Page 3 of Viking Unchained

Surprised, Steven said, “Thank you, Odin! My prayers have been answered. And your wife?”

Thorfinn’s wife, Luta, had deserted him five years ago when he had been off a-Viking, a springtime custom for all good Norsemen. She had taken with her their infant son, Miklof. She had not left alone.

Even worse, accompanying her had been that slimy slyboots Gervaise of Jorvik, a young, wealthy Saxon merchant, a man he had once called friend.

Thorfinn had been in a rage at first—still was, in many ways—especially when he had learned that the trading vessel taking them on one of Gervaise’s trading trips had sunk in an ocean storm. He no longer cared whether Luta had died, or how. After all, she had broken bond with him in leaving. But his baby . .

. ah, he had loved Miklof the instant he came squalling from his mother’s womb. Thorfinn’s heart would ne’er recover from his loss.

But then, several months back, an Arab trader named Ahmed had reported seeing Luta and Miklof in a Baghdad marketplace. The detailed description he had given came too close to the mark for Thorfinn not to investigate. Steven, ever irksome, had insisted on accompanying him on this two-month wasted venture. So far, neither Luta nor Miklof were to be found in the Arab lands. Ahmed must have been mistaken.

“Someday you will understand, brother. Leastways I think most fathers feel the way I do. Losing Miklof .

. .” He had to stop speaking for the lump choking his throat. “Losing Miklof was like losing a part of myself. I have not been whole ever since.” He blinked repeatedly to stem the tears in his eyes. Tears!

What kind of man am I who weeps like a woman? I have got to stop this madness.

Steven gazed at him with compassion. “Everyone has demons, Finn.”

He arched his brows. “You, too?”

“Of course.”

He could not imagine what, so merry of heart was his brother. Clearing his throat, he said, “One thing is for certain. If I ne’er see a camel again . . . or sand, for the love of Thor . . . it will be too soon. I vow not to complain about the Vestfold cold again. Man is not meant to bake his skin.”

“Well said! Does that mean you have finally given up this bloody search?”

He nodded. “I will try on the morrow to find that one last woman I was told about. If she is here with my Miklof, I will take him back with me. If not, I concede defeat. They must be dead.”

“Praise the gods!” Steven looped an arm around his shoulder. “Mayhap now you will regain your sense of humor. You have been much too dour of late. Betimes I think you have forgotten how to smile.”

“And methinks you smile too much.”

They both smiled at each other.

“Be ready at dawn to go back into the city. We launch our longships afore noon.”

“As you wish, master.”

He shook his head at his brother’s flummery. “One more thing: do not dare go back into the city to buy any slave girls.”

The flush on his brother’s face told him that was just what he had intended. Gods, will this nightmare ever end?

You can do WHAT with a pole? . . .

The last strains of “Do the hustle . . .” rang through the room, accompanied by the rhythmic pounding of athletic shoes on the hardwood floor, the wheeze of panting breaths, and Lydia calling out, “One last time, ladies. Cooling down. Lunge-slide and clap. Slow and easy. Lunge-slide the other side and clap.

Do the hustle, forward, and clap, do the hustle back, and clap. Lunge-side again. Right. Now left. Knee lifts. And scissors. Now one last hustle. That’s it. That’s it. Now sloooow down.”

Turning to the twenty ladies in the advanced aerobics dance class behind her, Lydia smiled. “Good workout.”

Even though it was only noon, this was the last class of the day for her . . . a perk of being the owner of the Silver Strand Studio, the premier aerobics dance and yoga facility here in Coronado. One of the reasons she’d bought the club two years after her husband’s death was so that she could be her own boss . . . so that now she would be home when her four-year-old son, Mike, got home from nursery school.

Her class members followed her lead in slowing down to recover, this time to the slower beat of Rascal Flatts’ “I Melt.” They checked their pulse rates as they moved.

"I am sweating like a warhorse,” Madrene MacLean complained. Madrene, the blonde-haired, statuesque wife of one of the SEAL commanders over at the naval base, hated exercise and didn’t mind telling everyone so, but she was trying to lose the last of the baby fat from a recent pregnancy. And to tone up her very impressive breasts, which she disdained but which always earned her a second look from men everywhere.

“That’s the point, Madrene. No pain, no gain,” Lydia said. “If you don’t sweat and ache and pant, then you’re not working hard enough.”