The Alpha King and His Virgin Bride novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Home

"Seven to seven," I said. "Same as always."

The chief looked at the mark on my neck, then at the ring on my right hand, then out at the harbor again.

"Good," he said. "Arne's been riding with a volunteer who faints at blood."

On Thursday at seven I clocked in.

Arne was at the coffee machine.

He turned around and looked at me over his glasses.

"Your Majesty," he said.

"Don't."

He handed me a cup of coffee, black, the way I liked it.

Then he squeezed the back of my neck once with his big hand, carefully, on the side without the mark.

"Good to have you back, kid," he said.

Our first call was a man at the marina who'd put a fishhook through his thumb.

Our second was a lift assist at Harborview, and on the way out a voice came through the open door of room twelve.

"Linnea. In here."

The old woman was sitting up in bed in her nightgown with her hat on the dresser beside her.

"I didn't fall," she said. "I just wanted to look at you."

"You can look at me any night. You don't have to call."

"I'm eighty. I like the lights." She squinted at my neck. "Is he good to you?"

"Yes."

"In bed, I mean."

Arne, in the doorway, made a noise and went back out to the rig.

"Yes," I said, and my face went hot.

"Good." She lay back on her pillow, satisfied. "My sister would've wanted to know. She was the nosy one."

At two in the morning Tove walked into the bay with a box of donuts and a face like she'd swallowed a lightbulb.

"Okay," she said. "Don't be weird."

She put the box on the hood of the rig. "Thunder Bay's son asked me out."

Arne stopped with a cruller halfway to his mouth.

"The bribe guy's son?" I said.

"The bribe guy's son." She tore a donut in half.

"He asked me at his dad's own dinner table, with his dad listening."

"I said yes."

"Does your brother know?"

"No. That's why I'm telling you. You're the Queen. You tell him."

"I'm not telling him."

"You have to. It's a Queen thing. It's in the book."

"It's not in the book."

"Nobody's read that whole book except you and a psychopath," Tove said. "So who's going to check?"

Arne laughed so hard he had to sit down on the back bumper.

I told Vidar the next afternoon, in the kitchen at Greywater, with Tove hiding in the pantry again.

He put his coffee down very slowly.

"Thunder Bay," he said.

He looked at the pantry door.

"Tove. What do you want from him?"

"Dinner," Tove said through the door. "And to see if he'll stand up to his father when it costs him something."

Vidar was quiet for a moment.

"He takes you to dinner in Gull Harbor, where Linnea can see the restaurant from the rig," Vidar said.

"And he comes to the gate and asks me first."

The pantry door opened an inch.

"That's so old-fashioned," Tove said.

"That's the deal."

"Fine." The door opened the rest of the way, and she came out and hugged him so hard he spilled his coffee.

That night I drove down to the little blue house on the hill.

Vidar's truck was already in my driveway.

Through the kitchen window I could see him at my mother's stove in a flannel shirt, frying eggs.

Eggs were the only thing he could cook.

"You've got a key," I said.

"Arne gave me his."

"Of course he did."

I ate the eggs.

After, he sat down at my mother's piano.

It sounded different.

The sticky key in the middle wasn't sticky anymore, and the whole thing had stopped being a little wrong.

"You had it tuned," I said.

"A man came up from Duluth on Tuesday. Arne let him in too."

He played something slow, the same thing he'd played the first time, and this time it was right all the way through.

I stood behind him and put my hands on his shoulders.

They were warm.

They were always warm now.

When he finished, I didn't let him start another one.

I turned his face up and kissed him upside down.

Then I took his hand and walked him up my mother's narrow stairs to my room.

He pulled me through the door and kicked it shut behind us with his heel.

The room was small and warm and full of the smell of the lake.

I reached for the hem of his flannel, but he caught my wrist and kissed me instead.

He kissed me slow and deep.

His tongue slid against mine and my knees went soft.

I got his shirt open one button at a time while he walked me backward toward the bed.

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