said rapidly, “I’ll tell you why I married Donald…why I made the worst mistake in my whole life. If you still want to hear about it.”
“Of course I do. That’s what I came here for.”
“I was born in Toronto,” she said. “My father left when I was seven. I still don’t know why, my mother would never talk about it. She was heartbroken. A few months later she got very sick and she died. Young as I was, I knew she didn’t want to go on living without him. I was brought to Askja to live with Great-aunt Gudrun…other than Uncle Erik she was my only remaining relative, and he was hardly suitable as a surrogate parent for a little girl just turned seven.”
So Katrin’s father had run away from his family responsibilities, just as Luke’s mother had from hers. Not that Luke was going to tell Katrin that. “Go on,” he said softly.
“At first I hated it here. We’d lived in the heart of the city and all of a sudden I was living in a village where everyone knew everyone else and there wasn’t as much as a toy shop.” Her smile was rueful. “But my great-aunt was patient and kind, and gradually I came to love the place…she died when I was seventeen, and left me this house.”
“You came back to your roots.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Katrin smiled. “Yes, I did. But I wanted more than my Icelandic heritage—I wanted to know about my father. He left here when he was young, after a fight with his father, who was Great-aunt Gudrun’s elder brother. He never got in touch with his parents again, and they knew nothing about where he’d gone. After my great-aunt died, I tried to trace him. Eventually I discovered he’d died just the year before, picking grapes in the Napa Valley in California.”
“So you went there.”
She nodded. “I found out very little. He was a wanderer, never stayed long at any job. He had no friends and no money. So I guess he’ll always remain a stranger to me…it was while I was searching through some old records in San Francisco that I met Donald.”
Wishing he’d accepted her offer of a drink, Luke waited for her to continue. She said in a rush, “It’s such a trite story. Donald was years older than me, and I was, of course, looking for a father figure. Classic, isn’t it? Besides, I was alone in a strange country, and he could be very charming when he chose. I fell in love. Or thought I did. We were married, I trained to be a broker, and for a while everything was more or less okay. I was very busy, first as a junior in a big firm, then moving to a better position in another firm, you know how it goes. But busy as I was, I couldn’t be oblivious forever. Gradually I realized Donald was being unfaithful to me. Not just once, but on a regular basis. But even worse than that were the people he’d bring into the house. His friends and business associates. Men I didn’t want to be in the same room with.”
Again she dug at the table with her nail. “Well, you know the rest. Things went from bad to worse, especially after he informed me he had no intention of changing his ways. Then one night we had this blazing row. I told him I was leaving him, he threatened to cut me out of his will, and I left.”
“So he still wanted you as his wife.”
“I guess so. I was good cover, being so trustworthy and respectable.”
“Don’t be bitter, Katrin,” Luke said gently.
“You don’t know how angry I’ve been at myself for being so trusting for so long. Anyway, after I left the house I went straight to Susan and Robert’s. Thank goodness I did that. I still shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn’t had that alibi.”
So did he. “It’s a tribute to you that you had such good friends…are you still in touch with them?”
“We write regularly. They moved to Maryland last year.”
So he couldn’t suggest she come to San Francisco to visit her friends Susan and Robert. “I can’t believe I didn’t meet you somewhere in the city during those years,” Luke said.
“I kept a very low profile. First I was studying like a fiend, then I started dissociating myself from Donald and his friends.” She shrugged restlessly. “I should have left him months before I did. But one of my great-aunt’s precepts was to believe the best of everyone until you had evidence to the contrary. I guess I kept looking for the best in Donald. He wasn’t altogether bad—he could be very witty, and not unkind, as long as I didn’t interfere with his plans.”
“Not much of an endorsement,” Luke said dryly. He wanted to ask what sex had been like for her; and found he couldn’t get his tongue around the words. He was jealous, he thought incredulously. Jealous of a dead man.
She said in a low voice, “I finally found out about his ventures on the wrong side of the law, and that was the end of it. I should never have married him! But even now, I hate to think of the way he died. That someone hated him enough to kill him.”
“You’re a good woman, Katrin,” Luke said.
“Not really,” she muttered. “When I came back here, I felt so battered and ashamed. I couldn’t tell people about the trial, I just wanted to put it behind me. So all I said was that I was widowed. Only Anna knows the real truth.” She ducked her head. “I lied, in effect.”
“You looked after yourself,” Luke said strongly. “The trial was no one else’s business.”
“I suppose.” Picking at a loose thread in the sleeve of her sweater, her eyes downcast, Katrin said in a strangled voice, “So now what do we do, Luke?”
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. “Have you made love with anyone other than Donald?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been wary of men ever since I left San Francisco. And on Askja, there’s not a whole lot of choice.”
Knowing he was ridiculously pleased by her answer, making no move to touch her, Luke said, “I’ve got a suggestion. Hear me out and think about it before you reply.”
She nodded, looking very wary. Luke said evenly, “Let’s spend the night together. Here. Then in the morning I’ll drive back to the airport and we’ll go our separate ways.”
Her lashes flickered. “And what will that accomplish?”
“There’s something going on between us, we both know that. This way we can have the best of two worlds…find out what it is without any messy complications.”
“Without any emotions, is that what you mean?”
“Without us getting entangled in a relationship neither of us wants!”
“You have it all figured out.”
“You can say no, Katrin,” he said in a hard voice.
She glared at him, tilting her chin. “I’m not going to do that.”
“So is that a resounding yes?”
“You don’t want a resounding anything!”
“At least I’m honest about it.”
“There are times,” Katrin said trenchantly, “when you make me extraordinarily angry.”
“Yes or no,” Luke said.
“Yes,” she blurted.
The bravado died from her face. She looked appalled; she looked as though she might change her mind any moment. Luke pushed back his chair with a jarring scrape of wood on wood. “Don’t look so frightened…it’ll be fine. You’ll see.” He walked around the table, took her cold hands and chafed them within his warmer ones. “Where’s your bedroom?”
“Down the hall.”
He pulled her to her feet and led the way, still clasping her by the hand. If ever there was a time for him to keep a lid on his own needs, it was now. No matter that Katrin had said Donald wasn’t unkind; Luke would be willing to swear in any court in the land