A Nordic King(82)

She’s made of hardy stock, that’s for sure. When she first took the job, I thought that her “roughness” would be a detriment to the position. After all, it was all about poise and grace and raising two princesses. But instead of poise and grace, she brought grit and guts. She rose to every challenge that the girls and I threw her way, and more than that, she rose up against me. She did it for the things she believed in and if it didn’t go her way, she’d argue her way out.

In other words, she’s the perfect woman to take sailing, because even with feeling seasick, she’s still toughing it out, because that’s what she does.

She’s the perfect woman period.

And now I’m tasked with figuring out how to make her stay.

Forever.

With me.

Naturally the biggest issue so far is that I haven’t been entirely honest with her and I know that day of reckoning is coming. I just pray that what we have is strong enough to survive it.

“Hey!” she says excitedly, pointing in the distance where the strait opens up and the Baltic Sea spreads before us. “A rainbow!”

I’m currently bringing in the main sail to adapt to the changing wind and look around it to see a defined rainbow in the distance where the clouds are parting and the sun is coming in.

“The wind should be dropping soon as it comes around Sweden,” I tell her. “The seas should calm.”

She gives me her happy grin. Her mouth has always been wide for her face, her smile so beguiling, but when she’s really, really happy, that’s when you see her incisors. I call them her glade t?nder or “happy teeth.” She becomes a sexy adorable vampire.

“It’s smooth sailing from here on out,” she starts singing a Queens of the Stone Age song, doing a goofy little dance at the wheel.

I laugh, wanting to join in but don’t.

“Oh, you’re too cool to dance with me,” she says with a scoff.

“I’m not the best dancer,” I admit, quickly tucking the ropes away and coming over to her.

“I don’t believe it,” she says. “You’re way too good at f….” she trails off and laughs loudly, covering her mouth. Dear god, she almost didn’t stop that admission. Neither my daughters or Johan need to know how good I am in bed.

“I’m good at footless, yes,” I say, as way of a cover-up. “But not proper dancing.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re good at slow dancing if anything. Kings have to know all that shit, don’t they?”

“Yes, we have to know all that shit.”

“Then perhaps one day you’ll ask me to dance.”

She’s still smiling as she says this, but there’s something heartbreaking about it. Like we both know the only dancing we’ll ever do is in our bedrooms.

I hate this. I love this so much and I hate it at the same time.

I hate that we’re trying to stifle whatever this is meant to be.

A muzzle on a dog that was never given the chance.

“It’s sunny!” Clara exclaims as her head pops out of the hatch and looks around. “Can we come up, Papa?”

“Of course,” I tell her. “Mind the deck, it’s a bit wet and slippery and stay down in the cockpit by Aurora.”

The girls climb out and go over to her, seemingly impressed that she’s steering the boat. I put on my sunglasses and scan the water in front of us, looking for any driftwood that sometimes blows out along here.

“Are those, like, X-ray vision?” Aurora asks.

I come over to the wheel and hand them to her. “They’re just polarized. It cuts out the glare so it’s easier to see into the water.”

She lets go of the wheel as I grab on to it and puts the sunglasses on her face.

“Wow,” she says softly, looking around her. Her smile is so bright, and I can see my reflection in the glasses. I’m smiling too. “It’s like a whole new world.”

“A whole new world,” Clara starts to sing dramatically. “A new fantastic point of view.”

I shake my head at her. She loves her Disney cartoons, but she didn’t quite inherit her mother’s singing voice.

Aurora is still looking around, then she takes them off and puts them back on again. “It’s hard to tell what’s reality now.”

“It’s all the same, it’s just you’re seeing it through a different filter,” I tell her. “It makes everything you’ve known seem brand new again.”

“It’s like another dimension.”

I chuckle at how enthralled she is and carefully remove the sunglasses from her face, staring at her. “Well this is the dimension you live in. It’s still beautiful.”

But love, I guess that’s the difference. Love is like looking at the world through polarized glasses. Every single thing has changed for the better. Everything murky becomes clear again.

“Papa,” Clara says, tugging at my jacket. “When do we get to the anchor place?”

“Soon,” I reassure her.

Though some of the best anchorages are on the Swedish side across the strait, we head down the Danish coast until we get to a little cove framed by a white sand beach. Much like the beach I took Aurora to around New Year’s, it’s deserted and won’t start filling up for another month.