High Risk

by Simona Ahrnstedt

  “Oh, you know. Pull in your thorns. Don’t start talking about the patriarchy or politics before you’ve even said hello.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “And it doesn’t hurt to smile from time to time, that’s all I’ll say.”

  Ambra stared into the mirror, annoyed that she had gotten herself into this discussion. “You should see me now. I’m smiling like crazy.”

  Jill laughed. “So, when was the last time you slept with someone?”

  “That really doesn’t feel like something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Do you at least have any hot underwear?”

  “I’m wearing around eight thousand layers of clothing. No one’s getting anywhere near my underwear today.”

  It was one thing for her to have dirty fantasies about Tom, but they were just that: fantasies. Jill’s life played out in a different dimension. She probably couldn’t even imagine what it must be like to be an ordinary mortal woman whom men weren’t constantly falling in love with.

  “So long as you aren’t wearing those granny panties.” Jill sighed.

  “But they’re so comfortable,” Ambra protested guiltily. Granny panties were a woman’s best friend—that was her private opinion on the subject. Plus, nothing was going to happen tonight.

  “Oh, God. Sometime, I should . . .” Jill began, and Ambra groaned loudly, convinced she couldn’t cope with any more criticism veiled as concern.

  “Bye, Jill, I’ve gotta go,” she said quickly. She hung up just as her sister said what sounded like “I’m sure there’s a cute bra in AA at one of those special stores in the Old Town.”

  * * *

  When Ambra got down to the lobby, Tom was already waiting for her. He was wearing a thick winter coat that looked as if it was designed for a month-long polar expedition, covered in zippers and pockets. With it, he had on salopettes and chunky boots, and there was something so damn appealing about him, standing there in the lobby. He was like a tank or a fortification. Someone you could take shelter behind. He looked her up and down.

  “You need proper clothes. It’s already close to zero out there, and it’s only going to get colder.”

  “This is everything I have,” she said, feeling the thorns Jill mentioned shoot out.

  “We’ll figure something out,” he said smoothly.

  They walked outside, and he nodded toward a huge black Volvo. She climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. No one knew where she was headed. Her cell phone was in her pocket, but the battery always ran out at record speed up here in the cold. Plus, the coverage was far from perfect. Even if Tom seemed safe and she was attracted to him, she didn’t know the man. Her instincts were usually good—they’d saved her on a number of occasions—but they didn’t seem to work properly around him. They were constantly pulling her in different directions. Sometimes she wanted to make out with him, and at other times she was almost afraid. And now they were in a car on the way to . . .

  “Where are we going?” she repeated.

  “My house,” he replied. The snow swirled outside the car, whipped up into a smoke all around them.

  “Why?” she asked sharply.

  “To find you some warmer clothes and pick up a snowmobile. You’re not allowed to drive them in town, so we need to go to my house. I have spare clothing, too.” His voice was calm and warm and she relaxed a little, forced herself to trust him. They turned off and headed straight into the forest. Her anxiety returned. “Where are we now?”

  “I live out in the woods, is that okay?”

  She paused, but then nodded.

  They drove in silence, deeper and deeper into the forest, until eventually he pulled up outside a low, dark house.

  “Is Mattias here?” she asked.

  “He’s probably working. He promised to watch Freja. Do you want to go in and say hi?”

  She shook her head. He turned on the light in what looked like a huge barn. Benches down one wall, hooks holding thick outer clothing, cupboards. A neat line of boots, all different colors and sizes. It looked completely normal.

  Tom pointed to a pair of pale gray overalls. “It gets really cold when you’re out, so I grabbed these. I hope they fit. There are thick gloves and proper boots,” he continued. She nodded, a little overwhelmed by the amount of clothing she was expected to wear.

  “And here’s a balaclava. You can wear that under your helmet, instead of a hat.” He held out a soft white hood.

  “It’ll protect your cheeks and chin. What kind of socks are you wearing? If they’re cotton, you need to switch to wool. Cotton is the worst thing to have next to your skin. Here.” He handed her an unopened pack of soft, thick socks, and she wondered whether he had bought them for her sake. Though maybe he had a whole box of women’s socks somewhere.

  “I’m going to die of heatstroke,” she protested, but she did as he said and obediently pulled on the wool socks and the overalls, then shoved her feet into the enormous boots. Tom seemed to know what he was talking about, and she had no desire to freeze to death.

  “You’ll thank me later,” he said, handing her the balaclava. She pulled it on and tucked in her hair. He held out a helmet and, with a look of concentration on his face, helped her to adjust and fasten it.

  She held her breath. Being helped with the equipment like that was an intimate feeling. He was so close to her, his fingers so warm on her skin. She fluttered her eyelashes and felt herself blush.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded, and they moved into the garage. Two huge black snowmobiles glittered at them.

  “You can sit behind me,” he said, starting to move one of them outside.

  “I wouldn’t mind having my own,” Ambra protested, and she pointed to the other machine.

  “They’re easy to ride. It’s basically just a case of starting the engine and steering. But it’s dark out, and the terrain’s unfamiliar. That can be dangerous, and your safety is my responsibility. I’ll drive.”

  She climbed onto the snowmobile behind him and tried to pretend that it didn’t feel at all strange to press her thighs against his legs and wrap her arms around his waist.

  Tom started the engine with a few twists of the wrist, turned around, and said, “You need to hold on tight.” She slid a little closer, felt her breasts being squashed beneath all of the layers. Tom shook his head, reached back and wrapped an arm around her, and pulled until Ambra was clinging to his back like a bandage.

  “Uff,” she said.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said, increasing the gas. They started off so fast that Ambra almost flew backward. She locked her arms around Tom’s waist in a death grip.

  He swung out into the forest, and she squeezed her legs around him as they turned. The trees rushed by, the snow whirled, and Tom sped up again; it was as though they were floating, just gliding over the surface of the snow, and she felt excitement bubble up in her chest. She loved it.

  The cold almost knocked the breath out of her, and she felt grateful for all of the layers. Wilderness surrounded them, tall pines, untouched snow, and above them a sky that stretched out to eternity. The stars shone in the cloudless sky, and she felt the urge to reach up and grab them, they felt so close. It was like being in a magical land.

  They drove through the forest. Occasionally, the track turned—sometimes it was just a long, straight stretch and Tom sped up. At one point, they sped across a flat plain.

  “Is this a meadow?” she shouted in his ear.

  “It’s a lake,” he shouted back, speeding up so that they flew across the frozen, snow-covered water. After they had been driving for a while, Tom slowed down and they came to a stop.

  “Try to get your circulation going,” he said, starting to take the bags from the snowmobile.

  While Ambra rotated her arms, bent her knees, and jogged on the spot, Tom set up some kind of wind shield using poles and tent material. He dug a snowbank and placed furs on the grou
nd, then, to Ambra’s intense fascination, he lit a fire, right on the snow. He built a pile of thick pine branches and sticks, then lit it. “I came up here earlier to prepare,” he explained as he fed the fire, first with a handful of birch bark that he took from a bag, then smaller sticks, and last with logs that he fetched from beneath a dense pine. “So long as you’ve got wood, you’ll be fine.”

  They sat down on the furs, side by side, with the snowbank behind their backs and the crackling fire in front of them. Tom dug out a thermos, unscrewed the lid, and handed her a cup of steaming coffee.

  “It’s like being out with a scout,” she said as Tom sipped his coffee.

  He smiled. “A kind of scout, maybe. But making fire, I could do that in my sleep. Are you cold?”

  Ambra thought about it. It was cold, her cheeks and the tip of her nose were icy, but otherwise she was unexpectedly warm.

  “Do you do this kind of thing often?” she asked.

  “Depends what you mean. I’m used to being outside, but just sitting down to look at the sky without waiting to attack or be attacked, that doesn’t happen so often. Sadly.”

  “Do you still do that kind of thing?” she asked carefully.

  Tom was silent for so long that she was sure he wouldn’t answer. “I don’t usually talk about it,” he said gruffly. “If I do, can you promise it’ll stay between us?”

  It was a question she had been asked so many times before. She was a veritable vault of secrets by this point, her own and others. “I promise,” she replied. She meant it. So long as Tom didn’t confess to a murder, she would stay quiet.

  “I was an operative in the special forces,” he said.

  She had figured out that much already, that he wasn’t just an ordinary ranger. He was some kind of specially trained elite soldier.

  “Before. Though not now, so it’s not confidential anymore.”

  “So what do you do now, if it’s okay that I ask?”

  This time, Tom stayed silent for so long that she didn’t think he would answer.

  “I work for a company called Lodestar. I’m the CEO and something called Operations Director,” he eventually said.

  Lodestar sounded vaguely familiar. “Private security, right?”

  “Yeah, partly in Sweden, for bigger companies and the occasional individual. But mostly abroad. In high-risk countries.”

  She quickly racked her brain for everything she knew about private security; it was about playing bodyguard and chauffeur in dangerous conflict zones, navigating foreign cultures and war-torn countries. Risking your life. It wasn’t a job for amateurs.

  “Thanks for your confidence,” she said, catching his eye. He looked at her for a long while without saying anything, and she wondered what he was thinking. Why did he invite her out here? She saw his eyes glisten, and he gestured up toward the sky. “It’s coming now,” he said, and Ambra followed his line of sight. They had an uninterrupted view from where they were sitting, with their backs to the woods, kilometer after kilometer of snow-covered landscape in front of them, and a clear night sky above.

  The Northern Lights started to dance across the heavens. Strands of color, mostly greens and yellows, and the occasional pink or purple glow. Slow at times, and then at high speed. Rising green waves, turquoise columns of light.

  “Wow,” she whispered, wide-eyed. Explosions, swirls and spirals, red, green, yellow, every color; it was like watching the very birth of the universe. As though the Norse gods were crossing the sky. Or as if she were on another planet.

  “Let me know if you’re cold. I don’t want Sweden’s best reporter to freeze while she’s my responsibility,” he said after a while.

  She smirked at the overdone compliment. “I’m not your responsibility,” she said, but she wished it didn’t feel quite so good to know he cared. There was something protective about him that she was unused to. She would never forget this, she thought as she looked back up at the sky.

  * * *

  Tom forced himself to stop staring at Ambra. He watched the celestial performance instead. If he spent too long looking at Ambra, he might start to think about kissing her. He snuck a glance at her out of the corner of his eye and saw her sitting with her head bent back, following the Northern Lights with wide eyes. His eyes lingered on her mouth, remembered how it felt beneath his. She shivered.

  “Come on,” he said firmly, getting up and holding out his hand. “We need to get our circulation going a little.”

  While Ambra circled her arms and stretched her back, Tom fetched a small spade. He quickly dug a square hole and packed down the snow to form a neck support at one end.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she did some kind of squat. She was starting to sound out of breath.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “Breathe through your nose. The air’s cold.”

  He had packed for all eventualities, and he now placed two insulated mats in the bottom of the hole. “Lie down,” he said.

  She looked suspiciously, first at the little camp he had built and then at him. Always that cautiousness.

  “It’ll be warm,” he explained. “And it means we don’t have to crane our necks the whole time.”

  She sat down. Tom sat next to her and then draped a huge animal skin over the two of them. They lay back against the neck support. Ambra was completely still. It was an odd situation, but their combined body warmth and the insulated mats should keep them warm for hours. He had slept outside when it was forty below zero before. With the right equipment, it was perfectly fine. He had lain like this countless times before, shouldn’t be affected by the physical closeness. But it was different with Ambra. Her body brushed against his, and he was ultra aware that she was there. He took off a glove and searched for his pocket with one hand.

  She tensed. “What’re you doing?”

  He pulled out a bar of chocolate in reply. Not a tough, nutrient-filled bar, but real milk chocolate with chopped nuts and raisins. Ambra’s eyes glittered. He handed it to her, and she broke off a big chunk and handed it back to him. They lay there like that, eating chocolate and watching the Northern Lights, warm beneath their layers of furs, clothes, and insulated materials.

  Ambra was much more relaxing to spend time with than he had thought. She hadn’t criticized his background, hadn’t asked whether he had killed people, whether he was a mercenary, nothing like that.

  “How long does it last? And is there any more chocolate?” she asked.

  He handed her the rest of the bar. “Another hour at least. Do you want to head back?”

  “No. Who knows if I’ll ever see them again.”

  He glanced at her and then back up at the sky.

  They lay next to one another in silence, and his mind emptied; he just admired the sky, breathed. When he next glanced over at her, she was asleep. He shifted a little and told himself that it was just because he was stiff and needed to change position, but he put an arm behind her.

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m awake now,” she mumbled.

  “We can go if you like,” he said.

  She shifted gently and then became motionless again.

  “Ambra?” No reply. She had dozed off again. Tom followed the stars’ movements across the sky, comfortably at peace with his surroundings. Ambra wasn’t moving an inch; she was sound asleep. But she looked peaceful, and it was warm in their little nest, so he let her be. The temperature continued to drop; the snow crackled in the chill. A branch, weighed down with snow, broke with a dry snap. He could hear the quiet rustling of an animal somewhere, maybe a fox. Tom didn’t think they needed to worry about predators, and so he just lay there, remarkably comfortable to have a dozing Ambra by his side.

  The Northern Lights slowly died out, the occasional green band crossed the sky and then disappeared, leaving behind only sky and stars, the moon and the endless snow-covered landscape. Ambra stirred.

  “How long did I sleep?” she asked, her voice drowsy.


  “Awhile.”

  She turned to him. Sleep had made her face relax. Her prickliness was gone. She was just a soft woman with warm eyes. The hat she had pulled on when she took off her helmet was no longer straight. She had her scarf wrapped around her, and in the moonlight her skin seemed almost silver. Tom studied her pretty features, those dark eyebrows, that straight nose, her broad mouth. She looked up at him and Tom lowered his face toward hers, toward lips that had been tempting him. She raised her head to meet his lips, looked at him with wide-open eyes. He almost brushed against her mouth. Their breath had already met—he could smell her, wanted to kiss her more than anything else—when a loud sound made her tense and open her eyes. An owl hooting. It sounded close. Tom paused, and Ambra blinked.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Great gray owl, probably. There are a load of birds of prey up here.”

  He pulled away, told himself he was relieved that they’d been interrupted before he did anything hasty. Why was he so drawn to her? And why did he invite her out here? During all the years he and Ellinor were together, they had never taken a nighttime trip to watch the Northern Lights. This was something he had done with Ambra only.

  Tom got up and moved over to the fire. He squatted down, deep in thought, and scooped snow onto it until it was completely extinguished. The night closed in around them. He stayed where he was, his mind empty.

  “Tom?” Her voice sounded so small. “Where are you? It got really dark.”

  “I’m here,” he said. He moved back over to her and held out a hand.

  She took it, clung to him.

  “Let’s go home,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty done with nature now,” she said. Neither of them mentioned their almost-kiss.

  When Ambra climbed onto the snowmobile behind him, he didn’t need to tell her. She pressed herself against his back, wrapped her arms around his waist. He started the engine, and the noise roared up in the silence. He twisted the handle and they sped off over the snow once more.