Sandra Hill by Hot, Heavy

her.
    “I always scowl.”
    “I noticed.”
    “Troll.”
    “But you look particularly annoyed now. Is it because you failed to kill me?”
    “Nay,” she said with a sigh. “If I had really wantedto kill you, I would have used a rock again … and ambushed you from a hidden spot outside the cave. I have not trained to be a soldier for naught. Some skills, I do still have. Alas, I wavered, and that puts a soldier at peril.” She could tell that her words surprised the oaf. He probably thought all women were helpless, cow-eyed maids.
    “You would not have been able to trick me this time.”
    She shrugged. “Little did I know that you would come back here with a
hird
of troll-soldiers.”
    “We are not soldiers; we are sailors,” he corrected her.
    How like a man to home in on the most irrelevant facts. Soldier, sailor, same thing.
“But you are trolls, eh?”
    “I have been known to behave like a troll on occasion,” he admitted.
    “You had to bring all those other trolls along, didn’t you? You, I could have handled, but eight trolls! I am not that good a she-warrior.” She folded her arms over her chest with disgust. “And all of them carrying those exploding clubs and enough weaponry to fill a king’s armory.”
    “You sure do talk funny,” he said.
    “I thought we already established that you are the one who talks funny.”
    “Female illogic is an amazing thing. You hear only what you want to hear. There’s an old saying that goes—”
    “Oh, spare me from your meant-to-be-inspiring sayings. We had a skald one time who did that all the time till everyone was nigh asleep from boredom. Did anyone ever fall asleep whilst you were pontificating endlessly?”
    “Has anyone ever called you a shrew?”
    “Plenty of times. You say shrew as if it is a bad thing. I say a shrew is a woman of intelligence.”
    “Amazing!”
    She almost smiled at him, but caught herself in time.
    He did smile at her, though, and her stomach clenched. It was probably a reaction to the food he had left for her. Or hunger pangs. Other than the bar of grain and nuts, she had not eaten all day.
    “Are you hungry?” he asked.
    Did he hear my belly talking? Ah, I am too tired … and, yes, hungry … to be embarrassed.
But what she said was, “Nay.”
    “You’re lying.”
    “Why would you care?”
    “I like to fatten up my captives.”
    She considered arguing the notion that she was a captive, but decided to wait till later for that. “Is that why you left me that bar of grain and nuts?”
    “Your stomach was rumbling louder than your snores, so I took pity on you.”
    At first, she just stared at him. “Are you teasing me?”
    He waggled his eyebrows at her.
    “I have not been teased since my brothers …” She shook her head to stop painful memories. “
Do
you have food?”
    “Yeah. Just MREs but they’re filling.”
    “What kind of food is that? If it’s anything unrelated to a camel, I would eat it.”
    “MREs are portable provisions. You know, quick food on a mission.”
    “Like dried lutefisk?”
    “Huh? No, things like beef ravioli, chicken cacciatore, jambalaya.”
    It was her turn to say, “Huh?”
    “Listen,” he said, rising to his feet and extending a hand to help her up, “are you hungry or not?”
    She ignored the hand. “Yea, I am a mite hungry.”
    He made a snorting sound.
    “But I do not want to go by the fire. Bring it back to me.”
    “Why don’t you want to … oh, is it because you’re embarrassed ’cause the guys saw you naked?”
    “You really are a dumb dolt, aren’t you? I was led naked through my great hall by a neck tether before two hundred enemy warriors. If I could survive that, I can certainly survive snickers from a few trolls.”
    Ian’s jaw dropped practically to his chest. “You are making that up,” he accused, but then he glanced at her neck, and wrist and ankles, and said, “I’m sorry.”
    She shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
    “Then why do you