Page 10 of You, As You Are

“I haven’t been for a while.” Maisie shifted her gaze to the windows across the bus where she could make out a sliver of ocean on the horizon. “I haven’t been anywhere around here for a while, actually.”

Iain turned his chin and looked at her as if there was something more to be said. She realised that he knew far too much about her for the minutes they’d known one another, and she knew next to nothing about him.

“How did you get involved with the group?” she asked. “No offence, but unless you’ve had some pretty impressive surgery, I’d say you’re about half the age of everyone else here.”

Was that a smile that twitched on his lips?

Iain turned his face fully to her, and Maisie’s pulse quivered. He was rugged in a way she’d never had the attention of before from a man, and she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to react, feeling a little like a moth being drawn to a flame.

“I could say the same for you,” he said.

“I didn’t expect to be the odd one out.”In several ways. “I’m a little glad that I’m not.” These people weren’t exactly the kind of ‘friends’ she’d envisioned meeting when Vera had pushed her into coming.

Maisie wondered briefly what her friends back home would be doing right now. Faye and Bash would both be snuggled together either in Bash’s mansion of a London townhouse or Faye’s new Manchester flat, now that she’d made her life easier by handing over the reins of her bakeries to an assistant at the weekends. Sienna would be opening up the florist shop where she worked, and Freddy would likely be cramming in an hour of work on children’s illustrations while simultaneously preparing his two young nephews for whatever activity they had today.

She didn’t expect Iain to answer the question she’d half-forgotten she’d asked, but he did.

“I was sick last year, couldn’t walk Ted for a couple of weeks. I posted in an online forum for Aber asking if anyone could help me out. Malc over there responded and walked Ted twice a day for me.”

That was a lot of words, more than he’d given her so far, but he said them all with such a straight face that Maisie didn’t entirely know what to make of them. “That’s kind.”

“He did me a favour those weeks,” Iain continued, and she couldn’t have been more silently shocked. “Told me about this group one evening when he dropped Ted off and asked if he could take Ted on the walk. He did. Then when I was better, Malc invited me too. Been rambling ever since.”

Their arms and hips were still pressed together and a small bump in the road made Maisie realise that this drive was the longest stretch of physical contact she’d had withanyonein – as Iain had so kindly reminded her – seven months.

“Did Vera have anything to do with you joining today by any chance?” he asked.

Maisie rolled her eyes and didn’t bother lowering her voice, even though it felt like the entire bus listened to their conversation. “She had everything to do with it. Even with a broken wrist she strong-armed me into coming today.”

“Well it’s nice to have another under-forty here.” Iain said so in such a deep, serious tone that it was hard to tell if the sentiment was real or not. “I’m glad you came.”

Butterflies swarming her stomach weren’t on the agenda for the morning, but they came anyway.

She held his gaze, somehow, raising an eyebrow. “You won’t be saying that when you have to drag me along the home stretch.”

“I’ll carry you instead.”

“You couldn’t.”

Iain passed a glance down her in a clean, slow sweep. “Don’t be so sure about that.”

Well … damn.Maisie only needed to take one look at him to believe his confidence. She drew in a breath and inadvertently pressed her thighs together, blush rising to her cheeks.

Something happened within her at those six words. No ex-boyfriend of hers had ever made her close to confident that if she jumped up, they could catch her. And here Iain was, astranger, getting her all hot and tingly at the prospect of being carried across land for miles like some kind of mediaeval princess.

Maisie turned her face to the window, and the force of her grin hurt her face.

She wasn’t in Wales to date or dally with another man who would end up letting her down, but maybe having a rugged and rough mountain man temporarily sweep her off her feet wouldn’t hurt her plans.

CHAPTER FOUR

MAISIE

The breeze comingoff the bay bit at Maisie’s cheeks as she stepped down from the bus behind Iain. They’d pulled into a small car park at the south end of Borth’s beach, theonlycar park on the seafront by the look of things.

The town was only a few kilometres up the coast from Aberystwyth and yet it couldn’t be any more different. Instead of four-story Victorian hotels on the seafront, quaint houses were set twenty yards back from the pebbled beach, if that.

Flag posts lining the car park buffeted as the group gathered on the empty tarmac, rearranging hats and coats and extending walking sticks. The gift shop on the other side of the street rather optimistically displayed colourful mini shovels and windbreakers, the narrow beach as quiet as to be expected for nine o’clock on a January morning.

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