Page 105 of Experiments in Offline Dating

“Except for you?”

“Except for me.”

“Wait. Are you”—I narrowed my eyes and leaned across the table—“secretly a big softy?”

He scoffed and went back to eating his pasta.

My mouth swung open. “Oh my God! That’s it, isn’t it? You love them too much, don’t you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, you’re such a bloody smart-arse. Like a dog after a bone, you are.”

Woof.

I laughed. It wasn’t a denial. “You’re a squishy, softhearted sheep lover!” I reached across the table and pinched his cheek like an old auntie. He swatted my hand away and scowled. “I thought I saw a tear in your eye when we held those little babies yesterday.”

“What utter bollocks.”

“Just, you know, cradling it. Singing it a lullaby.”

“Horseshit. I didn’t see you diving into that lamb pie last night, did I?”

“Yeah, well. I am a big softy, with animals, at least. But I don’t pretend to be a hulking, five-hundred-pound, immovable mass of anger!”

“Shut it and eat your damn Alfredo.”

I grinned so hard it was difficult to chew. This made him all the angrier.

It was getting cold and dark as we took Finn for a quick walk in the square, put the B&B coordinates into the GPS, and steeled ourselves for another winding hour.

“Jeezus. Where did the man put us? This B&B is in fecking no-man’s-land. And we have to drive past where we’re going tomorrow to get there.”

But an hour or so later, as we rolled slowly to a stop, our headlights the only thing illuminating the wilderness, we found that we weren’t at a B&B at all.

We were at . . . a tent.

One. Tent.

And outside the flap, a bottle of champagne on ice.

Chapter 30 An Experiment in Learning to Hate Your Favorite Romance Trope

“What in the holy hell is this?”

We both stared at it in silence for a moment, not daring to step any closer.

“Hold on, there’s a note here.” I stepped forward and grabbed it from where it rested against the ice bucket. “‘Dear Maya and Tadhg, thank you so much for booking a special night at our Lovebirds Glamping Yurt. Please find a composting toilet and sink in a separate building around the back. The space heater is broken, we’re afraid, but we’ve left extra blankets in the trunk. We hope you make magical memories here. Your hosts, Tim and Martha.’”

“Oh, he’s going to pay for this,” Tadhg growled.

Now, I’d thought I had seen a wide variety of Tadhg’s grump, but apparently not the full spectrum, because this was something new. His eyes flashed dangerously. It was, if I’m honest, both terrifying and knee-meltingly hot.

“He’s going to suffer.”

“Okayyy. Hold on, let’s just have a look inside. Maybe it’s bigger than it looks. Like the magic tents the spark mages use. With . . . you know . . . two beds. And a divider down the middle.”

I walked onto the little wooden platform that kept the tent out of the mud, and I unzipped the flap. I’d been unfair calling it a tent, because it was a yurt. A fancy one. There was a beautiful lantern strung up and glowing in the center, little glittering lights along the frame, and lots of those little fake candle things that looked real but wouldn’t burn us to a crisp in the night. And there, underneath the colorful Moroccan lantern, was a bed.

Just the one.