Page 1 of The Outlaw Viking

Chapter One

York, England

“Mommy, make the big lady move. I can’t see.”

Thoraine Jordan felt her face flame with embarrassment at the loud whine of the small child behind her. She sensed people around them turning to look at the object of the remark and then having to crane their necks upwards.

Big! That was the key word.

Rain grimaced. After all these years, the cruel word should have stopped hurting, but it never had.

Sighing wearily, she glanced at her mother, Ruby, whose lips formed a thin white line of suppressed anger. Rain squeezed her hand reassuringly, not wanting her overly protective mother to say something that would create a scene.

Turning to face the little boy who’d made the innocently cutting comment, Rain said, “Step in front of us, honey. We’re in no hurry.”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” the child’s mother protested quickly. “He dint mean no harm. He’s jist overtired from waitin’ so long.”

The crowd continued to gawk curiously, and Rain wished she could disappear. “That’s okay. We don’t mind,” she told the young woman.

After the lady and child moved sheepishly ahead of them in the line that stretched in front of the Viking museum, Rain’s mother whispered, “You’re too kind. Children should be taught from an early age that certain remarks are inappropriate.”

“Oh, Mother! He merely commented on an obvious fact. I’m six feet tall. There’s no hiding that.”

Her mother dismissed her words with a short jerk of her hand. “Sweetie, you’re a beautiful woman. I thought you got over that height hang-up long ago. You have no reason to be embarrassed.”

Rain put an arm around her mother’s shoulder and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “I’m thirty years old, and you’re still worrying about my feelings being hurt. That’s precious.”

“Humph! To me, you’re still my baby. Doesn’t matter to me that you’re a physician—or that you’ve delivered a few babies yourself. I’ll always think of you as my little girl.”

Rain flicked her long blond braid over her shoulder and looked down at her body meaningfully. “Little? Hardly!”

Her mother’s mouth pursed indignantly. “You’re just big boned, Rain, like your father. You’ve never been overweight.”

Trying to change the subject, an old and tiresome one, Rain teased, “Which father, Mom?” An enigmatic smile passed over her mother’s still attractive face. It had been a family joke for years that her unorthodox mother claimed to have had a time-travel experience thirty years before, when she’d met Thork Haraldsson, an outsize Viking version of her husband, Jack Jordan. In fact, her mother contended that Rain was conceived in the past and born in the present. Even worse, her mother insisted that, while her Viking father, Thork, had died before Ruby had returned to the future, she’d left behind Rain’s Viking half brothers, Eirik and Tykir.

Geez!

“Don’t start on me, young lady,” her mother chided, wagging a forefinger at her with mock sternness. “In a way, Thork and Jack were both your father. They were both very tall men and identical in appearance, except that your Viking father had more of a muscular build.”

Rain rolled her eyes at that enticing mind-picture. Her father had been a good-looking man. In a more muscle-clad body, he would have been drop-dead gorgeous.

Her mother reached over and touched the antique dragon brooch on the lapel of Rain’s white silk blouse. “It pleases me to see you wear the brooch Thork gave me.”

“Just because I wear it doesn’t mean I believe.”

Her mother chucked Rain playfully under the chin. “I know that, silly.” She caressed the pin lovingly, a dreamy expression clouding her face. “I wonder what happened to the matching brooch, the one Thork wore on the other shoulder of his mantle.”

Rain smiled at the whimsical look on her mother’s face, then hesitated before she spoke her next words. “I never believed all that nonsense of yours. I still don’t, but lately I’ve been really confused and—well, I don’t know.”

Her mother raised an eyebrow in question.

“The nightmare has returned.”

A soft gasp of dismay escaped her mother’s lips. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’ve been so preoccupied since your father’s death.”

Rain dismissed her mother’s concern with a wave of her hand, explaining, “The dream is nothing new. I’ve had it intermittently since I was a child, since Eddie was killed in that Lebanese bombing.” Rain had been only twelve years old when her older brother, a Marine, had died on duty in Beirut, but it had changed her life forever. “I haven’t had the dream for a long time, but it’s back—with a vengeance.”

“The same dream?”