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A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016
Copyright © Zara Stoneley 2016
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design by HarperCollinsPublishers
Cover design by Alex Allden
Zara Stoneley asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008201722
Version 2019-03-27
PRAISE FOR ZARA STONELEY’S BOOKS
‘A great treat for readers who love their books jam-packed with sexy men and horses’
Bestselling author Fiona Walker
‘Fans of Fiona Walker will love this book’
That Thing She Reads
‘A delightful romp stuffed with fun, frolics and romance’
BestChickLit.com
‘Stable Mates is up there with Riders and Rivals’
Comet Babes Books
‘Move over Mr Grey, the Tippermere boys are in town! Highly recommended’
Brook Cottage Books
‘A seductive fascinating novel. Mucking out the horses just got sexy’
Chicks That Read
This book is for you – whether your dreams are small, or mighty visions, believe in them.
‘The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.’
— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise for Zara Stoneley’s Books
Dedication
Epigraph
Part 1
Chapter 1 – Daisy. Cheshire
Chapter 2 – Daisy. White Elephants
Chapter 3 – Flo. Paris and Back Again
Chapter 4 – Flo. Heading Home
Chapter 5 - Daisy and Anna. Barcelona
Chapter 6 – Flo. Another Kind of Proposal
Chapter 7 – Daisy. The Morning After
Chapter 8 – Daisy. Saying Goodbye
Chapter 9 – Flo. Barcelona Airport Departure Lounge
Part 2
Chapter 10 – Flo. Tippermere, Cheshire
Chapter 11 – Daisy. New Friends
Chapter 12 – Flo. Scooters Are Easier
Chapter 13 – Daisy. Blue-Sky Space
Chapter 14 – Flo. Home Sweet Home?
Chapter 15- Daisy. Seeing Clearly
Chapter 16 – Flo. Poetry and Wine
Chapter 17 – Daisy. Handbags and Hippy Cats
Chapter 18 – Flo. Living the Other Dream
Chapter 19 – Daisy. Finding Mr Right
Chapter 20 – Flo. Past Mistakes
Chapter 21- Daisy. Heading Home
Chapter 22 – Daisy. Sandcastles
Chapter 23 – Flo. Fanning the Flames
Chapter 24 – Flo. Christmas Eve
Chapter 25 – Daisy. Turkey and Sprouts
Chapter 26 – Flo. Promises to Keep
Chapter 27 – Daisy. New Year’s Eve in Cheshire
Chapter 28 – Flo. New Year, New Start?
Enjoy a Winter Break in Barcelona…
Or Capture a Warm and Fuzzy Feeling in Cheshire!
Acknowledgements
Also by Zara Stoneley
About the Author
About the Publisher
Chapter 1 – Daisy. Cheshire
Daisy Fischer wound the baling twine round her finger twice, effectively attaching herself to the gate, before she realised what she was doing, and stopped.
She had to be losing her mind.
Jimmy, her long-term, on-off boyfriend, could not have asked her what she thought he just had. Could he?
She sneaked a sideways glance at him under her fringe, hoping he wouldn’t spot her peeking.
Jimmy was swinging the spade he was holding effortlessly from side to side, showing off his best rugged-man-in-the-country look. Over the years she’d known him he had relaxed into his role a bit; there was the first hint of middle-aged spread spilling over the waistband of his jeans (quite noticeable from this angle), but the forearm on display was still muscular. He was grinning, showing off the dimple she loved.
And he was staring at her bum. Which simplified matters. He didn’t look like he’d just asked her marry him. He looked, well, like Jimmy always looked.
Daisy straightened up, pushing her dark hair behind her ears. She really had to say something, because it was getting to the point of rude if she didn’t. And her back was starting to ache.
He winked. The cheeky wink that had every girl in Tippermere fluttering her eyelashes, even though Jimmy really was more than a little bit too old for most of them. Her mum thought he was too old (and too much of a flirt) for her, but what was eight years between friends?
So what the hell did she say now? If she spoke before thinking this through, one or both of them was going to look pretty silly, and more than a little bit embarrassed. Experience told her it was more likely to be her.
He just could not have said it.
‘Sorry, what was that? I was just trying to…’ The scorch of heat on her cheeks had to give her away, but he didn’t let on. But how the hell had he shifted from asking if she fancied a pint to the question?
‘I think you need to lighten up a bit, Dais.’
Maybe he hadn’t meant it. Or hadn’t said it. It had been a bit of an embarrassed mumble anyway.
‘I only said I needed to sort this out before I could go to the pub.’ Which she had, immediately after he’d said ‘fancy a pint?’, and before he’d said the other bit.
She fished in her pocket for a second piece of baling twine, just to be on the safe side. Safe side as in securing the gate, but also as in buying some more time.
‘But there’s always something with you, isn’t there? People our age should be out getting pissed, not spending the night tying up gates then watching a sloppy film.’
‘I like sloppy films,’ this was better, much safer ground. And she liked tying up gates and messing with horses. She gave the gate a gentle tug. It opened a few inches. Bugger. ‘You know I’ve got to fix this. If Barney goes wandering into Hugo’s food store again he’ll throw a real wobbler. You know what he was like last time.’ The last time that Barney, her very naughty (his previous owner had referred to it as ‘character’) Welsh Cob had escaped from his field he’d managed to break the feed-room door open. Hugo’s feed room door. After eating the entire contents of a bag of very nice carrots, he’d tipped a tub of half-soaked sugar beet all over the floor and trampled it in. Well, the bits he hadn’t eaten.
He’d then wiped his messy nose across the row of pristine stable rugs.
A strange puce-coloured Hugo, with his normally immaculate blond hair stuck up in a very There’s Something About Mary way, had arrived at her door, Barney in tow.
Even though she’d spent a good two hours clearing up the mess, Hugo still hadn’t forgiven her and was gently simmering; she preferred his frosty look, or his macho sneer, to his anger.
‘Your food store.’ Jimmy frowned. He was even less keen on Hugo than Daisy was. ‘Hugo’s a pompous git.’
‘Well he’s renting it, and I need the cash.’ Inheriting Mere End cottage had been a dream come true. With its rambling cottage garden, and room for her dog and horse, it was perfect. But perfect came with a price, and she’d soon worked out that her dog-grooming business wasn’t quite as lucrative as it needed to be. When Hugo had knocked on her door asking if he could continue the rental agreement he’d had with the previous owner – an old woman her mother had helped out – she’d jumped at the opportunity. Some days, though, she wished she had a tenant who was slightly more on her wavelength.
‘I’ll go and talk to Angie then, if you’re going to be boring.’
Giggling Angie, the barmaid, brought new meaning to the name mini-skirt, micro more like, thought Daisy as she added another strand of baling twine. But she supposed you could carry off that look when you were eighteen. And had a waist, and never-ending slim brown legs that were regularly waxed and suntanned.
Whereas Daisy’s waist had gone a bit fuzzy and soft-focus, and her legs were pale and, well let’s face it, also a bit fuzzy (but in a different way) inside her jodhpurs.
She tutted at him and folded her arms. ‘You should leave Angie alone. Her mum’s worried about an older man,’ she looked at him pointedly, ‘leading her astray.’ She could have added, like mine was, but didn’t.
‘If she’s old enough to work behind a bar, then she’s old enough to be led astray.’
‘Jimmy!’
He laughed, an easy, infectious laugh that brought a grin to her own face.
He was cute. But marriage?
‘I remember when you were that age, gorgeous.’ Leaning forward, he kissed her. The scratch of dark stubble rubbed against her cheek, and Daisy looked straight into his eyes –wondering when things like that stopped making the inside of your stomach squirm and just turned into ‘nice’.
Or a rash.
‘You were gorgeous, and you’re still as sexy. Come on, scrub up and come for a drink. We need to talk.’
Talk? Oh bugger, he had said what she thought he had. Jimmy didn’t do ‘talking’. The last time he’d wanted to talk to her was when he needed to borrow some cash to repair his ancient tractor.
How the hell was she going to avoid giving him a straight answer when he was staring at her over the froth of his pint?
‘Maybe I should get some wire. What do you think?’
‘I think,’ he prised her hands away from the gate post and reaching into her pocket pulled out the last remaining piece of baling twine, ‘I’ve got a chain and padlock that will do a much better job, and,’ he shook his head at the horse, who had ambled over to see if there was any food on offer, ‘if he can get out of that he deserves as many carrots as he can nick. Go on, you get inside and shower while I sort out Houdini.’
Barney stamped his foot and shook his whole body vigorously, then lowered his head to peer at Jimmy.
‘Yeah, you know when you’ve met your match, don’t you, mate?’
‘Think you can outwit a horse now do you, Jimbo?’
Daisy and Jimmy both turned to find Hugo watching them.
It wasn’t that he was nasty, or that she hated him, he just always seemed slightly superior. Even his drawl was perfect upper-class insolence. As was the ever-present cigarette dangling from his fingers (she’d told him it was a bad habit and very unfashionable and he’d just laughed and asked her when she’d become such a health-and-fashion expert – he had a point).
Hugo’s horses never escaped, he never fell in troughs, and he always looked immaculate. ‘Dashing’ was how her mother had described him (over the moon that he was going to be Daisy’s neighbour – so nice to have a bit of class about, you don’t know what you’re getting these days), which was why, she supposed, there was a never-ending trail of women in and out of his bed. There always had been, despite the fact he seemed arrogant and aloof to her, and just all too much, but he obviously appealed to some women. Well, quite a lot of women. When they were teenagers he’d been the pin-up at the state school, as well as the private one he attended. Hugo had always had it easy, had the pick of everything.
And he made her feel a bit of a klutz. She’d found ‘brusque and couldn’t care less’ was the most efficient attitude to deal with him. Which didn’t come naturally at all.
‘I tried to tie the gate up.’
He raised what she could only describe as a sarcastic eyebrow, if there was such a thing. ‘So I see. I never knew baling twine could be such an asset. You really do put the rest of us to shame when it comes to recycling, don’t you?’
She ignored him. ‘But Jimmy is putting a chain on. Did you want help with something?’ Polite but firm.
‘Not really.’ Oh God, that drawl could be annoying. There was a hint of ‘not that you could help with’ sneer lingering in the background. ‘I just had the bill for the food stuff he destroyed, plus the cleaning bill for the rugs. I’ll leave it in the house, shall I?’
‘Sure. Sorry about that. I’ll knock it off the rent.’
‘Cash would be handy.’
‘I bet it bloody would.’ Jimmy shook his head. ‘We’ll knock it off the rent, like Dais said.’
Daisy tried not to visibly cringe. It was lovely to have Jimmy doing his macho- territory thing, but it wasn’t his rent to knock it off. She smiled. ‘I’ll get showered then, shall I?’ And ushered Hugo off down the path. No way was she leaving the pair of them together to lock horns.
Chapter 2 – Daisy. White elephants
‘Bloody hell, I needed that.’ Jimmy wiped the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand, put his pint glass down on the table and raised an eyebrow at Daisy before scrummaging about in his pockets. ‘There you go.’
It was a box. An enormous, blue, scary box. Well, it was tiny, actually. As in ring-size tiny. But inescapable. It was that white elephant in the room. Daisy understood now why they called it that. You couldn’t actually not look at it.
Her stomach lurched. Not the fluttery feeling of anticipation that she sometimes felt when Jimmy started to slowly unbutton her shirt and his fingertips brushed her skin, it was more like the feeling of fear when Barney took off with her and she was wondering how the hell she was going to stop him before they ploughed through a group of unsuspecting picnickers. That heart-in-the-mouth moment before she knew for sure if he was going to slam the brakes on, spin round, or launch his huge body into the air and go for it.
It hadn’t been her imagination, or dodgy hearing because her bobble hat was pulled down over her ears. He had said the words that had made her nearly amputate her fingertips with a liberal wrapping of plastic twine.
We should get hitched.
She took a gulp of lager and glanced round, hoping nobody was looking at them, but knowing that she was probably just about to hit the number one slot for gossip-worthy news.
‘How about it then, Daisy, are you up to the job of making an honest man of me?’
His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously and there was a sheen of anxious perspiration across his brow. Not a look she associated with the solid, dependable, and slightly cocky man she more often than not shared a bed with. She wanted to throw her arms round him, reassure him, and scream with delight, like they did in the films. But it wasn’t happening. All she could force out was a wobbly mad-woman laugh.
‘Come on.’ His grin was all lopsided. Why, oh why couldn’t she grab the box? ‘You’re making me nervous here, put me out of my misery.’ He lifted the lid, encouraging a positive response.
‘Oh Jimmy.’ She put one finger out, not quite daring to touch the diamond that she should have been desperate to see. ‘It’s lovely, you’re lovely, wonderful.’ Oh God, she was sounding like a bad greetings card, and she was going to cry. It suddenly hit her, and her stomach lurched as she looked at the ring, the words that had automatically tumbled out of her mouth summed it up. That was the thing. She thought he was ‘lovely’, which maybe wasn’t quite the same as being madly in love in an ‘I want to marry you kind of way’. ‘It’s just a shock. I didn’t expect…’
‘To be honest,’ the look had turned to bashful Retriever now, ‘I know we’ve always kept it casual.’
Yeah, thought Daisy. At the start, Jimmy had always been the one to say it was daft to get too involved; he didn’t like commitment of any kind. Not even the kind that meant he’d agree to accompany her to the wedding of one of her best mates. And, to be honest, she realised now that it suited her; it had worked. She’d soon moved on from that crazy-crush elation because the cheeky Jimmy had noticed her as a teenager (which was rather a long time ago now) to the realisation that maybe they weren’t a match made in heaven. They were comfortable. In a few years’ time maybe they’d be too comfortable. Oh God, surely when you agreed to marry a man, your toes should still be curling up and your skin prickling all over when he kissed you?
But she still liked him, loved him in a best-buddy way. Now she felt two steps behind him, when he was finally saying he was ready to commit it all seemed a bit surreal. A bit too late – if he’d said this a couple of years ago she might well have leapt into his arms and a life of washing his clothes and wandering down to the local every night.
‘It was my old man that put me up to this, actually.’ He really was looking sheepish, and something inside Daisy rose up in suspicion.
‘Your dad?’ Since when did his father turn Cupid? Romantic proposals were so not the image she had of his dad. Not that this was turning out to be particularly romantic, so far.
‘He asked when I was going to get my finger out and give him some grandkids; told me to get on with it while he was still young enough to kick a football.’
‘Let’s get this straight. It was your dad’s idea? Your dad told you to ask me?’
‘Well, yeah, but then I got to thinking. I mean, why not? We love each other.’
This was going from bad to worse. She had thought maybe they did. But now he’d made her actually think about it, she was wavering. She loved him in the way she loved Mabel, Barney, her best mate Anna, her parents, her chickens (well at least her favourite chicken)… but did she love him? As in big heart, forever together. He was cute, he was kind. He chopped wood like a trouper. He knew just the right way to rub her aching feet. He hardly complained at all when she watched ‘Love Actually’ for the twenty-third time. He still loved her even when she was wearing a fleece with holes in and didn’t have any make-up on.
They had matching Christmas jumpers. He loved Mabel.
So why was she messing about? It could be perfect. Was it just some stupid unrealistic romantic notion that she wanted to be swept off her feet – not be asked the question in the middle of a field as she wrapped twine round a gatepost, almost like it was an afterthought.
She’d been watching too many rom-coms, read too many happy-ever-afters. This was real life. In real life you were happy, compatible, had known each other since you were knee- high to a grasshopper, as Grandad used to say.
In fact, this probably was how Grandad and Grandma had made the decision.
They were comfortable. Like two old slippers rubbing together.
Oh Gawd, she didn’t want to be an old slipper. Not yet.
The groan started to come out of her mouth and she did her best to change it into a non-committal squeak of what could have been mild interest. Or a pig sound.
Jimmy was not deterred. ‘I can just give my place up, daft me wasting money on rent. I’ll move in with you, and we might even be able to afford to tell Hugo to piss off.’
She didn’t want to tell Hugo to piss off, even though he could be irritating. She wasn’t really sure she was ready to let Jimmy move into the little cottage, her little cottage.
They seemed to be skipping from infatuation (on her part), to slippers-and-pipe comfortable, without doing the madly-in-love bit in the middle.
Surely there should be one of those, even for her?
‘I can help, you know, mend fences to keep that Houdini horse in,’ he gave a reassuring smile, ‘I know how hard it is for you to keep on top of that place, and I’m not always there, but I can be. So, what do you say? February wedding before I get busy on the fields?’
February! He was giving her deadlines now. She spluttered up the mouthful of lager. ‘There’s no need to rush into this is there?’ And gave a weak smile.
He could move in. Live there. With her. Instead of just spending the odd night at hers, losing odd socks under the bed, leaving the loo seat up, and emptying the milk carton, he could do it all the time. With all his socks. His socks would be happy – paired off. They could fall asleep in front of the TV together (him and her, not the socks) every night. She could cook his dinner while he mended things. They could do couple-things.
All the time.
Forever. Never set foot outside of Tippermere, never meet anybody new. Live on roast dinners and apple pie for the rest of their lives. Okay she was pushing it a bit there. They could go to the restaurants in Kitterly Heath, or rather she could. Jimmy was quite happy doing the same thing day in day out. He didn’t want to explore, he didn’t want excitement, oh God, he just didn’t have any of the dreams she did.
She perched on the edge of her seat. That was it. She’d got it, he didn’t share her dreams, he was happy with what he’d got and deep inside she thought, hoped, that one day she’d find a little bit more.
She really did feel queasy now. No way could she say that, it would be more shocking than the proposal, and it had only just occurred to her. And she’d sound deranged if she said it. He’d set off some weird kind of chain reaction inside her.
But he was nice. And maybe nobody would share her mad dreams, well not a man. Maybe this was all there was. She slumped back.
‘Go on then, say it.’ The pint glass stopped, halfway up to his mouth as he realised that her open mouth wasn’t signalling a delighted yes. ‘Daisy? Say something, please, I’m beginning to feel a bit of a dick.’ His gaze darted round, furtively checking out for listeners-in.