Morgan had found some time between his globe-trotting to come back home for a couple of weeks, and was the one who drove out here with their parents to surprise Maisie with a knock on the door last night. She didn’t stop crying happy tears for half an hour when Iain explained – as her family stood in the middle of his house – that one of her birthday presents was that he’d organised for everyone she loved to be here.
And now they were here.
All of them.
For her.
Because ofhim.
What was even more special was that he’d also gone behind her back to team up with Bash – who he now had a friendship with, apparently, after several trips up to Manchester – toorganise her friends being here for the weekend too. All of them: Faye, Sienna, Bash, and Freddy.
After setting up her parents in Vera’s spare room and Morgan on the sofa last night, Maisie had shown Iain her appreciation for this amazing gift in the form of one very long, hot, and sweaty evening between their bedsheets.
Calling out for Iain again, Maks tossed a rugby ball in his hands and waited for Iain to re-join them. His wife and their son built sandcastles over near where Vera and Ronnie sat wearing matching bucket hats in their foldaway chairs. To see her parents slowly turning into them as they sat almost identically a yard away made Maisie laugh.
“I better go,” Iain said before kissing her lips.
“Let them win? Just a little bit.” Maisie feigned innocence in her pleading eyes.
He smirked as he backward jogged towards the game of throw-around they had going. “No chance.”
It turned out that as soon as her brothers each met Iain,sportswere all that they could talk about, and she loved that for him. She lovedhim.And seeing him gradually form the relationships with her brothers that he’d lost with his own made her heart melt. He deserved it – the kind of loving family that he’d missed. After he’d passed the Moss brothers’ various daft eligibility tests with flying colours, that was.
There wasn’t a day that went by where she didn’t see Iain smile now.Oh,he still had his grouchy moments. The kind with knicker-dropping smirks that usually ended just like that – and she wouldn’t have him any other way.
They’d celebrated when he’d completed his first aid course at the local college, and again for his walking leader training for lowland, hills, and moors, and now he was halfway there to making up his number of required walking days before he could be assessed. Everything was looking up for once, and Maisiephysically couldn’t be more proud of him for turning his life around.
His relationship with his father slowly found an even footing, though there was still a way to go. They would never be close, but with Alun’s declining health he’d stuck to his promise of spending a few hours every Sunday just talking, and the visible difference in how Iain carried himself, as if the weight of the world wasn’t on his shoulders anymore, was a breath of fresh air each time he came home on those days.
Home.
Maisie still got giddy at the thought.
They were taking things steady, though despite that they’d moved in together. When her probationary lease on the bookshop flat had ended in May, she’d made her third move of the year, this time into Iain’s house. With the two of them and Ted it was a bit of a squeeze, but she wouldn’t have it any other way until they decided the time was right to move to a bigger house of their own.
“Maisie!” Faye’s voice hollered from the promenade next to Sienna’s exuberant presentation of a bottle of champagne. Bash and Freddy wandered up at the rear with Freddy’s twin nephews dressed in swimming trunks and lathered in sunscreen, ready for their day at the beach.
Squealing to herself, Maisie hopped her way over the shingles and sand and flung her arms out to the two women charging towards her. “You all made it!” she burst.
“If you thought we’d miss your birthday” — Freddy raised his voice over the chorus of feminine excitement — “you were wrong.”
Sienna grasped Maisie by the shoulders. “You’re thirty now, does it feel as terrifying as it sounds?”
“Hey!”Both of their male counterparts whined simultaneously.
Beaming a grin that hurt her cheeks, Maisie threw an arm around them both. “With you guys and my family all here, it’s already amazing.”
“We’re so happy for you,” Faye said sincerely. “For everything.”
Maisie’s eyes welled. “Ugh, don’t make me cry.” She wafted at her face as if the Welsh sun strobing from the clear sky was too hot. “Iain needs some teammates against my brothers. We should help him out.”
Bash’s brows raised, his gaze beyond their group. “I don’t think he needs us …”
Spinning, Maisie found Iain sprinting across the sand with the rugby ball tucked beneath his arm – all three of her brothers failing miserably to keep up with him – and her heart swelled with so much pure, unconditional happiness that she burst into laughter.
Everything was as beautiful as she’d always hoped these moments she longed for would be. Simple, earnest, effortless. She had her family, her friends, her new home, a wiry-haired companion, and the greatest man that fate could have let her fall into the arms of.
How could she be more in love with her life than this?
