Stockholm Diaries, Melanie Page 4

  “Fine,” she said, loading three into the little cart.

  “Easy, girl,” he said, chuckling. “You need a lot more than flour, and we have to carry all this back on foot.”

  Mel raised her eyebrows.

  “Next time I’ll bring someone with a little more muscle,” she said, glancing with mock skepticism at his biceps. Of course, there was nothing wrong with the size of his muscles, quite the opposite. But if he was going to mock her, he should be prepared to take it, too. There was a hint of a grunt from his direction, but she turned her back and continued down the aisle.

  And then stopped. Her list had been formulated perfectly for the local grocery store back in the States, with the items divided by the store’s sections, in the order she usually came to them. But here? Again she was in the dark.

  Mel turned back to Henrik.

  “I’m afraid I need your help again,” she said. “Please?”

  His brow furrowed a little.

  “And you don’t like that, do you?”

  She smiled a little.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “You really don’t try to hide it,” he said gently.

  “It usually takes care of a lot of problems up-front,” she said.

  Did he already understand this part of her? His soft gaze suggested he did, and she wasn’t sure what to think of that. He was paying more attention than she had given him credit for.

  “But I do need help finding my groceries,” she said, trying to focus back on the shopping. “I’ve arranged them all by section, which will make it easier for you.”

  She pointed to the heading above each sub-list as she handed it to him. But instead of looking where she was pointing, he was watching her with a hint of amusement.

  “Very helpful,” he smirked. At least she thought he smirked. That damn accent made it hard to tell.

  He turned down the aisle, and she followed.

  “Apparently you’re not the only one who thinks paradise should include wi-fi connections,” said Henrik, leading them to the row that included coffee stacked on the shelf. “That café was packed, even on Midsummer.”

  The old bakery where Henrik had dropped her off right after they had docked the boat had been filled with couples and families, eating inordinate amounts of baked goods and looking at their various devices.

  “The coffee would’ve been worth it, even if they hadn’t had wi-fi,” she said. “I also discovered my phone gets reception here. I called my mother to let her know she wouldn’t hear from me much this summer.”

  “Will it be hard to be so far away from home?” he asked, his voice warm and curious.

  She considered his question.

  “Maybe. But I also like being on my own. It’s nice to get a break from my everyday self sometimes, too.”

  She glanced up at him and added, “That probably sounds a little strange.”

  Henrik shook his head.

  “Not at all,” he said softly.

  She grabbed two packages of coffee off the shelf and held them up for guidance. Henrik pointed to the purple one, and she tossed it into the cart, along with a couple more like it.

  “What did you find out about your father’s translator?”

  His question sounded off-handed, but his deep green eyes had the glint of amusement she had seen earlier. What was behind that look? He was toying with her, but she couldn’t figure out his angle. Did he already know that her search had turned up almost nothing?

  “There wasn’t much to find out,” said Mel, “at least not in English. He wrote two novels, one that he translated and sold in the U.K. That one was also made into a movie here in Sweden. And he lives in the Stockholm area or maybe London? And maybe married? That’s it. Even the photo of him is dark and from the side. I couldn’t see much more than brown hair and broad cheekbones. Kind of sexy, if that was what he was going for, but not very helpful.”

  She had added the “sexy” part of her last comment as a sort of provocation, but when she turned to him, she saw he was now chuckling to himself.

  “What?” she demanded a little too loudly. A man further down the aisle gave her a chiding look. Apparently, grocery shopping was supposed to be a quiet activity around here.

  “What do you know about Mr. Högberg that makes all of this so funny?” she hissed.

  “Hug-berry,” he said, enunciating the name with a smile. Then, before Mel could reply that she didn’t care how his name was pronounced, he added, “And that guy is me.”

  Mel’s mouth hung open.

  “My middle name is Henrik,” he added helpfully.

  “Why the hell didn’t you just tell me?” she said, not caring that her voice was growing louder again. “Did you set this up just to make me look stupid?”

  His grin faded a little as he studied her.

  “No,” he said, eyes widening. Then he shook his head. “No, no. I’ve tried to make it hard for people who don’t know me to find me. And when you said you were looking for me, it was a chance to find out how well I’ve done. If you’d connect me to the person you read about.”

  Mel opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Had she really called him sexy to his face? Ugh. She closed her mouth and glared at him.

  Finally, she said, “I’m glad you got what you were looking for, but that didn’t feel very good from my side.”

  Henrik took a step closer so that he was looking down at her. His large body was distracting, and suddenly the feeling of his fingers brushing over her hand came back.

  “I’m sorry.”

  His voice drifted into her ear. Heat came off his body and tempted her to reach out her hand. She resisted. She lifted her eyes to his face and saw the aloofness was gone. A line of creases formed between his brows, and his lips parted. She willed herself to take a step back, only to find that she was already up against the shelves. His voice was low, and he glanced around as he took a breath to continue.

  “Look, Melanie,” he said, his voice softening at her name. It seemed to glide out of his mouth and float around her, making her dizzy. “That was a bad move on my part. I can be an ass, and I’m sorry you had to find out first hand. But I seem to be the only person you know here, and you need help. Otherwise I’d let a nicer guy look after you.”

  That was about the worst apology she had ever heard, and it was enough to take her out of the trance he seemed to have put her in. Mel wanted to tell him that she didn’t need any guy, nice or otherwise, looking after her, but after the last 24 hours, she could see this clearly wasn’t true. She narrowed her eyes at Henrik.

  “But you told me you were the handyman,” she said.

  At least he knew better than to smile, but Henrik’s eyes glittered once again.

  “No, you asked if I was like your father’s handyman, and I said yes, like a handyman,” he said, raising his eyebrows. His voice was low and intimate. “And that’s true. I was like your father’s handyman when fixing his place got to be too much for him to do alone. What you did with that idea doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  There was a hint of teasing behind his last statement—what she did with the idea—which inconveniently summoned her dream from the night before. Another flush of heat came to her face. Mel swallowed hard.

  “It may be true that you didn’t lie, but you were dishonest in spirit,” she said, exasperated. “And you enjoyed it. You enjoyed stringing me along and making me look ridiculous.”

  When he met her eyes, his expression had lost any hint of mischievousness. His eyes were wide and serious.

  “I’m sorry, Melanie,” he said softly. “I really didn’t think much about how you would react. That’s a problem I have. I told you—I’m not always a very thoughtful guy. My ex-wife pointed that out more than once.”

  Ex-wife? This guy had already been married and divorced? Mel didn’t have time to contemplate that any further. Henrik looked down at the floor and ran his hand through his dark
hair before he continued.

  “I’ve known your father on and off since I was five years old, and he’s been a lot of things to me. When I helped translate his poems, he was actually doing a favor for me, though I didn’t realize it at the time.”

  There was none of the mockery left in his voice now.

  “I owe a lot to your father,” he said and then gave her a little smile. “Certainly better treatment of his daughter, if nothing else.”

  Mel felt a stab of tenderness for him that cut through her irritation. The small cracks in his well-controlled exterior hinted at a well of feelings he kept carefully inside.

  “Do you miss Bj—my father?”

  Henrik looked down at the floor.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  She felt loneliness in his words. When jealousy nagged at her, more as an afterthought, it took a moment for her to register the change: Her first reaction was to Henrik’s pain, not anger at her father.

  Before he seemed to realize what he was doing, he lifted his hand, as if he were going to brush some of her hair out of her face. But he caught himself and let it drop. Instead he turned down the aisle, leaving Mel to pull herself together and follow him.

  This day was certainly not going as she had planned.

  She started down the aisle again, grabbing a box of cereal—at least that packaging was identifiable. She found Henrik standing in the middle of the next aisle, in front of the pasta selection. One of his hands was shoved into the pockets of his shorts again. He turned to her and smiled.

  “You forgot pasta and tomato sauce,” he said, gesturing to her list. “A meal with a long shelf life.”

  This wasn’t the kind of meal she had eaten since college, but Henrik was right. She needed to buy food that would keep for a while, not just what she liked best. She pushed her cart over to where he was standing.

  “So why were you looking for your father’s translator?” Henrik asked.

  “I—I found a stack of my father’s journals in his desk,” she said, though she was suddenly unsure of how much she wanted to share with him. She had imagined the translator as a faceless necessity in this process, but now, with a real person in front of her—an unpredictable one, at that—Mel was less sure if she wanted to share this project. She wasn’t sure she should be working closely on anything with Henrik.

  “And you want them translated. I’ll take a look at them when we get back,” he said decidedly, and then turned away.

  “Aren’t you going to wait for me to ask you for help?” she called after him.

  “Do you have any other options?” he asked over his shoulder.

  No, of course she didn’t.

  “But—but I don’t think it would be a good idea,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Why not?” he asked, turning to face her.

  He was challenging her, daring her to say something.

  Because if I didn’t desperately need your help on the island, I would have run in the opposite direction the moment you tore the plastic off the window hole and caught me standing naked? Because the thought of being alone in a room with you every day sounds like trouble? Of course, she couldn’t put any of this into words. The tenderness she had felt just an aisle back was turning into something more complicated, and Mel had no desire to identify it.

  “We’ll see,” she finally said and turned to walk down the aisle. “I have some money left from the book advance, but it’s probably not enough to translate all of the journals. We’ll have to figure out how much it covers and which ones are worthwhile.”

  He moved in front of her, and once again she found herself standing close to him, looking up into his determined eyes. He seemed to enjoy catching her off guard.

  “I wouldn’t take money for the translation,” he said evenly.

  This wasn’t the answer Mel had expected. She was at a loss for how to respond. Finally, she asked, “Why would you do it for free?”

  “That’s my own decision.”

  This wasn’t a negotiation of terms; he wanted to do things his way. She gritted her teeth at his answer as he loomed over her. This was her project, not his.

  “I think it would work better if I paid you,” she said quietly.

  Henrik’s expression changed a little, and he watched her for a moment before he spoke.

  “Let’s not decide this right now. We’ll figure out the details when I look at the journals,” he said. He paused and then added, “Is that okay?”

  Mel couldn’t hold back a chuckle. He raised his eyebrows.

  “Is that your best effort at compromise?” she finally said with a smile.

  Henrik looked away and slowly shook his head. Then Mel saw the corners of his mouth curve up until he was grinning, too.

  Chapter 4

  “Next time let’s consider how much all this weighs before you put it in your cart,” called Henrik. He was waiting at the corner and watching as Mel set down her grocery bags for the third time. She regretted insisting she carry her share.

  “Thank you for that very helpful tip,” she said, stretching her fingers, coaxing the blood back into them. He was carrying half of the groceries, Mel reminded herself, so he was, in fact, entitled to an opinion.

  “Two more blocks and we’ll be at the dock and on our way,” he said.

  Mel closed the gap between them and set her bags down again. She glanced down the row of shops they were slowly moving through.

  “Um, I need a swimsuit, too,” she said. She had avoided mentioning it on the trip over, not wanting to remind him—or herself—of the episode the day before.

  At least he attempted to hide his smile. She’d give him that. Instead he eyed the groceries they were carrying.

  “Now?”

  She sighed and just looked at him. He stared at her, too, eyebrows raised, but his grin lit up his face.

  “Never mind,” he chuckled. “I think there’s a place on this block.”

  He took a step back to look along the storefronts and pointed at a place a little further down.

  “I’ll wait outside with the bags,” he said.

  They parked their load outside, and Mel stepped into the small boutique. She looked around. This store was clearly for vacationers, she thought as she eyed the skimpy bikinis and gauzy cover-ups. She turned over the price tag of the first suit she came to, a red string bikini, and her jaw dropped. How could the store charge so much for such tiny scraps of material?

  She turned to the saleswoman behind the counter, who was engrossed in something clearly more important than customers.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes, of course,” said the saleswoman, looking up with what seemed like a forced smile.

  But not gladly? wondered Mel.

  “Um,” started Mel, looking around the store again. “I’m looking for a one-piece.”

  The saleswoman just stared at her.

  “Do you have one?” Mel asked, a little quieter.

  The woman narrowed her eyes, “One piece? You just want to buy the top or the bottom?”

  “No” she said, shaking her head. “I definitely want to cover everything. Including the middle.”

  Mel gestured along her body, but the woman didn’t smile. Instead, she shook her head and went back to whatever she was reading on the counter.

  “Okay,” she whispered to herself and turned back out the door.

  Henrik was leaning against a tree along the sidewalk with his arms crossed.

  “That was quick,” he said.

  “The store didn’t have what I wanted,” she said quickly. “Let’s go.”

  But Henrik didn’t move. She looked back up at him, and he had a hint of a smile on his face.

  “It looks like they have plenty of suits in the window,” he said, gesturing to the store front.

  Mel narrowed her eyes. Did the conversation have to go in this direction? Fine, she’d say it.

/>   “Those aren’t suits. Those are bikinis, and barely even that. I’m looking for a suit that’s a little less… revealing.”

  “This is coming from the woman who has enormous holes in both sides of her swimsuit? Maybe you could combine the two sets of suits for full coverage.”

  She let out a snort of laughter, but her cheeks burned. He had seen the hole that revealed her ass, too? She crossed her arms over her chest in a residual effort to cover herself.

  “Are you done? Because I’m ready to go.”

  “Honestly, I think the bikini is the more modest choice,” he said, laughing.

  Silently, she had to agree, but she wasn’t going back into that store.

  “I’ll wait until I find a decent suit,” she said, then added, “Besides, the saleswoman wasn’t particularly friendly.”

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, and before Mel could register what he was doing, Henrik walked into the swimsuit store, leaving her with the groceries.

  He emerged a few minutes later with a small, fancy green bag and handed it to her.

  She looked inside and found the red string bikini she had seen in the front of the store.

  “You can’t just buy this for me,” she said, handing the bag back to him.

  He let out his own snort of laughter and shook his head. “Well, I’m certainly not going to wear it.”

  “I’m not wearing it either,” she said.

  Henrik crossed his arms and took a step closer, making their height difference more pronounced. He looked down at her and said softly, “‘Thank you’ would be the polite response.”

  Was it possible to be irritated and turned on at the same time? Up until that moment, Mel would have denied it, but as she looked up into Henrik’s deep green eyes, both those feelings hit her at once. Despite the grin, his eyes settled on her with a look of challenge. Once again, he was toying with her, though the game seemed a little clearer this time. She took a deep breath.

  “Thank you for making a decision I’d prefer to make on my own,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. She lifted one of the suit pieces out of the bag, two tiny strips of fabric attached with long strings, and raised her eyebrows. “How do you know this fits?”