Page 35 of You, As You Are

Iain hated doing this, breaking apart the walls he’d built around himself before anyone else could take a sledgehammer to them. “Aron saw me helping you on Sunday and started jumping to conclusions that I have feelings for you.” Maisie’s blank expression didn’t falter. “I’m not looking to date anyone. What I said wasn’t just about you.”

“Well what I heard wasveryclear. You couldn’t have been any more direct.”

“Maisie—”

“I’m not here to date, either,” she cut in. “I wasn’t expecting anything from you just because we’ve been made to spend some time together, which it looks like we have been again.”

Maisie waved her hand at the space between them, and Iain swallowed down a sigh. He couldn’t deny being relieved that they were on the same page about single life. She wasn’t looking for a date and neither was he. That was simple enough to understand. So why did a kernel of protest break free from that recess in his chest where he’d tucked away his shrivelled-up heart?

“Taking care of mynainis the only reason I’m here,” Maisie continued. “But I would like to make at least one friend who isn’t seventy-plus.”

Iain didn’t let it show on his face, but that surprised him. He’d half expected her to rip him a new one for what he’d said. He’d been in her position a few times over, so he knew the struggle of finding people to call friends in a new town. If the only other people who she knew here were those in the hiking group, then he didn’t blame her for seeking a friend from her own generation, so he said, “Friendship, I can do.”

“Well don’t soundsoenthusiastic.” A smile cracked on Maisie’s full lips that shook Iain as though he’d taken his first breath.

Shit, maybe he was wrong. Maybe he should back away before his resolve to not get involved with a woman wore down.

Friendship. Friendship. Friendship.

“It’s just my sunshine personality,” he rebuffed in the drollest tone.

“Hm, it’s radiant today.”

Iain grunted, again. He didn’t expect Maisie to move on so easily – she’d truly looked hurt by his thoughtlessness the other night.

“Out of curiosity, why don’t you want to date?” she asked, following the path of a server bringing hot drinks and muffins to a table nearby. She’d said that she wasn’t looking for a relationship, so Iain didn’t believe her curiosity was for her own interest.

His grip on Ted’s lead in his lap tightened with his answer. “I don’t exactly have much to bring to a relationship. I’m not worthy of one.”

Maisie’s focus whipped back to him. “Why do you think that?”

A numb lump pushed against his sternum. He wasn’t going there. He’d already hit an award-winning low in record-breaking time with this woman, and Iain would rather stay there than keep on shovelling deeper.

“Do you want that coffee?” He started to stand.

“I can get?—”

“Sit.”

Her arse landed back on the seat with a wide expression that, if he wasn’t mistaken, was a little excited. “I’m not your dog.”

“No … Ted does what he’s told.”

Maisie’s jaw dropped, and he handed her Ted’s lead.

“Is he always like this?” she asked the mutt who shuffled closer to rub his head against her calf, and Iain found himself smiling as he wandered to the service counter.

A couple of guys from his rugby club and their wives were at a table by the window who nodded to him, so he nodded in return whilst he waited. Eventually he set down Maisie’s coffee – some kind of caramel concoction like the one she’d made for herself when he’d helped her move house – alongside his flat white. He brought the blueberry muffin she’d eyed minutes ago too as an add-on to his apology.

His arse that was sore from training the night before barely landed in the seat when she half-heartedly asked, “Were you this grumpy as a child?”

His lowering stuttered.

Of course he was, for reasons that’d become clearer and clearer to Iain with time. Sitting, he grunted around his bite into a sugar-dusted Welsh cake, one of the sultanas falling back to his plate.

No matter how many times Maisie called him grumpy, Iain wasn’t offended. He was well aware of how he seemed to the world. He hadn’t always been like this, but the minute things had begun to go right in his life and sunshine peered through the clouds, a thunderstorm came and drowned out all of his happiness. He had less to lose if there was nothing to wash away in the floods.

It was easier to get people to leave him alone that way. Except for this one redhead that he couldn’t find the strength within him to shake. Maisie needed someone, and he needed …life.

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