Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
MAISIE
“My feet might actually be dead.”
It only took half an hour, but they found Malc’s bus pass nestled in long grass at the edge of the trail and made their way back down the cliff yet again. The incline hadn’t felt so bad the second time around, but still Maisie wanted somewhere to sit down. Something to lean on. Anything. Well, almost anything.
Conversation had become surprisingly easy between them in the extra thirty minutes they’d been stuck together, but that by no means meant she was going to ask if Iain could hold up all her weight for five minutes. He’d already done that once today, and they had the half an hour walk back down the cliff still to catch up.
She passed a look at her phone for the time: twelve. They should already be back at Aberystwyth by now. The pensioners were probably sitting at a fish and chip shop in Clarach Bay , enjoying themselves at her and Iain’s expense.
Iain. A tiny part of her suspected that dropping the bus pass might’ve just been a ruse to get them to walk back along the coast together, what with the whole thing about always walking in pairs, but that felt a little extreme.
Her throat made a tired squeak at the sight of the descent once more.
Iain had already stopped. “Do you want to rest a minute?”
“Could we make it an hour?”
She was going to die. Iain would have to come through on that promise about carrying her. Maisie was tempted to pretend to faint or something just to see if he would.
He glanced at the clouds forming out at sea like he considered her suggestion.
There was no point in prolonging the inevitable, and Maisie was getting hungry. “No. Let’s just go.” If her seventy-year-old grandma could do it, so could she. But she hissed at her next step. “I think that scowl you gave to my boots earlier might make sense now.”
Iain’s glance down at her choice of footwear said it all. “You finally figured it out.”
“You could’ve just told me that walking in brand new boots was a bad idea instead of letting me learn it the hard way. I think my blisters are going to have blisters.”
“It’s better to learn through your own mistakes than have the answers fed to you.”
“Is that what you were taught growing up?” Maisie offhanded, realising too late the mother of all frowns that it put on Iain’s face.
His voice changed, filled with gravel. “Something like that.” Maisie wasn’t going to pry deeper into the vagueness that was that answer. They barely knew each other and it wasn’t her business.
She moved her bag off her back and retrieved the croissant that she’d saved. “I think I deserve this now.”
“Go ahead,” Iain said.
The plastic ripped open, and the sound made Ted spin around startlingly fast ahead of them.
Realisation washed over Maisie. “Wait, Ted ate my other one, shouldn’t you be taking him to a vet or something?”
Iain’s indifference was mildly alarming. “You’d already eaten half. Knowing him, he’ll get an upset stomach later, if anything, so I wouldn’t walk downwind of him from now on.”
Studying his profile, she said, “You’re oddly calm.” He had been all morning, actually. When she’d slipped and almost landed on her arse, Iain hadn’t panicked. She’d been a human disaster waiting to happen, and he’d been so … composed. Granted, he was still a grump, but a grump with a twisted sense of humour like her, apparently.
“What point is there in worrying when it will only make things worse?” he said. “I’ve had worse incidents with animals, anyway.”
“Really? What happened?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“But you remember it?”
His jaw worked. “How’re your feet?”
Iain changed the subject again, so Maisie indulged his diversion. They might never see each other again after this romp along the coastal path, so she didn’t need to uncover the ins and outs of his life. Surface level transactions only.
“I’d kill for a foot rub. My back would be nice, too.” Maisie didn’t mean for the moan that unbiddenly came from her lips as she stretched her spine to sound so sexual. She caught Iain looking from the corner of his eye, and her neck rose up with heat.
No, no. That kind of attention from him wasn’t what she needed right now.
She wouldn’t do herself a disservice and assume that she wasn’t Iain’s type. But he was … well … him. She had eyes; she wasn’t oblivious. Iain either knew that he was handsome but didn’t care, or didn’t know the effect that his gruff voice, frown – and for god’s sake, even the way that he held himself – in combination unfairly tickled her inside.
Maisie turned her face, partly so the wind kept her flyaway hairs away from her mouth, but mostly to hide her reddened cheeks, then chomped down on the pastry for something else to silently moan over instead of him .
Iain’s inconsequential confession that he played local rugby made complete sense. His tall build was clearly muscular, but a stockier sort, as if he worked out but didn’t say no to a pint and chips on a Friday night.
Speaking of, she needed something that would kill this awkwardness.
“ Nain went out to celebrate someone’s birthday last night. She said they were in her hiking group, so were you there?” Because if he had been, then he could’ve already known who she was before he’d saved her from breaking open her skull on the paving. He’d have known beforehand about the group apparently wanting her to come on this walk.
“No,” Iain answered, “I was with Ted at home.”
So he hadn’t been a part of Vera’s plan for her to make friends, at least not knowingly. He’d kept her company for three hours now without complaint, so that plan was in motion regardless.
Within a few more short strides that consisted of a lot of leaning back to counteract the decline, Maisie finished up the pastry.
And with one gust of wind, the wrapper flew right out of her hand.
“Oh— shit. ”
The plastic flew down the hill in a rolling scrunch.
“ Shit—shit. ”
Maisie picked up the pace of her aching feet.
Was she doing this? Yes, she was.
God, she was not a runner. Downhill. In hiking boots. With blistering heels.
“Maisie, leave it!” Iain’s voice carried on the wind, batting her spine from behind her. “Don’t run?—”
“I can’t litter,” she yelled in return. “It kills the wildlife.”
“There’s not any wildlife here.” Iain’s exasperated tone disappeared on the wind. “You’ll fall! Leave it.”
You’ll fall. You’ll fall. You’ll fall.
The funny thing about jogging down a cliffside that keeps on getting steeper and steeper, was that once you began, it was really bloody hard to stop. Maisie didn’t have a choice anymore. She was going to end her short life by being one with the ground, there was no doubt about that, but at least she could wipe clean her conscience in the process.
“ This. Is. Why. I. Don’t. Run. ” Her breasts all but smacking her chin made her punctuate every word.
Ted pounded the earth right alongside her.
The decline fell steeper.
The wrapper caught on the one random tuft of grass in the middle of the trail, and Maisie snapped it beneath her boot, momentum swaying her forwards.
“Maisie—”
“I got it!”
The skin of her heel bit with a sting.
Then the ground got her.
“Maisie!”
She landed in a mound of grass and bracken with a hard thud.
“ Oooouuuuuch … ”
Five seconds later, Iain panted above her as if he’d run down the trail too. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I think.” The plastic crinkled in her hand as she held it up. “I got the wrapper.”
Eyes digging holes into hers, Iain actually sighed. Clearly, he was mad at her for being so idiotic, but after living in a city for her whole life and suddenly being catapulted somewhere that was so picturesque, dropping litter was the last thing that she would ever do.
Maisie blinked up at him. From down here the view was even better: his broad shoulders and quite impressive thighs. Her traitorous mind wandered to some place not far from smutville , especially when Iain’s mouth twitched for more than a millisecond under his neat moustache. It felt like a win. Maybe the view of her from up there had put similar thoughts in his mind too.
She wouldn’t ever know, though, since brow movements were pretty much the only method of expression that Iain had locked down.
He extended out both of his giant hands, she assumed, to help her up, then snapped them back.
Her eyes bounced between those hands and the look in his eyes like she was turning green. “What?”
“You might want to get up slowly,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“Because that’s not bracken, Maisie.”
It certainly looked like it was?—
“Those are nettles.” The pinch of Iain’s face was apologetic and grim.
Maisie gulped as her stomach sank a few inches lower. “You mean …”
“You’re sitting in a bed of stinging nettles.”