Page 95 of The Very Virile Viking

"We have been tracking Big Bird, and a trap has been set."

"Huh? Who has been tracking?"

"Dirty Harry and me."

Angela put a hand to her forehead and counted aloud. When she got to ten, she said, "Who is Dirty Harry? And please don't tell me it's Clint Eastwood."

"Flint who?

"Not Flint… Clint. Aaarrgh! Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?"

"Not deliberately." Well, mayhap a little .

She scowled at him fiercely, and when he tried to put his arm around her shoulder, she slapped it away.

This appears not to be my day. Actually, there have been few of those lately. Mayhap I need to hone my skills better. "Dirty Harry is the code name for Harry Winslow, the private detective I hired to help catch Big Bird, which is the code word for Gunther, or whoever has been threatening the Blue Dragon."

"You hired a private detective? Without consulting me?"

"Yea, I did. And I got my driver's license today. Didst know that? Of course, I had to take the test twice. I almost hit a pole the first time. The policing man bit his tongue, drawing blood, and said a very coarse word. Mine is a license for foreigners living in this country, since I could not take the written test in

your English—yet."

This woman needs to learn that men are men and women are women. I am the leader; she is the follower. That is the way of the world. Angela was staring at him as if he'd grown another nose… or bigger ears, which would be disastrous, of course. His were plenty big enough, thank you very much. Or mayhap she had read his mind and did not agree with his philosophy of life.

"Harry is a very nice fellow. In fact, when this whole investigation is over, he is going to take me out for a beer… to a local stripper bar. I did not want to ask him, but what is a stripper bar, Angela?"

Of course, he knew what it was, having asked Harry, but he was teasing Angela, or trying to.

Unfortunately she just glared at him.

"Harry says the ladies there have tassels on their boobs. What are boobs?"

"You're a boob," she said angrily. Then she inhaled and exhaled deeply, as women were wont to do when exasperated with their men. "Magnus, how could you get a driver's license when you don't even have a birth certificate?"

"It helps when you know the right people. Leastways, that is what Harry says. He got those parchments for me, and for all my children, too. And social security cards, whatever they are. Why do people need special licenses in this land to be secure in their social lives? Oh, and work records… Harry got those for me as well. The papers say I was a Green Beret. And I was in the Witness Protection Program." He beamed at her, sure she would be pleased at his enterprise.

She did not beam back. In fact, she murmured, "More like the Witless Protection Program." Mayhap she was not all that pleased.

"Let's start at the beginning. Just whom did you hire, and what has he discovered?" she demanded to know.

She is a demanding wench betimes. "I hired a private detective, and he in turn hired some professional hit men—"

"Hit men?" Angela screamed in his ear.

He rapped the side of his head with the heel of his hand as if to clear his ears. "I was just teasing, Angela."

"This is no teasing matter."

Yea, she is definitely losing her sense of humor, and the best place to restore it is in the bed furs.

Unfortunately I couldn't lure her to my bed furs at this moment even if I had the smoothest tongue in the world. "Harry hired some professional security and detecting men. I realized the day Gunther came to visit that I needed help… that you needed help. I have often been a soldier for my king in the Norselands, but fighting is direct there. You lop off a head or pierce a man's gullet with a sword. Or he does the same to you. We use none of these devious attack-and-hide tactics. Well, actually, we Vikings employ a bit of that when out a-viking, but that is neither here nor there." I have got to stop rambling. I am beginning to bore myself .

"How much is this going to cost?"

Money, money, money! I am sick of talking about money. "You are not to worry about that, sweetling."

"Don't call me sweetling. At this moment I feel anything but sweet toward you. And you can't keep shoveling out money on my behalf."