What Were You Expecting? (33 page)

“I’m not worried,” he said, pushing her damp hair off her forehead tenderly. “Anyway, I’ve slept beside you for three nights now. If I’m going to get it, I already have it.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead he dropped his hand from her head and stood up. “I’ll come back in a little bit to check on you.”

Her heavy eyes wouldn’t stay open anymore, so she nodded lightly as sleep took over.

***

Nils stared at the computer screen in front of him, barely able to concentrate. He didn’t want to be at the office. He wanted to be at Maggie’s where he could hear her if she needed anything, but he wouldn’t have been able to explain his absence. Taking Monday off made sense, since the Lindstroms generally took off the day after a tour, but by Tuesday, he had to show up at the office.

He’d stayed at her place on Sunday and Monday nights, slipping into bed behind her to hold her as she slept, to listen to her breathing and remind her to take her antivirals and Advil. She’d thanked him about a hundred times, and on Monday afternoon she’d managed to eat a little chicken noodle soup, too.

When he left her this morning, she’d smiled up at him wanly from her pillow, thanking him again for his care. “Yet again, I’m causin’ you trouble.”

He took it as a good sign of improvement that she was up to teasing. He smiled at her, hating that he had to leave, even for a few hours. “Do you see me complaining?”

She shook her head, looking at him tenderly. “Nae. I dinna see you complainin’.”

“Maggie, I want you to know that I…” He’d stared at her, letting his words trail off. She was just starting to feel better and they had a lot of information they still needed to learn about one another as soon as she felt better enough to resume their questionnaires. It wasn’t the right time to pressure her by sharing his feelings. “I’ll be back at lunchtime?”

Her eyes, which had brightened momentarily, looked away from him and she licked her lips. “I can make myself toast or somethin’. You dinna need to break up your day.”

“I told you, I don’t mind,” he said, backing out of her bedroom door before she could protest any further. “I’ll be back at noon.”

He’d hurried home to shower and change before heading to the office. And the thing is? His apartment felt different when he got there. It was his house, but it didn’t feel like his home. He stared at his nondescript bed as he toweled off and changed, comparing the plain navy duvet and functional hardwood frame to the white wicker and cheerful purple flowers in Maggie’s bedroom. He longed for it—for the warmth of it, for the cheer of it, for the Maggie of it. And suddenly noon was far too long a wait.

He grabbed a container of orange juice out of his own fridge and on his way to the office, he stopped by her place, vaulting up the stairs but unlocking the front door quietly. He put the juice in her fridge and walked quietly into her bedroom, hovering in the doorway as he watched her sleep.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to wake her up; she needed her rest. He just needed to see her. He just needed to stand quietly in her doorway and drink her in, because four hours stretched out before him like a sentence without the pleasure of her flushed face and gravelly burr. When exactly had this happened? This shift from appreciating his own company to barely being able to function without hers? Was this the result of spending every waking moment with her from Friday afternoon to now? She was like an addiction to him now? A need? That he’d loved Maggie for years with a quiet passion was indisputable, but for the first time since he’d known her, he had to consider that loving her from a safe distance and
falling
in love with her up close were two separate things…and as he quietly let himself out of her apartment and walked the short distance to work, he realized that there was a very good chance he was deep in the throes of the latter. Sometime between marrying her and leaving her and returning to her again, he’d started to fall in love with her. Not with the
idea
of her, or
potential
of her, but with
her
.

His fingers had distractedly tapped the space bar so many times, the page before him was blank. He adjusted in his seat and tried to remember what it was he was supposed to be doing. Oh, right. While Lars made calls to reconfirm the campsites, Nils was supposed to be putting together an itinerary. A big group of thirty kids and six adults from a church group in Buffalo, New York, were coming to the park for a four-day retreat, and all three Lindstrom men would be on-deck to drive vans, lead group activities and be in charge of campsites and provisions. Though they’d secured the reservations weeks ago, the logistics of such a big group took a couple of days of serious planning right before the group arrived. The tents Nils had used over the weekend needed to be laundered, they had groceries to buy and organize into coolers, not to mention the pick-up on Thursday at the airport in Bozeman would be sheer chaos until all thirty-six visitors were settled into three twelve-person vans and on their way down to the park.

And this time, there was no room for Maggie. Nils’s heart lurched with the realization. He wouldn’t see her for four days. Not until he returned, hot, sweaty and exhausted, on Sunday night.

“Nils,
vem dog
?”
Who died?

Nils looked up to catch Lars’s eyes staring at him. “No one.”

“Something bothering you? You’re scowling worse’n usual today,” said Lars, eyes twinkling as his lips tilting up at the corners in a grin.

“Shut up, Lars.”

Lars sauntered over from the small conference table in the front of the office and parked himself in the office chair beside Nils’s desk. He glanced down at the keyboard, then back up at Nils’s face, grinning with furrowed brows. “So, when did you get married?”

“What
?!” demanded Nils, as his eyes shot open and his heart rocketed from zero to one hundred in a single moment. Had Lars found out? Did he know? Had he told their father? “
Vad pratar du om
?”
What are you talking about?

“Whoa, brother!” Lars’s neck snapped back at the tone in his older brother’s voice and his smile faded as he gestured to the wedding ring Nils was wearing on the fourth finger of his left hand. “I was just kidding…What’s the deal with that?”

Nils whipped the ring off, opened his desk drawer, dropped the ring in and slammed it shut. “It was grandfather’s. I found—I found it when I was…I just…”

“Thought you’d fantasize about cementing things with Maggie, huh?” Lars’s teasing smile had returned. “Although I haven’t seen much of her lately. You two have a falling out?”

“No.”

“Because while you were gone she canceled euchre on Thursdays. Said she was too busy. Saw Beck hovering over at the café all the time.”

Nils shrugged and tried to look like he didn’t care while the comment sat like acid in his stomach. How much time had Maggie and Beck spent together while he was gone? And when his truce with Maggie was over, would Beck be reasserting his place in Maggie’s life? As close as they’d gotten lately, they hadn’t discussed their feelings at all. Here he was, falling in love with her, and he had no idea if she still had any interest in getting serious with him.

“Can we stop talking about Beck Westman and get this itinerary done?”

Three hours later, Nils was at his breaking point. Between his short conversation about Beck’s attentions toward Maggie and the ache of being away from her this upcoming weekend, he was barking at his brother more and more, barely able to focus on the itinerary they’d agreed on. Finally Lars stood up, looking at his watch.

“You’re impossible today. Let’s take a break for lunch. Think you could possibly find and kill whatever crawled up your ass, perhaps?”

Nils clenched his jaw then nodded once. Lars was right. He
was
being impossible. He needed to go see Maggie. Moreover, before their interview, Nils needed to make sure that Beck was her past and he was her future.

***

For the first time since Sunday morning, Maggie was finally feeling a little bit better. She still felt stuffy and her cough wasn’t going anywhere, but at least her fever and chills had subsided, taking most of the full-body ache with them. Just as Doctor Garrison had predicted, days one and two were brutal, but Tuesday was better—thank goodness for antivirals! In fact, she felt well enough to strip down and take a long, hot shower, letting the water tumble down her back and front, easing the aches and pains of three days spent in bed. She washed her hair leisurely, smiling as she remembered Nils’s outburst as they sat on the couch last Thursday night “…
every time you move I smell your hair
…”

Running her hands over her breasts, the nipples tightened into points as her thoughts shifted effortlessly to him. Though she knew he cared for her, she couldn’t have predicted the tender care he’d provided her over the past few days. From the way he’d carried her up the stairs of her apartment on Sunday afternoon to staying over every night. He’d reminded her to take her medication while she was so tired and fuzzy, she could barely open her eyes. He’d kissed her sweaty forehead, held her shivering body and made her smile as she’d finally taken sips of soup yesterday. Maggie had been with other men, of course, but she’d never known what it was to feel cherished, to feel precious to someone. Not until now.

There was no denying that they’d had a deep affection for one another for years, and over the past several months, they’d discovered a combustible chemistry, too. And now, again, Nils’s actions were telling her so much about his feelings that he didn’t articulate. He was falling in love with her. She’d bet her life on it. She was watching it happen.

And while it filled her heart with unimaginable joy, it didn’t change the fact that secrets still lay between them. And until she knew what they were and how they’d affect the prospect of forever, Maggie still needed to protect herself.

She turned off the water and toweled her hair, wrapping it into a turban; then she grabbed another towel, wrapping it around her body and tucking the loose end between her breasts. She opened her underwear drawer only to find she was out, but remembered a clean load of clothes was resting in the dryer.

As she squatted down in front of the dryer, which was tucked into an alcove in her front vestibule, she wondered about Nils’s secrets, specifically as they concerned children. That was the most troubling puzzle piece. She needed answers, but she knew it wasn’t the right time yet. While patience wasn’t her strong suit, forcing him to answer big questions like that could make him close up, and that’s the last thing she wanted.

When the lock on the front door turned, she looked up from her spot in front of the dryer in surprise to see Nils walk into her apartment.

“Maggie! You’re up.”

She looked at the pair of underwear in her hand and threw them back in the dryer, standing up quickly. “Nils!”

She watched his face change as his eyes dropped from her eyes to her towel, to her bare legs, to her feet and back up to her face. While she’d been sick, their attraction to one another, while not forgotten, had been secondary to his care of her and her need to be cared for. Now, it rushed back with abandon and she could feel the tension, the electricity, between them. The heat in his eyes made a flush break out on her skin, coloring it pink, not with fever this time, but with arousal, with pleasure. She
liked
the way he was looking at her. She liked how it made her feel.

“Y-you, uh, showered,” he observed in a lower-than-usual voice.

“I showered.”

“Lunch.”

“Lunch?”

“I brought lunch.”

“Oh,” she said, wetting her dry lips with her tongue. His eyes widened as they focused on her lips before capturing her eyes again.

“You look better. You feel better?” He voice was clipped and nervous.

“Aye. A little.”

His eyes darted down to the place where she’d tucked in the towel between her breasts and she saw the slight flare of his nostrils before he looked back up.

“I didn’t have any clean underwear,” she said, gesturing awkwardly to the open dryer door and leaning down to grab the pair she’d thrown back in.

“Oh,” he said, and she saw it. She saw the thought pass across his eyes, which widened again, with raw hunger:
She’s naked in front of me except for that towel.

“Christ, Maggie,” he groaned, clenching his jaw, adjusting the paper bag in his hands. For a moment, she thought he was going to drop it on the floor and reach for her, rip open her towel and pull her down on the floor to ravage her with his mouth, his tongue, his fingers thrusting into her until she was slick and ready and then he’d—“
Please
get dressed.”

Then he passed her, careful not to touch her, and headed into her kitchen without another glance. And she stood there, balled-up panties in her hand, wanting him so much, she didn’t know how much longer she could wait to have him.