Inga and Marisa nodded at Karl, as well.
“You don’t look old enough to have been in Vietnam,” Marisa remarked.
Oops. My mistake! Another one! It’s what happens when we try to walk in two worlds. Careful, Sigurd, careful! “Must have been some other war,” Sigurd immediately corrected.
“Iraq,” Karl said. “I was a Navy SEAL.”
That impressed the spit out of all three women, and was only half a lie. Karl had started Navy SEAL training with Sigurd’s brother Trond, but while Trond continued to completion, Karl had dropped out. Karl’s human wife had been dying at the time, as Sigurd recalled. A very trying experience for the vangel who had never aged beyond age twenty-two to watch his sixty-year-old wife pass to the Other Side. Karl had recently been permitted to wed a human who’d lived in a trailer in a small town near Transylvania, Pennsylvania, where their vangel castle was located. And wasn’t that a whole other story!
But Sigurd had no time for distraction. He had to continue with the introductions. “These two men are Svein and Jogeir. They will be part of the island’s security force.” The two men with light blond hair and fair skin that was already fading from their blood-tans in this bright sunlight, nodded but said nothing.
“And the young man over there”—he waved toward the other side of the table—“is Armod. He is a great admirer of the late Michael Jackson, as you can probably tell.” The lackwit not only had his hair styled like the singer, but was wearing one sparkly white glove. With a swimsuit! In this heat! “Armod will be dancing in the nightclub program.”
“Really?” Inga asked. “Marisa and I are salsa dancers back in Miami.”
Sigurd turned to Marisa. “I thought you were a waitress and a massager.”
Her dark eyes nigh sparked at him with irritation. “Massage therapist,” she gritted out.
“Same thing.” He waved a hand airily.
“Not even close. In any case, Inga and I dance and waitress some nights in a Miami nightclub, La Cucaracha.”
He arched a brow at her. “Cockroach?”
“Yeah. You have a problem with that?”
He put both hands up in surrender. “Not a bit.”
“So you understand Spanish?”
“I understand and speak many languages.”
“Braggart!”
“I am what I am.”
“I am what I am,” she mimicked.
“Are you always so rude?”
“I am what I am,” she repeated, and smiled at him in the most irksome manner.
“So you like Michael Jackson’s music?” Inga asked Armod, no doubt to end his and Marisa’s bickering.
“Definitely,” Armod replied. “He was the king . . . of music.”
“Y’all are so cute,” Tiffany said. “And ya do look jist lak him, darlin’. Bet yer dancin’ is good, too.”
Spare me, Lord, Sigurd prayed. If there was anything that could get Armod talking, it was the subject of music . . . and dancing. Give him the slightest encouragement and he would be moonwalking around the pool. He got the crowd at a Philadelphia airport mob dancing spontaneously one time just by breaking into the song “Thriller,” which hadn’t thrilled his brother Vikar at all.
Immediately, an active conversation started between Tiffany, Inga, and Armod. A waiter stopped by their table, and the men ordered beers, except for Armod, who had been warned to avoid alcohol. He might be pretending to be twenty-one, but he was only sixteen (plus fifty vangel years, give or take), and not yet accustomed to the effects of hard brews. Marisa and Inga ordered bottled waters, and Tiffany got some tall, pink concoction with an umbrella on top. Armod looked longingly at the drink, but Sigurd gave him a warning look. Instead, Armod opted for a cola.
In the midst of the drinks delivery and the music conversation, Sigurd heard Tiffany ask Armod, “Can ya twerk, honey?”
Oh. My. Sorry. Soul! Sigurd felt as if he were in a minefield, never knowing where the next bomb was planted.
“Sure,” Armod said.
Four sets of men’s eyes turned as one to gawk at Armod. They’d all seen that Miley Cyrus singer twerking on the television set. Many times, truth to tell. Twerking involved some convoluted arse vibrating nonsense. Vangels watched a lot of television, and movies. Between missions, there wasn’t much else to do when one was supposed to be leading a sinless lifestyle. Bor-ing! To a Viking, leastwise.
But he’d never seen Armod do that. Sigurd must have scowled his way.
“What? Anyone can twerk if they practice,” Armod said defensively.
“Can ya teach me how?” Tiffany begged. “Ah have gotta learn how before mah first audition.”
Sigurd wasn’t about to ask why a Norse princess would have been twerking. Unless she got a bug up her arse.
“Me too,” Inga said. When the men looked at her in question, she added, “Not for an audition. I just want to know how.”
When Marisa didn’t join in, Sigurd arched his eyebrows at her. She blushed, raised her stubborn chin, and said, “Me too.”
Then she turned the tables on him, “How about you? Don’t you want to learn to twerk?”
Karl, Svein, and Jogeir snickered.
“Not even a little,” he responded.
“Sigurd does not like to dance, at all,” Armod offered, then ducked his head when Sigurd scowled, again. The boy talked too much.
Time for a change of subject.
“So tell me about this party Harry is holding tonight,” Sigurd said to Marisa.
But it was Tiffany who answered. “It’s being held on Mr. Goldman’s yacht. A really big yacht named Brass Balls.” Giggle, giggle. “Everyone who’s anyone at this conference will be there.” Giggle, giggle. “Y’all hafta come. Do ya want me ta talk ta Harry, and see if he’ll invite y’all?”
“No thank you. I don’t need a special invitation.”
“Party crashing?” Marisa snarked.
He shrugged. “If necessary. Why are you going to this event, Marisa? Have I not told you to avoid the man like a foul fjord flatfish.”
“You are not my protector, Sigurd. You aren’t even—”
“Yes, I am. I am your fiancé. Remember. We should get a ring.”
She said a nasty word rarely uttered by women in his acquaintance. At least she didn’t tell him what he could do with a ring. He could tell that she wanted to. “Why don’t you go do some doctoring stuff?” she suggested.
“I’ve been working since I got here. I have done enough STD tests for a lifetime. Did you know some people put tattoos down . . . Never mind. STDs are sexually transmitted diseases.”
“I know what STDs are,” she groused.
He tilted his head in question.
“Not from personal experience.” More blushes.
“I’ve treated two sunstrokes and three second-degree sunburns. Gave a pain pill to a woman with an abscessed tooth. Refused pain pills for five others who figured I would be their drug supplier while they buzzed through the conference. I also splinted a broken ankle for some lackwit trying to impress the ladies on a high diving board. And removed a fishhook from a woman’s breast. Don’t ask.”
“Ah got a crawfish bite on my butt one time,” Tiffany offered. When everyone looked at her in question, she explained. “Mah ex-boyfriend Bubba and me was catchin’ mudbugs on the bayou. In the nude. Ah slipped, and one them critters just took a big ol’ bite. Bubba laughed and tol’ all his friends. Dumb as a bayou stump, Bubba was, bless his ol’ redneck heart, but Ah dumped his sorry behind faster’n he could say Dixie, and that was the las’ time Ah went crawfishin’, nude, anyways.”
She smiled at them all as if this happened to everyone once in a while.
Not so much! Marisa turned back to Sigurd. “Why don’t you just go back to Johns Hopkins?”
“I can’t.”
“Fired, huh?”
“I go where I am sent,” he said. Another slip on his part.
Suddenly suspicious, she leaned closer, and Sigurd gasp
ed with dismay. No longer was she perspiring the scent of honey and tart ginger. There was another scent altogether. Lemons!
“Marisa! What have you done?”
She frowned in confusion.
“Either you have committed some great sin, or are about to,” he declared.
A rosy color seeped into her cheeks once again, and she raised her chin defiantly. He liked that he could make her blush.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She knew, all right. “Liar,” he whispered.
And more alarming, it meant there was a Lucie presence somewhere on the island. He tilted her chin to the side. Yes, there was a small bite mark there. She had to have already been contemplating some mortal sin, or a Lucie wouldn’t have bothered biting her. Demon vampires were not interested in pure humans, not worth the effort. But the Lucie must have been interrupted. He would be back, though, probably at the moment of her surrender to the great sin.
“You’ve been fa—, uh, bitten,” he said. “Come back to my office in the hotel, and I will . . . uh, treat it.”
“It’s only a mosquito bite. Jeesh!”
“Even mosquito bites can get infected.”
“I am not going to your office.” She laughed. “Next you’ll be suggesting that you do an STD test on me.”
A slow grin crept over his lips. He couldn’t help himself.
“You aren’t getting within touching distance of . . .” The rose in her cheeks got rosier. “. . . my girl parts.”
We shall see, he thought, then immediately gazed upward. Just jesting.
But that settled it. He would have to stick to her like glue—celestial glue—until he either redeemed her, or she went to the other side. He shuttered to think what a prize she would be for Jasper and his minions.
But then, she asked the oddest things.
“I don’t suppose you own a yacht?”
He shook his head slowly.
“An airplane?”
He shook his head more, frowning at her question.
“Have your own medical clinic?”
If he did, he would hardly be on this wacky island at this wacky conference.
She had both hands folded, prayer-like, under her chin. “Are you a billionaire? Or even a millionaire?”
Ah! He saw where she was going now. Wealth was her forbidden fruit.
“No,” he said bluntly, although he could gain riches in a trice, if he wanted to, or Mike allowed him to.
“Too bad,” she said, and stood. “Too damn bad,” she repeated before walking away.
The scent of lemons was almost overpowering in her wake. Tiffany hobbled after her in her high shoes, and his men left to prepare for a conference call with his brothers.
“Don’t be so hard on Marisa,” Inga said to him when they were alone. “She’s under a lot of stress.”
“Are we not all?”
“Not like her. She has a daughter with a growing brain tumor who will die without a certain operation.”
An oddly unpleasant thought occurred to him. “I did not know she was married.”
“She’s not.” Inga glared at him as if he was making a judgment about Marisa’s morals.
“I am not the moral police,” he said. Just an angel on the lookout for immoral folks. “I am just trying to gather all the facts.”
“Why?”
“Truth to tell, I am not certain.” He considered what Inga had told him and conjectured, “Her daughter is dying and needs an operation. Let me guess. It is a very expensive operation. How much?”
“One hundred and seventy thousand. In a hurry. Well, she’s already raised almost a hundred thousand through various fund-raising projects. Another seventy thousand is needed.”
“And she expects to earn that much waitressing and massaging for a week or so on this island?”
“It’s a start,” Inga said, her eyes not meeting his.
“Ah!” Now he understood. This island was like a Garden of Eden, and Marisa’s apple had a name. Harry Goldman.
Not if he could help it!
The only question was, what role did Sigurd play in that garden? Adam or the snake?
But then, an ever more troubling question entered his mind. What if Marisa was the apple, and Sigurd was the one being tempted? It would be just like Mike to try to trip him up.
Hah! He was stronger than that.
He hoped.
Chapter 8
Zing went her heart again . . .
Marisa, Inga, Tiffany, and Doris were sitting in the large hotel ballroom, along with two hundred or so new employees, listening to an indoctrination lecture.
And indoctrination it surely was.
Banners and badges proclaimed the conference theme: “FOE Proud!” Sample TV spots ran on video monitors along the sides. There was even a music video that was loud if nothing else.
“I wonder if they realize that the public will think FOE stands for the postal service’s ‘forwarding order expired,’” Marisa whispered to Inga.
“Hah! These folks are delusional,” Inga whispered back. “The PR director, Mitzi Dolan, told me that the pornography movement will go down in history comparable to the civil rights movement.”
“They better not mention that to the NAACP.”
A woman sitting in front of them turned and said, “Shh!” She was taking notes, for heaven’s sake. But then Doris, on Marisa’s other side, was taking notes, too. When Marisa tried to read what she’d written, Doris glared at her and covered her words with a forearm.
Touch-y!
Martin Vanderfelt, dressed to the gills in white slacks, a Hawaiian shirt, and docksiders, stood at the podium, where he had been lecturing them for almost an hour. His pristine white hair and mustache gleamed against his already deeply tanned face. He was an impressive cheerleader for pornography, even though they weren’t supposed to use that word.
“You will find two ‘FOE Proud!’ badges in your folders. Wear them proudly . . . ha, ha, ha . . . at all times. The second one is a replacement in the event you lose the first one. Some folks have done that already.”
More like lost them deliberately.
“You’ll want to wear them when you get home, too, or give them to friends as souvenirs.” Harry smiled winningly.
Does he really believe his own hype?
Probably.
“Folks, sexual freedom is alive and flourishing,” Vanderfelt announced. “Last year there were more than four million websites catering to men’s, and women’s, freedom-to-choose sexual palates. In fact, almost a hundred million people visited adult sites last year. That’s half of all the superhighway travelers. Who says adult entertainment is dead?”
Loud applause greeted his words.
Like smut cheerleaders, they all were.
“We have Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine to thank for all this,” Vanderfelt said with dubious reverence, waving a hand to encompass the crowd and the hotel gathering. “Larry was pioneering for freedom of expression in adult entertainment before anyone ever heard of the phrase. And he suffered for his efforts.” Vanderfelt bowed his head for emphasis.
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the sheep-like crowd.
He was referring to Flynt having taken a bullet from some nutcase outside a courthouse in Georgia where he’d been fighting one of his numerous battles and had been wheelchair bound ever since. St. Larry of Smut.
“Now, on to the agenda.”
Marisa and Inga weren’t the only ones to groan.
“No one, and I repeat no one, is to speak to the press. If you are approached by a reporter, direct them to Mitzi.” He nodded to the young woman sitting behind him on the dais. Mitzi, who resembled a young Rosie O’Donnell, looked as if she would like to punch Harry a good one. Marisa suspected he’d been passing off any uncomfortable problems on her.
“I thought there weren’t supposed to be any news media here on the island,” one man yelled out.
“There aren’t,” Harry sai
d, “but they’re sneaky bastards . . . excuse my language. I don’t doubt that some will try to slither in. They might even be sitting amongst us now. And you just know they’ll portray us as less than the professionals we are.”
Marisa glanced quickly at Doris, who said emphatically, “Not me.”
“Another thing,” Harry said, followed by more groans. “Please give our celebrities here some space.” He nodded toward the front row where Becky, Lance, and a dozen other actors and actresses sat.
“Don’t ask them for autographs, or approach them about your own careers. Same is true of the directors and producers,” Vanderfelt went on.
He is delusional. That’s why half the folks are here.
“There will be plenty of opportunity for that the last day of the conference when they can sign videos or posters for you.”
Or body parts.
Tiffany raised her hand, and Marisa and Inga sank down in their seats. She asked in her pure Southern accent, “Mistah Vanderfelt, suh, what if they approach us?”
“That would be different,” Harry conceded as his face turned red. Clearly, he wasn’t going to ask Tiffany what she meant by “approach.”
“Imagine that,” Inga said. “Someone in the porno industry blushing.”
“Now who’s being sarcastic?” Marisa whispered to Inga, who had been harping at her for being so cynical all the time.
“If you’ll check over the schedule of workshops and events in your folders,” Harry continued, “you will get an idea of the times when your particular jobs may begin and end. For example, breakfast in the communal dining room begins at seven a.m. and ends at eight-thirty, with workshops starting at nine. Lunch from noon to one, followed by more workshops and conference events until four. Dinner from five to midnight.”
Marisa read over some of the workshop titles: “How to Profit from Erotic Home Videos.”
Apparently, erotic is okay. Porno is not.
“Is Anything Taboo?”
God, I hope so.
“So You’ve Invented a New Sex Toy?”
Marisa tried to picture some dumb everyday guy trying to talk his wife into experimenting with his crazy device on her sensitive parts, and cringed.