Page 13 of Viking Unchained

Her trip down the dating

highway sure was twisted . . .

“I like to have my toes sucked. Do you have any problems with that?”

Lydia’s spoon stopped midway between her bowl of clam chowder and her gaping mouth. This was her fourth blind date in the past two weeks. Who knew a seemingly house-trained pediatrician could be so crude . . . or lacking in good sense? They’d just met for the first time an hour ago, for heaven’s sake.

Taking her silence for assent, he munched, loudly, on a bread stick and inquired, “What do you like in the sack, honey?”

To be honest, it was all about context. If Dave had asked her that question, and his feet had been clean, not like they’d been after a full-day SEAL workout— pee-you! — she probably would have said, “Sure.”

Or at least laughed, and then told him something equally outrageous that she’d have liked him to do. Like the time she’d suggested . . .

She shook her head to clear it of unwanted memories.

When she’d decided a month ago to get on with her life, after her lunch with the Magnusson women, she’d never envisioned dating being such an ordeal.

Her first date in almost ten years had been with a sales rep for the exercise clothing company whose products she sold in her aerobics studio. Blond-haired and cute in a surfer boy kind of way, even though he was twenty-eight years old, he must have figured she was desperate for sex, being an ancient thirty and widowed for five years. He’d put the moves on her before they’d even left her house for their movie date, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Turned out she was more physically fit than he was, she’d learned when she wrestled him to the floor in her hallway and threatened to cut off his balls with Dave’s KA-BAR knife if he didn’t remove his obnoxious self, pronto.

Her second date had been even more distasteful. Brian, an Internet computer genius, had taken one look at the photos of Mike on her mantel and bowed out. “Sorry. I didn’t know you had a kid. Instant families aren’t my cup of tea.” If she had a chance for a do-over, she’d have had an instant response: “Sorry. I didn’t know you had a comb-over. Bald men aren’t my cup of tea.”

Her third dating disaster was probably her fault. She should have known that a guy as good-looking as Jeff, who dressed like a GQ model and wore clear nail polish, was gay. He’d been in need of a female front to fool his homophobic family in L.A.

And now there was Bill.

“Listen, Bill,” she said, putting down her spoon. “Before I would even remotely consider sucking any of your body parts, I would have to know you a lot better. Has anyone ever told you that your dating skills leave something to be desired?”

Clearly offended, he bristled and said something so obnoxious she was forced to stand and dump her bowl of clam chowder all over his pristine white shirt and Gucci tie. Which was a shame. It was really good soup.

Was America ready for

another dumb man? . . .

“I am tired of being a prisoner,” Thorfinn complained to his cousin Torolf three months later as they sat, boots propped on the metal rail of the balcony of what he had come to think of as his dungeon—an apartment overlooking the ocean in Coronado, California.

An apartment was a keep divided into dozens of living units, piled one floor onto another to an ungodly height. Even with three sleeping chambers, their keep was cramped with him, Torolf, his witchy wife Brunhilda, their son Styrr, and a mangy dog called Slut.

Slut, who was sleeping at his feet, raised her head and growled agreement over the prison conditions.

The lustsome dog was no more happy than he was with being confined to the keep; in her case, Slut was unhappy staying inside when there were so many willing and ready male dogs in the neighborhood, as evidenced by their nightly howls, dog talk for, “Come see what I have for you, dearling.”

“This is not a prison, Finn. Stop your damn complaining. ” Torolf took a long swig of mead, rather beer, and belched.

He followed suit.

“How’s the tutoring?”

For twelve sennights now, Thorfinn had been instructed, up to ten bloody hours a day, on how to acclimate himself to this new time and country. It had taken him the first two sennights just to accept that he had, in fact, traveled through time. And another four sennights to learn the language . . . English but not like any Saxon English he had ever heard. Then it was history, geography, math, and the most modern of all inventions: computers, for the love of Thor! His mind still reeled with shock.

“The tutoring is boring, difficult, unbelievable, tedious, beyond mind-numbing. And Blade Jackson has stinksome garlic breath.”

Torolf grinned at him. “It’s Blake Jackson, and he’s no worse than the other four tutors you ran off with your incessant complaints and insults.”

“That last one . . . the woman . . . did have a nose so big it could be the prowhead on one of Uncle Rolf’s longships. ”

“You didn’t have to tell her so.”

“Why not?”