Until Forever by Johanna Lindsey Page A

on her.
    She opened her wallet, then the snapshot section of it, and practically shoved the first picture under his nose, then flipped another over, then another. “These are photographs of people I know, my parents; my brother, David; Gail, who’s my best friend; Bar—damn, I can’t believe I still have that one in there.” She slid out the snapshot of Barry, which she’d forgotten until now, and began ripping it into little pieces. “Shows you how often I look at my own snapshots,” she added in a grumble.
    “Why would you do that?”
    She leaned over to shove what was now no more than rubbish in her hand, to the bottom of the picnic basket, before she answered him. “Tear up a picture? Because I can’t stand the man in it.”
    “But ’twas costly, was it not?”
    “Not at all. What I was trying to explain to you is that the poster you saw in my classroom the night you first appeared was no more than an enlargement or blowup of a photograph similar to these. No artist painted it. And it certainly wasn’t William the Bastard who posed for it. Photos are taken with a camera, a little boxlike device that’s been around for more than a century now, and I certainly wish I had an instant one here toshow you, because it could produce your own image—”
    She stopped because he was no longer listening to her. Possibly there had been too many words that he didn’t understand, so what she’d just said made no sense to him. Or possibly something else interested him more, because he was, without permission, rummaging through her purse.
    Her perfectly normal reaction was one of indignation, yet she had to clamp down on her lips to contain it. Whatever interested him could only be to her ultimate benefit. She had to keep that in mind too, and keep a lid on her temper.
    Getting angry with a man who likely personified male chauvinism would be a pure waste of time. After all, his attitudes toward women would be as medieval as he was, and she knew exactly where women were placed in his day and age—right alongside the cattle and the stock of mead, as no more than property. Actually, women had had even less value than salable goods back then.
    So would he care if he offended her? Would he care if she showed her temper? Not even a little. She almost smiled. Dealing with him was going to be a history lesson in itself. She supposed she should be grateful that she knew history so well, knew historical attitudes, so she could adjust her own thinking accordingly. Otherwise, she had no doubt that she’d spend all her time with this Viking being outraged, and that would get her nowhere.
    So she held her tongue and waited to see what would gain his interest. Her purse-size perfume spray? Her tiny solar-powered calculator? Maybe the little packet of tissues she’d picked up at the airport?
    What came up in his hand was her lipstick, and he examined the white metal tube thoroughly, from every angle. Of course, that would interest him, since metal was related to weapons. He even flicked it with the nail of his forefinger to assure himself it was metal. And then the top separated slightly, enough for him to notice, and his eyes widened as he pulled it off the rest of the way.
    He was fascinated all right, and she found out why immediately as he stared into the empty well of the top and tried to get his large finger inside it. He couldn’t manage that, of course.
    “So thin, this metal, and perfect in its roundness and texture,” he said in an excited voice. “Your blacksmiths are ingenious, lady!”
    She couldn’t help smiling at that. If a little thing like a lipstick could amaze him, he was going to go into shock when he saw his first television, or—God help him, an airplane would blow his mind.
    “You’d have a hard time finding a blacksmith these days, Thorn. They kind of lost their importance when the horse did—never mind, you’ll find out about that on the way back to the cottage.”
    And she was suddenly looking