Black Bear Rising: A BWWM Paranormal Romance (Black Bear Saga Book 1) (25 page)

“She can be a bit of a handful at times. We have been room mates and friends for a year or so now,” Lana said. The word friend jarred her as if she had bit into something hard and crunchy amidst a bowl of ice cream. Was she really Sara’s friend or were they bonded by proximity and shared experience. If they didn't both work as escorts for Gus would she be friends with someone like Sara or was it because she was the only one she could talk to about the experience of doing the things they performed for money?

“I brought you something. I thought since you couldn't see what Iceland has to offer I’d bring it to you,” he said unzipping a bag at his feet. “I’ve brought most of it from my farm. You have to smell each item and try to guess what it is.”

Lana smiled at the thoughtfulness of this gesture. Einar didn't have to do any of this for her, he could have just as easily dismissed her as another dumb tourist who had paid no attention to the warning signs by the beach. Instead here he was sitting beside her and playing a game with her. The skin on her arms tingled at such a nice gesture. “Ok Im ready,” she said reaching her hand out. Einar touched his warm course hand against the back of her hand and gently pushed her outstretched hand away. Her skin prickled at his touch,

“Hey no cheating. You have to do this all by smell alone. Im going to hold the first one under your nose. Tell me what you smell.”

Lana inhaled deeply and a rush of scents filled her nose. “I can smell fresh cut grass, it smells bright and green. Is it freshly cut grass you are going to dry to turn in hay?”

“You are kind of close. It grows in the ground and you eat it. Icelanders eat it a lot. Try again,” he said raising the item to below her nose.

She sniffed again. “I can smell citrus and is that something a little earthy? I think its some sort of berry, like a redberry maybe?”, she said not fully sure with her guess.

“Not even close,” Einar said with a laugh.

Lana's heart beat fiercely in her chest. His laugh was open and friendly and invited you in, to be part of the joke and not the butt of one. Lana laughed a little to not able to stop herself and her laugh expanded to a deep throated belly laugh as she felt the horrors of the last few days wash off her as the laugh increased in magnitude.

Einar started to laugh along with her and said, “Are you laughing at this silly game?” as he continued to laugh with her.

Lana's laughing slowly subsided and she said, “No it's not that, I’m loving the game. I just needed to laugh the last few days have been very stressful. And yesterdays close call was just the icing on the whole thing. I could feel a tension building up inside me. I needed that. Thank you Einar.”

“So one final guess, what do you think the mystery object is?

“Some sort of flower?” Lana said.

“Sorry nil points for you. It was freshly cut rhubarb stalks,” he said as he placed the bunch of stalks into her hand. “I have a huge patch of them growing in one corner of my farm. I give most of them to an aunt who lives in the next town and she makes jam out of them.”

Lana ran her hand along the stalks and felt the ridged and curved surface under her fingertips. She raised a stalk up again and inhaled the bright
 
green smell of citrus and berries. “I’ve never had rhubarb before,” she said putting the stalks in her lap.

“You are missing out. This stuff is amazing with brown sugar and strawberries. Maybe you can come over sometime and I could cook you up some,” he said.

“I’d love to try some genuine Icelandic rhubarb,” she said as calmly as possible. Back home if someone invited you over to their place to hang out and eat it usually meant only one thing, hooking up. Over here everything could be different, maybe in these small rural communities people were more open and friendly and Einar would offer the same level of hospitality to anyone. Lana tried to tell herself all this whilst also secretly hoping it was something more.

“Are you ready for the next one?” he asked as he rustled at through the bags contents again.

“Bring it on. I’m feeling confidant about this one,” Lana said.

“Ok take a smell of this,” Einar said as ripped open a package and he held it under her nose.

The strong crisp smell of sea air and the dry pungent smell of fish wafted out of the bag. Lana smiled and said, “I know this one. Its dried fish.”

“Very impressive. Full points for you. This particular batch was caught off the coast of Vik and dried on my farm. I have an outdoor frame for drying fish that has been in use for over a hundred years. Have you tasted it yet?” he asked,

“No not yet. I saw some at the bus station in Reykjavik. They smelled a lot stronger than this one.”

“Different fish have different aromas. This here is cod, some of the other types of fish we dry can be a lot more pungent. Are you ready to try another one? This is the last one,” he said.

“Bring it on,” Lana said smiling.

She heard the click of a bottles seal being broken and then the stringent smell of alcohol filled her nose. “I can smell a waft of strong booze and some sort of spices. Is it an Icelandic vodka?”

“No. You are
 
very close,” he said.

She sniffed the bottle again and said, “Is it a type of schnapps or an aperitif. Some sort of spiced blend?”

“You are very good at this,” he said and Lana could hear the happiness in his voice. “In english its called the black death. It's a traditional schnapps that we drink when eating dried fish or fermented shark. Its made with caraway seeds and is very strong, it helps to mask the taste of the shark if you don't like it. We drink a lot of it during our traditional celebrations in February. We hold great banquets containing all types of ancient foods enjoyed by our ancestors. All the fine food is eaten and washed down with copious amounts of black death.”

“Thanks for doing this for me Einar. It feels like its been such a long time since I could relax and forget my troubles for a while. I really appreciate you hanging out with you me. You don't have to hang around and keep me company for too long,” Lana said hoping for the complete opposite.

“I’m in no hurry to go, you are fun to be around. What are you planning to do once your eyes have healed?”

“I have no firm plans really. I think we are going to stay a few weeks in Vik, maybe hang around for the fisherman's festival and then move on and do some travelling around the country. What about you, do you do anything during the summer with your wife?” Lana asked.

“I’m not married. I came close last year, only a few weeks away from the big day. I found out she was sleeping with my best friend for over a year. I was completely oblivious to it, or maybe I was just too dumb to pick up on the obvious hints. When I finally found out it was like someone stamped on my heart. I was devastated. I lost my best friend and the woman I was going to build a life with all in one day. I’m not proud of what I did when I found out, after every thing was out in the open they left the country and I think they are both living in Spain running a bar. The next six months were a blur. I only started to feel like I was coming out of that dark tunnel a few months ago,” he said.

“What did you do when you found out?” Lana asked.

“I’d rather not talk about it, the whole thing wasn't my finest hour. Have you ever been heart broken?”

“Nothing that could compare to your story. It will probably sound childish in comparison to yours,” she said.

“Go on tell me, all personal pain is valid,” he said.

“It was my final year in high school. All through school I was one of the invisible kids, you know the kind, the ones who never warranted any attention from bullies or made any waves that would threaten the popular kids. I was part of a whole underclass of teens who existed in the school and nobody really paid any attention to them. I had been gawky and a little weird looking most of my time in school and it wasn't until really my final year that I started to mature. I was a very late bloomer and interest from the opposite sex never manifested until the last few months before I finished. There was a boy I was in love with, actually probably more like obsessed with. Nate Jackson was a football player and was liked by most people who knew him. I don't think he had ever spoken more then five words to me in our whole time in school together. I was invisible to him and yet I foolishly thought I had a chance with him. We were in a biology class when our principal came in to announce the prices for our prom tickets. During the middle of the principals announcement Nate turned around in his desk and looked straight at me and smiled,” Lana let out a laugh at this point, “Thats all he did, was flash me a smile. Straight away I jumped on the idea that he was going to ask me to the prom and just as quickly I dismissed it as an impossible dream. Then I would double back and ask myself why did he smile at me. Every day in school was more painful then the day before as we marched closer and closer to the prom. My heart nearly beat its self out of my chest every time I passed Nate in the corridor thinking this would be the time when he asked me. Two weeks before the prom I heard that he had invited Tracy Mandelay the peppy people pleaser to be his date. The smile was never for me it was for Tracy Mandelay who sat three rows behind me. It all sounds trivial now saying it out loud, but I was absolutely wrecked. I think I cried solidly for a week after that.”

“Who did you go to your prom with?” he asked.

“I never went. I made a big deal to my friends and family that I wasn't interested and that it was a stupid old fashioned institution and I would have never wanted to go. Inside I was shattered that I couldn't go.”

“Do you have a boyfriend now,” Einar asked.

“I’ve had one or two in college. Nothing too serious. I don't really have time with my course work load.”

“What are you studying in college?” Einar asked.

“Art history. It's not the most practical degree, but my dream is to someday open my own gallery and art space so I think its applicable. My parents didn't think so when I choose it. My father wanted me to go into the family business,” Lana said.

“Which is?” Einar asked.

Lana mimed cutting something lying across her lap and smiled in Einar's direction.

“Butchery?” Einar said and started to laugh.

“Close and very similar. Surgery, my father was the top surgeon in his field. Or at least he used to be,” she said trailing off.

“What happened to him?”

Lana could feel the barriers she had built up coming slowly down as she talked to Einar, he exuded easy going charm and she felt like she could tell him anything even though she barely knew him. He was a good listener and before she knew it she was telling him everything about her father.

“My father was a great man. I always looked up to him when I was a little girl. There was one currency in our house that he valued more than anything else and that was knowledge. He always had a book in his hand, was always scribbling notes into the margins, his mind never seemed to rest and was always pursuing more knowledge. If we came to him with a question and he didn't know it, this gave him an excuse to do research and find out the correct answer. He instilled in myself and my younger brother the drive and the thirst for learning. He filled our minds with books on art, classic literature, poetry and history. No subject was too dry for him and his enthusiasm filled us up with the same kind of insatiable curiosity. Unfortunately his insatiable appetite for knowledge was dwarfed by his appetite for younger women. He had or was having a string of affairs at the time of his dismissal. Three different woman some still
 
medical students had contacted the board with accusations of sexual harassment. The whole thing got messy, litigation was a strong possibility. The hospital needed to squash the case before it got any further, my father claimed total innocence to the harassment claims. The evidence mounted against him and he lost his job and his medical license. Do you ever see those women on tv who stand by their politician husbands after they find out they had some sort of sordid affair?”

Einar said, “Yes.”

“My mother had no interest in being that kind of woman. She had believed him when he said the claims of harassment were false. She stopped believing him when an anonymous source sent her a text message about his multiple affairs. I was starting my first year of college at the time. My parents marriage imploded. It then came out that my father had run up huge amounts of debts and that my family was pretty much bankrupt. I was half way through my first year of college, totally absorbed in the process of learning when I got the call from my mother that she couldn't afford to pay for my college tuition anymore. At this stage my father had left the house and wasn't heard from too often as the divorce got processed. I remember the call so clearly, my stomach tightened into knots as she said I would have to quit after a year. I begged and cried over the phone to this poor woman who had already been through so much saying I couldn't leave college. All I did was upset my mother more, there was nothing she could do. My father had totally ripped our family to shreds. I pretty much vowed that night that I would do anything to stay in college,” Lana said stopping herself abruptly. She had been about to tell Einar all about being a high class escort, she was feeling so relaxed in his presence and it felt so good to unburden herself that she nearly said too much. You can never tell him that, she thought to herself, he would be disgusted with you.

“So what did you do to stay in college,” Einar prodded her.

Lana hesitated for a second she felt so close to simply opening up and telling him everything. She knew it was totally irrational as she had only meet him, and yet if she was going to unburden herself he felt like the right choice. “I got a job in a hotel,” she lied at the last moment. She couldn't tell him, she knew that now after her moment of weakness. She imagined his tone of voice changing from the warm lilting friendliness to something more cold and disgusted as she told him the truth, She couldn't face that and so lying was the only option for her. “I worked nights at
 
the weekend and I’m making enough to scrape by and stay in college.”