Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
IAIN
Concentration had been at capacity zero for the nine hours Iain laboriously slugged through his work. The three customers he’d seen hadn’t seemed to notice, and Gareth had patted him on the back with a smile as they locked up the doors. Another tick towards not being let go at the end of his warning.
All day he’d sat tapping his foot under his desk, much to Ted’s curled up chagrin, waiting for the moment where he could go home and find something – anything – to take his mind off the events of yesterday afternoon.
He’d left their little fake Valentine’s Day escapade not long after Maisie face-planted his crotch, needing to get out of there. She’d been embarrassed about the fumble, and he didn’t blame her in the slightest. But the idea of her mouth so close to him there had stirred feelings inside of Iain that he wasn’t supposed to feel. Desire , for one. A need to let her hair down from those buns she wore and tussle out the curls, for another. Do not get him started on her pink cowboy boot earrings.
Why he’d told her about his failed engagement, he didn’t know. She seemed to charm out facts about his life at every opportunity, and he let her. For the first time in nineteen months, the words to tell his experience had wanted to be told. So he’d let them all flow.
After work, Iain drove the long way home, which wasn’t even his way home at all. He missed the turning he should’ve taken off the A-road into town and kept on heading straight, until he took the most convoluted route of one-way streets to end up at the junction right by the bookshop below Maisie’s flat.
The sight in his rearview mirror was clear, so he grazed his palms over the soft leather steering wheel and tried to decide what kind of insanity he’d lowered himself to. He had no choice but to turn left, but how far he would drive along that road was a question he tried to figure out the answer to. Ten yards and he was with her . A hundred yards and he was on his way home. The coat-covered frame he clocked sight of waddling down the street made his decision for him.
Iain pulled out, turned, and parked up in the first on-street spot he saw available.
It’d gone dark already, and the sporadic streetlights didn’t fill him with confidence that Ms Vera would get to wherever she was going with two bags of shopping without tripping on a crack in the uneven pavement and breaking her other wrist.
He jumped out of his car and grabbed Ted from the boot. “Vera!”
She twisted until she spotted him across the road. “Oh, Iain, hello. Back for more are we?”
“Vera.” He said her name flatly, him and Ted jogging across the road to catch up to her. “Nothing happened. Maisie fell.”
“Right into your lap.”
Iain pushed down a groan. He knew what she was insinuating beneath that rain bonnet.
“I am only looking out for my granddaughter, dear.”
“I understand.” To a degree. That kind of familial support had been absent in Iain’s life for too long to remember what a comfort it was having someone watching over you for the right reasons.
He dropped his focus to Vera’s shopping bags laden with groceries that Ted attempted to dig his nose into, then took them from her. “Are you having another party, Vera?”
“No, no. Maisie is sick. Didn’t she tell you?”
His brows pulled down. Sick? He’d seen her only yesterday and she’d been fine. Had she hurt herself in her tumble?
“I haven’t spoken to her today,” he said.
“Oh …” He didn’t need Vera to analyse why that might’ve been. “Well, her cold developed overnight,” she said. “You might want to take your vitamins and make sure you haven’t caught it from her.”
A cold. Now that he thought about it, Maisie had been a little sniffly on Sunday.
He glanced again into the shopping bags. “You were bringing her food?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t I take it up?” he offered. “You don’t need to catch Maisie’s cold.”
Vera’s eyes turned round. “Would you? I just … I worry about her, Iain.”
As far as he was aware, the worry was the other way around. He cocked his head for her to continue like he knew she would.
Vera rubbed the back of her bad hand. “She doesn’t go out anywhere, Iain. She hovers around me ...”
Because she’s worried about you . But Iain couldn’t say that. It was Maisie’s business and her family’s – he didn’t need to get involved.
But he was. He had been since he first stepped foot on a hike with Vera.
“I think she wants to make sure you don’t hurt yourself any more than you already have done,” he said lightly, skirting around Vera’s concerns with a point of his brow at her purple cast beneath her coat sleeve.
“ Pfft , I’m as tough as nails.”
It wasn’t his place to say that Maisie worried for something more.
Lifting the two bags, he said, “I’ll take these to her.”
“ Diolch yn fawr iawn, Iain.? * ”
Iain passed what he hoped was a smile at her thanks.
He got one step away when Vera said, “I’m glad she’s decided on being with you , Iain.”
He paused. For the first time, guilt that this was all a lie rose up in his throat. Vera pursed her lips in a smile that looked like it held back emotion, using it as a defence, and a part of Iain crumbled.
How was he supposed to tell her that the man she trusted her granddaughter with was a fraud?
He carried that thought all the way up the chilly staircase to Maisie’s door, knocking a few times and receiving only silence.
“Daffy?” No answer. “Maisie, it’s Iain. You in there?” Lights in her windows that he’d seen from the street suggested yes .
Ted whined at the door, squished between the groceries and the wall.
Iain didn’t know why he was doing this. He could’ve let Vera come up to check on Maisie like she’d wanted to. He got out his phone and called her number, listening to it ring from inside in an annoyingly chirpy tone.
“Iain?” Her dulled voice came as an echo down the phone from what he heard through the door.
“I’m outside your flat.”
“Hang on.” Maisie didn’t sound like herself at all. Tense. Strained. Nose completely blocked by that cold Vera mentioned.
The call went dead, and the door opened a minute later.
“What do you want?”
Woah . She looked like … shit. Iain didn’t let that thought out. Not if he wanted to keep his head.
Picking up the grocery bags, he said instead, “I ran into Vera bringing these for you. She said you’re sick. She doesn’t need to be getting ill either, so I brought them up.”
Maisie’s glare could’ve melted ice.
Iain wasn’t accustomed to this, but he knew what would work. “Ted wanted to say hello.”
Her attention fell in inches down to his dog whose tail thumped against the wall.
“Hi Ted.” It was the most unenthusiastic greeting he’d ever seen Maisie give.
“No ‘hi’ for me?” he taunted as Ted performed a sniff inspection on Maisie’s black jogging bottoms.
“Sorry, I’m—” Her whole body clenched, face scrunching and shuttering.
Iain let go of the bags, his hands instinctively reaching for her. “Woah, there. Are you okay?”
“I need to sit down,” she managed.
“In. Go in.” Iain ushered Ted inside, picked up the groceries, and shut the door behind him.
It took ten seconds to dump everything in the kitchen and find Maisie on her sofa, lying flat out like she was preparing to be wrapped up in bandages. He crouched to her level, taking stock of her ruddy face and the pile of tissues on the floor.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have a cold,” she said, eyes screwed shut as she pushed down beneath her stomach.
Iain wasn’t an expert, but colds didn’t present like this. “This doesn’t just look like a cold, Maisie.”
“I don’t want to tell you—” A sneeze made her halt mid-sentence and her whole body groan. “Ugh, you don’t need to know.”
“You. Are. In. Pain.” He lowered his tone.
“Have you never met a female before?” Maisie bit out, running her hand across her stomach back and forth. “We’re always in pain.”
What was she talking about? Always in— oh shit . He was an idiot.
Iain released the breath he’d been holding for dear life, and the fear that Maisie’s cold was actually some kind of infection or fever he needed to get her help for.
“Sorry. Been a long time since I’ve had any women in my life.” It wasn’t an excuse, but he was out of practice on the menstruation caregiving front. “What can I do?”
“Leave.”
A smile cracked on his lips as he took off his suit jacket. “Bit harsh.”
Maisie raised her arm and covered her forehead. “I— ugh —I’m sorry. I just … I want to lie down, and I want to cry, and I want to curl in a ball until it’s winter again.”
Iain couldn’t help but chuckle at the melodrama that he was sure was a very real feeling. “That’s okay. You’re entitled to that.” He glossed right over her repeated, unnecessary apology. “I’ll … get you something warm. Have you had painkillers?”
“Strong ones.” Maisie opened one eye and – as Iain expected for the near future – glared at him, though for an entirely different reason than his intrusion before. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, and the question knocked him off balance for a moment.
Why wouldn’t he be doing this? What man claiming to love women wouldn’t find some way to be of use in this moment?
He chuffed. “My bollocks would never be safe around Vera again if she knew I left you alone in this state, Daffy.”
Maisie narrowed her eyes like the non-existent sun was in her face. “So you’re helping me because you’re scared of my grandmother with a broken wrist?”
“Yes.”
She laughed. And though it was strained, it was a laugh nonetheless, planting a kernel of something tender in Iain’s chest. He’d play the fool again if it’d help her feel better.
He wiped the couple of loose curls like peels of flames away from her clammy face. “You’re not having a very good day are you, Daffy?”
“No,” she said, sounding all sorry for herself as she blew her nose in a tissue that appeared from under her. Her watery eyes landed on him. “Why are you wearing a suit?”
Iain looked down at himself where he crouched, specifically the royal-blue slacks tight around his thighs and the brogues far cleaner than his hiking boots. “I came from work.”
Maisie turned her head on her cushion, and he followed her sight to where Ted stood, one paw lifted, tail arrow straight as he stared down some decorative, ceramic rabbit that was by the old fireplace.
“Ted works with you too?” she asked.
“He’s allowed to come sometimes. He likes curling up and watching people in the car park.” Iain snapped his fingers and beckoned his gun dog out of his trance. “Didn’t know I was going to come here until I was. I wouldn’t have brought him if?—”
“It’s alright.” Maisie reached out her fingers and Ted wandered over, giving her palm a lick. “I like seeing him.”
“More than you like seeing me?”
“Obviously.” The glint in her tired eyes caught Iain’s breath. “But since I can’t see him without you, I guess I could get used to you, too.”
* ? Thank you very much, Iain