Kissing Maggie Silver (10 page)

Pushing away such confusing thoughts he turned towards her with a teasing smile.
“Are you sure no one in your family knows we’re here?”

“Absolutely positive unless they have extrasensory perception,” she said, a dimple shadowing her cheek as she laughed.

They walked across the car park in a companionable silence that continued until a waitress ushered them to a table near an open window. Ruairi ordered a drink for each of them and then directed Maggie’s attention to the menu.

Drinks delivered and their order taken, he raised his glass.
“Here’s to an uninterrupted lunch!”

Right on cue, his cell phone rang.
With a wry smile of apology he looked at the number and then answered it.

“Jo!” his voice was warm and welcoming.
Then there was a long silence as he listened, his face full of surprise and pleasure. Finally he answered.

“Tomorrow you say, at three o’clock.
Right, I’ll be there.”

There was another pause and then he answered what was obviously a question.

“No, nothing has changed since we spoke earlier. The apartment is all fixed. I’ll ring the agent and let her know I need to collect the key tomorrow morning instead of Friday. It won’t be a problem, and she already knows to contact you about the tenancy agreement as soon as you’ve moved in. It’s a great apartment. Maggie helped me find it and I’m sure she’ll help with the groceries too.”

A further pause, then he chuckled.
“No, no, nothing like that! Maggie’s just an old friend from way back.”

He smiled across the table at Maggie as he spoke.
And Maggie, her mellow mood dispersed first by the phone call, and then by his casual dismissal of her place in his life, dredged up every ounce of will power she possessed and forced the muscles of her face into an answering smile.

* * *

“That was Jo,” he informed her quite unnecessarily as he slipped his cell phone back into his pocket. “She’s arriving tomorrow afternoon, a couple of days earlier than I expected.”

“And she wants us to do some shopping for her.”

“Mmm, not much. Just bread, milk, coffee…things like that. We could pick it up on our way back to Mark’s house. She says hello, by the way. She’s looking forward to meeting you.”

Maggie’s stoicism didn’t stretch to saying she was looking forward to meeting Jo too, so instead she hid herself behind her glass of
tomato juice and wondered how the other girl had managed such perfect timing. At a stroke the phone call had destroyed her appetite as well as her equanimity. With an effort she tuned back in to Ruairi. He was still talking about Jo.

“You’ll like her,” he was saying.
“In fact I hope the two of you will be friends because she doesn’t know many people in the UK, so she could do with some help while she settles in. You know, stuff about doctors and dentists and things like that.”

The waitress interrupted with their food. But although she picked up her knife and fork, Maggie did little more than push the food around her plate.
All she could think about was that on top of everything else she was now expected to be best friends with the unknown Johanna. First Mrs. O’Connor had asked her to find out what was wrong with Ruairi, and now he wanted her to look after his girlfriend.

Well she’d solved Mrs
. O’Connor’s problem anyway, because now she’d seen him light up when he talked to Jo, Ruairi’s problem was obvious. Anyone with half a brain could tell that he was missing her. As soon as she arrived the sadness his mother was worried about would disappear and everyone except Maggie would be happy. As for being friends with tall, blonde, blue-eyed Jo…well she wasn’t even going to think about that.

Ruairi continued to talk about her as he started to attack the steak he had ordered. “She asked if you were coming to the airport to meet her,” he said.

And why would I want to trail out to the airport to meet a complete stranger and then stand by and watch her kiss you, thought Maggie mutinously. Clamping her mouth tight shut so she didn’t say it out loud, she gave a non-committal shrug. Bad mistake because it wasn’t enough to curb his enthusiasm.

“I know! We can all go.
There’s hardly any traffic at that time of day and if we get there early enough we can take the girls into the observation area so they can see the planes landing and taking off. They’ll love it, and Jo will love them.”

* * *

By the time they returned to the house laden with Johanna’s shopping, everything had been agreed. Ruairi was to collect Maggie and the girls after he had picked up the key from the estate agent. Then the four of them would go to the new apartment to offload the bags of food and pack everything away in the empty cupboards and fridge. After that they would drive to the airport where they would climb up to the observation area to watch for Jo’s plane.

Maggie had reluctantly agreed to everything Ruairi suggested because she couldn’t think of a single reason not to as far as everyone else was concerned.
He wanted her to meet Jo. Jo wanted to meet her. And she knew he was right about the girls too. They would find driving to the airport an adventure, and they would love watching the planes. They hadn’t done much travelling in their short lives, so everything would be a novelty. And it would be a novelty that Ruairi’s enthusiasm would make doubly exciting, so how could she possibly deny them. Besides, she had to meet Johanna sometime, so why not tomorrow, as soon as she arrived. She would just get it over and done with so that she could get on with her life without spending every spare minute thinking about the pair of them. With any luck, her heart would stop jumping sideways every time she looked at Ruairi and settle back into its normal rhythm once she actually saw him kissing another woman.

She cleared a space in the fridge for Johanna’s two-liter bottle of milk and carton of orange juice and then stacked the rest of the shopping onto the kitchen counter while Ruairi went to find Sophie and Amy.
She could hear them greeting him, their excitement at a decibel level that made it sound as if he had just returned from the North Pole. Determined to take herself in hand, she filled the kettle and pulled mugs from the cupboard. She would make some tea and when she took it into the garden she would pretend everything was fine, that she had enjoyed lunch and that she couldn’t wait to meet the unknown Jo.

* * *

Sophie and Amy ran pell-mell across the lawn when they saw her.

“Come an
d see what Granny Connor has done to our den,” they pleaded, pulling at her cotton skirt to hurry her along.

“Their idea, not Mum’s…the Granny Connor thing,” Ruairi told her with a grin as he rescued the tray of mugs before she dropped them.
“Not that she minds of course!”

The smile that Maggie had already pasted on her face became more genuine. She knew how much Mrs
. O’Connor would love being called Granny Connor. Knew how much she would actually love to have grandchildren of her own. She gave an inward sigh as she followed the children. Well perhaps she would be lucky soon. Perhaps Johanna would oblige.

Chapter Nine

The girls were ready and waiting for Ruairi by eight-thirty the following morning despite being told by Maggie that it was far too early. They peered expectantly through the window and commented on everyone who passed by as they watched for his car. Maggie took advantage of their preoccupation to sort the laundry, make the beds, and do some basic housekeeping. The time she was spending with Ruairi was interfering with her chores as well as her heart, and although she knew June would be grateful for whatever she did, she also knew her sister-in-law liked to keep a tidy house. Besides, she would have her work cut out for her over the next few months with a new baby and two energetic little girls, so the least Maggie could do was to try to keep things on schedule.

“Bye sis,” Mark called out to her as the front door banged behind him. He was off to the hospital again although he had promised to be back for Sophie and Amy’s bedtime.

She didn’t bother to reply knowing he would already be halfway to his car. He had been doing everything on the run since the baby arrived and she hoped he would slow down soon and try to relax before June came home with their new son. For the first time she wished her mother was here instead of thousands of miles away because she would be able to make him see sense whereas Maggie had no influence at all. She knew he was grateful for everything she was doing but she also knew he wouldn’t thank her for suggesting he needed to sleep a bit more, or maybe spend more time with Sophie and Amy. It would be the same old reaction as always; he would just tell her she didn’t know what she was talking about because she hadn’t been there herself, so who was she to give him advice.

She finished unloading the washing machine and carried the full laundry basket
into the garden. As she started to peg the wet clothes onto the washing line her thoughts were still on her brother, but by the time she bent down to pull another small garment from the pile of wet laundry she was thinking about Ruairi again, as she had been doing on and off for most of the morning.

He would be ringing the doorbell in less than an hour and by then she would have to be cool, calm and collected, not the wreck she had been ever since yesterday’s lunch.

* * *

From the beginning she had known it would be a mistake to spend too much time alone with him but until yesterday she hadn’t realized quite how much.
Of course it had started off badly with Johanna’s phone call, and then Ruairi had spent far too much time talking about her. Far, far too much time, so that in the end instead of just disliking Johanna she had positively hated her, or at least the thought of her. But then, as if he had suddenly realized how she felt, he had switched his attention to her, and for the rest of the meal he had probed and questioned until, without really meaning to, she had told him about her plans to travel to a country where teachers were in short supply

Over the remains of salad and then
coffee they had discussed the different countries she was considering, the children she would like to teach. Ruairi had been to all of them and she had been grateful for his advice even though she knew it was the first step in a long and lonely journey away from him.

Then they had talked about his work and as he described the utter peace and isolation of the beach where he had
spent the past few months filming a breeding colony of New Zealand fur seals and their pups for a TV production company, she could almost see it. He’d told her about his next assignment too, about how he was going to Mexico to film the annual migration of monarch butterflies. He’d said it was something he’d wanted to do for a very long time, and as she’d listened to his description she understood why.

“They are such beautiful insects
Maggie, as well as one of the most fascinating. Did you know that huge numbers of them migrate up to two and a half thousand miles to escape the cold North American weather? Not all of them though. The ones who migrate are fourth generation butterflies. That’s because the first three generations of every year only live for about six weeks, just long enough to reproduce, whereas the fourth and final generation of their annual breeding cycle lives for around eight months. This is so they can migrate to a warmer climate, hibernate, and that start a new first generation in the spring when they return.”

“That’s not all either. When they migrate, whether it’s to Mexico or to Southern California, they always hibernate in the same trees even though none of them have ever been there before. In Mexico it’s the oyamel fir trees
and in California they settle in the coastal eucalyptus groves. I wish you could see the migration. The trees are absolutely covered in butterflies and, when they first arrive, the ground is too. Everywhere is just a fluttering kaleidoscope of orange and black and when the sun shines on them, well it’s just magical. I can’t wait to see it again and, this time, to actually get paid for filming it too.”

By the time they had finished their meal Maggie was completely enthralled. She wanted to learn more about the extraordinary life he lived, the places he had visited, the wildlife he had seen up close and personal. She wanted to know if it was ever dangerous, what he enjoyed the most, what he still wanted to do, but by then it was time to do Johanna’s shopping, so she had been left with too many unanswered questions and no time to ask them.

Then, soon after they had returned to the house, while her mind was still seething with everything he had told her, Mark had come home to spend his promised quality time with his daughters, except that Sophie and Amy weren’t interested. They were far too busy playing house with Mrs. O’Connor to even notice him, so he invited Ruairi to join him in front of the TV so they could catch up on the latest sporting results while they drank cans of beer. And there they stayed until Mrs. O’Connor gathered up her belongings and declared it was time to return to the hotel.

The girls danced attendance all the way down the path to the garden gate, pestering Ruairi with questions about the next day’s big adventure.
Mark had come too and given Mrs. O’Connor a hug as he thanked her for looking after Sophie and Amy. Watching them all, Maggie suddenly felt superfluous; certain that if she opened the gate and walked away nobody would even notice her go. She was just good old Maggie. Fine for filling in the gaps but not exciting enough to feature very highly in the wider scheme of things. She hadn’t thought up exciting projects like Ruairi, or turned a rickety cardboard den into a magical house like Mrs. O’Connor. She wasn’t even a worthy companion for Mark when he wanted to talk sport. He needed Ruairi for that. And on top of everything, listening to Ruairi talk about his adventures at lunchtime had made her realize how very constrained and narrow her own life was and it wasn’t a comfortable thought. As soon as June was back at home she was going to have to take herself in hand and do something about her life instead of just talking about it.