Page 95 of You, As You Are

The receptionist’s eyes bulged.

Iain cocked his head. “Pretty sure yournainthought we were sleeping together when she walked in and saw your face on my crotch.”

“Don’t remind me,” Maisie huffed.

“Oh?” Finally, Iain budged his annoyingly casual stance, tipping into her space. “Was that event not fun for you, Moo Moo?”

She sent him a scowl.

The receptionist cleared her throat. “Should I cancel the reservation? This late, there will be no refund of any kind.”

Cancel?This weekend had cost Maisie just shy of two hundred pounds that she’d transferred to Vera for the group booking which, as it turns out, didn’t exist. As far as she knew, Iain had paid the same, but knowing her meddlingnain, this scheme could’ve been organised for weeks.

As politely as she could with rage burning beneath her skin, Maisie smiled at the receptionist. “Could you give us a second?”

“Of course.”

Hands on Iain’s arm, she nudged him all the way across the information centre, taunted by the smiling faces on stuffed teddies of wildlife and local memorabilia – not to mention the giant-ass mural of happy campers on the wall. Unimpressed, Ted huffed and herded him too.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, lowering her voice.

Iain didn’t answer, not right away. Every one of his features looked tired, and she didn’t need a translator for the long, gravelly sigh he let out.

Her shoulders inched lower. “You want to stay, don’t you?”

Iain dragged his hand down his face. “I’ve been awake since six, I’ve worked all day, then I’ve driven us all ninety minutes up here. I want to eat something, shower, and go to sleep.” He barely gave what he said next a second of thought. “I don’t have an issue with sharing, but if you do, then we’ll go home.”

Maisie pursed her lips together. Iain was … right. It’d been such a long day already, and it wasn’t fair to ask him to drive back to Aberystwyth just because she felt so blindsided by this situation.

Someonehad paid for this cabin, so they might as well use it.

She turned back to the woman at the desk, completely unprepared for what she was subjecting herself to. “We’ll take it. Thank you.”

The receptionist smiled thinly as if she were glad this was over. “I’ll just get your keys and information sorted.”

Wary of the look she’d receive, Maisie twisted to Iain. “Well, it looks like we’re sharing a cabin.”

“Ia,?*”he said. “Just the three of us.”

Maisie sighed. “Just the three of us.”

They wound the trails out of the main clearing, following signposted cabin numbers through the stone-chipped trails of the woodland. The situation wasn’t as bad as Maisie’s imagination had told her it would be. The accommodations weren’t tents but fully built cabin pods with actual bathrooms and beds and heating systems for the less hardy and adventurous types – or two people dumb enough to have believed a bunch of sweet-faced over-sixties.

“How long do you think it’ll take before one of the group texts to ask how we’re getting on with our holiday?” she asked, growing tired of the uneven weight of carrying a weekend bag in her hand plus an equally heavy backpack on her shoulders.

“I’d give it an hour.” Iain’s tone wasn’t amused.

Maisie shook her head. “I can’t believe that they did this. I knew Vera was up to something.”

Iain didn’t say a word, but at this point in their ‘friendship’she didn’t expect him to always answer. He’d be thinking the same thing as her anyway: that this wasn’t going to work. It was a very bad idea.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there were no memory in her body of the way it felt to be kissed by him, because Maisie replayed the moment his hand wrapped around her neck and their lips collided at least twenty times a day.

Okay,thirty, but she wasn’t counting.

That kiss had altered her completely, filled her with sharp feelings of craving – to have more of him, tobemore with him – rippling all through her body. She was attracted to him, there was no denying that, and now they had two nights of sharing an enclosed space with only each other for company. They would be eating, sleeping, showering and stewing over this, all whilst breathing in the same air.

Iain’s navigation skills were more trustworthy than hers, so Maisie followed him and Ted as they diverted off the trail along a smaller one that disappeared between denser thickets and trees. At least there would be privacy, she decided, as all sense of the rest of the world existing disappeared behind the veil of leafy canopies and woodland copses.