Viggo frowned. “Why?”
“I’m curious about you. I’m guessing with a name like Viggo Gustafsson you’re Norwegian or Finnish or?—”
“Swedish.”
I winked. “I knew that. Freya told me a bit about her family. They sound like something right out of an idyllic Swedish IKEA fairy tale.”
Viggo snort-laughed, setting the mug down with a clunk. “Swedish IKEA fairy tale. Is that like ordering furniture with instructions that contain actual words?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m spitballing. So…what are your people like? Mom, dad, brothers, sisters?”
He gave a put-upon sigh. “My father is a retired physician, and my mother is a nurse. My older brother is a high-finance magician who makes money in his sleep. He’s married to Ingrid, and they have two children. They all live outside of Stockholm.”
“So you were born in Sweden?”
“Ja.I moved here when I was eighteen.”
“For college?”
He hummed a yes. “I was…recruited for wrestling, but the football coach asked me to try out at the end of my freshman year.”
“University of Minnesota?” I gestured at his shirt.
“Ja.”
“And…” I motioned for him to keep talking.
“And nothing. I played for three years. End of story.”
I furrowed my brow. “We’re the same age, aren’t we?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“So we must have played each other. I went to Michigan State.”
He shrugged. “Possibly. It was a long time ago.”
“True. I got injured my sophomore year, so there’s a chance I just don’t remember. I lost a chunk of my memory and…” I took another bite and steered the conversation his way. “Did you play football in Sweden?”
He quirked a brow. “Our football is your soccer. I didn’t knowmuch about the American version till I moved here, but I caught on quickly.”
“You’ve been in the States for a long time now. I hear a hint of an accent once in a while. Shouldn’t it be more pronounced?”
Viggo flashed a lopsided smile. “It’s been almost twenty years, butja, we studied English in our school curriculum, so I had an advantage. Also, my parents traveled a lot when we were little. I was proud that I could speak your language, but I still got teased.”
“For what?”
“I mixed up my Vs and Ws and pronounced video like wideo. Js were Ys sometimes, so jam was yam. Kids are ruthless. It inspired me to work extra hard to lose my accent in college.”
“Ah.” I tried to think of other questions and ideally not get too hung up on a vision of a hunky Swedish-wrestler-slash-football-player-slash-lumberjack going to battle with smartass undergrads. “Was your degree in forestry?”
Viggo set his fork down and wiped the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Yes. I worked for a mill near the Canadian border in the summers, and I liked it. My grandfather was an artist, a craftsman. He taught me how to make…everything. You?”
I chuckled. “I don’t know how to make anything.”
His lips curled at one corner. “You know how to make donuts.”
“True.”
