The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman Read Free Page A

a couple of hours before. “How about something hot to drink then?”
    “Russian tea, I hope,” Bjorn said.
    Mother nodded and turned to go back into the kitchen. “Kate, I need your help for a few minutes,” she said to me.
    Dad offered to help with the luggage, and they all moved toward the front door. I wanted to follow themout to the driveway and be inches away from Richard Bradshaw, whom I hadn’t seen in four years, and see if he ever looked my way, if he was feeling anything like I was feeling, but my mother had saved me from myself.
    “Bjorn hasn’t changed a bit,” she said when I entered the kitchen. “He’s still a pied piper, bringing all of California home for Christmas without warning.” She opened the refrigerator. “Throw this in the can, will you?” She handed me a brown chunk of lettuce. “You should have seen him; he ran all through the house first thing.” Her head disappeared back into the fridge. “I don’t think there are sheets on the bed in the guest room—just the spread.”
    “I’ll check,” I said.
    “I’m going to put Trish and Bjorn in his old room, of course,” she said, pulling out lemons and oranges. “Richard can sleep in the guest room.” She handed me the fruit. “Do you suppose he and that girl want to share a room? He called her his friend. Is that a euphemism? Of course, if they really are just friends, then—”
    I shrugged. “Beats me. Her name is Fleur, by the way.” I began halving the fruit with a knife.
    “Well, let’s have Fleur”—her lips curved up slightly—“sleep in your room in the extra bed. Do you mind?”
    No, I didn’t mind. Better with me than with Richard.
    “If the two of them want to get together, they’ll more than likely find each other. Don’t you think?”
    I cut myself. “Makes sense,” I said, sucking blood from my thumb. I hated this whole topic.
    Mother handed me a paper towel. “Where is Miss Manners when one needs her?” she asked, pulling thesugar container out of the cupboard above my head. “Fleur St. Geranium doesn’t seem like Richard’s type somehow.”
    I snorted. “St.
Germaine
, Mother. She’s pretty stunning, don’t you think?”
    She poured a cup of sugar into a boiling pot of water on the stove. “In a Californicated kind of way.” She’s shrewd, my mother is.
    I smiled and whispered, “I don’t think she’s California bred. She drops her postvocalic ‘r’s’ ever so slightly.”
    Mother looked skeptical.
    “No, really,” I said. “I think she’s from the upper South or maybe the lower south Midland—Charleston, Baltimore maybe.”
    Mother wiped a spill on the stove. “You sound more and more like your father.”
    “Thank you.”
    “But”—she held my shoulder—“I hate to tell you this, Ms. Linguist, but she was raised in Newport Beach, California. We established all that before you arrived.”
    I checked her face to see if she was serious. Irony is a family trait. “You’re kidding,” I said. “That doesn’t seem right,” and I left to check the bedding.
    Mother was right about the bed in the guest room; it had no sheets on it. I chose pale blue ones with striped pillowcases for Richard. Then I made space in my closet for some of Fleur’s things and checked out the bathroom, which was in pretty decent shape. All I really had to do was put out extra towels. I could hear Bjorn and Richard moving up and down the hallway with suitcases, reminiscing together like two old men. “Hey, this isthe closet where we lost your gerbil, Werner von Braun—remember?” Richard asked.
    “Probably still in there,” Bjorn said.
    “Probably the size of a cocker spaniel.”
    Their voices floated into the bathroom, where I looked into the mirror to determine how I’d changed since I was thirteen, when Richard had seen me last. My hair was much shorter, for one thing, and my braces were gone. The glasses remained of necessity. Was I pretty? It’s hard to make judgments about your own