4
During their first week of filming, making Maria and Peter look like absolute disasters took well over two hours every morning,
and Maria enjoyed every minute of the process.
“At first, he didn’t believe me,” Jeanine said, twisting and plaiting one side of Maria’s hair. “Then he asked whether it
was a Benjamin Button situation, because he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier, if you know what I mean.”
It was just so interesting , listening to Jeanine and watching her weave all those little braids, then backcomb them so Maria’s hair looked ratty and
big and ocean-ravaged and—frankly—like postclub sex hair. Then the hairstylist–slash–makeup artist–slash–costumer would smudge
kohl around Maria’s eyes and smear dirt on her face until, in the end, she resembled a well-fucked raccoon who’d recently
spent quality time in a dumpster.
When she got back to Sweden, she was totally re-creating the shipwrecked shield-maiden look one night, doing the same for
her friends, and hauling everyone to an expensive Stockholm bar, just to freak out all those urbane, besuited business types
there.
Peter required less makeup and fewer braids. Getting his beard the right degree of unkempt took extra time, though, and so
did the daily application of the prosthetic scar on his cheekbone and the swirling temporary tattoos on his strong arms and
broad chest.
Those tattoos, while slightly blurry and monochromatic, suited him far too well. As did his costume. Or rather, his lack thereof, because he spent those early days of filming shirtless, his chest bare, his shredded leather pants exposing more than a hint of his powerful thighs.
Too bad he was a jerk, because she wanted to lick him like an ice cream cone.
And once Maria donned her own tattered leather pants and torn woolen tunic... well, it was pretty amazing. Somehow, Jeanine
had made the castaway Viking thing both realistic and sexy. The woman wrought miracles daily for Maria and Peter.
Plus, Jeanine was delightful company. At over fifty years old, she looked thirty. And her greatest joy in life was bedding
men in their twenties without either lying about or revealing her own age ahead of time, then—afterward—savoring their reactions
as they found out.
It was Jeanine’s version of sports, Maria had concluded.
“Anyway,” Jeanine added, “then he called his mother while still in my room and apologized to her, for reasons I can’t quite
comprehend?”
“Wow.” Maria didn’t want to consider the Freudian implications too deeply. “Awkward.”
After ten days on the island, Jeanine had already received two marriage proposals from local fishermen. If what she did were a sport, the trophy would deservedly be hers.
One last tweak to a braid, and the other woman stepped away from Maria’s chair. “Done. Enjoy scrounging for seaweed and hauling
rocks, both of you.”
Maria and Peter got to their feet and headed for the shoreline, primped for another day of filming that would leave her staggering,
sore, and exhausted on her way back to their hotel.
Maybe Peter’s own exhaustion could explain why he’d lingered in a chair at the other end of the trailer and thumbed through a dog-eared paperback while Jeanine had worked on Maria today, instead of going outside and finding an isolated spot near the filming location.
It wasn’t raining yet, so that wasn’t his motivation for staying.
Besides, the island’s frequent drizzle—nippy even in June—hadn’t prevented him from fleeing her presence before today.
So, yeah, this was odd.
She and Peter had made it through their first week of on-location proximity without further hostilities, although the chill
between them remained. Before today, he’d still avoided her whenever possible, and she’d remained civil but hadn’t pushed
her company on him.
To be fair, he kept his distance from everyone. But with the crew, as opposed to her, that distance seemed more due to blanket
awkwardness than specific dislike. He might appear unfriendly in their presence, but she’d come to suspect he simply didn’t
know how to make casual conversation or find common ground with people he didn’t know. Both of which she would gladly help
him with, if he’d only thaw enough to let her.
Which he might not, and so be it. She wouldn’t let his iciness bother her. In fact, she’d been using it to enhance her performance.
Because the unspoken tension that coalesced between them, thicker than the island’s frequent fog? It helped her get into character.
Cassia was an independent, determined woman marooned alongside a man she didn’t like and didn’t trust and to whom she found
herself unwillingly attracted.
Maria could relate.
They’d almost reached the semicircle of crew surrounding the area where Cassia and Cyprian were hauling rocks from the shore and stacking them into an initial shelter.
More a wall than anything else, really. A windbreak that would suffice for the summer, as they built more permanent shelter and preserved food in preparation for the long, dark winter ahead.
To her absolute shock, Peter cleared his throat and—spoke? To her?
“Jeanine’s mistaken,” he muttered, looking straight ahead. “No more hauling rocks today.”
Maria glanced around, but there was no one else in hearing distance.
Weird.
“Okay,” she said cautiously.
He tilted his head toward Ramón, their director, who was studying something near the shore. “This morning at breakfast, Ramón
said we were moving on to the food-gathering scene.”
Even before he’d hated her, during their one night together, she wasn’t certain Peter had strung this many words together
in a row. Had an Irish witch cast a chattiness spell on him? Or, alternatively, removed a Curse of Manful Silence from his
very soul?
“So...” When he didn’t fling himself away from her in disgust after a single syllable, she continued slowly. “We’ll be
doing some fishing, then.”
He halted just out of hearing range of the crew, all of whom were eyeing them curiously. “And foraging for other things. Wild
leeks from the grikes. Seaweed and shellfish from the shore. He said they’ll plant fake birds’ nests and eggs for us to find
too.”
Fy fan , this conversation was agonizingly boring, especially since she already knew what was going to happen, so did he, he knew
she knew, and she knew he knew she knew.
She could only assume his newest version of an olive branch involved a tedious recitation of previously acknowledged information. Which—fine. She’d take it.
Okay, what else did they both already know? “We’ll be preserving the food next week, then. Sun-drying the seaweed and so forth.”
“Smoking the pollack.” He nodded. “Salting and drying it too.”
She supposed she shouldn’t tell him that smoking the pollack sounded like an unfortunate euphemism for oral sex.
Whatever. Time to up the ante, because she was done talking about pollack.
Turning toward him, she smiled and waited to speak until he made reluctant eye contact. “Eager to choke down more dulse today?”
When they’d filmed their half-drowned first scene on the island, they’d eaten fronds of the reddish-purple, leathery seaweed
in take after take, picking it directly from the rocks while the tide was out, washing off small snails and pieces of shell,
and consuming it like the starving Vikings they were pretending to be.
It was a delicacy. She got that. When dried, no doubt it was delicious as a flavor enhancer, and maybe even as a snack. She
could even admit to having enjoyed the first few mouthfuls of the fronds, fresh and still dripping with ocean water.
But she was relatively certain another dulse-filled day of filming would require a vomit bucket just out of camera view, readily
available between takes.
“Choke down?” He blinked at her. “Eating endless dulse was the highlight of my week. I can’t get enough.”
Her brow pinched in a confused frown. “Really?”
Because she could have sworn his face had begun turning as green as Ireland’s famous shamrocks late that Tuesday afternoon.
“Fuck, no,” he said. “And if all our seaweed consumption puts me off sushi, I’m suing the damn show and having them write a formal letter of apology to California rolls.”
Before he strode away, she spotted the slightest hint of a grin through that thick beard. Which meant...
He was... teasing her?
That had to be a good sign. Still, she wouldn’t push things. Until she knew for certain the hostilities were over, she’d let
him come to her.
She intended to treat him the same way she’d treated the stray moose who’d accidentally wandered through the garden of her
family’s summer home. In other words: with great caution. Because moose might be gorgeous and majestic, but they were also
wild creatures. Unpredictable, sometimes cranky, huge, strong as fuck, and liable to lash out whenever anyone got too close.
That said, if he called her Pippi again, she would be forced to beat him over the head with a jar of pickled herring in an
act of extremely Swedish revenge.
Suiting actions to intentions, she didn’t continue their conversation as they prepared for the first take of the day, and
he didn’t either. Not until the countdown to action was about to begin, and his gaze, dark and clear and studiously neutral,
caught hers.
“Ready?” he asked.
To begin filming? Yes.
For them to finally work together in harmony?
“ Ja , Peter,” she said, smiling, and watched the faint smile he offered in response.
Embarrassingly, she almost missed her cue.
At sundown, Cassia and Cyprian were crouched by the shore. Using a knife salvaged from the shipwreck, they gathered sea urchins from the cold, rock-strewn shallows, then deposited the creatures onto a swath of leather she’d torn off the leg of her pants.
Slowly, reluctantly, the Vikings were becoming a team, because they had no other choice if they wanted to survive. Also because
they were beyond horny for each other, and no wonder. Jeanine’s work had only improved upon the bounty nature had already
provided both of them.
“Cassia, dry off by the fire,” Cyprian ordered, his eyes lingering on her naked thigh.
Crouched low, she shook her head. “Not until we’re done here.”
Maria’s feet, bare and bruised from the day’s activities, had gone numb, but this was most likely the last take of the evening.
She didn’t mind a few more minutes of discomfort. Besides, if she complained, Peter—still distant, but markedly more pleasant
all day—might revisit his previous accusations of unprofessionalism, and she wanted all that behind them for good. Years spent
in such intimate, unavoidable proximity with a colleague who didn’t respect her might not break her heart or her will, but
it would be a pain in the rumpa .
Cyprian took Cassia’s arm and hauled her upright. At that point, Maria was supposed to shoot him a narrow-eyed glare and stomp
back toward their primitive shelter, her anger obvious, her unwilling pleasure at his protectiveness hidden from him but not
the camera.
But she could no longer feel the craggy rocks beneath her soles, and she’d been crouching far too long. As soon as he released
her arm, she lost her balance, slipped on a seaweed-slick chunk of limestone, flailed, and began to fall.
Only to find herself slammed against Peter’s chest, her breath squeezed from her lungs by the unforgiving pressure of his
arms around her.
Gods above, he was big. Big and blessedly warm, and so strong.
It took him a moment before he loosened his grasp and let her lean back far enough to look up at him. Far enough to see the severe line of his mouth, the angry concern in his gaze, and the stony set of his jaw as he held her tight and safe in his embrace.
She opened her mouth to say—something. She didn’t exactly know what. Maybe an apology for ruining the take. Maybe a heartfelt
Thank you, Peter for saving her from a painful fall, because she’d been headed for some very sharp rocks.
The cameras were still rolling, though.
What would Cassia say in this situation?
Maria had no clue. The heat of Peter’s body pressed against hers had burned away all her higher-level reasoning abilities.
And he didn’t say anything either, just kept staring at her with those hot, dark eyes. His arm braced her back, his big hand
gripping the nape of her neck. His other palm clamped low on her hip, his fingertips biting into her leather-covered ass,
and fuck .
How did she still want him this much? Why?
She swallowed. Hard.
Slowly, his mouth dipped toward hers. A millimeter. Two.
Then he jerked up his head with a rumbling snarl and essentially dragged her off the rocks and up toward their inadequate
shelter. Strong as he was, he couldn’t carry a woman of her size. But he was supporting a startling amount of her weight without
visible strain, and there was zero chance he was letting her fall. None.
Near the rock wall they’d built, he lowered her onto the grass, the firm press of his palm on her shoulder a mute order to
stay . Still stunned and numb, she did, unable to look away from that giant, capable body silhouetted against the falling light,
the play of shadows over his grim face, the stalking grace of his every stride.
The fire had turned to embers. Without a word, he added dried grasses, followed by splintered chunks of their knarr that had washed ashore—eventually, Cyprian and Cassia would discover the wonders of peat, but not yet—until the leaping flames began to thaw her frozen feet.
Then, after one final, lingering look at her, sitting sprawled and speechless before the fire he’d rebuilt, he turned and
prowled toward the shore once more.
At long last, Ramón shouted, “Cut!”
“I’m almost certain that’s the one we’ll use,” Nava said as she approached Maria. “Good job almost taking a header onto various
sharp rocks, Ivarsson.”
Even amid her confusion, Maria had to laugh.
“She’s nothing if not committed, Nava.” Grinning, the director high-fived Maria. “Great work, everyone! We’re done for the
day.”
It took a long, long time before Peter returned from the water and rejoined the group. For the rest of that night, he avoided
her again. Sat as far away from her as possible at dinner.
He didn’t speak to her. He didn’t even glance her way. And if she claimed not to know why, she’d be lying.
What lay between them—the undeniable chemistry, the brief but fraught history—was... inconvenient. Much as it might sting,
maybe avoidance truly was the smartest path forward.
Still, the next morning, when he talked to her again, the relief almost brought her to her knees.