Page 21 of The Very Virile Viking

At first she was shocked that he would suggest such a thing. Shock soon turned to indignation. "No!

Absolutely not!"

"It would only be for a day or two. A week at the most."

"Are you crazy? I live in a two-bedroom high-rise. That guy's head would touch the ceiling in my place, and with eleven people we would be stepping on each other. No way!"

"How about the vineyard up in Sonoma? The Blue Dragon? You know, the one you think is worth five hundred thou for a one-week movie shoot?" He said the last in a subtly threatening tone.

"Are you suggesting that unless I help you out with this, the deal is off?" She had to fist her hands tightly to keep from socking the jerk a good one.

"No, what I'm suggesting is that, if you do this, I will be much more likely to agree to your terms."

She folded her arms over her chest and tapped one high-heeled shoe with indignation. The nerve of the louse !

"Come on, Angela. You said your grandmother has a big old house at the Blue Dragon. Surely it's big enough for all these kids. And it would only be for a few days."

Her shoulders slumped in surrender. Really, she had no choice. Darrell might not know it, but the Blue Dragon was in dire straits, money-wise. Without his cash, there might not be a vineyard much longer.

She looked at Darrell; then she looked at the Viking, who still stared at her with an intensity bordering on hunger—Criminey, she couldn't remember any man ever looking at her with hunger—then she looked back at Darrell again.

"My price just went up. Seven hundred thousand."

"Agreed."

His quick response made her think she should have asked for more. "My grandmother is going to kill me," she said.

When they walked back to the group and informed Magnus of their decision, he just nodded, as if his going with her had been a given all along.

Soon after, they all moved toward a studio van that Angela was going to have to use. Her BMW would never hold the bunch of them, and Magnus claimed not to be able to drive a car.

"You remind me of someone," he said.

"Oh, great! The oldest line in the book! Let's get one thing straight from the get-go: no hanky-panky."

"Hank-what?"

"Never mind."

"Do you happen to know an old lady with white hair and prayer beads? And what is a no-veen-ah anyway?" the tree asked her all of a sudden.

Angela's heart skipped a beat and she stumbled. When she righted herself, with his hand under her elbow, she examined him in a new light.

Something strange was going on here.

No place like home (wherever that is… )

They were all crammed into a very large horseless cart, known as a van, and were speeding down a free-road… or, rather, a free-way. Magnus assumed that was a thoroughfare with no toll. But he did not want to ask. His stomach was too queasy from the harrowing experience of traveling faster than a speeding arrow. Other horseless vehicles were driving by them at even more excessive speeds. Angela claimed to be going only forty miles per hour, as if he would be comforted by that fact.

As things turned out, they were not going to be able to go to the Blue Dragon place right away. That

didn't bother Magnus all that much. He wasn't sure he liked the idea of taking his children to a dragon's lair anyhow… though Hamr had practically wept with disappointment. It was his lifelong wish, or so he had proclaimed loudly, to kill a dragon.

Storvald and Njal were sitting with their filthy hands folded in their laps, at his orders. The pair had crawled under the van while it was still standing still, looking for a hidden horse, before he'd been able to pull them out of harm's way. They now resembled ragpicker's children, not the sons of a Norse noble.

Angela had just stared with bewilderment at the lot of them. He was confused himself. How could he blame her?

When Angela had spoken to her work master a short time ago on a little black box called a tell-of-own, Master Blackman had reminded her that a big buyer coming in from some other country required her personal attention. This buyer, known as a custom-her, represented very large amounts of payment to her employer, who had to be out of town himself on a vay-kay-shun, which meant a time to have fun.