Page 37 of You, As You Are

Iain glanced sideways at the rain pounding the street outside. He knew from the photo where everybody else had gathered, and that bistro was a few streets over across the other side of town – impossible to have mixed up with the one they currently sat in.

“Do you want to join them?” he asked. It’d be a quick ten-minute walk in the rain, but Maisie would have to pass her flat just to turn back afterwards.

She hesitated. “I kind of have a lot of work to do today. I have orders for my business that I need to package and take to be shipped.” She sounded guilty, as if having stuff to do outside of seeing the hiking group was a bad thing. Iain didn’t suppose for one minute that Ms Vera was giving her much breathing space either, given her persistence in having Maisie join her outings.

“I knowNainis trying to be helpful and get me to meet people, but I don’t think she quite understands that I don’t have as much time as she thinks that I do.” Maisie carried on, and Iain sat, watching her, listening, as she played with the paper case of her blueberry muffin. “I didn’t want to move here but I don’t have a choice.”

Iain knew what it was like to be caught in a familial situation that you couldn’t get out of. Whether she’d been listening or not, he’d revealed that detail in her living room. He might’ve been too pushy in telling her that she did in fact have a choice to leave.Fancied a change in sceneryis what she’d told him the morning they’d met. Small town, coastal life wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and by the look on her face, she already regretted it.

“Vera is keeping something from us, our family,” Maisie finally said, worrying her lip with her teeth. “That’s the real reason I’m here.”

He’d watched her fiddling with the muffin case, but his focus snapped to her downturned eyes. “Something? Like what?”

“We’re not sure. Her breaking her wrist like she did hasn’t ever happened before – she’s never injured. And she’s been dodging questions on the phone since before Christmas. The other week, there was a box of stuff in her kitchen she said she was going to get rid of and she wouldn’t say why. It’s just not like her to hide something.”

Worry spiralled into Iain’s veins. He’d never had grandparents that he’d known very well. He didn’t know that kind of anxiousness when they became old and frail. But he knew these elders of the hiking group that’d adopted him like a lost, wayfaring child. When he’d been sick last year, he’d been helped without question and taken under each of their wings.

He’d never said out loud how much he cared for them all, though perhaps he should. He came running whenever each of them called – hell,he’dbeen the one who’d picked Vera up anddriven her to hospital the other month when Ronnie had been in hysterics over her accident. He didn’t think that Maisie knew that.

He set his elbows forward on the table and lowered his voice. “You think she’s sick.”

Shoulders slumping, Maisie sighed. “I don’t know. Like this meeting today, she got the café wrong. Ronnie hovers around her. And she wasreallyeager to have me out of her house … It’s just so out of character that something must be wrong.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Iain said, calming the train of his thoughts. Maisie wouldn’t need him suggesting things that’d make her more anxious. “There’ll be some other reason.”

“I hope you’re right.” Muffin case folded into a neat triangle, Maisie scrubbed her hands down her face, drawing Iain’s gaze along her pink cheeks, crossing a constellation of light-brown freckles. “I’m sorry, I just dumped a lot on you.”

It appeared like she didn’t have many others to lift those burdens from her shoulders. Maybe he was the only one in this town who she could bring into her confidence.

“Don’t apologise. It’s me who’s still in the doghouse.”

“I’ve already forgiven you for that. But I’d like to know why you said I should stay away from you.”

His eyes lowered. “You heard that too …”

“You weren’t exactlyquiet, Iain,” Maisie pointed out with the ghost of a happier smile, “and I was five feet away.”

He sat back and popped the crick in his neck, glancing at Ted where he snored at Maisie’s feet. “The truth?”

“It’s always better than a lie.” She didn’t sound as sarcastic as the words that came out.

Iain held off for a moment, wondering if she’d back down if his gaze burned into hers for long enough. But Maisie, this odd, beautiful woman, gave as good as she got and didn’t shy away.

You really want to know,he thought as he sighed. “My life is a mess.” To answer her original question. “I can’t entertain committing to someone until I’ve fixed my problems.”

Maisie let her eyes wander his shoulders and chest. “You don’t look all too messy to me.”

If she hadn’t already told him her only wish was for friendship, then he’d think that she was flirting with him. He rather liked her attention that way.

Friendship. Friendship. Friendship.

“I am,” Iain concluded. “And that’s all I want to say about it.”

Maisie’s tongue traced over her lips before she rolled them inward, breaking her attention from him to the artwork on the panelled wall beside their table. The painting was a dull wash of colours, but she looked at it as if it were a double rainbow over a wildflower meadow in May. “I miss the sun.”

“You’re in the wrong country,” he said.

“That’s not true. My summers here used to be beautiful.” Maisie stared up at the artwork. “I won’t be staying long enough to see it though, hopefully.”

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