She opened her mouth to reiterate when Iain said, “Not just yet. Ted knows to stay on the trail. He doesn’t ever run off.”
Maisie started to get the feeling that his mind processed her questions on a slight delay.
“But what about the wind?” she asked next, following the trail up the incline that decided to sharpen. Only a few steps, andMaisie already regretted her choices since last night, particularly the one where she agreed to this.
Iain shrugged his broad shoulders, hands casually slung in his pockets which – she couldn’t rightly be blamed for noticing – strained the olive-coloured fabric over his well sculpted arse.
“Whataboutthe wind?” he rebuffed. “This is mild. It’ll die down.”
Unfortunately, Maisie didn’t know Iain well enough to trust much of what he said as she lagged behind. “But doesn’t the trail get close to the edge? What if one of us?—”
“There’s fencing in places, and we wouldn’t walk if we didn’t know we were safe.” Iain’s general bluntness inched more towards being irritated with her cautiousness.
It’s January,Maisie wanted to hiss.On the edge of a cliff.
“What if it rains?”
“You realise you’re in Wales?”
“Wait—this isn’t Saint Tropez?” Maisie faked a gasp. “But I brought my bikini.”
Satisfaction swam through her veins when Iain looked back over his shoulder at her with an expression drier than sand, though there was definitely a trace of a smile on his lips. Surprisingly good lips for a man. Maisie snapped her gaze away from being locked on them.
“I’m making the decision to trust your judgement,” she said and hoped that she wouldn’t regret it later.
Another unintelligible grunt, of course, was Iain’s response.
As they ploughed on uphill, he explained that the trail should be ‘fine’. It rained a couple of days ago but the earth should have mostly dried out by now, meaning the chance of slipping was only high if you were clumsy – he said that part with a not-so-indiscreet glance her way.
The trail wasn’t rain-quenched for the most part up to the crest of the first cliff. Iain’s well-worn boots barely made a soundin the compacted, damp earth – unlike hers. Maisie’s expensive sports bra put in overtime with the uphill trek. It strapped her breasts down enough for them to not jump up to her chin with every step she pushed on upwards. Iain slowed midway when he didn’t have to – she would happily continue walking to her out-of-breath demise from exhaustion by herself.
The cliff came to a peak before she realised it, though. The others had stopped at the top and hovered around a lookout periscope pointed out to sea, exchanging turns.
They’d barely walked for twenty minutes, but still Maisie took a welcomed seat on a step of what she gathered was an old war memorial, if the inscribed stone at the foot of the monument gave anything away. She took the water bottle from the side pocket of her backpack and chugged some of it down, watching Ted wander to the wired fencing behind her and stare at the sheep on the opposite side. Iain’s eyes landed on the metal she raised to her lips and then snapped away, his body shifting at various points like he relived the impact of it to his crotch. Maisie wouldn’t be surprised if he grimaced as he walked to join the pensioners.
She thought that she should apologise for that moment on the bus, since her first attempt had been thwarted, but maybe saying nothing at all about how she’d potentially put a man she’d only met an hour ago out of action for a couple of days was best. His poor partner probably wouldn’t thank her for any injury, yet if he had someone in his life, he probably wouldn’t be hiking with a bunch of retirees (and her) on a Saturday morning, either.
Up here, the wind was even more fierce, and Maisie adjusted her headband to cover her ears better. She couldn’t make out much of the conversations happening in front of her, only that thirteen pairs of eyes flicked her way one by one when, two minutes later, Iain offered her his gloved hand and helped her back to her feet.
For all the decline down the other side of the cliff, which was a lot easier than coming upwards, he didn’t say much at all. Not until, when reinforced steps appeared like they’d been dug out of the ground, the earth suddenly felt like it might slide out from beneath her.
“Shit, this is slippery today,” Iain said to himself, but Maisie heard it.
She didn’t like that spike of something other than passiveness in his voice. Her gaze shot beyond him to find Vera – who still had a broken wrist and really shouldn’t be doing any of this at all – but Ronnie had a firm grip on her as she descended, and she used her hiking stick in a way that said she knew what she was doing to not let herself fall.
Rather un-optimistically, Maisie looked down at her own feet. Iain had already moved down a few steps curving with the shape of the cliff. She watched him, where he planted his feet, and tried to follow.
He noticed her hesitant movements. “Take your time.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Maisie answered under her breath.
Yesterday, she’d been at her computer, in the warmth with a cup of tea, organising pages of a veterinary website with pictures of cute kittens and bunnies, and now she couldn’t feel her nose from how chilly it was.
When she made it to the little wooden bridge at the bottom of the steps without incident, both Iain and Ted waited for her. She’d noticed there was an aloofness to their relationship that was oddly filled with affection. It was in how Ted looked back from a distance to check where Iain was, and how he didn’t wander too far without him.
The next section of cliff was as steep as the first, for now, with a narrower trail surrounded by mounds of grass that forced her to walk in front of Iain when he gestured for her to go first.
If he was going to keep on doing this –waiting –then they might as well have an actual conversation.