Page 45 of The Very Virile Viking

He kissed me! As if he has every right in the world to do so! I'd better he careful or he'll charm the pants off me… so to speak. Oh, God ! "Uh…" Well, that was brilliant .

Magnus smiled some more, as if he knew what she was thinking.

He couldn't possibly.

Could he?

Behind him, Miguel was chuckling. On all sides the vineyard workers were grinning. To the right, Torolf commented to Jogeir, loudly enough for them to overhear, "Whoo-whoo! I guess Father's getting his knack back."

"What knack?" she asked Magnus.

"I have no idea," Magnus said, and shot Torolf a glare.

Before she had a chance to pursue the subject, Miguel diverted her attention.

"Magnus is a great student, Angela. He asks so many questions. Soon he will know more about the vines than I do," Miguel informed her, laughing jovially.

Jow raised his lazy head from where he lay nearby, watching the boys work. He had just come back from the hard rigors of chasing the other children at play by the pond and attempting to catch a fish himself.

She walked the aisles with Miguel and Magnus then, inspecting the vines. There were neuron probes to measure the amount of moisture in the plants, but nothing could take the place of hands-on examination.

"The Norselands, where I live, are not good for grapes," Magnus said conversationally, as they walked.

"It is too cold in the winter and the summer is too short. Still, I have wild grapes that I allow to grow in the fruit trees."

"There are still some small vineyards in France that do it that way… the ancient way," Miguel said.

"Miguel and I have been talking about all the similarities between grape growing and simple farming,"

Magnus informed her, even as he laced the fingers of her hand with his. She was too stunned by his audacity to pull away. Heck, who was she kidding? She didn't want to pull away. It felt so good.

"Yet each man brings his own expertise and ways of doing things to the land. And each man is different.

You have so many horseless machines and other marvels to lessen your work"—Magnus waved a hand to indicate the tractors and aerators beside the fields— "but in the end, 'tis the hand of man that makes all the difference. Without his hands, the land yields nothing."

She glanced down at Magnus's hands, the one that was free, and the one still holding hers. They were big. And blunt. And callused. Short-nailed. Dirty today from hard work—honest dirt, her grandfather would have said.

She thought they were beautiful.

Magnus gazed off into the distance, as if caught in some old memory… probably of his own farmlands in Norway.

Miguel leaned up to her ear then and whispered, just as he had the night before, "You picked good this time, little girl."

She wanted to tell him once again that he was mistaken.

But she didn't.

The calm before the storm…

Magnus had never felt more at peace in his entire life. And he had never felt more troubled.

He was sitting at one end of the big kitchen table, and Grandma Rose was at the other end. Juanita and her husband, Miguel, sat on long benches across from each other near Grandma Rose. Angela sat on his

right. All his children were in between, except for Lida, who was in a high chair at the corner between him and Angela.

They had just finished a meal comprised of rigor-tone-he covered with a red sauce and big meatballs, which was delicious; a salad made up of greens covered with oil and vinegar, which was not so delicious (who ever heard of eating grass and weeds?); warm bread, fresh from the oven, covered with garlic and butter; and two double-layer chocolate cakes, which he and his children had devoured to the last crumb.

He leaned back in his chair with contentment, gazing about him. Everyone appeared to be talking at once, but not in an unpleasant way.