Maggie had not intended to end up in bed with Joe this evening, but where Joe was concerned, she didn’t appear to have any willpower. It had reached the point where all he had to do was look at her a certain way, and she could practically feel her knickers sliding off of their own accord.
“Couldn’t you just stay a little bit longer?” he asked as she began to unwind his limbs, which held her in a very comfortable cage.
She smiled. If only. “As tempting as that is, we only found four houses yesterday. The sooner we find the rest, the sooner we can get things moving with the appraiser and get this shit sorted.”
Her knees were locked up from having straddled Joe, and they each let out an alarming crack as she carefully straightened them. Jeez, when did I get so stiff? she wondered. It was an effort not to make ungainly oof! noises as she hobbled about the bedroom. Another point against them: he was yet to reach the age where every joint seemed to have something to say about being asked to perform its basic functions. These days her neck, shoulders, elbows, ankles, and knees clicked when she got off the sofa, as though tutting at being disturbed.
“Such a ruthless businesswoman.” He was watching her, one arm behind his head. He looked delightfully ruffled and Maggie couldn’t help staring as she wriggled into her jeans. The moonlight shone in through a gap in the curtains, casting a sliver of light across his body. Her heart beat faster. She felt as though every cell in her body was reaching for him, yearning for him. She swallowed her feelings.
“I think we both know that’s not true.” She smiled. “Are you sure you don’t mind holding the fort while I’m gone?”
“Of course not.” He raised an eyebrow and added archly, “Although if you were to make an honest man out of me and let me move in . . .”
This was a joke that had started when they’d first begun sleeping together （the convenience of having a live-in lover, etc.）， but like their feelings, the joke had gathered weight as time went on and now it had become a code for the elephant in the room.
“You forget, I’m being evicted. What would be the point of you moving all your stuff in, only to shift it all back out again?” She tried to play along, but it felt forced, tender, like pressing on a bruise.
“I’d settle for a sleepover.” He was negotiating.
“Too complicated.”
“Even if I sleep on the sofa?”
“You live five minutes up the road. What possible reason could I give the kids for you needing to sleep on the sofa?”
“Patrick knows about us, you know. And it’s pissing him off that we aren’t coming clean about it. He thinks I’m using you, and I don’t want him to think that; it isn’t fair.”
They’d left the protective circle of the joke, and she felt her familiar fight-or-flight response rising.
It would be easy to give in. Maybe for a couple of years they’d have a good run, but you could only keep reality at bay for so long before it comes knocking. Her reality would be HRT and graying pubic hair, while Joe’s would be missing his chance to meet a woman who could give him children. She didn’t want this wonderful man stuck with an aging greengrocer with thighs powerful enough to wear holes through industrial-strength denim.
Besides, there was more at stake than her own feelings. She wouldn’t allow Verity to give her tiny heart to a father figure only to have it broken when he inevitably realized his mistake and left.
“I know this is hard for you and I am sorry. But things aren’t simple for me. I can’t afford to make rash decisions, and now is definitely not a good time for me to be considering any more life-changing choices.”
Joe pulled on his T-shirt and climbed out of the bed. He straightened the sheets with undue attention, erasing the evidence of their lovemaking.
“I’m starting to wonder if it’ll ever be the right time to talk about us,” he said quietly. He appeared crestfallen, without anger or malice, only a sadness of Maggie’s making. She felt it like a rock sitting in her stomach.
“We’ll talk soon, I promise.”
“We shouldn’t feel like something else that needs to be ticked off your list or an extra burden you need to deal with.” He was shaking his head as he buttoned his jeans.
She pulled her socks on, hiding her face. “It doesn’t,” she said. “I don’t feel that way. I just. I don’t see how this can work in reality.”
“We’ve got something, Maggie. Something special, something not many people get the chance to experience. Or at least we could have . . .”
He left the sentence open-ended for her to fill in the blanks: we could have if you weren’t so terrified of commitment is what he’d left out. And he was right.
“Soon,” she said, shaking her head upside down to de–sex hair her hair. She stood back upright. “Soon. I promise. Please don’t be cross.”
He walked around the bed and took her in his arms. “I’m not cross,” he soothed. He left it for a beat and then added with a smirk in his voice, “I’m just disappointed.”
She blustered out a laugh and slapped his chest. “Are we good?” She looked up, and his warm eyes smiled down at her.
“We’re good.”
“I—” She stopped herself. “You are important.”
He kissed her so tenderly that her heart cracked twenty ways, and she kissed him back, hoping her lips could express all the words she couldn’t speak out loud.
As she pulled the front door shut behind her, she took this latest nugget of guilt and tossed it onto the mountain of anxious feelings that she hauled behind her like Santa’s sleigh.
10
The Rowan Tree Inn was lively for a Tuesday evening. The festive three-course set menu was in full swing, and businesses as far away as Tenterden and Tunbridge Wells had booked in for their staff Christmas meal.
Someone had painstakingly pinned hundreds of brightly colored baubles on ribbons to the ceiling beams and wrapped every picture frame with tinsel. Long strings of multicolored fairy lights ran above the bar and icicle lights dripped down the walls. The festive aesthetic was 1970s disco, with a whisper of drag.
Star had eaten her discounted dinner （perks of being mates with the owners） at the bar so that she could talk to Troy while he worked. Artemis had taken to following Star wherever she went and was now curled up in front of the log fire with an elderly Labrador.
“It doesn’t weird you out sleeping in your old room?” Troy asked.
“It did a bit, but I’m no stranger to laying my head down in weird places.” She grinned to hide the truth. She had been hit with such powerful nostalgia and melancholy that she had almost buckled at the knees when she’d stepped into the bedroom two nights ago. She had not expected the wave of longing for her childhood to sweep over her with such ferocity.
“Still the Rowan Thorp wild child.” He chuckled.
“You know me.” She forced the smile that was expected of her.
Throughout her twenties she had worn her transience with pride, but now in her late thirties, it had worn thin. Troy saw through her instantly.
“What is it?”
She chewed her lip as she tried to articulate her feelings. “I’ve always been a wanderer, like my parents. I also know from bitter experience that I am not cut out for any kind of office work; I haven’t got the stamina. But at the same time, I’m desperate for routine. And honestly, for the roof over my head to stay the same for more than a few weeks at a time. Is that terrible?”