He ran a hand down his face. ‘It could have been worse.’
‘Could it?’
‘Maybe not. It makes me sound hopeless to say I’ve had bad luck with women. That’s not a great advert for me.’
‘She was less trying to sell your good points and more pointing out why I might want to rethink.’
‘Are you rethinking?’ He pulled her up from the bench and kissed her so she couldn’t think of anything except the kiss.
‘No,’ she murmured, leaning her head back as Mats began kissing her neck, the stubble on his chin grazing her throat in the most delicious way.
He picked her up the way he had last night and carried her into the bedroom, so there was no need to stop, and sat on the edge of the bed with her straddling his lap.
‘I don’t know why you got changed after work,’ she said, pulling up the hem of his sweater. ‘You should have just waited in bed for me.’
‘Didn’t think of that,’ he said, against her breastbone as he pulled the zip down of her jumpsuit. ‘I wanted to pull this zip down so badly in that airport lounge.’
‘In front of everybody?’ Her hands were in his hair as his kisses moved down her torso. He lowered the zip further.
‘I’m glad I waited,’ he breathed, pausing to smile up at her.
Afterwards, Lotta dressed in her thermal leggings and the sweater Mats had been wearing before, loving that it was warm and smelled of him. He wore a waffle Henley with the cuffs pulled halfway up his forearms, and it was a toss-up whether that was sexier than the suit he’d been to work in that morning.
‘Can I still come to the island in a couple of weeks?’ She took a sip of wine and watched him look up from his phone with a smile.
‘I’d love that. And next time you’re in Oslo, will you stay here?’
‘If it’s still your place, yes. Otherwise, I’ll stay wherever you are.’
He laughed. ‘I think I’ll still be here in a couple of weeks. Take the key with you.’
Lotta thought her heart might explode with love for him. Obviously, she wasn’t actually in love with him, but she couldn’t think of any other way to describe how he made her feel. Sitting at his table with his sweater on, planning her next visit, felt like a dream. She’d never thought it would be like this when she’d firstmet him just a couple of weeks ago. In other relationships, she’d have had only a few text exchanges with someone in the same time. Was it a good or bad sign that things were progressing so quickly? She couldn’t help but think of Ingrid’s plea not to break his heart and hoped she wasn’t being careless, moving too quickly to really be sure that wouldn’t happen. But what she knew already was that if she broke his heart, hers wouldn’t be far behind.
14
The weekend before Lotta was due back in Oslo, Mats returned to Bergen and headed over to the island with his boat full of supplies. He went alone, partly because Anders and Becca had gone back to Iceland having helped Ida sort out the contents of the farmhouse, and partly because he didn’t want anyone knowing what he was up to. It felt like something special and he didn’t want to share it.
There had been a lot of progress since his last visit. Lars and his team had started work on the farmhouse, and the clearing it sat in was now cluttered with tools, machinery and materials, all of which had been brought across on barges that Knut had organised.
It didn’t look as unspoilt and wondrous as it had before they’d started, but once he walked into the woods towards the far end of the island, that part was still as untouched as it had been before.
The cabins that were scattered throughout the woods on this side of the island weren’t part of this phase of the development, but eventually, hopefully next year, it would be their turn for a makeover. Today, as he wandered from cabin to cabin, he was interested in finding one that still had its roof and windows intact.
After he’d looked at about half of them, he found exactly what he was looking for. It was a small cabin that still had some of its red paint on the outside walls, a window that had all its glassand a roof that was sturdy and thick with moss. The door stuck a little when he pulled it, probably damp had got into the wood, but with a good tug it opened. The cabin was just one room and empty save for a cast-iron stove in the far corner. It was dusty and had cobwebs hanging from the rafters but otherwise Mats was happy that it could work very well for what he wanted.
He headed back to the jetty, making a careful note of the route he took back to the farmhouse so that he’d be able to retrace his steps to the right cabin. It was going to take several trips back and forth, but first he needed to clean. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment plan, so he was sure he’d got everything he needed, including a broom. Nothing he did was spur-of-the-moment, which was probably why he’d stuttered over getting Lotta’s number that first time they met. He’d been planning this from the moment he’d invited Lotta to see the island. If they stayed in Loddefjord with Ida for the weekend, he knew he’d come away feeling as if he’d hardly seen Lotta, and he wasn’t sure he could cope with Lotta having another sisterly interrogation so soon after Ingrid’s.
He tied a cloth handkerchief around his face as a makeshift mask, then began. First, he threw the window open and propped the door ajar to get some air inside, then he swept the rafters and walls with the broom before sweeping the floor. But it turned out that years of dust are not that easily removed, and the cabin filled with clouds of it, forcing him to stand outside to contemplate his next move. He grabbed the bucket he’d brought with him and headed to the shore to collect some water from the fjord. The water was icy, so he tried to dip the bucket in without getting his hands wet, then carried it back to the cabin and stood in the doorway, throwing the water out of the bucket and across the floor as best he could. It did the job of settling the dust, but he needed another bucketful.
Once the floor was wet, he swept it again, feeling satisfied when he saw the brown colour of the water sloshing over the threshold. He repeated the whole exercise, taking the broom to the fjord to rinse out in between, and after the third thorough sweeping, he was satisfied that the cabin was clean. He walked back to the farmhouse where the old log store was still intact, for now at least, and still stacked half-full of logs that were decades old and Mats knew would make a good fire. He carried an armful back to the cabin, wanting not only to warm the place up but to dry it out before he brought the rest of the things from the boat.
He piled the logs neatly by the front door, collected a few twigs from the ground outside and laid them in the stove. He lit them, then went outside to check he could see smoke coming from the flue before he lit a proper fire. It could easily be blocked after so many years. But twists of smoke came out from the top, and there was a good draw, so he took a couple of logs inside and added them in. It would be dry in no time.
He sat on the step and poured a cup of coffee from the flask he’d brought with him. Was there anything better than doing manual work like this that left you feeling fulfilled? Yes, he had plenty of job satisfaction at work, but that was different. The work he’d done this morning had a clear aim, and every bucket of water he fetched, every sweep of his broom took him closer to that. At work, it was a very gradual, very hard-to-pin-down victory most of the time. It took careful analysis over a period of time to prove whether a strategy had been successful, and Mats had a natural talent which is how he came to be where he was today, but it didn’t give you many moments where you felt like you were achieving anything.
After he’d finished his coffee and eaten a piece of cake that Ida had made, he could feel the heat from the stove coming through the door. He took another couple of logs in to build the fire up and was pleased to see the floor drying out. Before hetook his cleaning supplies back to the boat, he wiped the window inside and out and then closed it to keep the heat in.
By the time he’d finished, it was mid-afternoon, and he’d turned an abandoned cabin into a cosy retreat for him and Lotta. There were a couple of bright rugs on the floor, and a piece of fabric that he’d pinned up at the window and then clipped to one side to make a curtain. The most expensive blow-up mattress he’d been able to find was inflated and made up with brand new bed linen. There was a small wooden crate next to the bed with a modern rechargeable lamp in the shape of a mushroom, and on the other side of the room, a couple of old wooden chairs and a table that he’d pinched from a neighbouring cabin.
