Chapter Thirteen
THE WATER WAS a touch too warm for Summer’s liking.
She’d only done twenty laps, with another twenty yet to swim, and she already felt like she was going to overheat.
Still, this indoor pool was her only option; it was the sole one within riding distance of M?rten’s house.
At least it was sparkling clean, and there was a gym right next door where she would lift some weights after her laps.
She reached the end of the pool, somersaulted into a turn, and kicked off to start another lap.
She was in the rhythm now, in her groove, and she quite enjoyed the weightless feeling of gliding through the soft, clear water, her arms slicing like knives through butter, her legs kicking strongly, her breathing regular and smooth.
Stroke, stroke, breathe. Stroke, stroke, breathe.
It was akin to meditation. But it was doing little to rid her of all these insidious thoughts of M?rten.
She’d been in Sweden for six days now, and she felt like she might be going insane.
They’d settled into a sort of routine, an almost domestic, homey routine.
He was easy to live with; she’d give him that much.
Apart from the grilling he gave her as to where she’d been and what she’d been up to all day when he came home from work—as if he were some kind of cop or something—M?rten was laid-back about most things.
He was a skilled cook, coming up with nutritious and tasty dishes most nights.
She always helped him in the kitchen; she hated anybody waiting upon her. And she was a pretty good cook herself.
When he asked what she wanted to eat, she’d requested healthy, high-protein meals, with lots of vegetables, and he’d come through every night.
She’d need to start carb-loading three to four days before the race, but right now she was enjoying all the fresh, tasty ingredients, often stopping off at the little gourmet grocer to pick up a few things after a ride.
But it was more than just the cooking. M?rten also kept his house tidy.
She couldn’t vouch for his bedroom as it was the one place she hadn’t yet been invited, even though the devil on her shoulder had her halfway up the stairs more than once while M?rten was at work before she stopped herself.
The man deserved to be afforded the same privacy she would’ve wanted for herself.
He was even good with his hands. Look at the beautiful kitchen he’d built all by himself, and the way he had restored his little cottage.
He even did the neighborly thing and helped the old lady down the road, for God’s sake.
Summer knew he was far from perfect, but right now it was difficult to find a flaw in the man.
As long as she ignored the fact he’d got all growly and overprotective back in Seattle, as if he had some kind of right to tell her what to do because he was a cop and she was a woman in distress.
And maybe he was a little OCD about some things. But then, wasn’t she the same?
They’d chat over their meal, sitting on the front porch, slapping away the annoying tiny gnats and listening to the songbirds searching for their last morsel before retiring to bed.
She learned a lot about him during those evenings.
He was compassionate and caring, with a very strong moral compass.
It was almost like he didn’t want to see the bad side of anyone, which was an interesting trait for a police officer, and made Summer wonder how he coped with seeing the darker aspect of humanity on a daily basis.
The problem was she was beginning to like M?rten.
Really like him. It wasn’t just physical lust anymore.
She liked that he was a closet romantic; she could tell by the books on his bookshelf.
And they weren’t just fifty shades of gray; there were a couple of Nicholas Sparks novels, and she’d even spotted Outlander lying open on the coffee table when they’d first arrived home, which he’d quickly removed.
They might well have been left by an old girlfriend, but M?rten had mentioned in passing that he’d never actually lived with anyone before.
Which was a shock in itself, but it explained the masculine feel to his cottage.
While it’d been sensitively renovated, it was lacking those small, almost insignificant touches that only a woman could bring.
Summer finished her laps, got out and showered off the chlorine.
It was still early, and she had the whole day to fill before M?rten came home.
If only she could stop that stupid little desperate flutter of her heart every time she thought about cooking with M?rten in his kitchen tonight.
Bumping elbows with him as she chopped vegetables.
Watching the quirky way the corner of his mouth lifted as he concentrated on stirring a sauce on the stove.
Oh, blast! This would never do. More distraction was called for. And the gym next door would do nicely.
An hour and a half later, Summer stumbled out of the door to where her bicycle was locked to a special rack; she loved how the bike-centric lifestyle here in Sweden made everything so easy for someone like her who relied on her bicycle.
Her legs wobbled a little as she lifted her bike from the rack, and she cursed silently.
She’d overdone it with the weights today in an effort to rid M?rten from her system.
Which was stupid; the last thing she needed was to injure herself a week out from a major race.
Looking up as she put on her helmet, her fingers stalled at the buckle as something caught her eye.
A woman was getting into a car on the edge of the parking lot.
She had short, dark hair and was a little on the plump side.
She looked very much like Paige. But that couldn’t be right.
The FBI was still looking for her missing friend on another continent.
Summer must’ve been seeing things. Her too-hard workout was making her hallucinate.
It was a trick of the shadows cast by the flickering birch leaves in the sunshine, that was all.
There were plenty of women out there who resembled Paige, and it was wishful thinking on Summer’s part.
She wanted Paige to be alive. Wanted her to be rescued from this savage abductor so she could be reunited with her fiancé and then they could put Tyrone in jail forever.
The FBI was learning more about Tyrone King as they dug deeper into his past. His upbringing had been anything but stereotypical, as he’d been born in Pennsylvania, when his Black father had married a white dairy farmer’s daughter, not a common occurrence in that state.
But it seemed he’d left Pennsylvania as an impressionable teenager after his father had committed suicide when the bank repossessed the dairy farm.
The story was terribly sad, but the real tragedy of Tyrone’s life emerged when Jacob told M?rten the reason the family believed they’d lost the farm was because a large gas company had drilled fracking wells on the outskirts of the farm and it’d poisoned their water, and in turn all their animals.
Tyrone’s hatred of mining companies was now making sense, not that she condoned his actions.
His story was that of a tragic villain with a painful past. But surely someone as astute and dynamic as Paige wouldn’t be drawn in by that narrative of heartbreak and woe. Would she?
Summer stared thoughtfully after the car as it completed a U-turn and sped off down the narrow country road and she lifted her leg over the bike seat and pedaled slowly back to M?rten’s.