Meanwhile, the SEAL charmer was smiling down at Nicole, and she was smiling back, even while she bounced. Nicole had never smiled at him, but then he’d never tried to charm her, either.
Trond noticed that Cage’s eyes were making a concerted effort not to home in on her breasts, prominent in a snug white razorback running bra with the WEALS insignia dead center between Paradise East and Paradise West. Leastways, they looked like Paradise to a man who hadn’t had hot-slamdown-thrust-like-crazy-gottahaveyougottahaveyou sex in a really long time. Or any other real sex, for that matter. Near-sex, now that was a different matter. He was the king of near-sex. Not that I’m planning any trips to Paradise, near or otherwise. Nosiree, I’m an angel. Celibacy-Is-Us. Pfff! In any case, WEALS—Women on Earth, Air, Land, and Sea—was the name given to the female equivalent of SEALs, which stood for Sea, Air, and Land. A female warrior, of all things!
He shook his head like a shaggy dog . . . or a wet duck . . . to rid himself of all these irrelevant thoughts.
“Are you sure about that, darlin’?” Cage was saying to Nicole.
Trond had no idea what they were talking about, but one thing was for damn . . . uh, darn . . . sure, if he’d ever called Nicole darlin’, she would have smacked him up one side of his fool head and down the other.
Trond was still down in his duck position while the other poor saps had risen, their punishment over for now. Without thinking (Trond’s usual MO, unfortunately) he leaned over and took a nip at Nicole’s right, bouncing buttock, which was covered nicely by red nylon shorts. Luckily, he’d been a vampire angel long enough that he could control his fangs; otherwise, he would have torn the fabric.
With a yelp of shock, Nicole slapped a hand on her backside and swiveled on her boot-clad heels. SEALs and WEALS were required to wear the heavy boots to build up leg muscles. Hers were built up very nicely, he noted with more irrelevance, although the shape of a woman’s body was never irrelevant to a virile man. And Vikings were virile, that was for sure.
All this exercise must be turning me into a brain-rambling dimwit. Or is it the celibacy?
“What? How dare you?” she screeched.
I dare because I can, my dear screechling. Rising painfully on screaming knees, he stood, reaching for a towel and wiping sweat with purposeful slowness off his face and neck. His drab green T-shirt with the Navy SEAL logo clung wetly to his chest and back. “Oops!” he said, finally.
“Oops? That all you have to say for yourself?”
You don’t want to know what else I have to say. “Sorry. I thought it was a big ripe apple, and you know how ducks like apples.” He grinned.
Usually women melted when he grinned at them. He had nineteen different grins in his repertoire, at last count. This was his how-can-you-be-mad-at-a-sexy-guy-like-me grin.
She was not melting. Not a bit. “Did you see that, Cage? Did you see what he freakin’ did to me?”
Cage was laughing too hard to answer Nicole’s question, as were the other idiots who’d been released from Gig duty. To say SEALs were often politically incorrect would be an understatement. Like Vikings, Trond thought once again.
“Did you say big?” At least she wasn’t bouncing anymore. “Did you actually say that I have a big butt?”
Huh? Uh-oh. He recalled then how modern women were fixated on the size of their posteriors. Little did they know how much men adored them. The consternation on Nicole’s face would have daunted a lesser man. Or a smarter man. “Did I say your buns”—that was a contemporary word for buttocks—“were like big apples? I meant to say juicy apples. Or melons.” He batted his eyelashes at the bothersome witch.
“Melons! You . . . you . . . you . . .” she sputtered, casting a glare at him and then at all the other laughing hyenas around them. With a snort of disgust, she stomped away.
“Uh, cher, I’m thinkin’ you need to do a little damage control,” Cage advised him. “You doan wanna make Sassy Tassy your enemy. Uh-uh! Talk about! Pissing off a female officer? Can you spell sexual harassment?”
Her-ass, for sure. But Cage was right. He was supposed to be blending in here. Taunting the irksome woman who was already suspicious of him was not a good idea.
With a sigh, Trond tossed aside the damp towel and hurried after her. “Sassy,” he called out, trying his best not to notice the up-down bounce of her butt cheeks in the brief shorts, cheeks that were not too big at all.
Should he point that out to her?
Probably not.
“Nicole?” he tried then, figuring she might be more inclined to answer to her real name.
Still nothing.
“Hey, slow down,” he yelled.
She stopped in her tracks and turned, frowning at him from under a brimmed cap. Her curly, light brown hair was gathered into a tail that emerged from a hole in back of the cap. Her heavily-fringed, honey-colored eyes sparked gold fire at him. Being of Greek descent, she did in fact resemble Helen of Troy, whom he’d seen from afar on one occasion, right down to the light olive cast to her skin and the slight Mediterranean bump on her arrogant nose.
“What?” she demanded, catching him in the midst of ogling her.
Talk about cold! With that attitude she couldn’t launch a longboat, let alone a thousand ships. “I might have crossed the line back there,” he offered.
“Might have? You are such a dickhead. Is that supposed to be an apology?”
Well, yes. “It is what I said, is it not? We dickheads are thickheaded betimes.”
“Betimes!” she snorted. “That’s the most lame apology I’ve ever heard.”
He counted to ten silently in Old Norse, then said as sweetly as he could, “I am sorry if I offended you.”
She arched one brow skeptically.
His tongue, which seemed to have a mind of its own these days, unfurled like a banner on the wind. “Your buttocks aren’t too big. Not at all. In fact, when you wiggle—”
“Whoa! You need to stop when you’re ahead.” Shaking her head at his hopelessness, she resumed walking.
He walked beside her. “ ’Tis your fault.”
“This should be good. How is it my fault?”
“For one thing, you are always hurling those lackwit motivational proverbs at me, mostly dealing with my attitude, which is just fine, if you ask me.” Which no one did.
“That’s because you need a major attitude adjustment.”
He’d like to adjust something on her, and he’d like to do it with his fangs. “For another thing, you are always pulling rank on me, even though my captain standing in the Jaegers is probably comparable to yours as lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.” Trond and one of his fellow vangels, Karl Mortensen, had joined BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL, the SEALs training program, under the pretext that they were Jaegers, the secretive Norwegian special forces, equivalent to the SEALs. Not that he’d been back in the Norselands for the past one thousand, one hundred, and sixty-three years. But Mike had set up this cover story to get them into the training compound.
There were people in the U.S. government who would swear that the security surrounding their special forces was ironclad, that no one could enter their ranks undetected. Little did they know the power and craftiness of an archangel!
“Maybe I do that because I don’t believe your story. Maybe I suspect you’re here for some ulterior purpose. Maybe my detective instincts tell me you’re hiding a secret. Maybe I’m repulsed by your laziness. Maybe I think you need a few motivational courses.”
A fount of information, most of it unsolicited, on motivational courses, Nicole apparently had dozens of books on the subject of inspiration, ones that could be downloaded onto an mp3 player and listened via ear buds. Inspiration to overcome fears, inspiration to increase focus, inspiration to lose weight, inspiration to gain weight, inspiration to achieve success, inspiration to reach potential, inspiration to be inspired. In his case, she’d offered to lend him one called The Power of Pure Energy. And she made the offer repeatedly, some
times alternating with Attitude Is Everything. Each time he declined with a cool politeness, she was surprised that he wasn’t jumping with joy to soak up her wisdom.
Nicole had been a police detective before joining the female SEALs. Another job better suited to men. Not that he would say that aloud in the presence of a woman who might just clout him upside the head, as one had done at a NOW rally back in 1972.
That’s what he thought, but what he said was, “That is a lot of maybes. What do you care about my background as long as I get the job done? You cannot deny that I hold my own in SEAL training.”
“Yeah, by wheelbarrow management. You’re one of those people who only work when pushed.”
Oooh, she was really getting on his nerves now. “I am a Viking. We have our own way of doing things.” Which was a load of boar droppings. Even he knew he was not typical of Viking men. Certainly not like his brothers, who had managed to find a place in this new world: Vikar, who was successfully managing the VIK headquarters in a rundown castle in Transylvania, Pennsylvania; Sigurd, a physician at Johns Hopkins Hospital; Cnut, an international security expert; Harek, a computer whiz who was setting up an angel blog on the Internet; Ivak, who was presently managing his lustful inclinations in a prison; or Mordr, a soldier-for-hire, who should have been the one sent here, not him.
Nicole shrugged. “It’s the way you do things that rankles. And what’s with all this Viking crap you’re always spouting?”
Viking crap? Oooh, how he would like to tie her tongue in a knot! “I am a Viking, and I have no idea what Viking crap you refer to.”
“You’re always saying things like ‘Back in the Norselands, our weapon of choice was the broadsword.’ Or ‘We Vikings are known for our battle skills and our extreme good looks.’ Or ‘I am Viking, hear me belch.’ ”
He stiffened with affront. “I did not say that last thing.” Trond prided himself on having refined his cruder habits over the centuries. He only belched on rare occasions now, and then in private. Mostly.
“Earth to clueless swabbie. There are no Vikings today. They died out about a thousand years ago.”
That’s what you think. “Some of us are still around.”
“Pure-blooded Viking, huh?” she jeered.
“That’s right.” I wonder how many years of additional penance I would get for tying her tongue in a knot.
“Like a shitzu?” She grinned.
A big knot. “More like a pit bull,” he said and made a growling noise at her.
“You’re a ghost, you know.”
“Huh?” He was dead, but he wouldn’t call himself a ghost.
“I ran a search on you in my old police database. You don’t exist. Nor does your friend Karl.”
Nosy, nosy, nosy! “Must be the Jaegers have buried our identities.” Or good ol’ Mike.
“Do you know Max from SEAL Team Five . . . Torolf Magnusson? He and that whole Magnusson clan claim to be Vikings.” The way she tossed a question at him suddenly, without warning, was no doubt some detective skill intended to trip him up. “Even Commander MacLean is married to a Viking, Max’s sister. And there’s a whole herd of that Magnusson family up in Sonoma.”
By the runes! This woman could talk a cat out of a tree, or a lustsome man out of a cockstand. Not that he had one. Not over her. Not that he couldn’t muster one up, given a chance. Not that he was taking that chance.
I swear, my brain is melting. Must be the heat. After the extreme cold of the Norselands, you’d think I would cherish this warmth, but a Viking is not meant for these climes.
“I asked you a question,” she prodded. The whole time she interrogated him, she shifted from foot to foot, as if impatient to be off to her next important mission. Did she never stand still? Was it a physical condition? Or something she did just to annoy him?
He crossed his eyes, and this time he counted to twenty in Old Norse. “No, I have not made the acquaintance of Max yet. He has been away on field operations while I’ve been here, and when he returned, I was at jump school at Fort Benning. I look forward to meeting him, though.” In fact, he’d heard so many odd things about the Magnusson family that he was curious.
“I got a new catalog from Audible Books today,” she said. Another out-of-the-blue remark meant to disconcert him, no doubt. “There’s a book there you might like. Outwitting the Devil. Interested?”
How appropriate! He couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing.
She scowled at him.
They’d reached the parking lot, not the female officers’ quarters where he’d thought she was headed. He recalled then that Nicole lived off-base in Coronado in a small house she shared with two other WEALS. Trainees like him were not given that option.
“Well, do you accept my apology?” he asked.
Tilting her head up at him—she was a mere five-five or so to his six-foot-four, not that their size disparity daunted the pixie at all—she eyed him suspiciously. Like a show dog on point she was with him. “What you really mean is, will I be reporting you?”
He shrugged. “That, too.” Where were all the biddable women in the world, that’s what he wanted to know. Had they become extinct, like Vikings?
“No, I won’t be reporting you, but I will be watching you,” she warned. “I’m on to you, buddy.”
He doubted that sincerely.
“You’re hiding something.” She stared at him, as if waiting for him to reveal all.
Not in this lifetime, or a hundred others! “Aren’t we all?”
An expression of pain crossed her face for a brief moment, stunning him into silence. She has secrets, too? Was it possible . . . Oh please, do not let it be so. Was Nicole Tasso the person he was sent to save?
His only clue as to the mission he and Karl were to accomplish here was to take out terrorists working for Jasper, king of the demon vampires, and to save one, or several, SEALs in danger of falling to the “other side.”
“You look like you smell a rotten egg,” Nicole said, opening the door to her little red Mustang convertible.
Which would have been appropriate since Lucipires, on being annihilated, melted into a pool of slime that smelled like sulfur, or rotten eggs. Not that she was in any way a Lucie; he would have known that right off the bat. But she could have been fanged by one and be in need of a vangel transfusion.
Maybe if I thrust my fangs into . . .
No, no, no! No thrusting.
Oh Lord! Let it not be so! he prayed. And it was definitely a prayer, not an expletive. Vangels never, or almost never, used God’s name in vain.
He leaned in closer and sniffed.
“Are you smelling me?” The outrage on her face was almost comical. “First you imply I have a big bottom, and now you imply I have body odor. What a charmer!”
He just smiled. There was no scent of lemons, the usual clue that a person had been infected with the sin taint. No fang marks on the neck, either. Whew! Thank you, Lord!
I wouldn’t be thanking anyone yet, a voice said in his head. He’d recognize that voice anywhere. Mike. And the voice was laughing.
Two
Why are women always attracted to losers? . . .
Nicole sat in her car, stunned, with the motor idling. Trembling with emotions she’d thought long dead, she stared at Captain Trond Sigurdsson as he strolled away from her. The biggest loser to walk the face of the earth! And also the sexiest.
No rushing for him. Nope, he just swaggered in a loose-hipped, lazy sort of way. He had the gait of a confident man. Too confident, in her opinion.
And talk about buns! His were choice.
Height was not a requirement for Navy SEALs, just upper body strength. As a result, many SEALs were of average height, or even short. Not this knuckle-dragging baboon. He was six-foot-four, and all of it lean muscle.
She flicked the air conditioning on to full blast to cool her overheated body. And not just because of the outside temperature.
What was wrong with her? What was this st
range inner excitement that flooded her? Big men did not attract her. With good reason. Her ex-husband, Billy, a Chicago policeman—a sergeant now, despite his sins—had been over six feet tall, a weekend body builder and amateur pugilist who packed a mean punch, as she knew all too well.
She shivered in memory and reminded herself how far she’d come. People meeting her today would never believe she’d once been so weak and insecure that she’d let a man use her for a punching bag, and blamed herself. In fact, when she thought back ten years, she barely recognized the eighteen-year-old girl who’d fallen in love with a rookie cop noted for his twinkling green Irish eyes and lopsided grin. Not so noted as a wife abuser. She’d been an energetic, full-of-life, hopeless optimist before that. After three years, Billy had turned her into a whimpering doormat. That’s why it rankled when people like Trond the Troll berated her for being too peppy or pushy; all she could say was, “So, sue me!”
It had surprised the hell out of everyone back in Chicago, including her family, when she’d left Billy, who gave the outward appearance of a nice guy who’d never in a million years strike a woman. Hah! It had also surprised everyone when she’d gone to the police academy in another state and worked her way up to detective. Sort of an in-your-face flicking-the-bird at her ex. Or at her father, if you could call him that. Daddy Dearest had preferred his code of silence to his fellow men in blue over his own daughter. Said she always was a flake, needed a bit of discipline. And her mother, the original Church Lady, had advised her to “offer up” her suffering for the souls in Purgatory. An act of grace, she’d called it. Hah! What grace was there in being a human punching bag? Her only sibling, Teresa, had been only eight at the time and clueless.