Page 28 of The Very Virile Viking

It was almost midnight, and Angela sat exhausted at her kitchen table, reading over the day's mail as she sipped from a stemmed crystal glass filled with a fine 1997 Blue Dragon zinfandel.

Her "guests" were asleep in their assigned beds or pull-out sofas. Magnus and Torolf were in her king-size bed, with Lida between them. Njal, Jogeir, and Hamr were wrapped in comforters on the floor.

In her second bedroom, in twin beds, slept Kirsten and Dagny, who'd gotten teary-eyed when she'd first shown them the soft pastel sheets and flowered wallpaper. Even clothes hangers and closets had made the girls almost swoon. Storvald and Kolbein were on the sleep sofa in her den, while the living room sofa was all hers. She'd already taken all the necessary clothes out of her bedroom so she could leave for work by seven the next morning without awakening anyone in her room.

What a day she had had! What a night she had had!

She had thought she'd seen everything at the Wal-Mart, but it had gotten worse. First she'd had to get the motley crew from the van in her condo parking lot up to her fourteenth-floor apartment. Her doorman took one look at the lot of them and almost swallowed his false teeth. Magnus had balked at getting into the elevator, but not his kids. They had been game for anything, especially those rascals Njal and Hamr.

Finally, after a hair-raising, white-fisted climb upward amidst much squealing and laughter and requests that they do it again, they had reached her apartment, all of them carrying bags from Wal-Mart along with Magnus's numerous wooden chests.

While her "guests" had walked about touching everything, asking question after question, she had called Domino's and ordered pizzas and soda for their supper. The television in the den had, of course, been the biggest attraction. To say the children had been stunned was a vast understatement. While most of them sat watching cartoon after cartoon, alternated with MTV videos, Angela herded them one at a time into the shower, which was another fascination to them… that and the toilet, which they kept flushing and flushing. The girls she had put into old flannel nightshirts of hers and the boys into loose jogging pants or nylon jogging shorts. Meanwhile she had dumped their clothes into the washer and dryer—two loads thus far. She had no idea how the leather tunics would come out, but she was giving it her best shot.

Lida, the little darling, had been toddling about the apartment in nothing but a diaper, falling, then picking herself up over and over , till Magnus had caught up with her and tickled her and rolled with her on the carpet. The scene—all of it—overwhelmed Angela's well-ordered mind, not to mention her previously tidy apartment. And the way he interacted with his children—whether it was tenderness with Lida, or gruffness with the needy Kolbein, or sternness with the rascals Hamr and Njal—something deep inside her melted, then grew. She could not give it a name. In fact, she was afraid to examine the new

emotion too closely.

The pizza was something else again. She'd been in the bathroom, trying to explain to the girls that the shampoo was a concentrate and they needed to use only a dab of it, not half a bottle, when the delivery guy knocked on the door. Magnus, who answered, apparently almost frightened the young man to death with his massive size. Then he forgot his earlier experience at Wal-Mart and tried to pay for the food with a gold coin. In the end he had paid for the six large pizzas and three six-packs of Coke with a hundred-dollar bill. She assumed the stunned delivery guy had just kept the change as a tip. All she knew was that he was gone by the time she came out. Magnus and his children had devoured the pizzas in a short period of time, declaring it food of the gods. Even Lida had gummed a crust happily, though Angela had given her some canned vegetable soup just before that. Afterward they'd had ice cream for dessert—three half gallons of it, strawberry, butter pecan, and chocolate.

These people had taken over her life.

"I am sorry," she heard a gruff male voice say behind her. She jumped with surprise and almost spilled her wine. She'd thought everyone was asleep by now.

"Sorry for what?" she asked over her shoulder.

Magnus walked around the table, into her line of vision, then sat down in a chair across from her.

"You're naked!" she accused him. "Go cover yourself."

"I am not naked," he said. "I have wrapped one of your towels around me, and I am wearing a pair of those jaw-key shorts under that. Wouldst like to see?" He stood and was about to remove the towel.

"No!" she shouted. Holy moley ! Could her heart really stand such an intimate view of six-feet, five inches of drop-dead-gorgeous bare skin and muscle? Angela had never been wowed by good-looking male hunks. They were a dime a dozen in Hollywood. But this man… well, all she could say was, Holy moley !

"No?" he repeated, and sat back down.

"Why are you sorry?" she managed to get out, trying to look everywhere but at his bare chest, which was— okay, let's admit it—pretty near spectacular.

"For putting you to this inconvenience. Oh, do not mistake me; I believe this is where I am supposed to be. My destiny. I but regret making you unhappy."

She accepted his apology with a nod, then homed in on one word: "Destiny? What could you possibly mean? By the way, would you like a glass of wine?"

"I prefer mead or ale, but thank you, yea, I would."

She rose and poured wine into another glass for him. When he took a sip and smiled his appreciation, she told him, "It's from my family's vineyard."

"Really?" He was clearly surprised. "Why would you live here in this crowded city when you could live on your family lands, which are presumably not so crowded?"

"My salary here helps to keep the vineyard going." Now, why had she revealed that to him?

"The vineyard is not self-sufficient?"

"It used to be, but we ran into some problems a few years back, especially after my grandfather died.

We stopped making wine, but we still grow the grapes in hopes that we can start up again someday. My grandmother is the only one left there, but it is her fervent desire that the Blue Dragon wines will be made once again." She shrugged to indicate the matter was out of her hands.

"I know a little about growing grapes," he offered, twirling his wine about in his glass before sipping it speculatively.

"You do?" Angela's heart skipped a beat at his words, and she had no idea why.