Page 46 of Snug in Iceland
He led her up the front steps onto a tiny wooden veranda where a couple of chairs were piled with snow. Rachel wondered whether it was ever warm enough to sit out there, even in the summer.
The house was clad in dark red corrugated cladding and the roof was grey. It was small but smart looking. Jones opened the front door and led Rachel into a lounge which was the entire height of the building, reaching into the apex of the roof. Opposite the front door was a mezzanine level reached by a set of steep wooden stairs which were barely more than a glorified ladder.
“That’s the bedroom,” Jonas said, pointing to the mezzanine. “Bathroom and kitchen.” He pointed to two doors underneath the bedroom. “I will just be a minute. Have a look around if you want.” He kissed her then climbed the stairs to the bedroom.
The lounge had a two-seater sofa, an armchair and a pot-bellied wood-burning stove with a flue that reached right to the roof. Everything was comfortable looking, lived-in and quite neat.
Feeling like she was being too nosy but doing it anyway, Rachel headed into the kitchen. It was like something from an IKEA catalogue. Super tidy, minimalist and very cool. The window looked out onto someone else’s garden, also strung with fairy lights. It was like living on the set of a Christmas film all year round but Rachel supposed it was dark so much of the time that it cheered people up.
“Okay.” Jonas appeared behind her dressed in his usual outdoorsy clothes. He opened a cupboard which looked like a larder but which was full of an assortment of coats, trousers and various types of boots. “Let’s take these,” he said pulling out a huge coat and some over trousers which were lined with soft fleece. “You can use this coat if you like. This one will be warmer and it doesn’t matter if it gets dirty.”
“Oh God, why will it get dirty?” Her anxiety was building. All of the worst things Rachel could imagine suddenly seemed the most likely things that Jonas would choose for them to do.
“It probably won’t, I just don’t want you to spoil your coat.”
“Okay, thanks,” said Rachel, taking the coat and trousers from him uncertainly.
“You don’t need to worry. You will enjoy this, it is not dangerous like the other things we have done.” He smiled and dropped a kiss on her forehead as he wrapped his arms around her. She buried her head into his chest, breathed in his scent and felt calm. There was no need to worry about anything when she was with Jonas.
“Your house is gorgeous,” she said, kissing him. “Shall we just stay here and have a lazy breakfast instead?”
“We can pick up some breakfast on the way. You’re not still worried, are you? It’s going to be fun.”
He pulled away from her, grabbed a rucksack and a set of keys.
“Come on, let’s go.”
His jeep was parked a couple of streets away and had a good covering of snow over it. Jonas insisted Rachel wait inside while he swiped the snow off then he disappeared into a nearby bakery and emerged with coffee and a bag of something that Rachel hoped were pastries. She was starving.
“Shall we eat these now?” she asked.
“No, let’s save them until we get there. It’s not far.”
They drove out of town on what Rachel thought was the same road as the one she took on the Golden Circle tour but as soon as they had emerged from the city and the snowy landscape lay in front of them for as far as they could see, Jonas pulled off onto a side track and parked outside a non-descript wooden-clad building.
“Here?”
He grinned and took the pastries and coffee from Rachel, before going ahead to unlock the door while she changed her coat for the one that he’d lent her.
She caught up with him and he held the door open for her. It was one huge space filled to the rafters with all kinds of outdoor equipment. There were endless loops of rope hanging from hooks on the walls and boards with hooks holding clamps and harnesses. There were racks of kayaks, diving equipment and even snowmobiles.
“Wow, this is amazing.”
It was also freezing cold and as she followed Jonas through the piles of equipment she was glad to see him heading for a cosy-looking nook with a couple of old sofas surrounding a wood-burning stove. He took a box of matches and lit the kindling that was already there which immediately started to blaze in a way that made Rachel feel warmer just by looking at it.
“This is where we store all our equipment. A lot of it is only used in the summer so we have to keep it somewhere. Also, we come here for meetings if there are a lot of us because the office in town is too small.”
Jonas put a couple of logs into the stove and then tore open the bag of pastries and laid it on the table, inviting Rachel to choose first.
“You do so many different things. Do you know how to do everything? Even diving?”
He smiled modestly and nodded. “This is all I’ve ever done. I have worked for excursion companies since I left school. It was the next step to start my own. You can mix your ideas with what you think people want and try to make it different from what the others are doing.”
Rachel sipped her coffee. She admired Jonas for working hard to turn what he loved into a business, a successful business. And she admired him even more for still loving every minute of it. It would be easy to forget your passion in the pursuit of business success but as with the rest of his life, it seemed Jonas had the right balance.
“Have you ever ridden on a snowmobile?”
“Of course I haven’t,” she said, giving him a playful nudge. “I live in England. We get an inch of snow and the country grinds to a halt. I’m pretty sure the only people in England who have ever been on a snowmobile did it in another country.”
