Page 4 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Cold or not, Anna takes a moment outside the cherry-red door halfway up. The little yard is much the same as she left it, albeit with a couple of inches of snow covering the cobblestones and the bench. There’s no sign of the plants that run around the edges, save for the bulges of some pots. A Christiania cargo bike is parked to one side, it, too, bearing a thick layer of snowflakes. The streetlight makes it all glisten in the winter darkness, and Anna feels a pang at the beauty of it. Another reason to pause at the door is to rehearse what to say when the door is answered. She’s praying there’ll be someone home.
A deep breath and she knocks, before quickly ramming her hand back into her wet pocket. There’s a pretty wreath on the door, which appears to be made out of… paper.Quirky.She stamps her boots, trying to get the blood back into her toes, but that’s a pointless exercise. She’ll be surprised if they aren’t frostbitten in there.
Not hearing any plodding on the sanded wooden floor, or anything on the stairs beyond the door, she hopes it’s the weather muffling the sound. There is definitely a lack of door answering. She knocks again, more loudly this time, in case the wind-muffling goes both ways. What shecanhear is her heart pounding, louder and louder as the seconds pass and the prospect of having to walk away gains traction in her head.
Anna feels her nose begin to twitch at the notion of there not being anyone home. That would be the perfect end to the day; her crying on her own doorstep, sodden to her knickers and frozen to her bones. Just the thought of it increases her panic and she hammers on the wood this time.
“Yes, yes.Jeg kommer!” shouts a voice from inside. Male and possibly not Danish, given the mixed language, but you never really know, given the way the Danes often mix words.
The door opens and before her stands a man, tall and broad, filling the doorway, wearing just a tiny towel around his waist.
He has a face she recognises.
And it forms a scowl she knows.
To which, knowing her hopes for shelter are scuppered, Anna bursts into tears.
ChapterFour
“Did you follow me?” he growls.
The situation is bizarre, neither of them knowing quite what to do. He doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who slams doors in the face of distressed women. On the other hand, and quite fairly, he doesn’t seem inclined to let such women into his home either, especially when he only has a tiny towel to defend himself.
“Absolutely not,” she manages, in something she wishes was less sobby, but it’s out of her control. The snot isn’t helping. The burr of his English tells her he’s a Scot. She suspects he’ll recognise her accented English as being that of a local. “This is just a weird coincidence.”
The arch of his right brow says he does not believe her.
He waits, silent. And glowering.
“I wasn’t following you before, either,” she adds, her earlier wish to set him straight coming back to her. “We were just heading in the same direction.” She spots his big Nordic parka hanging behind him in the hallway, the condiment apocalypse wiped off it, but a dark stain remaining. “The coat thing was an accident.” That scowl of his is back. His eyes look behind her now, to see if he is being pranked. “I did apologise,” she reminds him. It is hard to stay focused on stemming her tears and also being contrite, when his cold, and thus very hard, nipples are right in her eye line. That said, the animosity vibrating off him is helping.
Looking back at her now, presumably satisfied he isn’t about to be rushed by thieves, he gruffly asks, “What is it you want?”
Now, now she knows it’shimin the house, she isn’t so sure. Does she want to go into the house with someone who thinks she’s a stalker and clearly dislikes her? Anna half turns back to the street. Could she knock on a neighbour’s door instead? She’d have so much explaining to do.
Some cold meltwater from her hat drips down her forehead and catches in her eye, making her blink even more than in her efforts to stem the hot tears.
“Do I know you?” he prompts.
“No. Yes. Sort of. But no,” she rambles, turning back, possibly a little delirious now with the cold, and looking beyond him again, through the sliver of the doorway he doesn’t naturally fill. She wants to see what it looks like. She wants to be inside in the warmth.
His eyebrows draw together. She isn’t making any sense. And of course, she isn’t; this entire day has been nonsense. “I’m Anna. Anna Lundholm. I own this house. Your landlord, I guess.”
“Really?” The frown remains. “My landlord lives in London.” He folds his arms across his chest in a show of strength or to preserve warmth, she supposes, then remembers the towel, and swiftly moves his hand down again to hold onto the knot.
“Yes, true, but we met at the airport, remember?” she can’t help but point out. “I was in town for the day, and the weather happened, and I can’t fly home, and I can’t get a hotel room anywhere.” Thankfully, in the one well-timed occurrence of the day, her teeth start chattering again. “And I am so wet and cold, I couldn’t think of what else to do but come home and knock.” So, OK, her use of the wordhomeis deliberate and an intentional pull of the heartstrings, though whether he even has any remains undetermined. Anna feels she’s getting a grip of things.
He still doesn’t look convinced.
“What colour is the bathroom?” he demands.
“Which one?” she counters, drawing the back of her hand across her nose to wipe the snot. It’s not pretty, but needs must, and it comes across as feisty, which she’ll take, having just sobbed on a stranger’s doorstep.
“Main.”
“White. But there’s a mosaic on the wall that’s shades of blue.” She’d done it herself. It had seemed a good idea at the time, copied from something she’d seen in Greece, but very quickly used up all her patience and had taken months for her to complete.
“Kitchen?”
