still hanging back near the foot of the stairs, straightened her shoulders and stepped proudly into the open doorway.
Her mother, in a chair facing the hall, saw her first. Finn, lounging against the mantel on the outside wall, turned when he caught the direction of his hostess’s gaze.
Ingrid didn’t miss a beat. Her wide mouth spread in a happy, gracious smile. ‘‘Liv darling. You’re early.’’
‘‘Mother,’’ Liv said. She felt like a wire—strung tight, but not yet sprung. ‘‘Finn. How are you?’’
He gave her the most beautiful welcoming smile. ‘‘Better by the moment.’’ Oh, he was good. He was very, very good.
‘‘What a surprise,’’ Liv sneered, ‘‘to see you here.’’
Those amber eyes glittered with challenge, with something Liv couldn’t quite define. ‘‘Her Majesty has graciously invited me to be her guest during my visit to your beautiful city.’’
The wire of Liv’s temper pulled all the tighter. She flashed a furious look at her mother.
Ingrid rose to her feet. ‘‘Finn, I wonder…’’
He nodded. ‘‘I can see the two of you would like a little time alone.’’
Ingrid beamed him a grateful smile. ‘‘Yes, that would be wonderful. Fifteen minutes?’’
‘‘No problem.’’ He bowed over her hand and then he was striding straight for Liv. He wore camel-colored slacks and a polo shirt and he made something inside Liv go silly and hopeless and weak. Oh, why did he have to be so utterly gorgeous?
He reached her. And she was still standing there, rooted to the spot, blocking the doorway. She stared at him and he stared back at her. The air around them seemed to be humming—with her own righteous indignation, she tried to convince herself, as she ordered her foolish, wobbly legs to get her out of his way. With a quick, polite nod, he went on by.
She heard his footsteps going up the stairs. They faded off on the second floor. By then, she’d more or less pulled herself together. She leveled a look of disdain at her mother. ‘‘Well?’’
‘‘Oh, darling.’’ With a long sigh, her mother dropped to her chair again. ‘‘I hope you’re not too upset with me….’’ She looked across at Liv, hoping, no doubt, that Liv would rush in with eager reassurances, vowing she wasn’t angry in the least.
No way.
Ingrid became very absorbed with crossing her long legs and smoothing her bronze-colored linen skirt over her knees. ‘‘Oh, all right,’’ she finally admitted, ‘‘I should have said something earlier.’’
‘‘Now there’s a thought. Maybe you could have mentioned it last night, while I was stumbling all over myself trying to make sure you wouldn’t worry if you heard any rumors about my ‘engagement’ to that man.’’
‘‘I wanted you to get a good night’s sleep, be fresh for your job today. I knew you’d be angry, whenever I told you. And last night it simply seemed…wiser, just to wait until this evening.’’
Liv still held the apple she’d carried from the kitchen. Her appetite for it had vanished. She set it on the counter in the built-in bar area and moved nearer the chair where her mother sat. ‘‘Finn was here last night when you called me, wasn’t he?’’
Her mother sighed again and nodded.
‘‘Then you know about what happened between us?’’
‘‘Yes, darling. I do.’’
Did the humiliation never end? One night’s indiscretion and everybody had to know about it, her mother included. ‘‘How did you find out?’’
‘‘I spoke with your father. He called yesterday. We had a long talk.’’
Liv wondered if she’d heard right. ‘‘Wait a minute. The way you say that, you seem to be implying that you and Father had an actual conversation.’’
‘‘Yes. I would say the word ‘conversation’ pretty much describes what took place between us.’’
‘‘But…you never have conversations with Father.’’ The two had barely spoken in over twenty years.
Her mother was smoothing her skirt again. ‘‘Well, sweetheart, I’ve been doing some thinking. And I’ve come to the brilliant deduction that things change. If we want to survive in life, we have to adapt.’’ Ingrid looked up. A rueful gleam lit those sea-blue eyes. ‘‘With Elli married and living in Gullandria, and with Brit suddenly deciding to—oh, how should I put it?—explore her Gullandrian roots—I can see I’ll have to be willing to talk to Osrik now and then if I want to have any idea of what’s going on in my daughters’ lives.’’
‘‘You could try asking us.’’
Ingrid made a sound of frustration low in her throat. ‘‘I have. I don’t get a lot of answers—and what are you saying? That you’d rather your father and I went back to not speaking?’’
Maybe she would. Especially if they were going to discuss things like her sex life. ‘‘Whether you speak to him or not is completely up to you.’’
‘‘Thank you, darling.’’ There was a definite note of sarcasm.
Liv decided to ignore it. ‘‘So Father called and he told you…’’
‘‘About how you spent Midsummer’s Eve, about how you experienced the Freyasdahl symptoms the following night, about Finn’s offer of marriage and your refusal. Your father said Finn had decided to come here, to Sacramento, for a few weeks, to see if he might somehow manage to change your mind.’’
Liv felt her anger rising again. ‘‘And you want that to happen, right? You want him to change my mind. That’s why you invited him to stay here, in the house where I grew up—to show your support for him. You actually think that I ought to marry him.’’
Ingrid reached out. ‘‘Oh, Livvy…’’
Liv stepped back and sat in the chair across from her mother. ‘‘Just say it. You think I ought to marry him—marry a man I hardly know, a man with whom I have absolutely nothing in common, a man who’s been under just about every skirt in Gullandria.’’
Ingrid said nothing. For a moment, they sat in silence, mother and daughter, at odds.
Then Ingrid was leaning forward again, a wild, warm light in her eyes. ‘‘Oh, Livvy. I like him. I do. And he’s from a good family. And if you give it a chance, you might find the two of you have more in common than you realize. And besides, I saw the way he looked at you just now.’’
‘‘Mom.’’ Liv leaned forward, too. She spoke softly, taking care that no one but Ingrid would hear. ‘‘He’s a…playboy. Flirting to him is like breathing. He does it without having to give it a thought. He looks at all the women as if they’re the only one.’’
‘‘No,
