Page 69 of Entwined in Norway

Mats chuckled. ‘You can have your share. We’ll work it out. I think my great-grandfather would want that. Want to grab a beer in the hotel?’

‘That’d be great.’ It was such a relief to have it all out in the open, and he was grateful to Mats for hearing him out and understanding how important it had become to him and his family to find out whether the legacy existed.

‘So you haven’t used much of the timber over the years,’ Erik said, enjoying the beer as they now sat on the veranda at the farmhouse, enjoying the last of the day’s warmth.

‘We didn’t know it was there until we started work on the island. I don’t know whether Ida told you, but our father was estranged from his parents for most of my life, and all of Ida’s. A lot of our family history has fallen between the cracks. You’ve brought us a wonderful connection to the past, and that means a lot to me.’

‘What are the chances you could put in a good word with Ida for me?’

Mats laughed and shook his head. ‘That won’t help you. My sister will not listen to me. You’re on your own, my friend, but I wish you luck. Until today, I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time.’ He paused, then looked at Erik with a more serious expression on his face. ‘She’s hurt. But don’t make it right with her by compromising on what you want. That’s no good for either of you.’

Erik went to bed later that evening and immediately missed Ida. The small bed seemed cavernous without her there, and he hadn’t realised how used he’d become to having her next to him while he slept. The ache in his heart was worse than any he’d had in his leg, and he had no idea what he could say to make things right. Or whether things could ever be right between them again.

The following day, he went down to breakfast and crossed the entrance hall just as Ida was coming in. She stopped and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes she’d unsuccessfully tried to cover with makeup.

‘Morning, Ida,’ he said softly. He reached out a hand, but before he could touch hers, she rushed into the kitchen so that he couldn’t follow her. He sighed. If she wouldn’t even speak to him, there was no hope.

After breakfast, there was no sign of her at the desk, so he headed over to the cabin and started work alone before Mats arrived, losing himself in planing a piece of wood by hand. Meticulously curving and smoothing a beam that would sit over the top of the doorway between the bedroom and living areas. He ran his hand over the wood after every few strokes of the plane, finding it soothed him in the same way it always did. And while he worked with his hands, concentrating on getting the finish he wanted, he knew his mind would unravel all of this and try to make sense of what could come next with Ida.

After his accident, he’d been so bored and so depressed. Unable to walk, unable to get out of the house by himself, there seemed to be nothing to do other than lie around watching TV. But his father, a practical man, stepped in and gave him some pieces of wood, some hand tools and a wedge of sandpaper and asked him to make a pair of finials to decorate the corners of a wardrobe he was making. Nothing fancy, he’d said. They just need to be the same as each other.

Erik, willing to do this one thing if it made his father happy, even if he already knew it wouldn’t make any difference to the fact that he would still be stuck on the sofa, took up the challenge. Despite the cast on his arm slowing him down, having worked with his dad throughout his life, he turned out a decent finial. But the second was another matter. It was hard to replicate the first one, but he didn’t give up. It gave him something to focus on, and in the end, he made dozens of mismatched finials, and it had stopped him from plunging further into the depths of despair. Once he could get out of the house, he started going to work with his dad every day. It gave him something to get out of bed for. And it was doing the same thing now.

25

Every time she heard someone’s footsteps on the veranda outside, Ida dived into the kitchen. She didn’t want to see Erik. It was bad enough that she’d run into him this morning. He’d spoken so gently to her it made her heart break all over again. She’d never cried so hard over anything, not even her parents dying. In both cases, the process had been so slow that it had given her time to come to terms with the sadness and loss almost before it happened. With Erik, it had been a swift and devastating blow to her heart that she hadn’t seen coming.

‘Ida, you should go home,’ Mats said shortly after he arrived for the day. ‘Disappearing every time a guest comes in isn’t what we’re after in a hotel manager.’

‘I don’t need to go home. Can we make Erik leave? He got what he came for.’

‘We’re not doing that. Let me call Emilie or Magnus.’

‘So he’s won you over.’ It was so typical of Mats to not take sides right at the point she needed him to.

‘There’s been a misunderstanding, Ida. He’s not here for the island, it’s the timber forest.’

‘Oh, well, that’s fine then. Let him chop down half the trees and ship them to Canada. That’s exactly what we need to make the island more picturesque.’

Mats did that thing he always did when he was impatient with her and looked at the ceiling to gather himself before he spoke. ‘Did he tell you why the agreement was made all those years ago?’

He hadn’t told her because she hadn’t let him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Mats. Whatever the reason was, he decided not to tell me that’s why he was here. He let me…he lied to me.’ She was finding it hard to talk about without fresh tears springing into her eyes.

‘Let him talk to you, Ida.’ Mats took her in his arms, and she let a few tears soak into his shirt before she pulled away.

‘I don’t know if I can trust him.’

‘Things have been difficult for you, same as they have for him. You find it hard to trust people. You let your guard down and he hurt you.’

It was strange to hear her brother so full of wisdom. It must be Lotta’s influence.

‘Maybe give him the benefit of the doubt, because he came here for his family and didn’t expect to find you. It’s not up to me to fight his corner, but give him a chance to do that before you throw him off the island.’

Ida huffed, but actually she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him leave and never seeing him again. She’d never felt this way about a man before and she might not have much dating experience but she knew that someone who was kind, thoughtful, funny and endlessly capable, even if he had the odd grumpy patch, was the kind of person she wanted to be with and they weren’t around every corner.

‘I’ll talk to him.’

‘I expect he’s at Fredrik’s cabin’