Page 82 of Viking Vengeance Cruise

“Why would I fight a Viking?” Bess asks.

Nettie clucks her tongue. “I’ve seen you in the buffet line, Bess. You’d fight a Viking for the last slice of raspberry cheesecake and you know it.”

“Well, if cheesecake is involved, that’s a different story,” Bess is quick to amend. Everyone knows Bess would donkey-kick her own daughter for the very last slice of cheesecake. I wouldn’t dare get in the way of that dairy-based massacre waiting to happen.

“Land,” Ransom says immediately. “Vikings were legendary sailors. You don’t fight them in their element.”

I smile up at him. Ransom always knows the right answer to give. He could so take down an entire horde of Vikings—especially the ones who are really accountants. And he’d probably come away with a whole cheesecake for us too.

“Unless you’re also a Viking,” Wes adds. “Then you’d fight them in their own element.”

“Are you a Viking, Captain?” Nettie asks.

“I’ve got Scandinavian ancestry. Does that count?”

“Absolutely,” Bess says.

“Then yes. I’m Viking-adjacent,” Wes tells her with a wink.

Ransom lifts a brow my way with a look that says, Wes, a Viking? He glances to Marina, then back to me with another look that says, I think the only thing he’s adjacent to is trying to land the new crew member horizontal.

I nod his way with a look that says, I couldn’t agree more. They should smash faces already and put us all out of our misery.

He nods right back.

Married telepathy is simply the best.

“Adjacent counts,” Nettie says. “I once dated a man who was adjacent to employed.”

Marina’s shoulders shake with the effort of holding in another laugh, and she’s losing.

“What about you?” Wes directs the question to the only woman he apparently sees in this room. “Land or sea?”

“I’d negotiate,” Marina tells him. “In fact, I’d do my best to avoid the fight entirely.”

Somewhere in that answer is a woman who’s had practice.

“That’s cheating,” Nettie protests.

“That’s survival,” Marina shoots back.

“I like the way you think,” Wes says as his dimples press in, and Marina’s blush graduates to a full sunrise all over her cheeks.

Ransom leans down to whisper in my ear. “Should we leave them alone?”

“And miss this? Never.”

“So,” Wes says as he looks my way. “How’s the investigation going?”

Ransom grunts in lieu of a response.

“I was asking the detective in charge.” Wes nods my way.

Everyone laughs, and Ransom growls low in his throat. “She’s not actually a detective.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Wes says. “She’s solved more murders on this ship than most actual detectives.”

“To be fair, I have excellent help.” I pat my husband’s knee. “Not every woman lands a man who runs background checks as a love language.” I gasp a little because I sure hope I didn’t let the Marina-shaped intelligence detail out of the bag.