Chapter Thirty-One
Since she had proposed a day at the beach, Arthur had been imagining what Maggie would look like in her bathing suit.
When she tumbled out of her car onto the asphalt, already hot with the early summer sun, she was unfortunately covered, wearing a long, gauzy dress that only hinted at what was underneath.
She had on a floppy sun hat and round sunglasses, carrying another one of her Diadhan conference tote bags with a brightly colored towel sticking out of it.
“Do you feel this, Dahlia?” Maggie shouted as Dahlia joined her.
“The temperature is above sixty-five. The sun is actually shining. Gods above, I can finally defrost.” She was practically singing, and when she walked over to Arthur, there was a skip in her step he’d never seen before.
He had expected her to be hesitant, tentative with her affection in front of Dahlia, but instead she fell into his arms. He held her to him, breathing in the way her shampoo mingled with the coconut sunscreen she’d covered herself in, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered. “I missed you.” He knew that sounded ridiculous. They had only been apart for half a day and one night, but that was long enough for her absence to feel like an ache.
“I missed you, too.”
When she’d gone to fortify the wards alone, he’d been so afraid that she was preparing to pull away, but that afternoon she had returned to their office and pushed him onto the couch, kissing him as if she’d been gone for days.
She had practically dragged him back to her apartment without another word about needing space.
He had stayed with her almost every night since, only driving out to Atlantia to gather clothing and grab the occasional coffee with Rory, who looked at him with sidelong glances like he had something to say.
Yesterday afternoon, he’d returned to Atlantia for the night, to help Simon get ready for his baseball game today, which mostly involved a lot of talking through nerves and planning for the postgame ice cream cone they were going to eat.
“He’s wearing a bathing suit,” Dahlia said as they walked down the path that snaked through the dunes. “You owe me a coffee.”
Arthur glanced down at his outfit—old board shorts of Rory’s that were too short and the same Dartwood T-shirt he’d worn on their hike. “What did you think I was going to be wearing?”
“The last time we were on this beach, you were wearing a tweed jacket,” Maggie reminded him. “I wasn’t sure what you’d have on today.”
“It was cold!” When they reached the peak of the dune, he could see up and down the shore.
It was still early, so the beach was empty except for people going for runs and walking their dogs.
The glittering skyline of Atlantia was in the distance just across the cove and inlet north of the beach, with all of its peaking spires and shining windows.
Rory waved from the blanket and umbrella they’d arrived early to set up, walking up to meet them.
He held out a hand to Dahlia. The night before, when Arthur had been trying to soothe Simon’s worries, he’d also been trying to ease his own.
He was afraid he was making a mistake, bringing Maggie here to meet his brother and nephew.
His father. Lane. Even with Dahlia here…
But it was too late. He had reasoned with himself that even when the summer was over, he still hoped to have Maggie as a friend. Friends could meet his family. Right?
Then Rory was grasping Maggie’s hand in his, and Arthur’s worlds were colliding. “You must be Dahlia and Maggie. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“All good, I hope,” Maggie said as she dropped her stuff down on the blanket and kicked off her sandals. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too.”
Rory laughed, taking the beach chair Dahlia was carrying and setting it up beside his own chair, a detail that didn’t escape Arthur. “Let me guess, did he tell you some sob story about how I make too much fun of him?”
“Something like that,” she said with a grin.
Arthur was stunned out of his worried thought spiral when Maggie tossed her sun hat onto the blanket and began tugging her sundress up over her head.
Each inch it rose revealed another wondrous inch of Maggie and then a bathing suit that made Arthur forget he had been thinking about anything else at all.
It crisscrossed her body with peeks of skin at her hip, her waist, between her breasts.
He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it.
He wanted to walk over to the towel and lick the salty sweat off the stretches of skin the bathing suit revealed.
When he finally tore his gaze away from her breasts, Maggie looked at him with a gleam in her eye, like she knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was what she’d wanted all along.
“Come sit over here, Dahlia,” Rory called, patting the chair he’d set up next to him. “Those two need some space.” He rolled his eyes and Dahlia laughed.
The two of them were already chatting like old friends by the time she sat down, and, after a moment, Dahlia stage-whispered to Maggie, “I guess prickliness doesn’t run in the family. Maybe you picked the wrong brother.”
“Thanks, Dahlia,” Arthur grumbled, stretching out on the blanket next to Maggie.
Maggie was still sitting, looking out toward the ocean with her elbows on her knees. “Where’s Simon?” she asked.
“My dad took him out fishing,” Arthur explained. “He was too anxious to sit around and wait for the game. Poor guy. We’ll meet them at the field.”
Maggie lay down beside him on the blanket, rolling over onto her stomach.
Arthur had to practically sit on his hands to stop from running his fingers over the generous curve of her ass, right at the line her bathing suit cut.
Maggie reached into her bag and pulled out two books—the romance and the fantasy novel they had been reading in her office.
“You didn’t get to finish,” she explained, and soon she was lost in her book, distractedly playing with her bottom lip as she read.
Though Arthur opened the book, he couldn’t make himself focus on the words.
Beside them with their chairs turned to look out at the horizon, Rory and Dahlia were swapping stories, each one more and more outlandish.
Dahlia had just finished telling Rory about how she’d once crashed an ambassador’s dinner party after going on a date with her daughter, and Rory was telling a truly horrifying story about a run-in he’d had with a siren at work.
Arthur recognized something in Rory’s wry grin, in the way he couldn’t stop tapping his finger on his beach chair as they talked, in the way he was spinning his stories so they were brighter, funnier than other times Arthur had heard them.
He didn’t know Dahlia well, but she was leaning in, tossing her head back to laugh as his brother spoke. Interesting.
The sound of the ocean waves reminded him of Beltane, constant and sure, like a heartbeat.
Maggie’s hand that had been playing with her lip was now in his hair, her nails swirling against his scalp in small circles, sending shivers down his neck.
He leaned into her touch, and she smiled down at him from where she was propped up on her elbows, all without looking away from her book.
This far from the pall, from Hawthorn, it was easier to glimpse the life he had agreed to give up at summer’s end.
The quiet contentment and easy affection.
He knew he shouldn’t want it, not after Maggie had made herself so clear, but he did. Gods below, he did.
—
Even as her cheeks turned pink and her hair started curling from the sweat, Maggie wasn’t sick of the heat.
Her hand was out the window so the breeze could flow through her fingers as she and Arthur drove toward Simon’s favorite restaurant after his baseball game.
She felt an almost dizzying contentment as Arthur sang along, badly, to a song on the radio, and she laughed more than she had in months.
The baseball game had been even more fun than she expected.
When they arrived, Arthur had introduced her and Dahlia to Barry and Lane as colleagues and friends, and Maggie had felt the tension in her shoulders unwind.
They ate buttery popcorn and hot dogs slathered in mustard, cheered loudly when Simon walked onto first base and then scored after his teammate hit a home run, and it was over before she knew it.
Maggie had originally planned to leave with Dahlia after the game, since her friend needed to get back to finish her summer course prep.
It had been the perfect excuse to avoid an awkward dinner, but, at the last minute, she changed her mind and decided to go to dinner with Arthur and his family, even without the buffer of her best friend.
Arthur’s face lit up when she suggested it, and she felt a thrill twisted with guilt, but she buried it as they drove to the restaurant.
Oyster Bay was down a long, winding road that came to a dead end at the marshy entrance to the water.
It was an old restaurant, half on stilts over the marshland, and it had flooded in more than one big storm over the decades.
The walls were wood paneled, the floors were uneven, and the ceilings were low.
It was a little bit like stepping back in time, and Maggie thought it was such an interesting choice for a five-year-old’s favorite restaurant.
“My dad’s been coming here since he was a kid,” Arthur explained. “He’s been running an excellent PR campaign for the place since Simon was a baby.”