Having played water polo for most of his teens and early twenties, John might be biased, but he could tell you one thing: he would have been laughed out of the pool had he ever started rolling around, holding his knee, and crying.
He’d seen enough soccer in the past two months to last him for a lifetime. Settling on a repeat ofThe Simpsons, he sat back to drink his beer. Chilling. Just like he’d been doing every day for two months.
God, he was tired. Tonight he vowed to go to bed before 0200. No resort bars or late-night sauna parties for him—no matter how tempting.
So much for his plan to take it easy and relax while the LC figured out what the hell had gone down in Russia. Being a ski bum in Levi, Finland, had sounded like the perfect job for a temporarily unemployed Navy SEAL who needed to stay off the grid and disappear for a while. Levi was remote—one hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle certainly qualified—his fellow ski bums were too stoned or laid-back to ask a lot of questions, resorts were a mecca for the international labor force who were happy to fill low-paying jobs, and the Finns, like many in the Nordic countries, tended to speak English.
The latter was a good thing, because after two months, John hadn’t moved much beyond “hello,” “good-bye,” “thank you,” a few swear words, and “do you speak English?” Which, if you’d ever seen those words in Finnish, was pretty understandable. A few years of college Spanish didn’t help much with “hyvää päivänjatkoa,” aka, “have a nice day.”
His plan had been to find a job on the slopes while the ski season wound down, rent a room in a house with a bunch of guys, and spend his evenings in the local chalets,drinking whatever the Finnish equivalent of a hot toddy was while enjoying the local scenery of the blond, blue-eyed, and long-legged variety.
He’d say one thing for the Nordic countries. They might not know shit about good sports, but they had some of the best-looking women he’d ever seen in his life.
Everything had worked pretty much as he’d anticipated. He’d even managed to get in on some avalanche control, volunteering with the local ski patrol, to keep his skills with explosives fresh—until he’d nearly buried himself in an avalanche when a hand charge had gone off too quickly. Accidents like that happened even to the most experienced patrolmen. If they didn’t usually happen to him, John didn’t dwell on it. He never dwelled; it was a waste of time.
After the ski season had wound down, he’d exchanged his skis and boots for paddles and a river raft, making money by taking tourists down some not-very-thrilling rapids.
Not exactly his speed, but he wasn’t quite running on all cylinders lately. His sleep since arriving in Finland had been crap—especially since he’d exhausted the Ambien supply his roommate had tracked down. SEALs lived on the sleep aid.
Next time he needed to disappear for a while he’d pick a country that didn’t have almost twenty-four hours of sunlight. It made it too easy to stay up until two or three in the morning. Of course, the tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed inducements didn’t help with early bedtime. What had the inducement’s name been last night? Martha? He couldn’t remember. That was bad even for him.
Maybe he was going at this relaxing business a little too hard. Apparently, therewastoo much of a good thing. He wasn’t in his early twenties anymore; he was almost thirty and way too old to be going out every night.
If Brand were here, he’d be giving him shit for—
John stopped, remembering. No Brand. No any of those guys. They were gone. He had to stop thinking about it, embrace the suck, and move the fuck on.
He finished his beer in one long drink to cool the burning in his chest and popped another, staring so hard at the TV that he didn’t hear one of his roommates come in until he spoke.
“What are you doing here alone?” Sami asked. He was the only Finn in the house of five guys—it was a veritable United Nations around this place with a Russian, a Swede, a German, and a fake Canadian (him). “I thought you’d be at Hullu Poro right now, taking your bows before the concert.”
Ah, hell, that was tonight? One of his other housemates—the German—was in a local band, and they were playing at the Crazy Reindeer Arena, aka Hullu Poro Areena.
John ignored the taking-bows comment, hoping it would go away, and lifted his beer with a smile. “Just warming up.”
“Good,” Sami said, tossing him the paper as he unloaded a bag of groceries—or what a twenty-six-year-old single guy considered groceries. There wasn’t a shortage of crap around this place. If it weren’t for John, these guys wouldn’t have eaten a vegetable or nonprocessed food in weeks. “It wouldn’t do for the hero of the hour to miss out on his celebration.” The young Finn shook his head. “Man, first Marta and now this. You’re on a roll this week, my friend.”
Marta! That was her name. John’s three other unattached housemates, which included Sami, had all been eyeing the pretty new waitress at their favorite resort bar. John hadn’t been the first one to ask her out. Actually, he hadn’t asked her out at all. She’d done all the asking.
Which was just the way he liked it. He’d figured out a long time ago that some women didn’t like to be pursued,and if you waited long enough, they would usually come to you. He’d made waiting an art form; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to make the first move.
“You going to see her again?” Sami asked.
John shrugged. “Why not?”
Sami shook his head in disbelief. Despite the popular misconception, not all Finns were blond-haired and blue-eyed, but Sami did fit the Nordic mold and could have walked right off a Viking ship with his long hair and scraggy Vandyke-style beard.
Actually, John could have walked off that ship himself, although his hair was a darker blond, his beard was trimmed better, and he was a good half a head taller and fifty pounds heavier than his young friend.
“You’re unbelievable. The hottest woman to walk into Levi in months throws herself at you and you act like it’s no big deal.”
John wasn’t acting; it wasn’t a big deal. She was a nice enough girl—from what he remembered. And definitely nice to look at. He remembered that. But he didn’t lose his head easily. Actually, he didn’t lose his head ever.
Once.
“Paska,”Sami muttered. “If you don’t appreciate her, I’ll take her.”
Like most Finns, Sami used curse words as punctuation—in this case,shit. Finns were reputed to swear more than Russians and Scots. Which was saying something. John had done his fair share of swearing before moving into this house, but with both a Finn and a Russian in the house, it had increased exponentially.
