Page 34 of The Last Viking

“Oh, my God! Aunt Mer, are you makin’ it with Kevin Sorbo? Wait till the kids in Chicago hear this. Where’s the phone?”

“You’re not making any long-distance calls, young lady,” Meredith declared. She would think about Thea’s implication that she was “makin’ it” with a man later.

“Who’s Calf in Shore Bow?” Rolf asked, sauntering into the room. “You mentioned him afore, Merry-Death.” Leaning against the refrigerator, he dried raindrops off his bare arms and wet hair with a dish towel. The whole time he watched with amusement as the two of them watched him. For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the steady downpour of rain outside.

“You don’t know who Kevin Sorbo is? Gol-ly! You look just like him. He’s the actor who plays Hercules on TV. He is, like, such a boffo hunk.” She blushed at her last words.

“Hercules?” Rolf frowned in confusion.

“You know, the son of that Greek God, Zeus. Hercules was so strong and brave he was called on to do all these amazing feats. Tell him, Aunt Mer.”

“Greek? I’m not a Byzantine. I’m a Viking.”

“A Viking? Whoa! You’re, like, a pro-football player? Aunt Mer-e-dith! I never knew you were into sports.”

“Just the bed sport,” Rolf mumbled. “Leastways, a man can hope.” The poor man was obviously confused by the whole conversation. Luckily, her niece hadn’t heard his remark.

“Do you know Warren Moon?” Thea asked.

“Nay. Only the gods do war in moons. All my battles have been fought on earth, or sea.”

“Huh? I meant Warren Moon of the Minnesota Vikings.”

“Oh. I am of the Norse Vikings. We tend to be raiders, rather than plunderers.”

“Did they sell the Minnesota Vikings to the Oakland Raiders? Hmmm. You’d think I woulda heard of that. Do you have a Super Bowl ring?” Thea checked out his bare fingers and sighed with disappointment.

“I only wear arm rings. What is a bowl ring?”

“Oh, Lord!” Meredith groaned.

“Wait a minute. You said Norse Viking. Are you, like, from Norway?” Thea asked.

Meredith’s head shot up, and she gave Rolf a warning glance. She’d already advised him earlier when they were at the mall that it was not a good idea to tell people his time-travel nonsense.

Rolf hesitated and rubbed his belt buckle as if choosing his words carefully. “Yea, I am from Hordaland…the Norse lands across the sea.”

“Thea—I’m sorry, I just can’t call you Serenity, my tongue trips over the word—Thea, this is Geirolf Ericsson. He’s come to help with the longship project. Bear with him a little, he’s having trouble with the language.”

“Your aunt is giving me lessons,” he revealed, his lips twitching with amusement at her discomfort.

“Cool!” Thea said, already heading for the living room, the newspaper TV section in hand. “I’m on spring break for the next three weeks, you know. Maybe I can, like, help with lessons.”

Three weeks? Meredith felt her stomach churn. She needed an antacid badly. Probably the start of ulcers, or something equally dire, like hormone overload.

Left alone for a moment, Rolf added with a determined gleam in his eyes before he followed after the girl, “And I plan to teach your aunt a few things in return.”

“Cool!” Thea repeated.

Never in a million years would Meredith ask what, but her imagination kicked in with a vengeance. And “cool” didn’t begin to describe her vision.

By nine o’clock that night, Thea was already conked out in the bed up in the loft that she would share with Meredith. Without makeup and wearing a Mickey Mouse nightshirt, she looked like the twelve-year-old child she was. Meredith’s heart went out to the needy girl, but she wasn’t sure how to help her.

Exhausted herself by the day’s events, Meredith carried a pile of linens downstairs to make a bed for Rolf on the sofa. She stopped midstep at the poignant sight of the huge man gazing forlornly into the fireplace. An elbow propped on the mantle supported his tilted head. His free hand held a poker, which he used distractedly to stir the blazing fire.

Meredith knew he was distressed by all the “modern” inventions he’d seen today, from the mall to the television, which he’d watched in disbelief for hours with Thea. But she still couldn’t accept his time-travel story. There had to be another explanation.

The academic in her sought for a logical explanation. She still wanted to believe that her brother Jared or Mike had found this skilled shipbuilder for her, possibly from some primitive region where there were no televisions or malls.