Sweet Hearts (The Lindstroms Book 3)

she’d scream. He had removed his hand and she hurried to her car, not looking back, courage wearing thin.
“My training’s only going to help me so much if I’m holding Anna and trying to protect her,” she had explained, alluding to the defensive training she had learned in the military. “But, if he ever comes at me when I’m alone, he’ll regret it.”
Wade hadn’t been back to Lisabet’s place after that, and neither Ingrid nor Kristian had seen hide nor hair of him since Friday. Katrin knew Wade would probably be spiraling even farther downward now, and she was sorry that her family had to deal with these threatening and upsetting confrontations. She hoped that Wade would accept that she was gone and give up on her sooner rather than later.
As for Katrin, her fears were slipping away, and she was starting to trust her surroundings. Wade felt farther and farther away, and Katrin hated herself for wasting all that time in Choteau putting up with his behavior. Out of habit, she would still think of her life in the “Wade timeline” sometimes and wonder if they’d have been pregnant again by now. She thought of her cumbersome, pregnant body trying to help her drunken husband into the back of their car when she went to pick him up at one of the local bars, and she’d shudder, grateful to be in Skidoo. Mostly she felt sorry for Wade, as she would for anyone on the road to certain destruction, and she wished that he could get help and recover his life, find a new path, be happy.
More and more she was able to divert her thoughts of Wade entirely, though, and she was grateful for the distraction Erik Lindstrom provided.
Erik, so different from Wade, so tall and blond and protective…and unavailable. So unavailable, in fact, that it made him the safest possible person to moon over as she lay in her bed that week looking forward to today, remembering the heat between them.
Harmless mooning aside, she had firmly resolved that she and Erik must just stay friends, despite her potential to fall for him, and his possible interest in something purely physical with her. With their families as entwined as they were, a fling—rife for complications and confusion—was absolutely impossible, and she knew it.
On one hand, she pouted. If he weren’t so handsome and kind, it would be easier to keep him in the friend zone, easier to see him as nothing more than a brotherly friend.
On the other, she pulled up her big girl pants. Don’t be an idiot, Katrin. He’s not for you, so you keep him in the friend zone. Anything other than looking at Erik, is only asking for trouble, and you don’t need any after what you’ve been through. You just think of him like Sam or Kristian. Like family.
And she told herself that if she weakened in the presence of his handsome, funny kindness, she should remember that her days of bad decisions with men were behind her, dying a swift death when she’d escaped from Wade. Erik had made it entirely clear he wasn’t interested in relationships. And she wasn’t the sort of girl who just fooled around without one.
She sat up and adjusted her sunglasses, smoothing out her white long-sleeved cotton cable knit sweater, and crossing her legs. She was admiring her new flip-flops when his car approached and without thinking, her face exploded into a grin as she jumped up to greet him, running over to his window to say hello.
***
In the week they’d spent apart, Erik had done a number on his head, seriously readjusting his image of Katrin Svenson from last Sunday afternoon, and brainwashing himself until he believed her plainer, less interesting and more vulnerable than he’d found her last weekend.
He had started by reasoning with himself that getting involved with her was a recipe for disaster. Katrin wasn’t some anonymous tourist whom he could bed and forget, as Ingrid had helpfully pointed out. She was family by extension: his brother-in-law’s cousin. And he didn’t want to risk friction between him and Sam, and—by extension—Jenny. He couldn’t risk being at odds with his siblings; he loved them too much. So, first and foremost, it was important to remember that she was Sam’s Cousin.
He thought about her recent heartbreak too, being left at the altar by her drunkard, stalker boyfriend, and honestly he had no interest in doing anything that could harm her delicate spirit, poor thing. It was obvious she’d been through the wringer, and he wasn’t up for some super emotional, vulnerable girl getting attached to him. He’d end up hurting the poor dear. She needed his kindness and sympathy more than anything else, poor girl. So, any sparks he’d felt around Katrin were doused mercilessly until she was Sam’s Cousin, Poor Little Thing.
He’d concentrated on how she’d looked when he met her at Ingrid’s house. She wasn’t really that pretty—she was unkempt, plain and skinny. More than skinny, her delicate frame had become so small and frail in his head that he could almost think of her as a wizened old lady, prematurely aged by the evil intentions of her dastardly fiancé, not unlike old Mrs. Havisham in his favorite novel, Great Expectations. He concentrated on those thick glasses and greasy hair, and tried to remember her in that sloppy sweatshirt. Whatever attraction or possessiveness he’d felt for her had been ultimately mashed and mangled in his head until it resembled no more than brotherly protectiveness for Sam’s Plain Cousin, Poor Little Thing.
Revising his opinion of Katrin didn’t mean he took his promise to Ing lightly. In fact, thinking of that piteous, frail little thing with a broken heart, so depressed and homely, he felt beholden to look after her as he would a shut-in aunt or an injured child.
He texted Katrin in the evenings to keep