“You think? How smooth are you, exactly? If you don’t mind me asking.” Jill’s eyes glittered dangerously.
Ambra sighed. She was virtually invisible when these two got going. She started to search for her clothes. Next time someone asked her to a sauna, she would say no thanks and lock herself in her room with a kilo of candy. She grabbed the last of her things, went into one of the toilets, and got dressed.
“I’m going up,” she said when she came out, but she may as well have been talking to herself. Jill and Mattias were deep in some intense conversation, and neither of them heard her.
Well, she’d get her dessert in any case.
Chapter 21
The rest of the evening wasn’t as tense as Tom feared.
It was way worse.
While Mattias served dessert and Tom made coffee, Ambra didn’t say much. She helped to put the cups onto a tray, and when she went to fetch the milk, she paused by the refrigerator door. Tom realized she was looking at the picture of him and Ellinor, a photograph from their ten-year anniversary at Ellinor’s parents’ house. It was an old picture. He happened to bring it up to Kiruna with him, and he’d hung it on the refrigerator door without really giving it a second thought. He wished she hadn’t seen it.
Ambra opened the refrigerator, took out the carton of milk, and kicked the door shut again. “Nice picture of you,” she said breezily.
Did she mean it? Her tone was curt.
“What are you two whispering about?” Jill shouted from the table. Ambra carried the tray over. “Lay off,” she replied to her sister, and then disappeared from the room.
Tom watched her leave. He hadn’t handled any of this very well.
* * *
Tom added another log to the fire before he went back to the couch and sat down. If it wasn’t for Jill and Mattias talking and laughing nonstop, the rest of the evening would have been deadly quiet.
“. . . then he snorted cocaine all morning and was on the verge of missing the live broadcast. But all the old ladies like him, so now he’s the main presenter on Channel One.” Jill had her head cocked, and as far as Tom could tell, Mattias was genuinely interested in her crazy, tall tales about the Swedish celebrity elite. Maybe it really was fascinating to listen to gossip direct from such an informed source. But Tom couldn’t concentrate. He glanced at Ambra, who was curled up at one end of the couch, listening with an absent expression on her face. She had probably heard all of Jill’s stories before. She would nod politely at something Mattias said every now and then, but it was clear she had withdrawn into her own world.
Jill said something Tom couldn’t hear, and Mattias laughed loudly.
“Want more coffee?” Tom asked, holding up the pot to Ambra.
“No, thanks, I’m fine,” she said, her voice exaggeratedly polite. She smiled stiffly, and Tom couldn’t think of anything else to ask her. Mattias was laughing loudly at something Jill said, and Ambra looked as if she wished she were a thousand miles away. Tom could hardly blame her. He’d acted like an idiot. It was as though he had suffered a temporary meltdown. A chemical reaction he couldn’t contain. But Ambra’s warm, fragrant skin beneath his fingers, those small, stifled sounds of enjoyment she made, they all made him want to kiss her. And then his body just took on a mind of its own and started thinking ahead, about considerably more than a kiss. About how it would feel to pick Ambra up from the wicker chair, for example, to feel her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist; slowly parting her robe and moving inside, skin against skin, making love to her against a wall, a table.
It was somewhere around then he should have stopped massaging her, of course. Instead, he bent down toward her inviting mouth without thinking of the consequences. Tom, who never did anything without a Plan B, C, or D, had leaned down to kiss Ambra Vinter without anything resembling a backup plan for everything that could go wrong. He really couldn’t understand it. He’d never believed you could have feelings for two women at the same time, that it was just bullshit made up by men who wanted an excuse to cheat. He loved Ellinor, and winning her back was the only reason he was up here.
Ambra was attractive, there was no doubt about that, but he’d met attractive women before. Normally he didn’t have trouble keeping his short-term attraction and long-term goals separate. He’d never cheated on Ellinor, never even came close. And that was the rub, at least for him. He had never deceived his woman. They did once have a long break, many years earlier, during which he had a couple of short relationships, just as he assumed Ellinor had. He wasn’t a virgin when they first met, either. There were a number of sexual experiences from his youth that he definitely didn’t want to have gone without. But ever since the worst of his teenage hormones died down, he had never allowed his dick decide what to do. As an operative, he was flexible, that was the very basis of being an elite soldier—adaptability and flexibility—but he didn’t act on sudden impulses. Shit, he didn’t even have sudden impulses. Or not before he met Ambra Vinter anyway.
“Ambra, you have some of those, too, don’t you?” he heard Jill say.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. What are you talking about?”
“Online haters,” said Jill.
“Jill was talking about how much crap she gets on Instagram,” Mattias added.
Ambra nodded. “Everyone does, journalists and artists, but women suffer more. And if you’re young, it can be really terrible.”
“What’s done about it?” Mattias asked with a frown.
“Threats and hate toward women aren’t exactly priorities,” Jill said. “I have one troll who regularly threatens to cut off my breasts and rape me. With a hammer and a broken bottle, most recently. The police have dropped the case every single time, so now I don’t even bother reporting it.”
“Is it the same for you, Ambra?” Mattias asked.
“Yeah. Some of them are really violent. Several appear again and again.”
“But what do your bosses say?” Tom asked. He was leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs, studying her seriously.
She shrugged, a gesture that could have meant absolutely anything. Did she get threats? He would love to have a word with her haters, if that was the case. Ideally with the assistance of a baseball bat.
She was curled up even smaller in the corner of the sofa, with her feet tucked up beneath her and her hands pulled inside her sleeves.
Tom got up, grabbed a blanket, and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said, draping it over her legs. Her hair was dry now, and curlier than ever. Sitting like that, she looked ridiculously young, more like a teenager than a journalist with one of the country’s biggest papers. Her entire being was a study in contrasts. On one hand, a cynical reporter who covered gang murders, natural disasters, and abuse. On the other, a young woman who had never been to a sauna or seen the Northern Lights. He put down his cup and wished he could think of something to say.
* * *
Ambra reached across the coffee table and grabbed her cell phone, just to avoid Tom’s gaze for a while. Jill was laughing again, and Mattias was grinning. The evening really was becoming unbearable. She was trying her best, but her mood had plummeted rapidly. She tried to catch Jill’s eye to signal that she wanted to leave, but her sister was far too busy flirting with Mattias. Jesus, they were going for it. Her phone buzzed, and she read the newsflash.
“Did something happen?” Tom asked, and she wished she didn’t feel a thrill every time she heard his low voice say something.
She nodded and put down her cell phone. “Serious car crash in Skåne.”
“They’ve been having really bad weather down there.”
“Yeah.”
“Though it’s been pretty bad up here, too.”
“Yeah.”
It was an idiotic conversation, as if they were two strangers in an elevator or something. She thought about the picture on the refrigerator. Tom looked away, and she curled up beneath the blanket, wishing she’d have the guts
to bring up what had happened. What was the etiquette after you just happened to kiss someone anyway? And what was Tom Lexington up to? Was he a player after all? He seemed so straight-up, but then he went and kissed her like that, and he kept pictures of Ellinor in his kitchen, and Ambra didn’t understand a thing. Was there something between them or not? Didn’t he realize the mixed signals he was giving her? And what about her—how could she even get herself into this bizarre situation? She glared at Jill, who was in the process of uploading her hundredth Instagram picture, this time of Mattias’s lingonberry cheesecake.
Freja, who’d been dozing by the fire up to that point, lifted her head, got up, sniffed Jill, and then moved on to Mattias, who was busy brushing something from Jill’s shoulder. She reached Ambra, sniffed the rug, and then padded away and expectantly sat down by Tom’s feet.
“I’ll take the dog out,” he said. He seemed grateful to get away.
* * *
Once he left, Ambra moved around the living room as Jill talked about a British talk show she had been on. Ambra had just taken a paperback down from a shelf and started to read the back cover when she heard Tom stamping his feet in the hallway, and Freja came charging back into the room. She ran over to Ambra. Her fur was cold. “Good to get out?” she asked, scratching the dog behind the ear. Freja closed her eyes and seemed to be enjoying it, so she petted her a little more. When she eventually looked up, she realized Tom was watching her.
“It’s getting late,” she said.
He didn’t reply.
“Jill, do you think we could call Ludvig? Ask him to come get us?”
“Already?” Jill seemed surprised.
“I have to get up early,” she said. Somehow, she had managed to book a seat back to Stockholm, and right now she wanted to leave this part of the world more than ever.
“When does your plane leave?”
“After lunch, but I need to work first,” she lied.
Jill pulled a face.
Ambra wearily shook her head. “Can we just go?”
Jill made the call, and after a seemingly endless fifteen minutes, she said: “He’s here now.”
Thank God.
They said their good-byes in the hallway. Mattias helped Jill with her coat; Tom held out Ambra’s jacket and helped her pull it on. She hurried to push her arms into the sleeves and to move away. They exchanged a few quick hugs and then they were finally outside.
Ambra slumped into the backseat. She rested her head against the window. She was completely exhausted.
“Why were you so weird?” Jill asked while she pointed out directions to Ludvig.
“I’m tired,” Ambra replied dismissively. She was tired, tired of this whole Kiruna adventure. She wanted to get home, back to normal life, to the office. Once she was home, she would try dating again, she promised herself. Normal, uncomplicated, available men.
“I had a great time anyway. Those two are really fun, or Mattias was. You were so cold to Tom, though. What happened between you?”
Ambra gave her a cold look. “I’m surprised you even noticed. You spent the whole night flirting with Mattias. I thought you said you didn’t have anything in common.”
“We don’t. It was a bit of harmless flirting. Why are you so blue? What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know.”
“You said it yourself, he has a girl.”
“An ex,” she pointed out. “Who has a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, yeah, I still think you should be happy to get rid of him. Try to think of it like that.”
She hated it when Jill did this, argued against her feelings. “Could you let me be sad for a while before you start all the positive pep talks?”
“But no man is worth feeling sad over.” Jill sounded as if she genuinely didn’t understand. She hit the back of the driver’s seat with one hand. “Ludvig! You need to turn off soon!”
“I know. I still have a GPS,” Ludvig replied grumpily.
“Turn off here,” Jill said, waving her hand.
“I knoooow.”
Ambra tried to ignore their constant bickering by looking out the window, staring at snow-covered pines as they rushed by.
She would definitely let it go. Really soon. Nothing had even happened, she told herself as they left kilometer after kilometer of forest behind them. Everything was normal. There was no reason to feel like a failure. No reason to be disappointed. Maybe she just misunderstood everything and Tom and Mattias were discussing how awkward she was at that very moment. She just needed to get back on her feet. Back in the saddle.
It was a horrible expression. One that foster parent after foster parent had used whenever she fell, whenever she hurt herself, whenever someone pushed her, whenever she was sad. “Back in the saddle, Ambra. Dry those tears, Ambra. Pay no attention to her, she’ll stop soon enough.”
Jill was right, she just needed to let it go.
She would do it, she really would. She just needed to work out how first. How to ignore her reactions, her feelings. How to ignore the fact that it genuinely hurt.
Back in the saddle, Ambra.
She leaned her forehead against the window and watched the forest rush past, silent, dark, and threatening.
Chapter 22
Ambra stowed her computer into her bag. She quickly double-checked the cupboards, the bathroom, and beneath the bed to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, but everything was packed away. It will be good to go home, she thought as she pulled on her jacket, to leave Kiruna and all its failures and memories behind her. She had managed to talk her way into a late checkout and decided on another quick trip that morning to the house where the Sventins lived, again on a whim. The place still looked completely abandoned, and she wasn’t even sure what she was hoping to achieve by going back. She had left another message with the social worker and then returned to the hotel to pack up the last of her things.
She would make it in to the office that afternoon and had promised to submit an article later that day, so Grace was no longer pissed. The taxi she ordered wouldn’t be coming for a while, and so she lay down on her bed with her cell phone, scrolling through her news feeds. The world seemed to be in one piece. Unless you lived in Syria, that was. She absentmindedly opened up Jill’s Instagram feed. Her sister had uploaded pictures of yesterday evening. Champagne glasses, an open fire, but also a picture where Tom was visible in the background. He probably wouldn’t appreciate that, she thought with a smirk. When she read through the comments, she saw how hate filled they were. Jill hadn’t been exaggerating, some of them really were hair-raising. Ambra reported the worst of the comments and put down her phone. She realized that the trip to Kiruna had been good in one sense: For the first time in a long while, she felt like she wanted to meet someone. A man, that is.
An acquaintance from another paper had been in touch over Twitter recently, asking if she wanted to go out. Should she say yes and arrange to go for a coffee with him once she was back in Stockholm? It would do her good to get out more. Stand up to her fears, do something other than work.
It was also good to have met Elsa. Ambra had taught the older woman how to send text messages and take pictures with her cell phone, and after a few minor autocorrect errors, they now sent short messages to one another. Elsa seemed especially fond of the emoji function, and her latest message to Ambra was full of flowers, planes, and waving hands.
The small frog from Elsa was wrapped up in a pair of socks in her purse. She would put it on her bedside table, alongside the only photograph she had of her parents and an insanely expensive and impractical candlestick from the super exclusive Swedish store Svenskt Tenn that Jill once gave her.
She would just have to focus on the positives of coming up here and try to repress the rest. In a few days’ time, she wouldn’t care anymore. And by this time next year, it would be nothing but another bizarre memory among all the others she’d collected over the years. One of many in the memory bank. Do you remember when you did a li
ve TV report with your sweater inside out, ha ha? Or when you had to step in to do an interview with a furious politician and she tore strips off of you? Ha ha. Or, funniest of all, when you thought that ex-soldier in Kiruna liked you? Ha ha haaaa.
* * *
She heard a knock at the door. Ambra assumed it must be the cleaning staff wanting to come in, because she had waited until the last minute to leave her room.
“Come in,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. When no one answered, she got up and went over to the door.
Tom Lexington.
You have got to be kidding me.
“Hi there,” he said, filling the entire door frame with his size and presence.
Ambra lowered her hand to the handle and squeezed the metal tight. This was where she was meant to come up with something witty to say. Or slam the door.
“Hi,” was all she managed.
He peered over her shoulder, into the room where her luggage was packed and ready.
“Are you leaving?”
“My cab will be here soon.”
He pushed his hands into his pockets and leaned against the door frame.
“I wanted to stop by before you left,” he said.
She dragged the tip of her shoe against the floor. “You could’ve called. Or sent a message.”
“Guess so,” he said.
She was silent. Dragged her foot again, debated for a moment, and then resigned herself to it. She may as well come out and say it. She braced herself. “Sorry I was in such a bad mood yesterday.”
He shook his head. “It was my fault. You don’t have anything to apologize for. I don’t know what happened. I shouldn’t have, you know . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“You’re cool, that’s what I mean. It’s been fun, spending time together these past few days. And it did me good, to get out, to talk with you. It really meant a lot to me. I’m grateful for it. But I told you about my situation.”
Jesus, she wasn’t sure how much more of this apology she could handle. “You don’t need to explain,” she said, but he continued anyway.
High Risk Page 21