Kissing Maggie Silver (23 page)

And she had. She had even made some very practical suggestions and told Maggie where to find hidden glens and shallow streams, and clusters of newly unfurled bright green ferns; the sort of places that were exactly right for Maggie’s picture book.
And once she had sketched and painted them, Moira O’Connor’s admiration and enthusiasm was such music to her ears that she wondered why she had kept her dreams a secret from everyone for so long.

Because you were
frightened people would laugh at you
the little dark voice that still occasionally invaded her thoughts told her.
You thought they would just say it was another of your whims, not to be taken seriously.

The thought spurred her into greater action because she knew now that she was good, that her drawings, so carefully stored away for so long, were the fledgling steps of talented illustrator, and she was determined to do herself justice.

* * *

Strangely, although she had dreaded seeing photos of Ruairi everywhere and having to listen to stories about his childhood, or about the work he was doing now, it wasn’t as bad as she had expected.
For one thing there were only a couple of framed photos and they were both several years old, so it was almost as if the Ruairi she was   in love with didn’t exist. And although his mother did refer to him occasionally, it was in such a casual way that Maggie wasn’t obliged to continue the conversation.

So when she went down to the kitchen on the sixth morning of her stay she was feeling more relaxed than she would have thought possible just a few months earlier.
Smiling her thanks as her hostess poured her a mug of tea, she sat at the table and admired the stripes of early morning sunlight dappling the quarry tiles on the floor.

Mrs
. O’Connor pushed the breadboard towards her so she could cut off a chunk of freshly baked soda bread. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “It’s set to be another lovely day so why don’t I pack you up a picnic. Then you’ll be able to wander a bit further afield when you’re sketching today.”

“But that doesn’t seem fair. Not when I’ve come to visit you,” Maggie protested.

“Nonsense my dear! I just like to see you enjoying yourself. And it’s not often we have such a long spell of uninterrupted sunshine. The weatherman on the radio forecast high temperatures for the rest of the week, so make the most of it while you have the chance. Besides, I have one or two things to do today, and I’m expecting a visitor too.”

“Well if you’re really sure then I would love to spend the day walking,” Maggie told her, and before long she was packing food and a flask into a small rucksack alongside her sketchpad.

She set off full of excited anticipation. Mrs
. O’Connor watched from the open doorway of the cottage until she was out of sight and then she swiftly cleared the breakfast things from the table, tidied the kitchen and, with an anxious glance at the clock, hurried upstairs.

Chapter
Twenty

A practiced traveler, Ruairi was the first one off the plane when it touched down, and he was waiting at the luggage carousel long before the suitcases came tumbling through. Within moments he had piled his own luggage onto a trolley and pushed it through to the arrivals concourse to where a hire car was waiting.

He barely saw the wonderful scenery as he drove along the coast to his mother’s cottage.
Instead he kept rehearsing all the things he wanted to say to Maggie; things he’d been writing and re-writing in his head ever since this hair-brained idea had been conceived.

It was all very well for June and Jo, using Ollie as their go-between, to tell him he just needed to spend time with Maggie away from her family if he was serious about her.
It was all very well for them to persuade his mother to invite Maggie to stay with her and not tell him about it until his travel dates were confirmed. They weren’t going to be at the receiving end. What if Maggie didn’t want to see him? What if she couldn’t forgive him? What if she decided to take the next plane back to England before he had a chance to tell her how he felt about her?

He was still full of the dark thoughts that had filled his mind ever since he had finally realized he’d been a fool to leave Maggie behind, when he finally pulled up outside his mother’s cottage and killed the engine.

She was waiting for him in the doorway with an anxious frown that turned into a huge smile of welcome as soon as she saw him. He reached her in two strides and swept her into a bear hug that almost lifted her from the ground.

She smiled up at him.
“I think you’d better smarten yourself up or Maggie won’t recognize you.”

He rubbed his hands over the stubble on his face with a groan.
“I feel as if I’ve been travelling for days…and I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”

“Go and have a shower and freshen up while I cook you bacon and eggs.
You need something decent to eat after twenty four hours of airline food.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, showered and shaved, he was sitting down to a piled plateful of food that he washed down with several cups of strong coffee. Not until he had finished did he ask the question that had been uppermost in his mind from the moment he left New Zealand.

“How’s Maggie?” He gave his mother a wry smile, embarrassed by his reluctance to talk about the very thing he held most dear.

“Maggie’s fine,” she told him calmly.

“Does she know I’m here?”

“She does not.”              

He stared at her.
“You’re not going to tell me a thing are you?”

“No!”

Then she softened slightly. “Whatever did or didn’t happen between you and Maggie is your business Ruairi. I have no rights on how you live your life, nor do I expect to have, so I am only going to give you one piece of advice.”

He waited.

“Don’t break that poor girl’s heart again. And once she’s forgiven you, don’t take no for an answer or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life!”

He grinned at her.
“You said one thing, that’s two!”

“So it is.
Well you’d better go and look for her before I think of something else. She was going to walk over the headland but she’ll probably be on her way back by now. She’s wearing a red jacket and she’s carrying a small rucksack, so you’ll know it’s her, even at a distance.”

He pushed back his chair, stood up, dropped a kiss on the top of her head and walked out of the cottage without another word.

She shook her head as she watched him go. He might have travelled the world and found himself fame and fortune in his chosen career, but when it came to his heart he still had a lot to learn.

* * *

As Ruairi strode across the fields he felt his heart lift. His mother had said when Maggie forgives you, so she must think he had a chance. Not that he would have chosen to do it this way. He’d had a much more subtle plan in mind, one that involved a telephone conversation, an invitation to dinner, a gentle approach that he hoped would undo the hurt he had caused. But thanks to his friends and his mother it was an option that had been taken away. Unless he was going to leave the country again he had to face Maggie the hard way. No props, no romantic lighting or soft music, just him and Maggie with the memories of the past between them. He’d felt sick with anxiety for days, so sure had he been she would reject him; but now, with a soft breeze blowing up from the sea, and the sun highlighting the distant mountains, he suddenly felt more optimistic. Maybe it would work after all.

* * *

He had been walking for almost thirty minutes before he saw her and even then it was only a flash of red out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head swiftly he was just in time to catch a distant glimpse of her outlined against the sky before she plunged down a hillside and out of sight.

Changing direction he began to jog, anxious to cut across her path before he lost her. She was further away than he realized
though, so by the time he saw her again she was on the beach. He paused at the top of the path leading down to the bay, his heart thudding against his chest, not from exertion but from the sudden sight of Maggie sitting with her back against a rock, a sketchpad resting on her knee. As he watched he saw her hand move swiftly across the paper, shaping and shading as she reproduced the view in front of her.

How long he stood
there he never knew. It could have been hours or minutes because, for Ruairi, time stood still as he gazed down at the woman he loved and wondered all over again how he could ever have been stupid enough to walk away from her.

Finally she finished drawing and slipping her sketchpad into her rucksack, she stood up.
Ruairi took a deep breath and readied himself for the rejection he was afraid he might see in her face but instead of picking up her belongings, Maggie wandered off towards the edge of the bay, away from him. She seemed to be searching for shells because every now and again she would pick one up and study it. Mostly she threw them away again but occasionally she would keep one, slipping it into the pocket of her jacket before moving on.

Ruairi watched the graceful movements of her body as she bent and sifted through a pile of stones, or used her
foot, clad in a sturdy walking boot, to push at something the tide had left at the water’s edge. He noticed the way the wind tugged at her hair so that wisps escaped from the clips she had used to restrain it and blew across her face. He saw how agile she was as she clambered across some scattered rocks to peer into a rock pool. And then, finally, she turned, and he saw her face.

It was everything he remembered, and more.
Despite the distance between them he could see the high curve of her cheekbones and the smoothness of her brow, and as she came nearer he saw how the sun had warmed her cheeks to a flushed pink and burnished the skin at her throat to a pale gold. Then, as the sea breeze tugged at her unfastened jacket and uncovered the curves he had tried to erase from his mind, he almost stopped breathing.

When he finally regained his senses, he
opened his mouth to call to her. At the exact same moment she looked up and saw him and for a long, long moment they stared at one another across the width of the small bay. Then she smiled, and with a great leap of his heart he knew it was going to be all right.

* * *

By the time they returned to the cottage the light was fading and a chill wind was beginning to blow in from the sea. Neither of them noticed it though. They were too wrapped up in one another as they trudged across the fields, mostly talking, although occasionally Ruairi brought them to a stop so he could kiss her again.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid,” he told her as he brushed wayward strands of copper colored hair from her face.

“Ssh! It’s over now,” Maggie put her fingers across his lips and then stood on tiptoe so that she could kiss the corner of his mouth.

He groaned, pulling her towards him with a sudden impatience
that she quickly matched, her fingers creeping up into the hair that curled at the nape of his neck. It was a long time before they moved on after that but when they did Ruairi picked up the conversation he had interrupted.

“I didn’t think I was ready to settle down.
There’s still so much I want to do and, stupidly, I thought getting married would interfere with that.”

Maggie dragged him to an abrupt halt.
“Married! I don’t recall a marriage proposal or did I miss something?”

He stared down at her in surprise.
“Of course we’re getting married. That was half my problem in the first place. I knew I couldn’t have a casual relationship with you. It knew it had to be all or nothing, and like a fool I almost chose nothing.”

Maggie gazed
up at him speechlessly. Would she ever understand him? Why had it taken him seven months on the other side of the world to see sense when she had known what she wanted from almost the moment she first saw him? Then she remembered what she had been like seven months earlier and knew she had been partly responsible for sending him away. She had spent too much time telling him how dissatisfied she was with her life. She had been over sensitive and prickly in turns, with no real plans for her future, just a muddle of dreams and wishes. The Maggie of seven months earlier had been far too self obsessed and immature to cope with the lifestyle Ruairi was offering her.

“I wasn’t ready,” she told him, staring down at the buttons on his jacket so she didn’t have to look at him as she tried to find the right words. “I didn’t have any real plans.
I thought I did but I didn’t, not really. And I didn’t know enough about people either. Seven months ago I would have been a liability.”

“And now?”

She heard the laughter in his voice and then his finger was under her chin, lifting her face up to his. As he lowered his lips, he said it again.

“Oh now!
Now I’m definitely an asset,” she said and then she didn’t say anything else for a very long time.