Page 75 of You, As You Are

“Really?”

“Ted doesn’t understand picking his toys up after himself.”

“That doesn’t matter. He’s a good boy, aren’t you?” Ted lifted his head from her lap where they cuddled together on her sofa, simultaneously nudging his nose against her boob.

It was a no-bra day – she’d been too unwell to bother with one – which meant it was a free for all in terms of where her breasts decided to sit. As Maisie lay here on her cramped sofa, one tried to migrate under her armpit. At least she wore a loose-fitting hoodie which left a lot to the imagination. Or it would do, if Iain even looked at her with those kinds of thoughts. She was hardly a picture of desirability tonight. She definitely looked like a disaster. Her hair was greasy and doing its own thing in a slicked back ponytail she’d drawn too tight. She could actuallyfeelher skin being dewy and clammed up. Her face was blotchy and completely make-up free – she hardly ever went without at leastsomethingaround her eyes.

And her nose … Well, it dripped like the leaky tap in her bathroom.

The cold had been what had hit her first, coming on last night after her shower. As soon as her drowsy head had hit her pillow, she’d passed out. This morning, she’d thought the long night’s sleep had just resulted from general tiredness. But no, her uterus attacked with a vengeance too.

So here she was. Being waited on hand and foot by a male nurse in a snug blue suit.

Iain dropped the bin-liner within her reach and moved the nearly-empty box of tissues closer on the coffee table.

“I have the immunity of a goldfish,” Maisie whined as she reached to grab another one.

“That doesn’t make?—”

“It made sense tome, okay?” she bawled.

Iain tilted his head as he stood above her, his smile lopsided as he tugged off the pink rubber gloves.

“I think it was the walk,” Maisie added, closing her eyes to stop the overhead light behind him from worsening her headache. “I should’ve taken my ear warmers off when I got too warm.” The afterthought sent her into a sneezing fit.

“I’ve had that fever before,” Iain murmured.

A delicate touch on her forehead made Maisie open her watery eyes, finding the blurry form of the back of a hand hovering above her brows. Unable to keep her eyes open, she tried to swat him away, but her arms felt like lead. “I don’t want you to get sick too.”

Iain huffed one of his semi-reluctant chuckles. “I have the immunity of a brick.”

“Bricks crumble over time,” she uttered.

“Ah, but Lego bricks are indestructible.”

Maisie peeled open an eye. “You trying to say that if I stood on you, you’d hurt me?”

“More like we’d fit together with a click.”

She stared at him so tall above her, then scoffed her best attempt at a laugh. Yes, she was definitely delirious. “Was that a line?”

One cheek went round with the crooked way that Iain smiled. “Did it work?”

If she had more of her wits about her, it wouldn’t have done. “I didn’t know you had the ability to flirt.” She didn’t know if she was actually hearing it, or if any of this was real.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know I can do, Daffy.”

That was something Iain shouldn’t have said when Maisie still wasn’t sure if he was a hallucination or not. Her mind only conjured up strange images – far too sexual ones – that she had to put a halt to. It took even more energy out of her to do so.

Looking down at her, Iain inhaled and let that breath go. “I’m going to put away the groceries Vera brought,” he said more earnestly, more like his usual gruff self, turning towards her tidy little kitchen.

She wasn’t surprised that Vera had given in so easily to letting Iain bring up the supplies, but how had their paths even crossed? They lived on opposite sides of town, so that meant Iain must’ve intercepted her outside, which also meant he must have purposefully come from work – like he’d said he’d done – to her street.

They hadn’t arranged to see each other tonight, so he wasn’t here because of their agreement. Which meant that he was here … forher.

As that thought sunk in through the fog in Maisie’s mind, Iain appeared from her kitchen with a block of cheddar and half a loaf of sourdough in each hand. “You hungry?”

Her stomach chose to grumble right then. “Yes.”

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