“Why America? You’re Swedish, aren’t you?” Again, she had the flickering sense she was being debriefed, but this was how her life had gone since her father’s death. Her notoriety gave people the impression they had a right to ask personal questions.
“I have distant relations in Sweden, but we only returned to renew our passports. My mother died when I was four and my father took me with him on his travels.”
“He educated you himself?”
“He was a teacher in a previous life.” She nodded. “He enrolled me in local schools at different times, mostly for language and socialization. You must know a little about that sort of upbringing?” She tried to bat the conversation in his direction.
“I do,” he said after the briefest of pauses. “While my father was alive, we lived wherever he happened to be assigned. I resented being uprooted every year, forced to say goodbye to my latest batch of friends, then having to assimilate into a new culture. Above anything, I wanted to stay in one place. Be careful what you wish for,” he said with an ironic nod at his chair.
“Is New York your home now?”
“My complex business interests keep me traveling. I have many homes.”
“You’ve become your father,” she teased.
“It appears that way.” He said it lightly, but his face smoothed to unreadable and he sat back, popping the fragile bubble of connection they’d briefly shared.
The wine arrived, distracting her from examining her distinct impression that he didn’t want to talk about himself. Giovanni ordered appetizers and they clinked glasses.
“How did you come to settle in New York instead of Sweden? School?”
“You could read the book to learn all this. You didn’t have to buy me dinner,” she pointed out.
“I want the raw data, not the polished prose. Unless you’d rather not talk about it?” That penetrating gaze of his made her heart stall each time it landed on her. There seemed to be a degree of challenge in it, as though refusing to talk would be seen as a sign of weakness or guilt.
“I don’t mind,” she lied.
She’d told her story enough times it was something she could usually do while holding herself at a distance so the facts didn’t hurt too much to revisit. With him, however, her typical confidence was butting up against a level of self-assurance she had never encountered. She felt overpowered, which made her defenses shaky. She had to remind herself that she didn’t need his approval for any reason, but it didn’t stop her from wanting it and she didn’t understand why.
“You might have seen in the book’s acknowledgment the mention of my father’s editor? Oliver was instrumental in getting me out of North Korea. It’s why the US took over negotiations from the Swedish officials. Oliver worked tirelessly for two years to learn whether I was alive, locate exactly where I was, and petition for my release. He brought me into his home afterward.”
“Because he felt responsible for sending you and your father there?”
“It was my father’s choice to go. No, Oliver regarded himself as a surrogate father after such a long friendship with Pappa. He and his wife, Barbara, continue to be very kind to me, but I was nineteen when I arrived. I didn’t want to be a foster child or a houseguest.” Not again. “I had several offers for ghostwriters to tell my story, but Oliver suggested I write the book myself, as part of a creative writing degree. I had some money from my father’s estate for tuition, Oliver made some calls to his alma mater. I thought university would be a good way to integrate into Western society, that I would meet people my age and expand my mental horizons.”
“Oh? How did that go?” Giovanni’s mouth pursed knowingly. “I’m guessing your horizons were already stratospheres beyond your peers.”
“Pizza, sex, binge drinking... That’s all they cared about.” She sighed. “The people who had traveled hadn’t really traveled. They had spent summers on a yacht in the Greek islands or went on a spring break rager through the Caribbean. Even my instructors seemed stunted, hammering at me to draw a thicker line between black and white. They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t angrier. They made me angry, trying to force me to rewrite my own experience to fit the narrative they thought it should have.”
“It’s a sensational story. Why wouldn’t you sensationalize it for profit?”
“Exactly. I couldn’t possibly have affection for the people who had held me. That would make them people.”
She waited for the questions that usually came when she got this far, the ones that probed for salacious details. Had she been mistreated or assaulted? What horrible things had she done to survive?
“Were you not given an advance for your book? Why are you working in catering?”
That almost sounded as though he was more interested in how she’d come to meet him at the hotel last night than how she’d been pried from the clutches of a notoriously uncooperative government.
“I used my advance as a down payment on a small flat, but I have a mortgage and living expenses. Oddly enough, a creative writing degree isn’t at the top of HR managers’ wish lists.” She shrugged. “So I tutor ESL students, and a friend got me in with this catering company. Once I get my book tour out of the way, I’ll start a teacher certification program.”
“You want to shape young minds?”
“Open them, at least.” She made a more determined effort to steer the conversation in his direction. “May I ask you a question?”
“Never married and currently uninvolved,” he said promptly, maintaining his intense stare, though it held a shadow of self-deprecation at what he was implying.
“I wish I could say the same,” she threw back, deadpan.
His face abruptly fell with shocked dismay.
She burst out laughing.
“I didn’t expect you to be so gullible.” Freja’s laugh was so merry, her expression so incandescent, he was spellbound.
Giovanni’s only thought should have been to question how his team had missed something as vital as romantic associations, but her remark had prompted a far more visceral reaction. Involved? No. He wanted her for himself.
Which was not only an uncharacteristic thrust of unjustified jealousy, it was the sort of emotional reaction he had trained himself not to have. The fact she had so easily slid past his well-fortified shields against any sort of manipulations, intended or otherwise, told him exactly how dangerous she was.
He tried to neutralize all of that firepower of hers with some heat of his own.
“You’re nothing like I expected.” He picked up her hand and brought it to his mouth to drop a kiss in her palm. “Which is why I have such a strong disinclination to share you.”