See Jane Fall (34 page)

“Literally? Pain in the neck,” he answered,
ending with a chuckle and winking at her.

“How much Swedish do you know?” she asked as
he added batter to the iron and gingerly closed the top.

“Good bit. Enough.” A glop of batter oozed
out the side and he caught it with a spatula before it dripped onto
the counter.

“Tell me more words.”

He glanced at the iron between them, which
seemed okay now, and leaned one elbow on the counter, grinning at
her.

“Okay. Let’s see…
Värdefull
.”

“Means?”

“Valuable…precious.” He took a deep breath,
tilting his head and gazing at her. “
Härlig.
”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Lovely,” he murmured.

“More.”

“
Lita på mig
.”

She tilted her head to the side in
question.

“Means you can trust me…well, literally it
means you can
rely
on me. But, it’s the same thing.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. I’m never going to lie to you again,
and I’m not going anywhere, Jane.
Jag lovar dig
.”

Her eyes widened at the word “lovar” and she
drew back a little, sitting ramrod straight on the counter. She
swallowed, looking nervous. “
L-lovar
? What’s
that
mean?”

“Calm down.” Lars smiled at her
discomposure. “
Promise
. It means
, I promise you
,
not…”

“Whew! Got nervous there…”

“Nervous?”

“Yeah, I mean…it sounded like you were
saying…”

He raised his eyebrows, smirking to conceal
the unexpected disappointment he felt to hear her say that. It’s
not that he was ready to ask her to marry him, but his feelings for
her had definitely grown beyond a general or cursory affection,
even beyond a crush or an infatuation. He knew it. He could feel
it. They were rushing, bounding, hurtling toward love.

He looked down and shrugged, shaking off his
disappointment. She was here with him, wasn’t she? In his house, in
his kitchen, staying the night, giving him a chance.
Don’t rush
things, Lars. Be patient with her.

“Lars.” He looked up and her face was soft,
maybe even a little worried. She gave him a small, cajoling smile.
“One more?”

Lars nodded, looking down, thinking. When he
looked back up, Jane’s eyes were wide, waiting for him to say one
last thing in Swedish. His thoughts were still barreling in one
direction, and he couldn’t just hit a switch to detour them or turn
them off. There was only one phrase circling in a loop in Lars’s
head, and once he thought of it, he couldn’t think of any others,
so he said:

“
Jag är förälskad i dig
, Jane.”
I
am falling in love with you, Jane.

“Means?” The bell on the waffle iron dinged
loudly between them, making Jane jump a little.

“Means the
våfflor
are done, Minx.
Ready for something sweet?”

***

Idiot!
Jane took a plate of waffles
covered in some sort of Swedish jam that was unfamiliar to her and
stayed perched on the counter as he leaned beside her, eating in
silence.

Great job, Jane.
You could have
offered a hard cringe or vomited or something just to add a little
extra repulsion to your reaction to the word lover which wasn’t
even the word lover!

If she could smack some sense into her own
face unobtrusively, she would have. She hated herself. She wished
she could go back to the moment and just smile at him demurely,
raise her eyebrows, look down…
anything
! Anything but her
stupid stumbling, bumbling response that shut him down and didn’t
come anywhere close to expressing her true feelings.

“These are great,” she offered.

He nudged her thigh with his elbow. “Told
you.”

“Where’d you learn to cook?”

“My
Mamma
. She was a great cook.”

“I don’t know if my mother was a great cook.
I don’t remember.” She took another bite of the cakey waffle
covered with crimson jam. “What’s this again?”

“
Sylt Ligon
. Lingonberry jam.
It’s—”

“Swedish. I am learning that you are very
Swedish.”

“And here I would have thought a smart girl
like you would have picked up on that already. My name being Lars
Lindstrom and all…”

“Big difference between having Swedish blood
and having a Swedish life.”

“Just wait ’til tomorrow, Minx. You’ll think
you’re in Stockholm.”

“I can’t wait.” And she couldn’t. How long
had it been since Jane had spent time with a real family? Not
counting awkward holidays with the Mayses where Sara sulked around
whining about how
boring
it was to be home, she couldn’t
actually remember.

“Hey,” Lars looked at her, eyes alert,
tilting his head. “Do you hear that?”

Jane listened, but she didn’t hear anything.
He took her empty plate and put it in the sink, turning down the
music. Then she heard it: the muffled, but unmistakable, sound of a
woman’s light laughter.

“Is that coming from here?” Jane
whispered.

Lars nodded, pointing a finger at the
ceiling.

“Who’s up there?”

“Nils. And…”

“Maggie.”

Lars whipped his face to Jane, shaking his
head back and forth fast. “Nah. He’s liked her for years, but they
haven’t—you know, they haven’t…”

“Umm…” Jane bit her bottom lip, trying not
to smile.

“What do you know?” he whispered, ice-blue
eyes teeming with questions.

Jane slipped off the counter and took his
hand. “Where can we talk?”

“Tell me now!”

“I’m not going to tell you the whole story
whispering in your kitchen when they’re right above us doing
that
.”

He turned and pulled her through the
kitchen, back through the living room—Jane sighed as they passed
the sofa—into a hallway, pushing open one of three doors. She
assumed the other two were a bathroom and spare bedroom, because
she knew instinctively that she had just entered Lars’s
bedroom.

Jane took a deep breath. She had never seen
such a big bed in her life. It dominated the room. A dark brown
leather frame with a simple, but imposing, dark brown leather
headboard in three sections, each section corded with more dark
brown leather. It was simple and elegant, but also a strong,
masculine choice. There were three pillows against the headboard,
and it was neatly made with a plush, butter-colored comforter.

She looked away from the bed, taking in the
rest of the room: neat as a pin with navy blue walls and dark
brown-stained chair railing and crown molding. A bureau with a
large mirror sat opposite the bed and had a framed black-and-white
picture of four young children in skiing gear, lined up from
tallest to shortest, and Jane knew the second-tallest child was
Lars, posing on the slopes with his brothers and sister.

There was a comfortable leather reading
chair in the corner with a bronze lamp behind it. Lars crossed the
room to turn it on and the room was suddenly bathed in a warm,
honey-gold glow. He watched her from the doorway, seeming to
realize that the energy between them had shifted as they stepped
into his bedroom. He cocked his head to the side, gesturing to the
chair.

“Do you want to sit?”

Jane would be eternally grateful to him for
not patting the bed and asking her to join him there, instead
giving her a moment to adjust to her surroundings. She nodded
gratefully and crossed the room, sitting down, curling her legs
under her. He sat on the corner of the bed, watching her with those
Arctic-blue eyes, slightly amused, his lips trying not to
tremble.

“Seriously, Jane. Did you think I was going
to jump on you or something?”

She grinned, settling back in the
comfortable chair. “It wouldn’t be the first time, Professor.”

“It definitely won’t be the last time,
Minx,” he promised. She saw it on his face, the way he suddenly
shifted from playful banter to hunger, but instead of pushing
things, he looked down, sitting up straighter, composing himself.
“But, right now, I have to hear this news…”

“They can’t hear us in here?”

Lars shook his head. “We made sure our, um,
bedrooms weren’t on top of each other.”

Jane gave him a sardonic look. “To control
the noise from the traffic?”

“You flatter me, Jane. You definitely
flatter my brother. I’ve never heard him bring a girl home. If he
was getting any action, he was getting it somewhere else, not
here.”

“Sure as heck got it somewhere else last
night,” Jane declared, grinning.

“Okay. Talk, Minx. Now.”

“Well, I don’t exactly know what
happened…but, we were all sitting together and Nils dealt the hands
for euchre. And I…I said that I was surprised Nils hadn’t driven
you to Sara’s cottage, since you were sleeping with her.”

Jane cringed, looking down. “That’s behind
us now,” he said gently. “Tell me the rest.”

“So, Nils said that it was impossible that
you were with Sara, because you were into me.”

Lars nodded at her, smiling. “He got that
right.”

“Anyway, he said something like…if you
belong to someone, you can’t let them go. Something like that. And
when he said that last part, he was only looking Maggie. Like,
whispering it to her, almost. And Paul and I just stared at them
with our mouths open.

“And, um…well, Maggie just stared at Nils.
Hard. Intense. Just…eye to eye. And he just stared back. And then
she got tears in her eyes and jumped up and left out the back door.
She didn’t say anything. Just left. And Nils…I could tell he was
upset—like, really upset, like, I could hear him breathing, he was
feeling so intense about it. And then he got up and followed
her.”

Jane shrugged and smiled, her palms up as if
to say,
There it is.

***

Damn, Nils. Did you finally make a
move?
He knew that Nils wasn’t around when he got back from the
Prairie Dawn last night, and come to think of it, he didn’t
actually remember hearing Nils coming home.

“Huh. Wow. Sounds like I missed a lot!”

Jane grinned at him, adorably small in his
dark leather reading chair. He loved seeing her in his space. He
hoped he’d have many more opportunities to see her in his space,
comfortable, settled in.
Stop getting ahead of yourself. Focus.
Nils. Mags.

Jane went on. “Paul said he thought Maggie
might have given Nils an ultimatum in the spring, and last night
was sort of the moment of truth…”

Paul again. It rankled him, but he knew it
would really upset Jane for him to continue questioning Paul’s role
in her life, so he kept his face impassive.

“Did
Paul
have the details of this
so-called ultimatum?”
Seems to have the details on everything
else going on in my family’s life.

“Uh-huh. Yep. He said that in May, Maggie
got real drunk at a party or something and told him that Nils had
two choices when he finally made his move; he could bed her or wed
her, but anything else would be a waste of time.”

He wanted Paul to back the hell off from
Jane already. He was determined to have a word with him at lunch
tomorrow, out of earshot from Jane.

Wait…what did she just say?
Nils
certainly didn’t get married last night, leaving one option…

“So that would mean…”

Jane pursed her lips, trying not to smile.
“Uh. Yeah. Already had to banish the image from my brain. Please
don’t stick it in there again…”

He smiled at her, unable to ignore the
double entendre.

“Stick it in there? Jane! I’m shocked!”

Her shoulders started shaking with laughter.
“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“Disgraceful! Thinking about my brother like
that!”

“Wrong brother,” she murmured, holding his
eyes.

His mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened
as his body heated up, processing her words. His lips tried to form
a sound, but his mind had gone utterly blank. Had she actually just
admitted to him that she had fantasized about having sex with him
or was she just kidding? The entire vibe in the room had shifted
with two words, and he felt the awareness heavy and thick between
them. He noticed the faint movement of her breasts with her
breathing, which he could just make out as heavy and slightly
ragged, as she cast her gaze down uncertainly. He half expected her
to retract the words, but she didn’t, which made him admire
her.

“You think about
me
like that?”

“No,” she deadpanned, looking up at him,
head tilted sardonically. “
Erik
.”

“Kat sure wouldn’t like that.”

“Yeah. I don’t think Kat’s got anything to
worry about, Lars.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you,
Minx, if your heart’s set on—”

“Do you generally disappoint?” she volleyed
back, low and direct.

“Not that I know of.”

She licked her lips and bit her lower lip,
killing whatever was left of his self-control. She looked up at him
from under lower lashes and the frank challenge in her eyes was his
undoing. He had to have her. Now. And it had to be on her terms, so
he gave her a choice.

“The chair or the bed?” he asked, his voice
gravelly.

“Bed,” she answered, holding his eyes.

Her simple answer was so hot and he was so
amped up with wanting her, it took every ounce of self-control he
possessed not to leap up, swoop her into his arms, and throw her
back down on his bed. He reached out his hand to her and as she
stood up, he pulled her to him until she stood between his legs. He
stared at her breasts, which moved with her breathing, only hidden
by the thin, clingy fabric of her shirt.

She tilted his chin up to face her, holding
his eyes.

“What does it mean?” she breathed.

“What?”