“Easy for you to say. Your self is all easy charm.”
“Okay, firstly, that’s not true. And secondly, you have no idea how beguiling you are. Don’t get me wrong, it’s sexy as hell that you don’t recognize it in yourself, but you really have nothing to worry about. From where I’m standing, the people in this community would do anything you asked. You want my advice?”
“Of course.”
“Speak from the heart and don’t overthink it.”
She let out a long breath. “Speak from the heart,” she parroted like a mantra.
“Are you finished with your note cards?” he asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Good. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, secretly hoping he would lead her to her bedroom.
“You’ll see,” he said. He was smiling. “You’ll need a coat.”
Dammit!
The sky was sepia-tinged gray, and last night’s ice looked set to be joined by more tonight. All along the high street, chimneys pushed out curls of smoke, and in one of the back gardens someone was burning leaves. It was only three o’clock but already lamplight spilled out from windows and Christmas trees twinkled behind net curtains.
They hadn’t taken the van, so he wasn’t whisking her off to a motel somewhere for an afternoon of passion, more the pity. They crossed the road, and Joe led her to the side gate that led into Augustus’s garden. This was becoming less romantic by the minute. What was it that he had to show her? A new compost bin? When he took her hand and led her to the end of the garden and into the woods, her hopes rose again, although she would definitely be keeping her coat on if they were going to attempt sex in the wild.
Birds feasted on the tight clusters of ruby berries that clung to spindly branches. Voluminous ferns dotted the ground in clumps between the corpses of woody bluebell stems and tenacious frilly capped fungi. They wandered farther into the wood, until all the sounds of the street outside had been replaced by birdsong, the crunch of leaves, and the scurrying of busy woodland creatures in the thicket. Squirrels flashed past in a whirl of gray bottle-brush tails and disappeared up tree trunks.
They reached a clearing encircled by trees whose topmost branches arched over to form a vaulted ceiling and cast shade on the ground below. In the middle of the clearing a two-person tent had been erected. Maggie felt a stirring in her apple-catcher knickers and was pleased she’d shaved her bikini line this morning. Not a motel room but an improvement on being bent over sacks of potatoes in the storeroom, she mused, cheeks flushing at the remembrance.
“And what is this?” she asked, unable to hide her smile.
“This is the tent of intent.”
“The what?”
“You avoid talking about us. And I get that it’s hard with two kids in the house and the business and now your sisters and all this solstice stuff. So, this is the tent of intent, where we set aside time to talk about us.”
“Talk?” She balked. Her hopes for an afternoon of torrid tent sex were deflating fast. Such a pity; she’d never had sex in a tent before.
“I’m not ruling out other activities,” he said with a lazy smile and a raised eyebrow. “But in the tent of intent, talk comes first.”
“Like dinner before pudding.”
“Exactly like that.”
“You didn’t go for a run at all, did you?”
“No.”
She had known her stalling would catch up with her eventually. If she’d discovered his cunning plan sooner, she would have feigned an excuse, but she’d been so eager to get laid, she hadn’t bothered to ask. That’ll teach you to think with your lady parts!
She tried a different tack: she sidled up to him and began to trail kisses down his neck.
“What if my intentions for the tent of intent are physical rather than verbal?” she whispered.
Joe cleared his throat and shook himself, and she was pleased to see she had him flustered. But he took her hands in his and used them to gently push her arm’s length away from him.
“My tent, my rules,” he said. “We are going to have a grown-up conversation about us.”
“God!” she huffed. “So unfair!”
Joe smiled and lifted the flap to the tent. “After you,” he said.
She sighed and climbed inside. The floor was lined with cushions and a double sleeping bag lay unzipped across them. She fixed him with a stare as he climbed in beside her.
“That’s a little presumptuous,” she said, gesturing to the sleeping bag.
Joe settled next to her and zipped up the tent flaps. “Oh, I think not.” He grinned knowingly at her. “But first, we talk.”
She rolled her eyes as though disinterested, but inside she felt leaden with dread.
“I am in love with you . . .” She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand for her to be quiet. “Please, Mags, I need to tell you this. I have fallen in love with you, and I want to be with you. Properly with you, not sneaking around, not pretending we are only friends with benefits. I want people to know about us. I know that you’re stressed with the flat and the shop and everything, but losing the building needn’t be the end of something. We can make a new start together, find a place and put both our names on the lease. Start a business together. And if that feels like it’s too fast or too much for you, then we’ll go at any pace you like, so long as we go public.”
“Public?”
“I don’t want to hide in the shadows like your dirty little secret anymore. I want us to be a couple, and I want the people that matter to us to know it. I want us to sit down with Patrick and Verity and tell them we’re going to be a family.”
“I haven’t even told the kids we’re being evicted yet. I think one bombshell is enough to be going along with, don’t you?”
“Why would your kids finding out we’re together be a bombshell? What we’ve got going is a good thing, a positive, life-affirming thing. Don’t put our relationship in the same category as your eviction.”
She pulled her knees up and hid her face in them. She so desperately wanted all the things Joe wanted, but it wasn’t realistic. Sooner or later he would see it too and it would be messy, and she would be heartbroken, and Patrick would say “I told you so” and he’d be right. She pulled her head away from her knees and took a deep breath.
“I am not a good bet. You could have anyone you wanted . . .”