Chapter 4

Skadi

Even though Iknew they would be, I let out a sigh of relief when I realised the lights were still on.

I held the door open so Erik could come through into the cloakroom at the front of my house. I hung up each of my layers on the different pegs so they could dry, and set my snowshoes into the rack.

"Feel free to hang up your stuff," I said to Erik.

"Thanks." He started stripping off his own outerwear, revealing that his jumper was soaked through. "I should take this off too."

"Then you"re in luck, there are spare clothes."

"That"ll fit me?" he asked.

I looked him up and down without meaning to. "Yes."

"Belonging to a boyfriend?"

"No, I don"t have a boyfriend."

"A husband?"

"Just an ex, and you don"t have to worry about him, he lives by the sea very far from here."

"That is fairly far from here."

"See, nothing to worry about," I responded. "And no, they don"t belong to anyone. This isn"t the first time someone"s gotten their car stuck in the snow outside my house."

"Ah, so now I"m just going to be part of a statistic when you talk to your friends about how often people get stuck outside?" He pulled his jumper over his head, bringing part of his shirt up with it and revealing a surprisingly toned set of abs.

I knew I should look away, but I couldn"t help it. I cleared my throat. "I don"t really talk to my friends about how often someone gets stuck," I promised.

"Then I feel very lucky."

I chuckled. "You should." I opened the door that led into the main room. "The guest room is on the left. You"ll find the clothes in the wardrobe."

"It"s the same layout as Lofn"s cabin."

"They"re all built the same," I responded. "Oh, I do have a rule about clothes."

"No walking around naked?" he joked.

I laughed. "Okay, two rules."

"What"s the other one?"

"No shoes in the house, but always socks."

Erik paused in the doorway. "Always socks?"

"Yes."

"Because your floors are cold?"

"No, I have underfloor heating." And I knew it was working, I could feel the heat seeping in through my own socks.

"Ah, you"re not a feet person," he said, nodding as if he understood.

My blood ran cold. "What?"

"Well, if it"s not about being cold, then you must not like feet. My mum"s the same, she can"t stand the sight of feet. Though she"s a slipper person, not a sock person."

"Oh, right, of course. Well it would be a bit unreasonable for me to expect you to wear slippers when you didn"t even plan on staying on the mountain tonight."

"That"s fair." He frowned. "You don"t have a phone I could use, do you? I want to check on my grandfather, but mine died."

"There"s no signal right now," I responded. "Normally it takes them a day or so to get it all sorted. I"m sorry."

"Not your fault." From his face, I could see that he was worried about the situation.

A part of me wanted to offer him some other form of communication, but I couldn"t think of one that would actually work. It was times like this that having some witchy magic would definitely help. "Are you hungry?" I asked instead.

"More thirsty and a bit cold," he said.

"Right. I"ll get some drinks, you should get changed." I gestured towards the closed door needlessly.

"Thanks." He gave me a tight smile and headed into the room.

I let out a frustrated sigh. It was bad enough that I"d been wrong about the storm and was having to use the emergency generator, but now I had someone else in my house and needing my attention. Kind of.

I pulled my attention away from the door and made my way back to the kitchen to make some gl?gg. He"d seemed to enjoy it while we were at Lofn"s party, and if he was cold, it would be perfect for warming up.

And besides that, I didn"t really know what else to do. If I were to listen to Lofn or one of the other love gods, they"d tell me that this was fate after I"d left the conversation I was enjoying too early.

A glance back at the door only confused me more. Was this fate?

I shook my head. What a ridiculous notion. I didn"t believe that fate was real, even if I"d met gods who claimed to control it.

Now the weather? That I believed in. All of this was simply a case of nature doing what nature did. Nothing more, nothing less.

I emptied a bottle of wine into a pan and added the spices as I brought it up to a simmer. It probably wouldn"t be as good as the stuff at Lofn"s party, but considering it was just the two of us stuck in my cabin until the morning, it was going to have to do.