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Robin Brande

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Beschreibung

Annie Linley needs a change--a big one. Burned out as a teacher, betrayed by her boyfriend, she's looking for something dramatic to shake up her life.

On impulse, she books a trip to Iceland, where she'll stay at the horse farm run by quiet, brooding Kjartan. Annie is in for more change than she realizes: Hot nights in a cold climate have a way of melting hearts.
 

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HEART OF ICE

(HEARTS ON FIRE, BOOK 1)

ROBIN BRANDE

RYER PUBLISHING

HEART OF ICE

(Hearts on Fire, Book 1)

By Robin Brande

Published by Ryer Publishing

www.ryerpublishing.com

Original Copyright 2012 by Elizabeth Ruston/Robin Brande

Revised Edition Copyright 2014 by Robin Brande

www.robinbrande.com

All rights reserved.

Cover photo Dreamstime.com

Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design, Inc.

www.gobookcoverdesign.com

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Annie’s and Shannon’s Stories Continue…

About the Author

Also by Robin Brande

1

“It’s not too late.”

Annie smiled. “I’m going.”

Her cousin Shannon took another bite of airport hamburger and shook her head. “I can’t believe it. The first impulsive thing you do in your life, and you don’t even invite me along.”

Annie stole a cluster of fries. “Well? Want to come?”

“To the North Pole? No, thank you.”

“It’s not the North Pole. It’s Iceland.”

“Yeah, listen: Ice-land.”

“It’s a trick,” Annie explained. “Greenland is ice, Iceland is green.”

“I don’t care. You’ll freeze.”

“The lowest it will be is forty degrees. I’ve got clothes for that.”

“And not much else if that’s all you’re taking,” Shannon said, pointing to Annie’s single carry-on bag.

“I don’t need much. I don’t plan on going anywhere.”

“Forty degrees? That’s freezing for you. You hate the cold.”

Annie shrugged.

“What,” her cousin asked, “has gotten into you?”

“I’m just going,” Annie answered. “I’m not going to worry about it.”

Shannon shook her head. “I leave you alone for a week—”

“See? That’s what happens when you go on vacation and don’t write.”

“They don’t have e-mail in the woods.”

“Your loss. I would have told you about it much sooner—yesterday, at least.”

“Did you really just decide?” Shannon asked. “Just like that?”

“Yep. I know—it’s not like me. Strange, huh?”

Shannon eyed her cousin skeptically. “Is there more to this than I know?”

“Like what?”

“It’s the Mark thing, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Shannon raised one eyebrow. “Oh, that’s right—I don’t know you.”

Annie couldn’t help chuckling. Although she didn’t see her cousin often enough anymore, Shannon was still like a sister to her. They had both grown up as the only girls in households full of boys. From the time they were infants until they graduated from high school they spent part of every summer together, a united front against their brothers, an exclusive two-girl club for sharing secrets and sympathy.

When Annie’s mother died a few years ago, Shannon had taken the red-eye from Minneapolis to Phoenix, then rented a car and driven to Tucson, just to sit quietly by Annie’s side and listen to her cousin cry. When Shannon’s marriage had fallen into ruin, Annie flew up to help Shannon move to an apartment and rearrange the pieces of her life.

They were both 31 now, both single again. They shared their mothers’ good looks: ivory skin, gray-green eyes, dark brown hair that Shannon kept in short, soft curls and Annie wore in a sleek page-boy cropped at the neck.

“So,” Annie said, seizing control of the conversation, “did you have fun with...what’s his name?”

“David. Fun, but not so fun.”

“Not a camper, huh?”

“Not in the least.”

“But I’m sure he has other fine qualities.”

Shannon chewed thoughtfully. “Some.”

“Shan, do you really think taking a guy backpacking for a week is a fair test of his qualities as a boyfriend?”

“Yes. How am I going to know if a man measures up unless I can see him make a campfire?”

“That’s your brothers talking.”

“But they have a point.”

“So he failed the test, huh?” Annie asked.

Shannon jutted out her thumb and flipped it over. “Cute, but inept.”

“Out he goes?”

“Out he goes.” Shannon sat back and surveyed the gathering crowd of passengers. “Look at all these people,” she whispered. “Iceland must be the land of the blonds. People are going to stare at you everywhere you go.”

Annie scanned the ticketing area. It was true: Most of the people were fair-skinned and blond. “Good. Finally I’ll get to look exotic.”

“What do they speak there?”

“English. And Icelandic. And I think maybe Danish.”

“What do you even know about this place?”

Annie held up her guidebook. “Everything I need to know for now.”

“And someone’s going to meet you?”

“I take a bus from the airport, then someone from the horse farm will pick me up where it lets off.”

Shannon shook her head. She took another bite of burger. “And this horse farm thing. What’s it called?”

“Saga Farm.”

“Saga Farm, right. So where’d that idea come from? I thought you were afraid of horses. Every time I’ve tried to teach you, you hated it.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, but what if—”

Annie squeezed her cousin’s knee. “Stop it—I mean it. I’m going, so be happy for me.”

“I am happy for you,” Shannon said, beating Annie to the last of the fries. “Of course I am. And I’m really proud of you. I know this isn’t your kind of thing—a long plane ride—over an ocean, for heaven’s sake—going to a foreign country—I mean, where have you ever been before?”

“Nowhere. That’s the point.”

“And going by yourself,” Shannon continued. “I don’t get that. Where’d all this come from?”

Annie shrugged. “I just decided I’ve been too afraid of things. I’ve been letting my life slip by.”

“It’s because of Mark. Admit it.”

Annie sighed. “I don’t know, maybe. I guess that was just the last thing that helped me decide I needed this. So that’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” said Shannon, “it’s good you caught him groping Miss Biology in the teachers’ lounge. It’s good he’s been cheating on you for who knows how long. It’s good he’s a—”

Annie held up her hand. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, hoping to convince herself. “It’s over. I’ve moved on.”

Shannon bit the inside of her cheek. “Can I just say I hope they’ll be very miserable together?”

“I’m sure they will be.”

“Listen, I know you don’t want to hear this—”

“Then don’t say it.”

Shannon was never one to be put off. “I’m not excusing him—he’s a complete bastard—but you should know that not every guy is willing to date someone for four months without some action.”

“There was action.”

“Not of that particular kind. Come on, Annie. Don’t you think maybe there’s such a thing as going too slow?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” She pretended to take great interest in the rest of her burger. “So what are you going to do about next year? Keep teaching there?”

“I don’t know. I already told the principal I’ll be renewing my contract.”

“But school’s not for a month and a half,” Shannon said, “right? You can change your mind.”

“And do what?” Annie asked. “I’ve been there longer than Mark has. I’m not leaving just because of him.”

“But I thought you weren’t happy there this year anyway.”

Annie shrugged in resignation. “I don’t know, Shan. I don’t want to think about any of that right now. I want to go to Iceland. I want to be someplace where I have to wear a coat in the summer. I want to see where the Vikings lived and walk where they walked and learn to ride a horse and...” She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “I just want to live a bigger life for once—you, of all people, can understand that, right?”

Shannon touched her forehead to her cousin’s and whispered, “You bet.”

What am I doing? Annie wondered. She was three hours into the six-hour flight, her legs cramping, her mind spinning. No going back. Just do this.

No wonder Shannon thought she was crazy. Annie had called her just two days before and announced her plans. She would fly to Minneapolis, meet Shannon in the airport for a few hours, then keep going to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.

All because of a story. Annie had left out that part when explaining to Shannon her reasons for going. But the truth was, if not for coming across that story, Annie would still be home sweating through another Tucson summer and fuming over her ex-boyfriend’s infidelity.

Someone had left the book out on the library table. She had never heard of the sagas of the Icelanders, but there they were, just a fraction of them collected in one thick volume. Annie had some vague impression of the Vikings and their exploits, but here were epic tales as absorbing as any of the Greek legends she had studied in college.

Hardy seamen and warriors and their even hardier wives. Women widowed and remarrying repeatedly as their men fell under sword or wave. Love affairs giving rise to blood feuds that spanned generations.

And there in the midst of the turmoil was the fearsome Freydis, illegitimate daughter to the Erik the Red, half-sister to the great explorer Leifur Erikson.

Pregnant, unarmed, the men in her party besieged by a band of warriors who had landed on their beach, Freydis erupted into action. She refused to give in to the inevitable slaughter. She charged down the beach toward the invaders, scooped up a sword from one of her fallen companions, and shouted with all the fury of a wild animal. She tore open her shirt and bared her swollen breasts. Now she had the warriors’ attention. She beat the sword against her breast, screaming and cursing and threatening their very souls. The invaders fled to their boats and rowed away, Freydis’s screams filling their ears.

Wow. Annie had thought. Why can’t I have that kind of fire?

Sitting there in the library, the sagas open on her lap, she replayed the scene in the teachers’ lounge.

I open the door. There’s Mark, there’s Sherry. His hand is hidden behind her. He looks up, sees me, pulls his hand away. They scoot away from each other and smile at me in that fake, guilty way.

I run to the coffee machine. Rip open my blouse. Pour scalding coffee on my breast...

Annie shuddered. No, try again.

I rip open my blouse. (Leave the lacy bra on—it’s one of my favorites—no point in ruining it on his account.) Take the grammar book I’m holding and beat it against my breast while shouting—while shouting—

And there the fantasy ended. What could she have said? “I wasted four months on you! Die, fiend!” Words seemed inadequate. Maybe she’d done the only thing she could do under the circumstances: close the door and walk away.

He tried to lie, of course, but Annie knew. She realized she had known for weeks. She didn’t love him, but hoped to if she gave it enough time.

Once again Annie wondered if it was really her fault, rather than any of the men she’d met. Yes, Mark was a bastard, just like Shannon said, but so what? What about any of the others she’d tried to talk herself into liking? Maybe there was something wrong with her. This kind of numbness inside her, this hollow in her chest that had only grown larger since her mother died.

Maybe that’s why the Icelandic sagas had hit her so hard. Women like Freydis weren’t numb. The women in those tales were passionate and angry and fierce. They loved so hard their men sometimes died from it. Nobody was living a half-life. Nobody was just watching their lives pass by, wondering if there was something missing that would help them feel more. Those people felt plenty, every second of the day.

So she’d done the unexpected. For once in her life been irrational. Gone home, done a bit of research, and booked her trip that very night. Then packed a single bag and left her home behind before she could think too hard about what she was doing.

She would play the part of heroine for once—bold, uncompromising, fearless. Maybe she would find a bit of Freydis’s spirit somewhere in Iceland, and let the woman warrior fill the hollow in her heart.

The flight attendant moved through the cabin with a cart of duty-free items. Annie glanced at the jewelry on top. What she needed was a duty-free vacation—no obligations, no schedule, no one expecting anything from her. She closed her eyes and settled back into her seat for last three hours of her flight.

Kjartan Thorbjornson grunted his good mornings. Five riders stood waiting in the stable, their boots already muddy.

“You,” Kjartan said, pointing to a gray-bearded German, “get a helmet.” Kjartan surveyed the rest of the group. He could usually tell from the way they stood which ones were the novice riders. He picked out a British woman standing stiffly near the railing. He would assign her the slowest horse. The rest—he’d just have to see. He could switch around horses on the trail once he had a better sense of his customers’ skill.

Kjartan’s assistant Petra, a red-haired German woman in her late twenties who had been working for him on the farm for the past five summers, helped her countryman select a riding helmet. They muttered in low tones, deferring to Kjartan’s preference for silence. When the man was properly capped, Kjartan said simply, “Good.”

While Petra cinched the saddles and checked the bridles, Kjartan directed riders to their horses. “You, take that one. You, over here.” The group was a mix of Germans and French and a Brit, with Kjartan the only Icelander. English was the group’s common language. Although Kjartan, like all Icelanders, had learned English in elementary school, he still preferred using as few words of it as possible. Even when speaking Icelandic he was terse. No good had ever come from saying too much.

He was right about the British woman. She clutched her legs around the horse like she was straddling a high wall.

“Petra,” he mumbled to his assistant, “that one’s yours.”

Petra nodded. She led her horse toward the woman’s, then withdrew a tether from her coat pocket and clipped the two bridles together. “We’ll go slow,” Petra assured her. The woman nodded nervously.

Kjartan looked at his watch. He preferred to move through his day without ever looking at the time, but he didn’t have that luxury today. He had three groups to guide before supper, and another one that night. In between he had supplies to pick up, a meeting with the vet who was coming out to check on one of the mares, and a new guest arriving at the bus stop.

In his e-mail confirming her registration, he’d promised someone would meet her with the van. Kjartan worked through the logistics as he turned his horse onto the trail. If he took this group across the short cut, he would just make the American’s bus in time.

Americans. Why his ex-wife had been so fascinated with them, he still didn’t understand.

In his eight years running a tourist horse farm, Kjartan had found Americans to be arrogant, self-involved, and condescending. More of them arrived every year as travel magazines touted the charm of Reykjavik and the country’s exotic landscapes filled with volcanoes, glaciers, and towering waterfalls. One man—a tax attorney from Dallas—had actually told Kjartan he was disappointed the volcano looming over the farm hadn’t erupted during his visit. Kjartan bit his tongue and nodded empathetically.

The ones who came to his farm had seen pictures of shaggy Icelandic horses and thought the “ponies” would be fun to ride. They had no appreciation for the horses’ history as the original Viking breed, kept pure for the last thousand years. He could count on one hand the Americans who knew anything about Iceland beyond the fact that the singer Björk was from there.

Because most Icelanders spoke English, the Americans made no effort to learn even the simplest Icelandic words. Those who had stayed at the farm expected world-class, 24-hour service, despite the fact that Kjartan did most of the work alone. Petra had worked for him over the past several summers—cooking, cleaning the cottages, helping him guide trips —but the bulk of the details still fell on Kjartan’s shoulders.

Which was why he would have to find time to retrieve the American from the bus stop.

American or not, this one was traveling alone, and that posed its own burdens. Male or female, the solo traveler expected to be entertained, coddled. Kjartan had neither the time nor the patience.

He would make it Petra’s job to keep this woman Annie out of his way.

2

Annie set her bag on the concrete outside the little grocery store where the bus had dropped her off. She checked her watch: 11:10 AM. The bus had left her there five minutes early. She sat on top of her carry-on bag, leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes. She was not going to sleep—this was just a long, slow blink. She would obey all the advice she read on the Internet and stay awake until her normal bedtime.

She awoke to a gentle nudge against her shoulder.

“Here for Saga Farm?” the man asked.

Annie nodded, disoriented. She pushed onto unsteady legs. “Sorry. What time is it?” She glanced at her watch.

Kjartan mumbled something. He reached for her bag and stowed it in the back of the van.

“I’m Annie. Are you Mr....” She waited, wanting him to pronounce it first. The name looked daunting in his e-mail—Thor-something—and she knew she would butcher it.

“Kjartan,” he answered. “No ‘Mr’.” He pronounced his first name in two syllables, K’YAR-tun.

Annie repeated it, trying to imitate the soft roll of the “r.” “Would you say your last name for me?”

“Thor-B’YORN-son.” Again, with the rolling “r’s.” It sounded lovely coming from someone who was a native speaker. Annie was sure her hard “r’s” and flat American accent would not do it justice.

The idea of Icelandic surnames intrigued her. The guidebook explained that last names were based on a father’s first name and the gender of his child. Women’s names ended in “dottir,” men’s in “son.” Instead of Linley, Annie’s last name would be Alansdottir. Her brothers would be Alanssons. The guidebook pointed out the confusion Icelandic families generated when traveling abroad, since mother, father, and children all had different last names.

While she waited in the airport that morning for the bus to arrive, she had checked something else the guidebook mentioned. The phone book—a thin publication covering the entire population of the island—had listings by first name only. She scanned the pages: Gudrun Arnolfsdottir... Gudrun Magnusdottir...Gudrun Sigurdardottir. Every now and then a clearly foreign name would pop out at her: James McKenzie (listed with the “J’s”). Susan Jenkins, right after Solija Olvikdottir.

Kjartan reached for her bag. He scanned the area around her. “Is this the only one?”

“Yes. I thought—well, I assume it’s not fancy at the farm. No formal dinners or anything,” she added, smiling.

“Nei. No formal dinners.”

Kjartan opened the sliding door and offered Annie a hand up. Uncomfortable with the gesture, she ignored his hand and climbed in. When he was seated behind the wheel she asked, “How far is it?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Thanks for picking me up.”

Kjartan seemed too absorbed by the sheet of paper on the seat next to him to answer.

“What’s the weather been like?” Annie tried.

He lifted his eyes to the rear view mirror. “Not so good today. It was better last week.”

She nodded, noting the rough gray clouds outside the window. “Will it rain, do you think?”

“Já.” The word had a strange, round sound to it, a cross between “Yow” and “Yo.” It sounded closer to “no” than “yes.”

“No?” Annie repeated.

“Yes,” Kjartan enunciated, clearly annoyed.

Annie settled back onto the seat. Fine. She wasn’t here to make friends with every Icelander. The guidebook was right again: The people here were much more reserved than Americans. The book suggested she could get Icelanders talking if she approached them gently, but otherwise, she shouldn’t expect much open interaction.

Right now she was too tired to care. In fact, she was grateful for the quiet. She closed her eyes—just for a few minutes—while the van glided down the road.

She awoke even more disoriented than before. She sat up and looked outside the window of the van. It was parked in the driveway of a two-story house. Equipment in various states of disrepair rested against the wall. Next to the house was a smaller structure she took to be the stables, since a line of people exited, towing their horses by the reins.

Annie noticed her seatbelt—which she always wore—was unbuckled. Her bag was gone, too. On the seat beside her was a key marked “4.”

Annie ran a hand over her hair and swiped her sleeve across her mouth. She must look a mess. Who cares—she didn’t know anyone there, and wasn’t that part of the point? She could be whomever she wanted for the next two and a half weeks.

Coffee. Her body screamed for it. Her head ached from sleep deprivation and caffeine withdrawal. The guidebook had promised Iceland was a land of coffee addicts. Annie was ready to join them. She had no illusions about finding a Starbucks anywhere near, but she had the feeling the native brew could be even better.

She slid open the door to the van and stepped onto the soft dirt. The ground was slightly spongy, as though it were never completely dry.

She clutched the key in her hand and looked around for the cottages she had seen on the farm’s website. To her right and down a foot path she saw them: four white wooden buildings that looked like small German restaurants. They had that same scalloped detail, the same flowery border painted on the edge of the eaves, that she had come to associate with bratwurst and sauerkraut. Shannon loved to drag Annie to the German restaurants in Minneapolis, where the two of them loaded their plates and suffered later through days of raucous indigestion.

Cottage number 4 was nearest the house. Annie climbed the two wooden steps onto the porch. Her bag was outside the door. She stood under the protective eave and slipped the key into the lock, then wrestled with the door. No luck. She backed up and checked the number on the front wall again, willing to believe her addled brain had made a mistake. No, number 4. Plus, she reminded herself, her bag was here.

Once again she tried to coax the door open, first pulling it toward her, then easing it away, all the while babying the key in the lock.

She paused to rest. This staying awake was too much for her. She hadn’t slept in—what, almost 24 hours? She didn’t count the stray cat naps she’d been taking every time she sat down. Annie concentrated her energy for one last try.

And broke the key in the lock.

“Great.”

She stumbled down the steps back onto the foot path. A young woman passed her and smiled. Annie’s reflexes were so slow she was unable to smile back before the woman was several feet down the path. Annie turned, curious. The young woman disappeared into the flaps of a faded blue two-person tent staked to the grass behind the house.

Campers. She had noticed tents all along the bus route—lone structures out in the middle of fields, a few clustered together near waterfalls and streams, half a dozen scattered throughout a designated campground. It was odd to see one set up so close to someone’s house, but what did Annie know about the customs there? Maybe everyone in these remote areas let people camp on their property.

She continued walking toward the stables. She could see a few people milling about. “Excuse me,” she called out, “is Kjartan there?”

None of them answered. The woman turned and said something to her male companion, who nodded. Another man looked at Annie blandly, then bent down to continue scraping mud from the side of his boot.

“He’s away,” said a voice behind Annie. She turned to find the young woman again. “Can I help you?” She added in a whisper, “I don’t think any of them speak English.”

“I need help with my door,” Annie told her. “I broke off the key.”

The young woman smiled warmly. “Ah! That happened to me once. Come inside. Let me see if I can find someone.”

Her accent was faintly French, although Annie couldn’t be sure. “Do you work here?” Annie asked.

“No, I am staying in the tent there, but they won’t mind if we go inside.”

She opened the door to the house without knocking. “Petra?” the young woman called. Casually she kicked off her boots and headed down the hall.

Annie followed.

“Oh, you need to take off your boots first,” the young woman said.

Annie remembered reading something about that in the guidebook. “Right, sorry.”

The woman smiled. “No problem. Are you American?”

“Yes. And you? French?”

“Yes.” She held out her hand. “My name is Sophie.”

“Annie.”

“Ah, you’re the woman who’s come alone.”

“Yes,” Annie answered, a little surprised.

“This was a good place to come. You’ll like it here.”

“At the farm, or in Iceland?”

“Both.”

Divested of her boots, Annie padded down the hall after Sophie. They entered a small kitchen taken up almost entirely by a long narrow table.

“Petra?” Sophie stepped into the room beyond the kitchen. “She must be out riding. Let me see what I can find.”

She led Annie into a small office just beyond the kitchen. A computer, printer, fax machine, and telephone crowded the worn pine desk. A shelf above the desk held dictionaries: English, German, French, Danish, Italian. Photographs—some color, some black and white—covered every inch of space along the walls.

Sophie ran her finger along a row of keys hanging from a peg board.

“You are number four?”

“Yes. But a key won’t help. I broke it off inside the lock.”

Sophie scowled. Her pleasant features showed none the worse for it. Annie admired the natural beauty of French women. In college she had made a pilgrimage once a week to the small, dirty theater near campus where all the foreign movies came. She had taken French for two years in high school, and continued through college. She enjoyed comparing the subtitles to what her ear could pick up and translate.

She loved the images of French life: the outright femininity of the women, the easy charm of the men, the flirting and maneuvering that inevitably led to bed. Annie spent her college years a virgin, and took vicarious pleasure in watching the freedom with which the characters entangled themselves with one another. One woman might sleep with three or four men in a good French romp. The films didn’t shy away from any of the details. Annie learned more from them than she did from reading romance novels.

She liked the way French women made themselves up: mascara on the upper lashes only, bright red lipstick, a subtle swipe of blush. They sat in cafés smoking, drinking coffee from large bowls. Although she couldn’t imagine smoking, Annie was happy to embrace the coffee habit. She gave away her mismatched mugs and started drinking from her soup bowls instead. She started treating herself to what she considered a classic French breakfast, dipping jam-slathered toast into bowls filled with half coffee, half milk.

Annie smiled at the memory now. Sophie was the first real French woman she had ever met. And it was clear the young woman’s beauty didn’t come from clever makeup techniques or tight, inviting clothes. Her skin was clean and pale, her eyes a wide, friendly blue, her full lips curved in a perpetual smile. Her long brown hair was matted—almost dreadlocked—and gathered in a careless ponytail. She looked at Annie with such open friendliness, Annie couldn’t help but smile back.

She also couldn’t help but make the association between Sophie and those imitation French breakfasts from college.

“I could really use some coffee,” Annie said. “Do you know where I can get some?”

“Yes, yes,” Sophie answered enthusiastically. “I’m sure you need some. Did you fly last night?”

“Last night, this morning—I’m not sure which.” Annie looked at her wristwatch. “Two o’clock here is...” She tried to picture the hands on a clock, running them backward seven hours to Arizona time. Her mind was moving so slowly...

“In Iceland, forget about time,” said Kjartan. He leaned into the office and pulled a stack of papers from his desk. Then he stood in the doorway, searching through the papers, not looking at either woman.

“She needs help with her door,” Sophie said.

Kjartan looked up. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” Annie said, “but I sort of broke the key off.”

She expected to hear the same irritation in his voice as before. Instead, he went back to shuffling through his papers. “I’ll take care of it. Just a moment.”

Satisfied, Sophie turned to the next issue. “Coffee. Come with me.”

Annie sat at the table while Sophie coasted confidently around the kitchen. She opened drawers, cupboards, assembled the supplies. She measured grounds from a yellow metal canister on the counter.

“How long have you been here?” Annie asked, registering the young woman’s familiarity with the place.

“A week.”

“Only a week?”

“Yes.” Sophie turned to her with a smile. “Why?”

“It’s just that—you act like you’ve lived in this house for a while.”

“It’s very casual,” Sophie explained. “You’ll get used to it.”

With the coffee brewing, Sophie sat across from Annie. She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. “Tell me everything.”

Annie laughed. “Everything. Okay, I came to learn to ride Icelandic horses.”

“You’ll love them. They’re beautiful.”

“Do you ride?”

“Yes. Every day since I’m here—sometimes twice a day.”

“Did you know how to ride before you came?”

“Yes. I have a horse of my own.”

“Oh.” Annie’s confidence lagged. She leaned forward so Kjartan wouldn’t hear. He still stood in the doorway to his office, shuffling through papers, apparently ignoring them both. “I’ve only ridden once or twice. I don’t really know how.”

“That’s all right,” Sophie whispered back. “You can learn.”

“The guidebook says Icelandic horses are easy to ride—that beginners can learn in a day. Do you think that’s true?”