Sam slid her hand through Graham’s hair, the soft strands delicious between her fingers. His weight on her was so comforting—just heavy enough. She could still breathe with relative ease. So far, at least.
“Mmm.” He nuzzled her neck, his beard making her shiver. Really? Two orgasms and you’re still this wound up?
He raised up, pulling out of her with a regretful sigh. She swallowed and rolled to her side, feeling bereft as he got up and went to deal with the condom. When he came back and slid onto the bed, he snugged her up against him, his arm snaking around her waist, his body warm and solid against her back.
“We probably should have gotten under the covers,” he murmured into her neck.
“Mmm. Yeah. Maybe.” Her stomach rumbled and she slapped her hand over her eyes. “I guess my stomach has opinions about that.”
Graham shifted behind her, resting his chin on her arm. “Someone else does too.”
Sam took her hand away from her eyes and came face to face with Honey’s dark, shining eyes. The dog had her head propped on the coverlet and was staring at her.
“How did she sneak up on us? She usually makes so much noise. Also, that’s pervy, dog.” Sam reached out and stroked Honey’s head.
Graham laughed and sat up, getting his glasses off the nightstand and hunting for his pajama pants. “Here,” he said, tossing her the clothes he had loaned her. “I’ll make us breakfast.”
Sam turned the tee shirt right-side out and slid it on. “What are we having?” She didn’t have very high hopes. Cereal, maybe.
“How does eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee sound?”
She paused, the lounge pants halfway up her legs. “That sounds delicious.” Her stomach gave another rumble, louder this time.
Graham tugged a tee shirt over his head and laughed, extending a hand. “Come on human supermodel. The canine version already ate. Time to feed you as well.”
“Can I help with anything?” Sam asked as they walked into the kitchen, Honey trotting beside her, looking up with a besotted expression. Sam reached down and fondled the dog’s head and ears, and Honey closed her eyes.
“No, I’ve got it. Just keep spoiling my dog until I get jealous.” He slapped Honey’s flank and the dog gave him a look of reproach, her muzzle cradled in Sam’s hands.
“Now maybe I’m a little jealous,” Sam said. She didn’t look at him, but he could see her cheeks were getting pink as she continued to croon at the dog and stroke her.
Graham smiled, remembering how she had bitten her lip when he had given her ass a gentle slap. “Is that so?”
She bit her lip again. Interesting. Her eyes flickered to his face and skittered away again. Her shoulder came up in a half-shrug, the pink in her cheeks deepening. Taking pity on her, he busied himself with turning the oven on and filling the coffee maker. When he had the coffee brewing, her color had returned to normal.
“How do you like your eggs?” he asked, pulling ingredients from the fridge.
“Any way except fried super hard.”
“No problem with runny or soft textures?”
Sam laughed. “You’ve never had Norwegian food, have you?”
Graham paused, bacon in his hands ready to lay on a sheet pan to go in the oven. “You know, I don’t think I even know what Norwegian food is.”
Sam sat in a chair at the little table in the bay window. Honey followed, laying her head in Sam’s lap. Sam addressed her next remarks to the dog’s soulful expression. “Honey, there are a few hallmarks of Norwegian food.” She held up a finger. “Full of calories. Living in a brutally cold climate, coping in a snowy landscape, you need a lot of energy.”
Graham laid the strips of bacon on the sheet pan, watching her out of the corner of his eye, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Two.” Another finger. “Lots of coastline. That means lots and lots of fish.” Sam held up yet another finger. “The other thing about long winters is you can’t grow things in the snow and ice. Storage becomes important. So, preservation methods are essential. Salting, canning, obviously freezing…even preserving fish using lye.”
Graham paused, arrested in the action of opening the oven to put the pan of bacon in. “Lye? As in…lye? Isn’t that poison?” Leaving the pan of bacon on the stovetop for the moment, he turned to her. Her eyes were shining with humor.
She had to be kidding.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend eating lye. But you can preserve fish by immersing it in lye and rinsing it out. It’s called lutefisk. Frankly, it’s disgusting. It’s like fish Jell-O.”
Graham swallowed, shuddering, then returned to his task, opening the oven and sliding the pan of bacon in. “Yeah. Okay. I get why you don’t have issues with textures. But how did someone even figure that out? Who thought, ‘I know. Let’s put some fish in a caustic substance and see what happens.”
Sam snorted. “How do humans figure out anything about food? In Iceland they dig a hole, toss a shark in, bury it for a while, and when they dig it up, they cut it into little cubes and call it a delicacy.”
Graham stood for a moment, an egg in his hand, trying to figure this one out. “Okay, what does burying the shark do?”
“The shark’s a super old, super primitive species. Its entire body is flooded with excess urea. The burying presses it out while the shark ferments in its own juices.”
“Urea. Like… as in pee?” Graham swallowed.
“Yup.” Sam’s voice was cheerful.
“You’re kidding me.”
“I swear on Honey’s sweet face I am not. I’ve never had pee shark, though. Don’t worry. And I don’t even like lutefisk. I only tasted it once so I could say I did. According to Bestemor, my tastes are thoroughly Americanized. Except for pickled herring.”
Graham hit an egg a little too hard on the side of the bowl and had to fish out pieces of shell. “I’m coming to the conclusion that Norwegians are weird as hell.”
The look on Graham’s face as he scrambled eggs was priceless. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not sure why I decided to spin Scandinavian Weird Cuisine’s Greatest Hits for you this morning.”
He put a pat of butter in a frying pan heating on the stove. “Don’t apologize. It was…enlightening.”
“My tombstone will read: here lies Samantha. She made it weird.” But it was sweet that he didn’t get freaked out.
“I like weird,” he said.
“Sure. You say that now.”
“Come on. I’m a librarian. We have our own very special kind of weird.”
The coffee maker beeped and Sam rose to her feet. “Can I at least fix you a cup of coffee? I feel kind of awkward just sitting here watching you do everything.”
“Sure. Cups are in the cupboard over the machine. I take it black, so that’s a nice difficult task. Sugar’s also in the same cupboard if you want it, milk in the fridge.”
Sam served the coffee, setting his cup next to the bowl of beaten eggs. “Want me to put the bread in to toast?”
“Shoo, woman. You’ve done enough. Go amuse my dog. She’s looking lonely.”
Honey was stretched out on the floor, her nose between her front paws, her eyes tracking from Graham to Sam and back again. Sam sat on the floor with the dog, who thumped her tail as Sam stroked her.
“So how are librarians weird?” Sam asked, sipping her coffee. “Being a librarian seems very…wholesome. Normal.”
“Let’s put it this way. Normal people like finding stuff. Librarians like looking for stuff.”
Sam wrinkled her nose as she sipped her coffee. “I don’t follow.”
“Ever tried to do some research and were completely stumped by it?”
“Sure. Hasn’t everyone?”
“Did you enjoy it?”
She snorted. “No. It was frustrating.”
He smiled, stirring the eggs in the pan. “A librarian is the kind of person who will run up against a problem like that and love it. They’ll worry at it, consult colleagues about it. Obsess over it until they figure out the right angle or tool or whatever they need to crack it. We like looking for stuff. Actually finding whatever we’re looking for is just the cherry on the research sundae.”
Sam fiddled with one of Honey’s ears and smiled. “No wonder you made your way back to fishing. That sounds like a lot of days on the water.”
Graham laughed. “I hadn’t thought about it that way before. But you’re right. We have even more in common than we thought.”
She looked around the cozy kitchen, so different from her own home, and realized this a tiny vacation, a break from reality. But reality beckoned.
He checked on the bacon, popped bread in the toaster oven, and poured the eggs into the frying pan, stirring the mass slowly. The kitchen filled with comforting, warm breakfast smells and Sam’s belly howled again. Honey’s head rose, her ears pricking up.
“Didn’t mean to startle you with my very vocal stomach, girl.”
Half turning away from the stove, Graham looked at her and lifted an eyebrow. “Just a few more minutes. You going to survive that long?”
Sam blushed. “Barely.”
“Hang in there. If you can get me some dishes out, I can feed you about ten seconds faster.” He nodded at a cupboard and Sam got to her feet, washed her hands, and fetched a pair of plates. She enjoyed the calm, competent way he conducted himself in the kitchen. Everything came together at once and before she knew it, Sam was carrying a plate and re-filled coffee cup to the little table in the bay window. She buttered her toast and took a bite, groaning and closing her eyes. “Thank you so much.”
“No, thank you,” he said. She opened her eyes again and looked at him. There it was. That look again.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
His cheeks reddening, he poked at his eggs with a fork. “I just love the way you enjoy food. It’s almost carnal.”
“I feel like I should be self-conscious, but I’m too hungry to care.” She put a forkful of eggs and a piece of bacon in her mouth, enjoying the warm salty flavor.
“Do you have to be somewhere today?” Graham asked.
“Yeah. I have a shift at The Hole. And have to catch up on some school stuff.”
“I guess I’d better get you home after breakfast then.”
“Yeah.” Sam sighed. The last twenty-four hours had been so nice. So restful. Time to go back to reality in her tiny apartment, just her and the textbooks. No big sunny windows and dog to give her adoring glances. No Graham to make her feel treasured and feed her delicious food.
“When can I see you again?” he asked.
Whenever you want. But no. Despite how comfortable she was in his house, she wasn’t going to fall into the trap of relying on someone again. She was going to move forward, same as always. “I don’t know. I’m not working tomorrow night. But maybe that’s not the best idea.”
“What’s not the best idea?”
“Seeing you again so soon.”
“Why not?”
Graham’s heart thudded and his stomach wasn’t exactly hospitable to the idea of more breakfast. Was she pushing him away?
“This…your life. It’s so inviting. I feel like I shouldn’t get too comfortable.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s yours, not mine,” she said.
“Even if I offer to share?”
Sam set her fork down, fiddled with the napkin on her lap. “You seem so sure.”
“About what?”
“About me. But we haven’t known each other that long. And you know my history.”
Graham reached out a finger, traced the back of her hand. “In other words, you’re not sure of me.”
Her eyes flickered to his. “I’m as sure of you as anyone can be of someone they just met about a month ago. I mean, I slept with you, Graham. I don’t usually do that.”
An hour before he had been Gray. His full name in her mouth was like a punch to the gut.
He pulled his hand away from hers, picked up his fork, pushed his eggs around. “Okay. I’ll take you home after breakfast. And see you…whenever.”
Her eyes squeezed shut and he felt like a heel. “I’m sorry. I just need to get used to this. I’ve been on my own for a long time. I need to figure out a way to bridge who I’ve been to…this. And suddenly depending on you, being around you all the time, isn’t going to get me there. Even if it was my style.”
“A Halvorsen isn’t beholden,” he quoted.
One corner of her mouth curled in a wry expression. “Something like that.”
He got it. Even if he didn’t exactly love it. And he didn’t want her to turn into someone she wasn’t. But damn it if he didn’t want her to need him, even if it was just a little bit.
“Thanks for yesterday. And this morning.” Sam fidgeted with her handbag as Graham drew up in front of her apartment building. Had she pushed too strongly, set boundaries that were too high? Graham’s face was thoughtful as the car came to a stop and he put the car in park.
“No, thank you for coming with me. And for…everything else.” She couldn’t read his expression. “Can I… Can I kiss you goodbye?”
Her insides warmed. Or maybe she’d set her boundaries just right. “Yes, please.”
“So polite.” He leaned in, pressing firm lips to hers. She smoothed his beard with her fingertips and he angled his head, intensifying the kiss, teasing the seam of her lips with his tongue. She parted her smiling lips, tilting her head and welcoming his tongue into her mouth, meeting it with her own. The kiss made her want to melt into him, beg her to take her back home with him and wrap her in the coziness of his life.
From the back seat, Honey whined and shoved her cold, wet nose into Sam’s neck. Squeaking, she pulled back.
“Honey,” Graham scolded. The dog’s ears flattened and she panted, looking from one human to the other.
“No, she’s right. I have some stuff I need to do for school before I go in for my shift.” And she had to get away from that needy, yearning feeling. Back to standing on her own feet. “Thanks again for everything. I’ll see you soon.” She opened the door and slid out of the car, smiling at Graham and Honey and waving as the door thumped closed. Honey hopped into the seat Sam had just vacated and Graham shooed Sam toward her front door, seemingly not willing to go until he saw her safely inside. She waved goodbye from the front step and went into the apartment house.
Sam’s clothes felt odd and stiff from their air-drying on Graham’s shower rail overnight. She opened her mailbox and riffled through it as she walked to her front door. Junk, junk, catalog, junk, and another envelope with a return address in Oslo, this one thicker than the last. Sam frowned, fingering the smooth, heavy paper, then tucked the lot under her arm.
Her phone chimed with a text as she put her key in the lock and she fished it out of her bag after her usual battle with the door to her apartment. Gina. Girl, haven’t heard from you about the wedding. What is UP? She had appended a thinking face emoji to the end of the message, making Sam roll her eyes as she tapped out a response.
Long story. Just getting home now.
Dots pulsed on her screen. OoOOOooo. I want all the details. Gimme. Now.
Got school stuff to do. Come by The Hole tonight and I might give you a detail. One.
You’re a cruel woman.
Sam smiled. You love me. Just don’t dance on any tables. Denise isn’t having it.
You’re no fun. See you tonight.
Plugging her barely-alive phone into its charger, Sam returned her attention to the mysterious envelope. Digging her thumb under the flap, she tore it open and began to read.
Dear Ms. Halvorsen:
This letter is to inform you that we have confirmed that you are the grand-niece of Arne Johannasen, brother of your grandfather Einar Johannasen. As such, you have inherited the farm known as Litengård. While the late Mr. Johannasen was not constrained in his bequest by the law of Åsetesrett, he was strongly of the opinion that the farm that had previously been in your grandmother Gerda Hagen’s family be returned to that family.
Supporting documents and deeds are enclosed. Should you require legal representation in Norway, our firm would be happy to assist you.
Sincerely,
Kristine Toft, Attorney