eyes, the push of her breasts against her thin green top. Storing it all in his brain against the time when he’d be gone from here. When he’d never see her again.
She said stiffly, “Give me one good reason why I should believe you.”
“I can’t! Either you believe me or you don’t. And what does it matter anyway?”
“You’re right, it doesn’t matter.” She bit her lip. “Please leave now, Luke—I should go up to the house and make sure the kids are all right. Besides, Erik will be home shortly.”
The last person in the world Luke wanted to meet was Katrin’s husband. The man who shared her bed. The father of her children. With one small part of his mind he realized that this was the first time Katrin had called him by name, and would also be the last. “Goodbye, Katrin,” he said, turned on his heel and wound through the poplars toward his car, remembering on the way to snag his camera from the apple tree.
Just as he opened the car door, Lara and Tomas emerged onto the front step of the house, each clutching an icecream cone. They waved at him. “Bye, Luke,” Lara called.
“Goodbye, Lara. Bye, Tomas,” he called back, turned around in the road and drove north along the shore. In his rearview mirror he watched Katrin cross the road and walk toward the house.
Game over, indeed.
Except it didn’t remotely resemble a game. Rather, Luke felt like that little five-year-old boy in Teal Lake who’d finally realized his mother wasn’t going to come back home; that she hadn’t just gone to the store, or into Kenora for a visit. Then, as now, he had the same sensation that the earth had shifted, that there was nothing firm to stand on.
Katrin was married, the mother of two children. No matter how much he desired her, she belonged to someone else.
Once Luke was out of sight of the pale yellow house, he pulled up by the side of the road and gazed out over the lake. Its serenity mocked him, so placid was it, so much in harmony with the graceful willows that draped its shoreline.
He felt cheated. As though he’d caught a glimpse of beauty beyond his imagining, only to have it snatched away before he could grasp it.
A couple of teenage boys were slouching along the road toward him. Luke edged off the shoulder and drove on. But five minutes later, when the tearoom came in sight, he slowed down again. He didn’t want to go back to the resort and be convivial. He didn’t want to play golf or lift weights, and he’d already jogged this morning. While tearooms weren’t priority on his list, he could do with something cold to drink. And maybe a piece of chocolate pie, he thought wryly. The basic cure for a bruised ego.
Because that’s all this was. It wasn’t a major tragedy. He’d merely made a fool of himself for reasons he didn’t want to analyze, with a woman far too acute for his own comfort. Yeah, he thought, turning into the driveway between rows of pink and scarlet petunias. Chocolate pie. That’s what I need.
The tearoom wasn’t designed with six-foot-two men in mind: the tables were small, the curtains frilly, the wallpaper with more flowers than a Hollywood funeral. But in the cooler by the door there was a chocolate torte with thick layers of dark chocolate icing, and the proprietress gave him a friendly welcome. Luke smiled back. “I’ll have a big slice of the torte,” he said, “and iced tea with extra lemon, please.”
“Coming right up,” she said, her brown eyes twinkling at him. Her name tag was inscribed in such elaborate calligraphy that he had difficulty deciphering it; he was almost sure it said Margret. Her hair was the orange of marigolds, her eyeshadow blue as delphiniums, and she had no pretensions to youth. But something in her smile said that a tall, athletic-looking man could brighten her day anytime.
Luke picked up a newspaper from the stand by the door and sat down by the window. Six women were sharing a table on the far side of the room, and two more were seated nearer to him; he was the only man. Feeling minimally more cheerful, he unfolded the paper. When his iced tea arrived, he took a sip; it was exactly as he liked it. Then Margret arrived with a flowered plate bearing a huge slab of torte surrounded by swirls of chocolate sauce, sliced strawberries and whipped cream. He grinned. “No calories in that.”
“You’re in fine shape, you don’t need to worry,” she said, giving him a flirtatious wink. “You must be staying at the resort?”
“That’s right, there’s a mining conference going on.” Deliberately he added, “I was just driving through the village and met Katrin, who’s our waitress in the dining room.”
“Katrin Sigurdson, that’s right. She lives in the pink house two down from the church.”
Luke’s fork stopped in midair. “No…she was at the very end house in the village. Playing with her kids.”
Margret frowned. “Kids?”
“Lara and Tomas. Blond like her.”
“Katrin doesn’t have any children.” Margret’s brow cleared. “Those are Anna’s children.” In a carrying voice she addressed one of the two women seated nearby. “Anna, is Katrin looking after your kids today?”
Anna, who had a cluster of blond curls and light blue eyes, smiled at Margret. “She offered to take them to the beach for an hour so Fjola and I could meet here and have an uninterrupted visit.” Her smile encompassed Luke. “Katrin’s such a lovely person. So kind. And the children adore her, they’d do anything for her.”
Anna, he could tell, was the sort of woman who’d grown up in a small place and trusted everyone, including himself. Striving for just the right touch of lightness, he said, “Then it’s to be hoped she has children of her own someday.”
Anna chuckled. “First she has to find a husband.”
Luke’s heart jolted in his chest. “She’s a pretty woman,” he said with deliberate understatement. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“But Katrin is very choosy, too choosy for a little village like Askja.” Anna shrugged. “She is talking of leaving here. That will be our loss, but no doubt her gain.” She gave Luke another of her generous smiles. “Now, if you will excuse me…”
She went back to her conversation with her friend Fjola. Luke said, “Margret, I’ve heard that a fisherman called Erik Sigurdson takes tourists out in his boat, is that right?”
“Erik? Yes, but only on weekends. He’s too old now to do it every day, he says.” Her smile had a touch of malice. “Too fond of the rum bottle if you ask me.”
“Too bad…I’ll be gone by the weekend.”
“Jonas takes out tourists every day, the resort would have his phone number.”
“Thanks,” Luke said. “I’ll probably look him up.”
Three more women came in the door and Margret left to show them to a table. Luke stared unseeingly at the newspaper. So Katrin was neither a married woman nor a mother.
She’d lied to him.
For her own protection? Because she was afraid of him, and put him in the same category as Guy? Or because he’d been reading her correctly all along, and Katrin wanted him as badly as he wanted her?
The
