The Alpha King and His Virgin Bride novel · Chapter 5 of 32

Chapter 5: My Girl

Arne wouldn't say another word about her all night.

He drove the rig.

He made his bad jokes on the radio.

He did a lift assist for a man who'd fallen in his bathtub and was very kind to him.

At seven in the morning, when our shift ended, he followed me out to my truck and got into the passenger seat.

"I'm coming up there with you," he said.

"I'm not going up there."

"Yes, you are. You've been looking up that road all night." He buckled his belt. "Drive."

The gate at Greywater stood open.

The courtyard in front of the lodge was paved in old stone, with a dry fountain in the middle.

A dozen people were crossing it, men and women in work clothes, a couple of kids chasing a gray pup.

Every one of them stopped when Arne got out of my truck.

They could smell something on him.

I didn't know what.

Torvald was coming down the lodge steps in his gray coat, talking to two big men.

He saw me and smiled.

Then he saw Arne, and the smile stopped halfway.

"Kittleson," he said.

"You remember me." Arne walked toward him across the courtyard, slow, his big belly first. "Thirty-three years. I've gotten fat and you've gotten gray."

"I remember a boy who threw a rock through my car window."

"I'd do it again." Arne stopped six feet from him. "Tell her what you did."

Torvald looked at me.

"I don't know what he's told you."

"He hasn't told me anything," I said. "I'd like to hear it from you."

The courtyard had gone quiet.

The kids had stopped running.

"Her father had a fishing boat," Arne said.

He wasn't talking to Torvald now. He was talking to me, loud enough for everyone.

"He'd missed four payments, and the bank in Duluth was coming for the boat and the house."

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