Page 33 of Entwined in Norway

Ten minutes later, Erik appeared, having changed into a long-sleeved black t-shirt and the khaki trousers he’d worn last night.

‘Ready?’

Ida nodded and grabbed her bag. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said to Emilie.

‘Have a good time.’

Erik took her hand authoritatively, which made Ida’s stomach flip.

‘I left the kayak at the other end of the island to keep it out of the way.’

‘At least there’ll be no one around to see when we fall into the fjord.’

He laughed. ‘I have never fallen off a kayak. Not accidentally.’

When they reached the tip of the island, Erik pushed the kayak into the water and held the front.

‘Take the life vest.’

‘What about you?’ She zipped up the vest.

‘If I fall in, I’ll use you as a floatie.’

She flicked her eyes between him and the kayak.

‘I won’t let you fall in,’ he said in such a reassuring voice that she actually believed him and held his gaze. ‘Promise.’

He held the front while she climbed in, and it only wobbled slightly when she crouched down and shifted one foot and then the other onto the back of the kayak.

‘Okay?’

She nodded, and before she could start worrying about it tipping over when Erik got on, he was on so quickly there was no time to think anything.

‘And off we go.’

Ida watched his back as he paddled them alongside the island, between the shore and the rock on the other side of the fjord. The shirt he wore, the sleeves pulled up to his elbows, was tight enough to show his muscles rippling as he dipped one arm down and then the other. It was mesmerising. In no time at all, they had reached the end of Radfjorden.

‘Where to now?’

‘Straight across,’ said Ida, wondering whether she might need to take a dive into the fjord to cool off before she watched any more of Erik’s capable paddling. Who’d have thought that would be a turn-on?

14

Other than to give him directions, Ida hardly said a word on the way to her house. He thought back over every conversation they’d had today and silently concluded that she hadn’t wanted to go for dinner with him tonight. Firstly, she’d turned him down because of her nephew, then even when he’d offered to kayak over there, she’d reluctantly agreed. When Mats said she was off the hook for babysitting, she hadn’t agreed as such, and then it had been Emilie who arranged it for her. In the aftermath of their conversation over breakfast, when she’d had to point out to him that she was quite capable of getting home by herself, perhaps he had again undermined her independence.

‘That’s our jetty,’ she said, pointing to a jetty that ran from a small boathouse to the foot of a steep set of steps.

Man, it wasn’t his day. He was going to need another rejuvenating bath when he got to the top.

He pulled alongside the jetty and held onto a mooring post to steady the kayak. ‘You go first,’ he said.

Ida rather inelegantly crawled onto the jetty, then stood up and took the paddle off him. He used the mooring post to pull himself out of the kayak and then lifted it out of the water.

‘And nobody got wet,’ he said, triumphantly.

Ida smiled at him. Before she headed up the steps, he gently touched her arm.

‘Hey. I’m sorry you got steamrolled into this. I shouldn’t have let Mats and Emilie speak for you and then assume we were on for dinner.’