Sandra Hill (18 page)

Uh-oh! Something’s up. And it involves me. Oh, maybe one of my guys got in trouble, and he needs my help. Probably got picked up at the Wet and Wild for disorderly conduct last night. Needs me to bail him out.

“I see. Okay. Just stick with her.”

Her?
Alarm bells went off in his head. He stood and tilted his head in question.

“Your wife is strolling the shops in San Diego. And she has a big cat with her.”

Norsemen go a-Viking, Norsewomen go a-shopping …

Maddie and Sam were strolling, as if they hadn’t a care in the world, along a strip mall about two miles from Ian’s home when he finally caught up with her.

Ian pulled his red Mustang convertible into a parking slot and started after the errant pair. Sam saw him first and had the good sense to duck between Maddie’s legs. Maddie had no sense at all, just waved at him as if she had a perfect right to wander off.

The first thing he said to her when he walked up, practically nose to nose, was, “What the hell are you doing here?”

She cocked her head as if trying to puzzle him out, and answered him tit for tat. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

He took a deep breath and warned himself to be
polite … until he got the willful witch home. “Maddie,
dear
, I’m curious. What are you doing here?”

“Looking in the market stalls,
dearling
.”

Do not lose your temper. Do not lose your temper. She’s just being sarcastic. Like I am most of the time. Do not lose your temper.
“I distinctly ordered you to stay home.”

She looked at him as if he were dumb as toast. “Dost really think that I would take orders from you … or any other man? You have not been listening to me, if you are of that opinion. Mayhap you are deaf … or leastways, deaf where women are concerned. Some men are. Bloody hell,
most
men are. And, by the by, that vein in your forehead is throbbing again. Best you be careful or it may explode.”

“Aaarrgh!” He took her by the upper arms and barely restrained himself from shaking
her. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have a reason for wanting you to stay indoors? Did it ever occur to you that you don’t know this city and could get lost? Did it ever occur to you that someone other than yourself might have a brain? Did you even think, period?”

“Did it ever occur to you that you are not my real husband, nor my master? You have no rights over me. I do not like your tone. Not at all. I am not one of your seals that you can speak to like that. If you must know, I was bored. After washing your clothes and hanging them to dry, there was nothing else to do. And take your hands off me. I did not give you permission to touch my body.”

“Lady, if I want to touch you, I will, and by damn, I’m not going to say ‘Pretty please’ first.”

“Be careful, troll, I could wave my magic fingers at your male parts and render them useless.”

“Bullshit!” He laughed and released his hold on her. Guilt struck him then as he noted the marks he had made on her fair skin. “I’m not afraid of your fingers, sweetheart, magic or otherwise. You give me a hard-on that couldn’t be brought down by a hammer, let alone your piddly little fingers.”

She gasped with indignation. “I know what a hard-on is, you oaf. I asked Pretty Boy when I heard him use the word back in Baghdad.” A smile flickered on her lips then as she asked, “I give you a hard-on?” She appeared pleased at the notion. Probably because she enjoyed torturing him so.

“This is not a conversation we should be having. Not in a public place.”
Not anywhere else either.
“Another thing, people don’t go out walking with a cat. Cats run away. Cats get run over by cars.”

“Sam does not run from me. She is a good cat.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Really, even when I entered these shops, the traders would not let her come in, but I told Sam to sit outside on the pavement and wait for me. And she did just that. Didn’t you, sweet cat?”

Ian glanced down at the cat, which was indeed sitting next to Maddie like a docile pet. “How come she never behaves like that for me?”

“You handle her incorrectly.” The implication was that he handled Maddie incorrectly, too.
If she only knew how tempted I am to handle her!

While Maddie was looking at him and not at the cat, he could swear Sam stuck out her tongue at him. “Well, since we’re here, we might as well get you some clothes. You can’t wear the same thing every day.” She was wearing the T-shirt and latex pants she’d put on this morning.
Lordy, Lordy!

Her face lit up. “I love to buy … and trade. Would
it be immodest of me to say I have a talent for trading? The merchants at Birka and Hedeby know me well, and respect the hard bargains I make with them.”

Okaaaay. Birka and Hedeby again. I’ll have to ask Geek where they are.

So a-shopping they did go.

She went nuts over some weaving loom or whatever the jumble of wood was in the window of an antique shop. “I had a hand loom like that one time. I did not have much idle time, but when I did, I loved to sit and weave.” She sighed.

He was getting used to her sighs. Not!

They continued walking, but she kept looking over her shoulder at the loom. And Ian did not miss the fact that, while they were walking, lots of people—
mostly men, dammit!
—did a double take when glancing at Maddie. Her pale hair hung in a long, single braid down her back. Her facial features were sharp. Her lips were full and sexy … really sexy. She walked like she was the queen of the strip mall on long, long legs. And he wasn’t even going to look at her breasts … though a couple dozen men were.

“That forehead vein is throbbing again,” Maddie pointed out.

Something else is throbbing, too.
“You bring that out in me.”

“I do not!”

He shrugged. “By the way, what did you mean about washing my clothes? I didn’t think there was any detergent left by the washing machine.”

“Deter-gent. Mash-sheen.” She sounded both words out, and when he just shook his head at her
continuing game of “What is that?” she replied, “I washed your garments in that metal trough in your kitchen. I used the hard soap that was there. Then I hung them out to dry.”

The dingbat washed my clothes.
“I’m afraid to ask. Where did you hang them? I don’t have a clothesline.”

“Out on the railing of the wooden platform behind your house.”

Oh, good Lord!
“The deck?”

“Yea, the deck. And what a problem I had with your pant-teas and mine, not to mention my breast harness. The wind kept blowing them out onto the sand.” Her face brightened. “But I took a rod down from your window covering in the kitchen and anchored it between two chairs. With the garments strung along the rod, they are drying nicely.”

“My pan-panties?” he sputtered out. “Holy hell, Maddie! You washed my jockey shorts? By hand?”

“Yea, I did.” She must have noticed the stormy expression on his face, because she glared at him, hands on hips, and said, “Say thank you.”

He barely choked out the words, but he said, “Thank you.”
Man, we’d better get this shopping expedition over quick. One of the guys might come over early for our meeting tonight. I’ll never hear the end of it if they see my tighty whities blowing in the wind, next to her “harness.”

For the next two hours, Ian enjoyed the wonderful pleasure/torture of watching Maddie try on tight jeans, revealing shirts, short skirts, sandals and sneakers, all of which she marveled over like a kid in a toy store. In the process, he saw up close and personal that Maddie had been telling the truth. Her “harness” had been left at home on his deck rail.

The lingerie section was particularly embarrassing to him. Maddie held up one sexy bra after another, continually referring to them as harnesses. “I wear a 34-see,” she told him.
Like I need to know that!
As for panties, they settled for hip-hugging silk scraps, which he was not imagining on her body. Uh-uh. Not him. When he suggested that she try a thong, she examined it closely, then made a scoffing sound. Looking up at him impishly, she said, “I’ll wear a thong if you will.” They didn’t buy any thongs.

Now they were headed toward their last stop … the grocery store at the end of the strip mall. Maddie’s eyes went wide, even wider than they had on first seeing an aircraft, or all the clothing items in the boutique, or his freakin’ kitchen.

“This must be heaven.” She sighed orgasmically.
No, no, no! I did not think that word orgasmically. She sighed—that’s all. Oh, God, this is a losing battle. I am dead meat.

First they went to the produce department, where Maddie had to touch and smell everything. Grapes that she declared bigger and more succulent than those on her father’s farmstead, wherever that was. Apples that were redder and firmer than those she’d seen in Birka, wherever that was. Pomegranates more inviting than those eaten in the Arab harems, wherever they were. She claimed to have never seen a banana before. He bought several of those. Oranges she was familiar with, but the ones she’d tasted had been far smaller and bitter. He gave her a sample section which was set out on a tray. She declared it food of the gods. They tossed a bag of oranges in the cart. Then a bag of lettuce mix, potatoes,
tomatoes, peaches, blueberries, watermelon and so much more, each of which required another of those sighs which he was not categorizing in a sexual way, like he had before, though he was thinking it.

Dammit. A man has to be dead below the waist not to want a woman to sigh like that over him. I can hear it now. “Oooh, it is bigger, and firmer, and more succulent than any I have seen before.”

“Why are you grinning?”

He zipped his lips. “Never mind.”

He had to pull her from the produce department after half an hour and a half-full cart of produce alone. The meat department was equally tantalizing to her. She just couldn’t accept that there were no cows or pigs or lambs being slaughtered behind the counters to yield all these packets of meat. They bought hamburger, hot dogs—
and didn’t that raise her eyebrow?
—steaks, bacon, sausage, a couple of frozen pizzas, frozen French fries, butter, bread, rolls, ice cream, milk, eggs, soda, beer, nail polish, dish and clothes detergent, a brush, comb and mirror, soap and shampoos, each of which she had to sniff. Even as they left, he with a sigh of relief, she with a sigh of regret, he had to promise they would return. They ended up with two carts full of groceries and a three-hundred-dollar bill.

Outside, one exasperated-looking cat greeted them with a loud, whining, “Meow!”

“We bought you some cat food, sweetling,” Maddie told Sam, reaching down to ruffle her fur. Sam purred her thanks.

“Hey, thank
me
. I’m the one who paid for it.”

Sam thanked him by pissing on the sidewalk near his boot.

“Damn cat!” he said under his breath as he led them toward his convertible.

“I heard that,” Maddie said. But she wasn’t mad at him, he could tell. He’d taken her to a magic mart—her words—and he was in her good graces. For now.

They were cruising down the streets in his neighborhood, top down, the late-afternoon sun warm on their heads. Ian was feeling oddly at peace. And happy. He couldn’t say why for sure. He just was.

Maddie was holding on to her seat for dear life. Claimed she had never ridden in a horseless red box with no roof before. “Do you have to go so fast?

“Are you kidding? I’m going fifteen miles an hour. Relax.”

Maddie sat back and seemed to loosen up. That was when she threw him one of her zingers. “Ian, is one hundred thousand dollars a lot of money?’

“You could say that. Yeah, it’s a lot. Why?”

“The man in the jewel mart offered me that much today.”

“No way!”
Oh … my … God! Prostitution now. I don’t believe it. No, no, no! It can’t be that. Even Maddie wouldn’t be worth that much money for a roll in the hay.
“No way!” he repeated.

“He did. I assure you, he did.” She held out a business card to him. It read:
Abraham Kranich. Fine Estate Jewelry.
Then, handwritten on the card was, “$100,000. Eight-carat emerald.”

He had just pulled into his driveway and was about to punch in the remote for his garage door when he turned to her. “You have an eight-carat emerald?”

She nodded, and took a big green stone from her
pocket to show him. What did he know? It looked like a big green stone.

“The man said this is a rare jewel and of superior quality.”

“I’m going to hate myself for asking, but where did you get it?”

Her face flushed. “I might have taken a jewel … or two … from the harem treasure chests.”

“You stole jewelry?”
This is just great! First she seems to be a terrorist, then a hooker, now a cat burglar.

She lifted her chin haughtily. “I was sold, against my will, to one man after another. For two long years I have been kept from my homeland. I deserved just payment, and that is what I got. No one ever missed them. I kept them sewn into the seams of my gunna. Ten little jewels! Pfff! I had ten times as much stolen from me when Steinolf invaded my keep.”

Steinolf again!
“Ten, you say?”

“More or less.”

He raised his eyes heavenward. “You’re a freakin’ millionaire.”

“Is that good?”

“Very good.”

“Then I will give you one of the jewels for the groceries you bought today. I do not like to be beholden to any man.”

He started to laugh and couldn’t stop. He could see that she was annoyed by his laughter. “A hundred thou for a bag of groceries?” he choked out through his continuing laughter. “What is that? Like a hundred dollars an orange? A hundred dollars a banana? A hundred dollars for a brush? A hundred
dollars for a candy bar? Oh, geez. Oh, man. This is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

She looked downright cute glaring at him.

So, what could a red-blooded male—which he was—say but, “Baby, you can pay me in some other way”?

It was a Norse-Arab-Cajun-American Indian pasta dish …