Free Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 01] by The Reluctant Viking Page A

About the same age as Olaf, who seemed to be in his late thirties, Gyda was short, slightly plump and feminine—definitely the womanly ideal Thork and Olaf had spoken of earlier.
    “Welcome home, husband,” Gyda said softly as she stepped forward.
    “Good it is to be home again,” Olaf responded with a wide grin and a gleam in his eye.
    With a whoop, Olaf scooped Gyda into his arms and swung her in a circle, hugging her warmly. Gyda buried her face in his neck, holding on to his shoulders tightly as her skirts swung high off the ground. When she raised her misty eyes, Olaf kissed her soundly, put an arm under her knees and carried her resolutely into the house, leaving them all alone outside.
    Ruby turned embarrassed eyes to the children who stood near her, hoping they hadn’t heard Olaf ask his wife meaningfully, before the door closed, “Would youlike to see the present I have for you?”
    But the girls weren’t self-conscious at all. The oldest girl, Astrid, told Ruby unabashedly, “They like to welcome each other in private.” There was no question the girl knew exactly what her parents were doing.
    “Do you wanna see the ducks in the river?” the littlest girl, Tyra, who was about five years old, asked hopefully. When Ruby nodded, the child smiled enchantingly, showing two missing front teeth. She put a small hand in Ruby’s and pulled her to the side of the house.
    Ruby’s heart lurched. She’d always wanted a little girl of her own, one just like the gap-toothed Tyra who innocently offered Ruby her first real welcome to this foreign land—a daughter she could pamper with frilly dresses and flowery bubble baths, a daughter who would weep with her at sad movies, share her love of sewing.
    She and Jack should have had another child. That sudden thought jolted Ruby. They’d always planned to have more children, but once she’d started her lingerie business and the recession had hit the real estate market, there never seemed to be enough time. Ruby couldn’t remember the last time they’d even talked about it.
    Was it too late now? Was she too old? Did Jack still want more children? It was a moot point, really, unless Jack came back to her. Or if she never returned to the future.
    Ruby’s headache slammed back in full force. She shook her head to halt her straying thoughts.
    They circled the house and walked past a well and a covered garbage cesspit, then down the cushiony slope to the river. Tyra’s curious sisters followed closely behind them, like ducks themselves in their long, vividly colored dresses covered by crisp white pinafore-style aprons.
    Ruby sat on a sturdy wood bench at the riverbank as Tyra reached deep in her apron pocket and pulled out a heaping handful of bread crumbs.
    “Do you wanna feed the ducks?”
    “Oh, yes,” Ruby answered enthusiastically, noting idly how such little things made children happy. What happened to people when they became adults, that they lost this ability to savor the little gifts of life—a beautiful sunset, a laughing child, ducks waddling on a summer afternoon, the love of a good man?
    Dozens of ducks soon converged on the scene. The girls laughed delightedly at the antics of the gluttonous animals who shoved each other aside in their efforts to get the food.
    The girls slowly inched closer to the bench, and finally Astrid, the oldest girl, perched at the other end from Ruby and asked, “Did Father say your name was Ruby?”
    Ruby smiled. “Yes. Ruby Jordan.”
    “Like the jewel?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh. Never have I heard that used as a name afore.”
    “Lots of girls are named after jewels in my country,” Ruby explained, “like Emerald, Opal, Pearl, Garnet and Jade. But actually, I wasn’t named after the jewel. My mother named me and my sister—” She never got to finish her explanation because a wild squawking commenced and Tyra came clambering quickly up the riverbank, complaining that a duck had almost bitten her, just because she held the