Page 60 of A December to Remember
Later that afternoon,Maggie found herself alone in the flat. Patrick had taken Verity to a pantomime in Tunbridge Wells. Her son having never shown any inclination toward panto before, Maggie surmised it must have something to do with a certain young woman called Louella, who was playing the part of Princess Jasmine.
She was taking advantage of this rare peace and quiet to make some notes for the speech they would have to give at the village meeting tomorrow. Simone and Star had both agreed to take their turn to speak, but as usual, the planning had fallen to her.
She’d written out note cards of the things they should include in their appeal. She hoped Betty was right and that people were simply waiting for them to ask. If not, she had no idea how they were going to pull this thing off. She felt sure that if Augustus had had the faintest idea that she was about to be evicted, he would never have tasked her with this. It seemed cruel that she was putting so much energy into a celebration for a community to which she might no longer belong in a few short weeks. She sighed, sipped her tea, and continued to scribble words to rouse the village of Rowan Thorp to action.
The kitchen door opened, and she felt Joe behind her chair.
“Hello. How was your run?”
“Invigorating,” he replied with a smile in his voice. “What are you doing?”
“Writing speech notes.”
“Speech notes! Do you think you’ll need them?”
“I get tongue-tied when I’m nervous.”
“Relax,” he said, rubbing her shoulders. The cold of his fingers brushing the skin above her collar made her shiver in a good way. “Everyone wants to help you succeed. It isn’t a test, nobody’s judging you. Just be yourself.”
“Easy foryouto say.Yourself 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 gardenssomeone 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.
