Page 42 of You, As You Are

You sound grumpy even in text form

It’s where my sunshine personality shines best.

It wasn’t the first mention of hissunshine personality.Iain let Maisie read the message without giving her the phone back, and her delicate huff was humour-filled. He got a twinge of satisfaction from her finding him funny.

She whined in protest when he moved the phone out of her reach.

“You sound like Ted,” Iain said aloud, typing his next note while Maisie exhaled like an angry little dragon, her fist shoving his thigh. His facial hair was thick enough to hide the two-second curl in his lips. He wrote:

Don’t change the topic. We have bigger problems!

Maisie typed as furiously as her next words came to be.

We need to talk!!!

Just what every man wants to hear.

Did you catch how I rolled my eyes? No? Let me do it again

Iain coughed to cover how he grinned.

She typed again.

When we get off the bus, we need to talk. I think I’ve figured out what’s going on!

What’s that then?

Iain handed back the phone and didn’t expect the fizzle up his arm when the back of his fingers slid against Maisie’s palm. She was too busy typing with nails that made tapping the screen look difficult to notice him internally panic at that feeling.

He couldn’t havefeelings– not towards her – sexually or emotionally or otherwise. Certainly not after his body that he’d always trusted to do the right thing had carried him all the way unwittingly to her door when he’d been knocked unsteady by his father’s voice.

That was enough indication of a problem brewing as it was.

But of course, Maisie had to go and sit her phone down on his hyperaware thigh. Five of those peach polka-dotted nails poked him with their tips through his walking trousers.

He shifted his eyes to where his focus should actually be and read her response.

We’re being set up!

* Thank you, Irene

CHAPTER TWELVE

MAISIE

The minibus droppedthe group off at a tiny village calledAbercegir, though calling the one street with a cluster of quaint, stone-built houses avillageseemed an overstatement. It was more of a tiny, little, old-world hamlet in Maisie’s opinion.

She’d noticed how everybody said “Thanks, Drive” when stepping off the bus, which didn’t really make grammatical sense, but she went along with it as she descended the steps.

As soon as feet hit the ground, they were off. The pensioners with their clunky boots and walking sticks set a good pace down a side road. Maisie hitched her backpack, adjusted her berry-coloured walking trousers, and caught up to Iain and Ted at the rear of the pack.

She poked Iain’s elbow and asked, “How long is this walk?” Really, she should know more about these things before she agreed to do them, but half of her would rathernotknow until there was no choice to turn back.

“Huh?”

Maisie rolled the question back onto her tongue but held it in at the last millisecond, suspecting that any minute he would?—

“Five miles,” Iain said. “Through some forest, skirt a hill, throughPenegoes, farmland, and finish inMachynlleth.” Hisaccent made Maisie smile to herself for a moment. The way he rolled through words and the pleasant sounds that were foreign to her London-born ears.

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