Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IAIN
The phone on the desk buzzed – some kind of alert tone Iain had never heard. He picked his head up from where he’d slung it back in boredom.
It was a slow day at work, if nothing happening at all could be considered slow and not static . Gareth had been on the phone in his office for an hour, and Mari tapped away at her computer, flicking through catalogues and chatting up the workmen who came to collect stock.
Iain looked too slowly and only caught his phone’s screen fading to black. He glanced around the empty showroom. No one would care if he checked what the alert was.
The notification on the home screen said he’d been mentioned in a Facebook post, which was odd as he barely used social media, not since he had every single person in his friend list – not to mention that of his ex-fiancé and family – getting up in his business about the wedding that never was. He’d deleted everything and started new, which still only left him with the hiking group and guys from rugby as his ‘friends’.
The post he’d been tagged in was in the local resident community page.
Arjun Choudhary: Hi! My wife and I are avid landscape photographers. We will be staying in Aberystwyth in a few weeks and were wondering if there was a local tour guide available, preferably for hiking?
Ronald Davies: Hello there, I hope you enjoy your visit to our little town! Your best bet would be to talk to Iain Howell , he could be able to sort you out.
“What?” Iain reread Ronnie’s response to the post and the words came together the exact same way.
He wasn’t a tour guide. He was good with hiking and reading maps, and he knew the land around these parts like he knew exactly how many minutes after eating that Ted would need to be taken outside, but he wasn’t a guide.
Mr Choudhary hadn’t responded yet to Ronnie’s comment, and Iain didn’t know how to word his rejection to not be obstinately rude, so he left it. A problem for later Iain to grumble over.
He went to open a mindless go-kart racing game app that he used to pass the time when a name he didn’t see too often lit up his phone.
“Shit …”
Mari looked over from her desk that time.
Iain grabbed his coat from the back of his chair and headed outside into the rain, shoes scuffing on the car park gravel as he stabbed with his thumb to answer the call.
“I’m at work,” he said right off the bat.
“We want you to come for dinner on Saturday,” his eldest brother, Lewis, responded.
“I have plans.”
“Oh yeah? What?”
Iain didn’t think Maisie would mind him using her as an excuse. What else was this plan of theirs for?
“I’m seeing someone.”
“Well bring her too,” Lewis said.
“I’d rather not.”
“You can’t avoid us forever.” It was uncanny how much their voices matched; the same worn-down, irritated tone from years of this same dragged-out conversation.
“I’m not avoiding you,” Iain murmured, turning his back on the showroom. “I’m avoiding Alun.”
“He wants to see you.” His brother’s response was terse.
“I wouldn’t know what for.”
“You would if you answered his calls.”
He scoffed. “And listen to him berate me for another thing about my life? No.”
“Iain—”
“I have to go. We’re busy today.” A complete lie. “Bye Lewis.”
Maisie Moss was a genius.
Their first meet-up with the hiking group since their fake dating ruse had begun at Ms Vera’s party, and no one so far had pushed them towards being joined at the hip – not when they’d walked to the meeting spot by the pier together and sat side by side on the minibus by choice.
The redhead was right: the pensioners of the group gave them fewer meddling looks now that they assumed they would come as a pair. They all seemed satisfied that their job was done. With any luck, things would stay this way for another few weeks like he and Maisie had agreed, and then this could all stop. Iain could go back to his life, and she could go back to hers.
Ted spread out in the aisle between the seats like he did on every bus journey.
Iain read the time on the clock above the driver. “Only twenty minutes left.”
No response.
Frowning, he looked over. Whether she noticed him do so or not, Maisie didn’t take her head out of her phone – she hadn’t for the last half an hour. Iain wouldn’t usually glance at someone’s phone without them knowing, but she flicked through tabs for websites like her fingers were on fire.
He nudged her elbow with his. “Everything alright?”
“No,” she said immediately.
Something was definitely wrong.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Iain asked like any good boyfriend should since someone on this bus would be listening in.
Their bodies were pressed side by side, as usual on this damn minibus with emphasis on the mini , so when Maisie’s shoulders dropped, he knew it.
“My friend’s new bakery is opening in Manchester next weekend and I don’t think that I can go. I’d have to take at least three trains to get there and they’re so expensive. I’d borrow Nain’s car if I thought it’d actually make the journey and not fall apart. And the buses take …” She pressed her phone screen a few times. “ Six hours.” Her head fell back and thudded the chair in defeat as she groaned. Ted picked up his ears. “I’m going to have to say I can’t go.”
It was too much information for Iain to keep up with at that speed, so he broke it down.
Friend. Bakery. Manchester.
Expensive trains. Rusty old car. Long bus rides.
Can’t go.
The overtones of their conversation as he’d walked her home after Vera’s party weren’t lost on Iain; he knew how much Maisie’s friends meant to her and that she missed them. If she’d found out by now what was occurring with Vera to get every Moss so worried, then he was convinced Maisie would already be gone. Back to London. Back to her friends. So he wasn’t surprised that her disappointment for being thwarted in her chance to see one of them would bring her close to tears.
“When is this?” he asked.
“Next Saturday.”
“And you were only planning to go for the day?”
“That was the plan. But now there are no plans at all,” she said, her sadness tugging on strings of Iain’s heart that he didn’t know he had.
Closing his eyes, he shook his head at himself. What on earth was he doing? His whole mantra of ‘do not get attached’ felt less like a command and more like a cloudy suggestion each day.
Before he could change his mind, he blurted, “I’ll take you.”
Silence sat for a long moment, then Maisie’s eyes drew up slowly, glistening like a dewy meadow in spring. “What did you say?”
Iain repeated himself. “I’ll drive you up there.” Besides from helping her out, it’d play nicely into their hand in this ruse. That was the only reason. The only reason. The fact that he couldn’t stand to see her upset wasn’t one at all.
Her chin quivered. “Why would you do that?”
“So you can support your friend on her opening day?” he ventured. “I’m not a complete prick.”
“You’d really do that?”
Iain huffed. “Would you just say yes?”
“Yes!” Maisie jumped on his offer – and literally him – her phone forgotten in her lap to grab the crook of his elbow instead. “Thank you. I’ll pay you for your time, and your petrol.”
Iain didn’t want to take her money – he refused to. Just seeing her so excited was enough. “What does your friend bake in this bakery?” he asked.
“Doughnuts. But she’s branching out into other pastries and stuff.”
“Then you can pay me in doughnuts.”
Maisie pouted. “That’s not exactly?—”
“A man needs to eat,” he said, wondering what the foreign warmth he felt inside was for. “I like doughnuts.”