She’d done that to him. She’d kept him from coming home.
No, she defended. She’d had every right to be angry, every right to be hurt when she’d found out the truth about him. Kjell had lied to her about who he was and had insinuated his way into her life... Her conscience yanked hard. Knowing that hurt was rewriting their history. In fact, he’d been reluctant to talk to her at the beginning.
‘Is this seat taken?’ she asked, her heart in her mouth.
Freya had never before been so bold. She’d never really had the opportunity at the all-girls boarding school she’d attended in Svardia.
Ice-blue eyes stared up at her blankly. She was about to turn away, utterly devastated, when he said, ‘No.’ It was clipped and rough, as if he hadn’t spoken in a while, and had a strange effect on her pulse.
She sat down with a sigh of relief. But now that she was there, she didn’t know what to do next. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when he got up, gathered all his books and left the table.
She clenched her jaw until the blush of humiliation had passed and promised never to speak to Kjell Bergqvist again.
Snapped out of the memory by a distant slam from deep inside the cabin, she pulled the boots from her feet and self-consciously stripped off her clothes. But if he thought she was taking off her underwear, he was sorely mistaken.
‘Bra and knickers,’ came the shout, as if he’d somehow divined her defiance.
‘Absolutely not!’ she yelled back.
‘If I don’t see them hanging up on that dryer, you’re not coming in.’
‘You’re a beast!’
‘You’re not the first woman to say so!’ he shouted back without missing a beat.
Cheeks flaming and an unwanted but completely uncontrollable jealousy raging within her, she peeled down her panties and unclipped her bra. She refused to hang them up on the dryer though, like some trophy for him. Turning to the shelf of clothes by the door, she pulled out a pair of grey jogging bottoms, a white vest and a petrol-blue jumper that was surprisingly soft. As she put them on, the dry warmth that enveloped her reminded her of what it had felt like to be surrounded by Kjell,protectedby him. What they’d shared eight years ago had been too intense for peace, too frantic for stillness, too risky to be safe. But she had found a serenity with him that she’d never experienced before. Which had made his betrayal so much worse. Freya used that hurt, that pain then, adding them to the layers of armour she would need. Because that was what being in his presence felt like. Going to war.
Kjell was prepared to admit he might have taken it too far, demanding Freya remove her underwear, but he’d needed to make a point. They were stuck here at the beginning of one of the worst storms he could remember in Dalarna, and if she didn’t follow the rules there would be severe consequences for them both.
The cabin was state-of-the-art—not that she’d seen evidence of it yet—but it was still off-grid. The solar panels would be out of action from the snowfall in the next few hours, but the backup generator was ready to kick in. The ground source heat pump would be good for another day or two of ambient temperature but, even then, they’d have to rely on the wood-burner in the central part of the cabin. It was nothing he wasn’t prepared for and there was enough food and water to last them both an entire month—not that it would come to that. The storm was bad, but would probably blow itself out within the week. Not that it made it any less dangerous.
To someone used to central heating, constant electricity and heat whenever and wherever they wanted it, the minus temperatures that this storm could reach would be shocking. All that kept them safe from the elements were the walls of this cabin, the ability to create heat and stay dry. If any of those were compromised, they would be in very real life-threatening trouble.
No matter what had passed between them, a threat to Freya was anathema to him. She was his to protect until the storm lifted. Something thick and heavy shifted in his chest. As if the thought was too much. Too close to what he’d once been.
Freya wobbled on heels that she was clearly unaccustomed to and that made Kjell even angrier. Her so-called friend had stayed on at the half-term party, letting Freya walk back to her dorm alone, in the dark, inebriated.
Kjell was tempted to have the girl transferred.
In the past two weeks alone he’d redirected the interests of one student determined to ‘bag a princess’, and another who’d wanted to cash in on her fame.
Princess Freya had the self-preservation instincts of a duckling.
She leaned a little to the left and he caught up with her just in time to balance her.
‘Are you drunk?’ he demanded.
Freya shook her head. ‘Absolute not.’
He cursed.
‘Why do you swear in Swedish?’
‘You know Swedish swearwords?’ he asked, surprised.
She nodded. ‘And Greek, English, German, Italian and several in Russian,’ she said proudly.
‘Svardian tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.’