Page 71 of You, As You Are

Her hands … She didn’t know what they’d grabbed but it was covered in denim.

“Moo Moo! I brought you some leftovers from—oh my.”

Oh. God.That wasn’t …

Oh but it was.

Maisie snapped her head up, the one that Iain’s gigantic hand had wrapped around the base of when she’d smashed her face into his crotch, feeling her stomach drop at the sight of her stunned grandma with fogged-up Tupperware in her doorway.

“Nain!”Her face burst into beet-red mortification.

“I am so sorry to interrupt.”

“No, no—we weren’t—there was nothing—fuck.” Maisie pushed up with strength she’d never possessed, and Iain groaned at the palm she shoved at his?—

“Yes, that’s what it looked like I interrupted.” Vera scurried to the nearest flat surface which happened to be the desk. “I’ll leave this here.”

Staggering over, Maisie shoved her boobs back into place. “I wasn’t?—”

“Nice to see you, Iain,” Vera called on her way out. “Be gentle with my granddaughter.”

“Nain!”

This is terrible –absolutely not the kind of rumours Maisie wanted to start.She could cry with the influx of emotion that crashed into her, because what were the pensioners going to think? From the doorway, it would’ve certainly looked like she’d been giving Iain a?—

“Maybe take a look at some of her books?” Vera spun to take the concrete steps, eyeing Iain. “Those things are filthy. I know she seems sweet and innocent, but if she reads those things then?—”

“Please go,Nain. Goodbye.” More flustered than a hen, Maisie ushered her out.

The door was short of being slammed shut.

Hoping that the last thirty seconds hadn’t happened, Maisie pressed her palms into the cold wood. Her face burned as though someone poured lava from above, her hair saved by the two buns she’d plaited it in.

She was never going to be able to look her grandma in the eye again. She was going to have to pack up everything that she could carry and haul her arse on the first train out of town tonight, heading for somewhere that none of her family could find her. The Arctic Circle, perhaps? It might be cold up there, but she could acclimatise.

The room was too silent.

She turned as slowly as she could to delay the inevitable when her eyes connected with Iain’s.

But the bastard smirked.

“That wasn’t what I meant when I asked if you wanted to eat.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

IAIN

Concentration had beenat capacityzerofor the nine hours Iain laboriously slugged through his work. The three customers he’d seen hadn’t seemed to notice, and Gareth had patted him on the back with a smile as they locked up the doors. Another tick towards not being let go at the end of his warning.

All day he’d sat tapping his foot under his desk, much to Ted’s curled up chagrin, waiting for the moment where he could go home and find something –anything –to take his mind off the events of yesterday afternoon.

He’d left their little fake Valentine’s Day escapade not long after Maisie face-planted his crotch, needing to get out of there. She’d been embarrassed about the fumble, and he didn’t blame her in the slightest. But the idea of her mouth so close to him there had stirred feelings inside of Iain that he wasn’t supposed to feel.Desire, for one. A need to let her hair down from those buns she wore and tussle out the curls, for another. Do not get him started on her pink cowboy boot earrings.

Why he’d told her about his failed engagement, he didn’t know. She seemed to charm out facts about his life at every opportunity, and he let her. For the first time in nineteenmonths, the words to tell his experience had wanted to be told. So he’d let them all flow.

After work, Iain drove the long way home, which wasn’t even his way home at all. He missed the turning he should’ve taken off the A-road into town and kept on heading straight, until he took the most convoluted route of one-way streets to end up at the junction right by the bookshop below Maisie’s flat.

The sight in his rearview mirror was clear, so he grazed his palms over the soft leather steering wheel and tried to decide what kind of insanity he’d lowered himself to. He had no choice but to turn left, but how far he would drive along that road was a question he tried to figure out the answer to. Ten yards and he was withher. A hundred yards and he was on his way home. The coat-covered frame he clocked sight of waddling down the street made his decision for him.

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