Travelling Light

‘That’s right.’

‘Am I way off the mark if I think it’s not easy for you to be here?’

Every nerve in her body tensed. She didn’t want Lars Bronstad guessing the confusion of emotion that had claimed her ever since she had headed in the direction of Oslo. ‘You can’t possibly know that!’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I know it. I don’t know how or why, but I do.’

With a lack of finesse that secretly appalled her, Kristine snapped, ‘Look, I’m grateful you came to help me, and I’m truly sorry I hurt you—and that’s that. My private life—my feelings—are nothing to do with you.’

‘We’ll see.’

Two small words into which he had injected a world of purpose. Her breath hissed between her teeth. An open door into the hallway was most certainly irrelevant as far as Lars Bronstad was concerned, she thought furiously. He was the most unsettling man she had ever met.

In the bathroom she turned on the taps in the basin. The room was graced with a sunken jacuzzi, great piles of fleecy black towels, and rather more mirrors than were discreet; in one of them she watched Lars look around with interest. ‘A hedonist,’ he commented. ‘Why didn’t he accompany his Canadian cousin on her first wanderings around Oslo?’

‘He was busy,’ Kristine said with minimal truth, scrubbing her hands with soap and hot water, then guiding Lars’s elbow under the cold tap. The flesh was swollen. Blood had encrusted his arm, so that the water ran pink into the bowl. His forearm was corded with muscle, and very tanned; blue veins stood out in the crook of his elbow. Her mouth suddenly dry, she turned off the tap and rummaged in her kit for the antibiotic ointment.

After dabbing his arm dry with a sterile pad, she daubed the cream on the long red gouge, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she tried to concentrate on her task. She had not felt the slightest bit like this when Philippe had been stung by a bee, or when Bill had scraped his knee on some rocks. Straightening, forcing herself to meet Lars’s eyes, she said, ‘That looks better.’

His face was very close to hers; she had no idea what he was thinking. His eyes were deep-set, the sockets lined, and again she had the sense of a man who somewhere in his past had been stretched beyond his reasonable limits. Yet she had forfeited the right to ask him how or why, for she had discouraged him from a similar curiosity about herself. She bit her lip in frustration.

Lars reached around her with his other arm, turning on the cold tap again, and taking a face-cloth from the nearest pile. ‘Hold still,’ he ordered.

As he brought the wet cloth up to her cheek, Kristine closed her eyes. He applied only the lightest of pressure, yet as she felt against her other cheek the waft of his breathing her heart began to race in her breast.

What was wrong with her? She’d never reacted like this to a man in her life; had never wanted to. Nor did she want to now. An unknown cousin and a problematic grandfather were males enough.

After what seemed like a very long time, Lars lowered the cloth and took her chin in his fingers. Kristine’s eyes jerked open. She could lose herself in the depths of his eyes, she thought in utter confusion, and felt him angle her cheek to the mirror. ‘I suspect you’ll have a quite dramatic bruise by tomorrow,’ he said.

For a wild moment she had thought he was going to kiss her. Hot colour flooded both her cheeks. Lars said harshly, ‘I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to.’

Kristine’s eyes flew back to meet his. Her vision had never been so keen, her sense of touch so acute; she felt herself being pulled into the blue of his eyes even as the warmth of his fingers on her skin spread through her body. All the normal barriers between two strangers fell to the ground, leaving the two of them, man and woman, sharing a moment of naked communication that shook her to the soul.

Then she jerked her chin free of his grip. The moment was gone, swallowed by the past, ephemeral as only memory could be. Kristine drew a long, jagged breath, knowing it was terror that had driven her to free herself, terror of a very different kind than that which had claimed her in the park. There was no room in her life for the stark honesty of that moment with its blend of sexual awareness and emotional intimacy, a blend that went far beyond the sexual into territory she had not even known existed. No room at all.

She grabbed a towel to wipe her face, avoiding his eyes. He said flatly, ‘Has that ever happened to you before?’

She shook her head; it was noticeable that she did not ask him the same question. He answered it anyway, and for the first time Kristine had a sense of English being a language foreign to his tongue. ‘Nor to me, ever. What does it mean?’

‘Nothing! I’m tired, I had a bad fright, we’re alone here—that’s all.’

Lars was breathing hard, and she was suddenly aware of the silent, empty rooms that surrounded them and of her distance from anyone she knew. He said, the words falling like stones, ‘I will not allow you to call it nothing.’

In open defiance she said, ‘I’ll call it what I choose.’

‘So you are a fighter, Kristine Kleiven.’ His smile was mirthless as his gaze dropped briefly to his gouged arm. ‘Not that I needed to be told that, did I? Perhaps we should go to the kitchen, where the cold beer is no doubt becoming warm beer?’

Although his change of subject threw her, her recovery was almost instant. ‘Flat, too,’ she said agreeably. ‘I made the mistake of pouring it.’

‘Your cousin isn’t coming back tonight, is he?’

Her lashes flickered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not until the weekend.’

‘Yet you invite me—a stranger—up to his apartment. Do you go around looking for trouble?’

‘I asked you here to make amends—not to be insulted!’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

She gave him a mocking smile. ‘You didn’t have to accept the invitation, Lars.’

‘A fighter, indeed,’ Lars said, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, and holding her gaze with his own. ‘I want to see you again. Tomorrow why don’t we go to the Viking museum at Bygdoy?’

Normally there was nothing Kristine liked better than to tour a city with one of its inhabitants. ‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly.

‘Every visitor to Oslo should go there.’

‘In that case I shall do so. On my own.’

His jaw tightened infinitesimally. ‘How long are you staying in Oslo?’

‘Not long.’

‘Then what’s the harm in one outing?’ he asked, his smile deliberately high-voltage.

Fighting against his charm, she said, ‘I travel light.’

‘I’m not asking you to bring your cousin.’

In spite of herself her lips quirked. ‘Earlier you called me foolish. I think it would be extremely foolish of me to accept your invitation.’

‘Merely high-spirited.’

‘You have an answer for everything and I need that beer,’ Kristine said feelingly, and marched into the kitchen. There she perched on a stool by the counter and launched a determined discussion of Ibsen’s plays. Lars obligingly followed her lead. They moved to Grieg’s music and drank one beer each. Then Lars stood up. Moving towards the door, he said, ‘What time will I pick you up tomorrow?’

‘You’re taking it for granted that I’m going with you!’

He leaned against the doorpost, his body a long, lazy curve. His blue eyes were laughing at her again. ‘That would be very foolish of me,’ he said.

If she were sensible, she’d say no and oust this man from her life as violently as he had entered it. ‘I’ll go,’ she said crossly. ‘Ten-thirty.’

‘Good.’ Lars pushed himself away from the door and crossed the hall to the main entrance. Pulling one of the tall double doors open, he said, ‘Lock this behind me, won’t you? I hope you sleep well.’ Then the door shut and he was gone.

Kristine, who had been pondering what she would do were he to try and kiss her goodnight, gaped at the gleaming wood panels, said a very rude word, and hoped she wouldn’t behave as atypically during the rest of her stay in Norway as she had on the first day.

CHAPTER TWO

KRISTINE slept poorly. She got up early the next morning, washed out some clothes and hung them on Harald’s balcony, and soaked in the jacuzzi with a gloriously scented bubble bath that she suspected must belong to the owner of the négligé. She then dressed in her blue shorts with her favourite flowered shirt, breakfasted on the less dubious remains in the refrigerator, and went out to buy some groceries.