Chapter 4

“Ulf, why didn’t you get chocolate sauce?” Kelis asked, before carefully licking around the melty bits at the top of the cone.

He grinned. “I like the red stuff better. Looks more like blood. And you can call me Ian, you know. Now I’m off duty.”

“Ian,” Kelis said thoughtfully. “If I was a Viking, what would my name be?”

He gazed at her for a moment, lips pursed. Kelis seemed to have been turned into a chunk of impatient stone, a dab of ice cream on her nose and chocolate sauce around her mouth. “Astrid,” he said firmly. “It means beautiful.”

She accepted it as her due. “What does Ulf mean?”

“Wolf,” Ian said mildly—then turned to growl at her. Kelis squealed and nearly dropped her ice cream.

“Oi, careful with that,” I said with a smile. “I’m not paying for another if you lose that one.”

She ignored me. “What about Dad? What would his name be?”

Ian took a thoughtful lick of his ice cream. I tried not to stare at his tongue. “Now, that’s tougher. Hmm. Einarr?”