Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MAISIE
“What do you mean, exactly, when you say that there’s only one cabin?”
“That there is only one cabin booked by a Ms Vera Moss,” the brunette across the check-in desk stated calmly.
Maisie tried to keep a grasp on her collected state. “Could you check again, please?”
“I’ve checked three times.” So the likelihood of the receptionist being incorrect and the computer system magically spewing out that there were in fact multiple cabins booked was zero .
“Oh god—” Blood drained from Maisie’s face. “There’s only one cabin.”
And only two of them.
“What about the others being booked?” Iain inputted as she pressed her palms into her eye sockets. Fuck mascara – this meltdown she was about to have was worth ruining it over.
“We only ever had confirmation for one cabin in this reservation,” the woman said regretfully. “We don’t have a group party booked for this weekend. Only couples and families. All our cabins are now taken.”
Maisie spun and all but burst with frustration in Iain’s face. “Those menaces! They’ve set us up again.” Her hands made ten different gestures. “This wasn’t supposed to happen anym— why are you so calm?”
Apart from saying very little in the five minutes of this exchange, Iain had barely shifted an inch or batted an eyelid. Ted sat bored at his feet.
“I don’t know what else you want me to be,” he said.
“Freak out just a little, please,” Maisie begged, because this absolutely could not have happened again. She never should’ve trusted her nain, and now she didn’t trust any of them. All of their cooing and excitement at the café last week – it was all a scheme. They were already ‘together’ as far as those pensioners were concerned. There was no need to set them up on a weekend getaway.
Iain’s trademarked frown returned. “You’re doing enough for the both of us, Daffy.”
Maisie had to stop looking at his lips. She had to stop thinking about them. They were off-limits. What she needed was space AWAY from him, but that was hardly going to happen now, was it?
Her mind flew back to sitting in that tearoom when Vera and her friends had made the proposal – remembered the taunting discussion about if they’d spent the night in Manchester separately or not.
“Oh my god.” As if this couldn’t get any worse. “They don’t think we’ve slept together! That’s what they’re trying to do.”
The receptionist’s eyes bulged.
Iain cocked his head. “Pretty sure your nain thought 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 meddling nain , 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.
Someone had 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, to be more 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.
“Here. Number eight,” he said a minute later.
Maisie craned her neck to see around him. “Wow.” Their accommodation was definitely to her liking, namely because the curved roof was covered in slate tiles and the tiny wooden cabin looked completely weatherproof.
This type of camping, Maisie could do.
Their pod was raised from the ground and sat on decking, a few steps leading up to a table, two wooden reclining seats, and French doors. She could picture a scene from a film happening here, could see an old man in a straw hat playing the harmonica whilst his golden retriever lay at his feet of an evening.
She didn’t know if Iain shared her enthusiasm or not because he headed straight to turn their key in the door, allowing her to step through first. The decoration was simple, full of natural woods and olive greens like a little fairy house, but what caught Maisie’s eye was the fact that the one bed that they had … was tiny.
“We’re not going to fit,” she said, deflating. “Look at the size of you, and the size of?—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence like I think you’re going to.” Iain barged around her with his bags.
Maisie’s mouth snapped shut. She got that the cabin was small, but maybe fairies really did live here if this was supposed to fit the both of them. They hadn’t even discussed sleeping arrangements yet. The man wasn’t blind, and she wasn’t daft – whatever happened, they were both never going to fit on that bed together. Not comfortably, at least. And not with an appropriate amount of empty space between them either.
“Well you can’t tell me you think that this is a normal sized bed.” She flayed her hand at the thing that called itself a two-person bed, shifting her focus to find that the tiny couch would barely fit two people sitting, let alone have the function to turn into a pull out.
Ted sniffed around at his leisure while Iain dropped his duffel bag on the floor, kicking a smaller bag he’d kept tucked under his arm under the bed. “It’ll do.”
“It’ll do?” Maisie let go of her bag with a thud on the floor. “It’ll do?”
“We don’t have much alternative. Unless you want to be driving back home after coming all the way here?” The way Iain looked at her with murder in his eyes said that she’d be walking home if that was the case.
Maisie hadn’t let go of her fury about this entire situation yet, still fired up about being played. Her phone hadn’t had any signal as they’d traipsed through the forest pathways to call Vera and give the woman a piece of her mind.
“How about I take Ted, and you can sleep in his bed?”
Iain’s side-eye as he checked out the kitchenette amenities could’ve killed. “Very funny,” he said drolly. “I don’t know why you’re stressing about the one bed when we have a bigger problem.”
“Oh?” Raising an eyebrow, Maisie cocked her hip. “What’s that then?”
What problem could possibly be worse than having only one tiny bed between them?
Roaming the four feet of cabin, Iain perused the walls like he had all the time in the world, hands tucked behind his back, until he ended at the half-open door at the rear. Looking back at her, he said, “The one bathroom.” Then strode in, turned dramatically, and shut the door behind him.
One bath— Maisie’s eyes flew wide. “Don’t be such a man!”
She swore she heard Iain’s laugh rumble from inside whilst he did god knows what in there.
Ugh. This weekend was supposed to be calming, and all it was going to do was give her greys and stress lines. She removed her backpack and slung it on the settee.
“I’m going outside!” she yelled over the rush of water that began in the bathroom. “And I’m taking Ted.”
The knock on the door made Maisie whip her head out of the beans on toast she’d rustled up using the cabin’s tiny stove. As it turned out, being prepared was one of Iain’s greatest redeeming qualities; he’d had the forethought to Google the campsite’s amenities beforehand and brought food supplies.
Unless squirrels had learned how to knock, there was a person right outside of their cabin, where – ever since she’d returned from taking Ted out exploring – they’d done little more than bicker back and forth over who got to use the bathroom first (she did) and who slept furthest from the door (she did), as well as who controlled the radiator temperature (what a surprise, she did ).
Iain unfurled from the tiny attempt at a sofa chair to his full height, and Maisie was more than happy to let him go to the door instead of her. They were in a forest … in the darkness of evening … in the middle of nowhere, and she didn’t particularly fancy the idea of being kidnapped. In London, she absolutely did not go near a knock on her door after dark.
Iain’s body took up the entirety of the doorway, peeking out whilst Maisie silently tried not to panic, but then his spine relaxed and he flicked a switch to illuminate the decking before opening the door.
Standing in the darkness with a tiny torch pointed at her feet was the woman from the information centre who had checked them in.
“Hi, sorry to interrupt. I forgot to mention when you checked in that it’s set to be a clear night tonight, and we often lead a group out through the forest and a neighbouring field to view the stars when the weather is good. Would you be interested in joining us?”
“N—”
“Yes,” Maisie cut in, sliding off the bed to join them. “We would.”
A low sound of protest rumbled from Iain’s chest by her shoulder.
“Excellent. We have a guide who explains constellations and some of the old tales associated with them. If you’d like to join us, we meet at the information centre at ten-fifteen.”
* ? Yes