Page 65 of You, As You Are

“Oh my god.” Maisie’s stomach swooped like she’d just taken a misstep on the downhill of a cliff walk. Ted picked up his head at her frustrated tone.

A thin veil of concern draped over Iain’s features. “What?”

“Nainconvinced you to help me that day,” Maisie blurted, her eyes close to bursting from their sockets. “She would’ve known it was your Valentine’s Day and thatIhad no idea about it. Her scheme to get us alone on yourDay of Love slipped right past me! Why that conniving?—”

Iain’s hand cupped her cheek and turned her face up to him, his thumb pressing her lips shut. “Any louder, Daffy, and they’ll figure out that we know what they’re doing.”

Blinking up at him, Maisie’s pulse danced southward to where she wished his thumb might press. Their gazes held, Iain’s thumb lingering for another too-short moment before falling away.

She regathered herself and recognised how utterly unbothered he was by the meddling she’d just uncovered. “Why didn’t you tell me that day had meaning?” And more importantly, why hadn’t he mentioned this ‘day of love’ when they’d talked about the ways Vera and her posse had set them up?

“I was trying not to think ofanythingthat day.” His tersely given answer threw another layer onto the stack of things he wasn’t telling her.

Maisie decided to get back to the point of what they were originally discussing. “Do you have any ideas for how we should break up?”

Iain stole a furtive glance behind him at the peeping Toms. “How about we just tell them we’re not together anymore?”

“And hope that they don’t ask questions?” That wasn’t likely. “We need a story. We need a reason.”

“Maisie, none of this is real,” he slightly growled. “We don’t need any reason. We tell them that we went on a few dates, and we didn’t align. We’ll stay friends.”

Maisie chewed on her lip, contemplating if that plan would be believable enough. They could say that they’d had an argument … but that would make seeing each other for hikes more awkward than they’d been before this plan. No, if it was going to end, it had to be amicable.

Their conversation hadn’t outwardly appeared asflirtyas it should for a little while. Being bold, Maisie moved her hand through the air between them, tucked her fingers behind an unzipped panel of Iain’s coat, then ran her knuckles over his stomach. His really,reallysturdy stomach.

“Actually, what if we waited longer?” she suggested, adding an air of coyness to her ruse.

With that darkened look still deepening his strong features, Iain’s head cocked. “Now why would we do that?”

Maisie rolled an answer right off of her tongue. “So that no one can say we didn’t give this a fair shot and try to get us together again. A few more weeks and it’d be believable that we tried but we’re not compatible.Nainshould be less likely to try and convince us to give it another go.”

“You and your mind,” Iain mumbled. The barrel of his chest filled up against the back of her hand, his body drifting closer. “Fine. A few more weeks.”

“Fine.” Now that that was sorted, Maisie took a deeper breath and dropped her hand before it could get used to the feeling of his body beneath it.

Ted sat by Iain’s feet and stared up at them, whining ever so quietly for the remains of the dessert he wasn’t allowed to taste. Iain dipped his fingers into one of the tactical pockets on his trousers and tossed a couple of treats into the grass for him to sniff out instead.

Maisie studied him – Iain, not Ted – wondering who the man was beneath the surface that he kept a wall around. She’d seen a glimpse of him the other night when he’d walked her home; the gentleness in how he’d not wanted her to be alone in the dark, the sadness in his eyes when he’d mentioned his brothers. The loneliness that radiated when she’d talked about missing London and her friends, as if it was a feeling he’d never known. It wasn’t ideal, but at least it meant that she knew she was loved and had people to love in return.

“Would you really break up with someone on Valentine’s Day?” she asked.

Iain raised his gaze through his dark lashes, an inch away from a bite of his ice cream. “I’m not that much of a prick,” he said.

“Good.” That was reassuring to know. Maisie didn’t think she could trust someone who would choose to dump a person on Valentine’s Day. Then again, that also meant— “We’re probably going to have to do something.”

“Huh?”

“On Valentine’s Day tomorrow. They’ll want to know if we did anything together,” she noted with a pointed side-eye at the picnic table full of earwiggers. How the thing hadn’t toppled over with the way they all tried to lean towards the conversation, she didn’t know.

Iain shrugged. “So lie.”

“I can’t lie to mynainlike that,” Maisie whisper-hissed. “She’ll sniff it out. She’ll expect us to see each other.”

“This whole thing, Maisie, isn’t real.”

“I know …”

He sighed. “I suppose … we could take Ted out together and get some lunch.”

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