What Were You Expecting? (28 page)

“I thought you only read those travel books…like
A Walk in the Woods
.”

“Hand me a bowl. Big one. For mixing,” he said, unwrapping the white paper from the ground meat. “I don’t date much. I don’t go out much. I like TV, but there’s only so much you can watch and Gardiner doesn’t have a movie theater. Not to mention, books are good company during overnights in the park. So, I read. A lot.”

“All kinds of books, too,” she replied, with a touch of sassy back in her voice.

“I read the three in that series, yes. I didn’t buy the first one. I sort of stumbled across it. I was already at the airport one Saturday to pick up folks when they announced that the flight I was waiting for would be three hours late. I went back to the van to wait it out, and found the book shoved between one of the seats and the window.” He shrugged. “I had nothing else to read, so…”

“Three hours later, you were addicted.”

“You got a spatula?” He nodded. “Addicted. Yeah. Pretty much. I know that lots of folks criticized her writing, but I sure liked those books. They kept me hooked.”

Maggie rummaged through her drawers for a spatula and handed it to him, watching carefully as he mashed the two lumps of meat together.

“Here’s the trick, Maggie May. You ready?”

She hopped up to sit on the counter beside the bowl. “Ready.”

“First of all, you have to stop calling them ‘Swedish Meatballs.’ No one with the surname Lindstrom would call them that, okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded.

“Repeat after me:
Svenska Kottbullar
.”

“Svenska Kottbullar
.”

The sound of his Maggie speaking in Swedish made an unexpected smile break out across his face, but he looked down quickly so she wouldn’t have the pressure of seeing how freaking pleased it had made him. He reached for a small bowl that had been resting on her counter.

“What’s
that
?” she asked, and when he glanced at her, her nose was turned up.

“Bread crumbs and cream. Been soaking since I got here.” He dumped it into the bowl with the meat. “Now watch. We mash up the meat and bread crumbs and add egg, sugar, and spices.”

“How much of each?” she asked.

He looked up at her. “Like, how many teaspoons?”

She nodded.

He had no idea. He’d watched his mother make meatballs as a child, and learned from watching. He knew how long his mother’s hand paused over the bowl with a cylinder of salt or a small bottle of nutmeg, but he had no clue of how to translate that to amounts.

“We don’t cook like that,” he instructed. “You have to watch. That’s the only way to learn.”

“Svenska Kottbullar
,” she said softly, as though testing the words out on her tongue.

Her
tongue
. Damn it, why’d his brain have to go there? He felt a bead of sweat begin at his hairline and make its way down his face.

“Tell me something in Gaelic,” he said to distract himself.

“Okay,” she answered, swinging her leg beside him.

It was bare and tan and smooth. He wondered how often she had to shave it to keep it that smooth and suddenly he didn’t trust himself not to touch her, so he threw the spatula in the sink and plunged his fingers into the bowl as he’d seen his mother do a million times before.

“Tha an t-acras orm,”
she said softly.

The sound of her words, soft and rolling and slightly exotic, made his whole body respond. His fingers curled and kneaded, grateful for something to do, for something to grab and touch.

“Means?” he ground out.

“I’m hungry.” She reached over, placing her hand over his, sliding it over the slick mess of ingredients on the back of his hand, through the threads of his fingers. “I’ll do it. You must have something else to do?”

She’d knocked the wind out of him the second her skin had touched his. He stood motionless at the counter staring at her hand resting on top of his in the center of the chrome bowl.

“Maggie,” he started, but she reached for the bowl with her other hand, pulling it away from him, onto her lap. His hand hovered motionless over the counter, cold and goopy, bereft of hers. He cleared his throat. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“Of course. You know where it is, right? Same place as it was in Jenny’s apartment.”

“I know. I remember from the night when I—”

He looked up and his eyes slammed into hers, finishing the sentence in his head…
took your pants off and kissed you for the first time.
He watched as realization passed over her face too and her cheeks bloomed pink.

“And I’ll just keep kneading this?”

“Yeah. I’ll, uh, I’ll be right back to slice the onion.”

He washed his hands quickly and sat on the edge of her bathtub, willing his body to calm down, his heart to stop racing. He noticed a pink bottle beside him and caught the black writing: Strawberry Italian Soda. Twisting off the top, he inhaled deeply and goose bumps sprouted up along his tan, corded arms. He’d know that smell anywhere. It was Maggie’s smell. It was the smell that had haunted him for four straight weeks in Yellowstone. The smell he’d looked for in his mind as he fell asleep and made him hard as stone as he awoke every morning. He turned the bottle over.

Damn you, Philosophy shampoo. You don’t know what you’ve been doing to me.

He wanted her. He wanted her like he’d never wanted anyone or anything in his entire life, he thought as he carefully screwed the top back onto the bottle and set it back down on the little corner shelf. But, he had a marathon in front of him, not a sprint, and tonight was just the opening lap. Not to mention, for all that she had shared her love of dirty books and touched his hand as she took the mixing bowl from him, it was possible she was still seeing Beck.

He clenched his fists together, remembering them at
Midsommardagen
, all cozy by the fire. Then again, she’d kissed
him
, Nils, a few days after. Talk about mixed messages. What was the deal with them? She wouldn’t see much of Beck in the evenings over the next few weeks, but Nils’s stomach lurched as he imagined Beck stopping by on his lunch break, secreting Maggie up the back stairs and having his way with her before returning to his goddamned office. Nils winced, grinding his jaw until he feared it would pop. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t bear not knowing.

He hopped up and strode back into the kitchen where he found Maggie standing at the counter slicing up the onion.

“What next?” she asked cheerfully.

“We sauté the onion in butter. Add it to the meat. Shape the meatballs. Brown them. Bake them. Are you seeing Beck?”

Her face jerked up and the knife clattered down on the cutting board. She turned to face him. “What?”

“Beck Westman. Lawyer. Short. Funny looking. Are you seeing him?”

She pursed her lips, but her eyes were laughing as they locked on his, damn her.

“He’s not exactly a Lindstrom, but he’s not short either. And I think most girls would agree he’s not funny lo—”

Marathon not spr—Oh, screw it.

Nils reached out and grabbed her waist, pulling her to him, her body against his body. He tried to control his breathing, but he was losing the battle because yanking her into his chest had released a burst of her shampoo scent and pressed her breasts against his body and he was helpless to do anything but lean his head down and catch her bottom lip between his.

***

Aside from the quick kiss at their wedding, it was the first time he’d ever really initiated a kiss between them, and Maggie’s knees went to jelly. As she slumped, she felt his arms lock around her waist like steel and she leaned back against his arms as he leaned forward, tilting his head to capture her lips again. That’s the moment when she stopped thinking about anything but this confusing, addicting man holding her in his arms. That’s the moment she knew she was ruined, forever, for anyone but him.

Her hands slid slowly up his chest until she touched the hot skin of his neck, where she rested them, the heat from his tanned skin making them tingle and tremble. He sucked on her top lip, nipping it gently as he turned them slightly so that her bottom was pushed up against the drawers under the counter. He released her only to put his hands on her waist, lifting her effortlessly onto the counter before reaching up to hold her face, gently, tenderly, the pads of his thumbs pressing into the skin of her cheeks as his fingers threaded through her hair. Her fingers skated down his forearms, touching the hard contours of muscles and veins, lingering at his elbows, and finally dropping to his hips where they slipped under his t-shirt and curled into the soft, worn denim of his waistband.

His fingers deserted her face and sank into her hips, pulling her to the edge of the counter so that he fit perfectly into the apex of her thighs and she sighed into his mouth as she raised her legs, sliding them up his jeans and locking them around his back.

He kissed a trail from her lips, tracing her jawline, to her ear where he took the tender lobe between his teeth while sliding his rough hands up the soft skin of her back. She arched against him, gasping at the sensation of her tender skin held lightly between his teeth, while his fingers spanned her body from spine to breast.

Her core started to vibrate. Wait a minute. The vibration that she thought was internal was…external? She leaned back from Nils, glancing down at the pocket of his jeans that was flush against her inner thigh.

“Nils,” she breathed. “Your phone.”

“What?” he panted.

“Your phone. It’s vibrating. It’s ringing.”

“No,” he said, lowering his lips to hers again.

She pushed gently against his chest, regaining her senses as she murmured against his lips with breathy urgency, “Answer your phone.”

“No,” he mumbled, pressing feather-light kisses along her jaw. Her eyes closed again and she moaned softly, letting her fingers play with the bristly hairs on the nape of his neck.

“Could be…important,” she murmured.

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because nothing’s more important than this.”

As his tongue found hers, his hands slid down her back, over her jean shorts, squeezing her ass lightly as he pulled her closer. His phone had quieted, but a second later, it vibrated against her inner thigh again, an almost unbearably erotic sensation as she tightened her legs around him, stroking his tongue with hers as his fingers flexed and relaxed, over and over again, making her gyrate lightly against him.

“Damn it,” he exclaimed, pulling back from her and shoving his hand in his pocket. He put the phone to his ear, staring at her intently. “
What
?”

She touched her fingers to her lips, wiping lightly as he kept his eyes locked with hers, listening to whomever was on the phone. As Maggie started scooting forward to hop off the counter, Nils used his free hand to press down on her bare thigh and keep her there.

“It was only three nights at the Yellowstone Inn, not four.”

He glanced down at his hand, which he slid forward, under the frayed edge of her cut-off shorts, gently, experimentally. She looked down at his hand and waves of hunger kept her frozen, unmoving, as his index finger found the fold where her thigh curved into her pelvis. Her breath hitched as his finger slid down and glided under her panties.

“Four. No, I mean three. Listen, can we do this tomorrow?”

“Oh,” she gasped, eyes closing as she braced her hands on the counter behind her and leaned her head back against the cabinets. Her breathing quickened as his finger explored her soft folds, finally finding its mark and stroking the small, slick bud of her sex.

“Tomorrow,” he repeated in a low, strangled voice.

Her eyes were closed, but she heard his phone hit the counter as his finger continued its brushing, rubbing caresses. She bit her lip, listening to the sounds of her breathing as the unbelievably sweet pressure mounted, pooling in the spot he stroked with a more rhythmic, less teasing, cadence.

“Jesus, Maggie, you’re so wet.”

His words were so hot and so unexpected, her fingers curled on the countertop behind her as she panted, the hot air almost painful on her lips until he licked them, wetting them, plunging his tongue into her mouth for her to suck on just as she tipped over the edge of sanity, convulsing, trembling, falling apart against his hand that slowed its motions, following the arc of her orgasm. Finally, he withdrew his finger, reaching for her and pulling her into his arms to kiss her gently, tenderly, until the fierce throbbing subsided. His lips brushed against hers, soft and cool, a soothing zephyr after the explosion of heat she’d just experienced.

She felt him lean away and she opened her eyes slowly through a fog of latent arousal, to find him staring at her, his expression so intense, so full of emotion, she held her breath as she stared back at him. For the first time since she’d known Nils Lindstrom, she saw love looking back at her, and she never, ever wanted to look away.