for the first time, he scared her. She had an easily aroused, deep-seated fear of aggressive men, but he was so calm, seemed so stable, that her fear quickly subsided.

  She often met military men through her work, and many of them liked to talk about how mentally stable they were, only to prove themselves to be surprisingly high maintenance. But Tom seemed genuinely level-headed.

  “What’s the best thing about your job?” he asked quietly.

  “Being in the newsroom.” She loved being a reporter, writing, interviewing people, but nothing beat the feeling of walking into the office. The people were a little smarter, a little funnier there; it was one of the best places on earth. “I think it’s the feeling that anything’s possible. That anything could happen. That today could be the day we make history. It’s hard to explain.”

  “What about the worst?”

  “Not everyone likes you. I don’t have anything against constructive criticism, but let’s say I get my fair share of hate and online trolls. Some of them can be really serious.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t want to quote them, but it’s definitely a case of men who hate provocative women in the public eye.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “Yeah. And it would be good if I didn’t argue with my boss so often. I seem to rub our latest editor-in-chief the wrong way. I can be a little . . .”

  “Angry? Judgmental?” he suggested. But he smiled.

  She laughed. “Difficult, I was going to say. I should be better at keeping quiet sometimes.” She shouldn’t have told Dan Persson that the paper had taken a step back when it came to feminism, for example. Or argued against all of his suggestions.