Page 60 of Viking Unchained

“It’s true.”

The blood drained from Lydia’s head. If she hadn’t been already sitting, she might just have fainted. “It can’t be true.”

“I come from a rather strange family.”

I already know that. “There is strange, and then there is strange.”

“Really strange, honey.” Kirstin’s eyes darted to someplace over Lydia’s right shoulder, then she made a beckoning motion with her fingertips before calling out, “Come join us. You need to hear this, too.”

Madrene and Alison, now in street clothes, headed over and quickly sank down to the rug and sat cross-legged in front of them.

“Lydia is asking me about the time travelling,” Kirstin said, raising her eyebrows meaningfully at the other ladies and shocking the spit out of Lydia.

How could her friend betray a confidence like that? “Kirstin!”

She patted Lydia’s hand. “It’s okay.”

“How do you know about . . . it?” Alison asked, her face turning almost as red as her hair.

“Thorfinn,” Kirstin answered in a ta-da fashion before Lydia could speak. “He and our pole-dancer queen have a thing going on.”

“Kirstin!” she chastised again.

“Surely, you are too intelligent to fall for that arrogant toad,” Madrene remarked. “The insufferable man told Ian that if he ever wants to get rid of me, my breasts are so big they could float a longship.”

“Hilda is the one who really has a personality conflict with him,” Kirstin said. “He keeps telling Torolf how shrewish she is and that it’s his job as a Viking man to tame her.”

“I would like to see him try,” Madrene said with a huff. “Oh, my gods and goddesses, you are the love

slave.”

“What?” Kirstin and Alison squealed.

“Torolf told me that Thorfinn was living with his love slave. Bloody hell! I just remembered something.

Thorfinn said some woman made him her love slave first.”

Lydia could feel her face heat with mortification. “It was just a joke,” she lied.

No one believed her.

In fact, Kirstin gave her a high five. “Way to go, sister! ”

“He is good looking,” Alison conceded. “There are a lot of women who wouldn’t mind him putting his boots under their beds.”

They all turned to Lydia then.

“Has he?” Alison asked.

Oh, yeah! Like a time or two . . . or twenty. She didn’t have to answer; her face said it all.

Alison smacked herself upside the head. “Well, of course he has, if they were playing love slave,” she mused aloud.

“Maybe it’s not too late.” This from Madrene, who turned to her. “You haven’t fallen in love with the lout, have you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. You people are being too hard on him, though. Yeah, he’s a bit overbearing, but he’s not all bad. He has a vulnerable side, too.”

Four sets of eyebrows shot up with disbelief.