Lottie Phillips - Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse

LOTTIE PHILLIPSworked as a teacher before turning her hand to fiction. She was brought up in Africa and the Middle East and then – as an adult – travelled extensively before moving to London and finally settling in the Cotswolds with her young son. When she’s not writing, you will find her scouring interior design magazines and shops, striving towards the distant dream of being a domestic goddess or having a glass of wine with country music turned up loud. As a child, she always had her nose in a book and, in particular, Nancy Drew. Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse is her second romantic comedy but she also writes psychological thrillers under the pseudonym Louise Stone. Readers can find Lottie Phillips, otherwise known as Charlie Phillips, on Twitter @writercharlieor at www.writercharlie.com

The Little Cottage in the Country

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Lottie Philips 2018

Lottie Philips 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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 978-0-00-818994-5

Version: 2018-08-06

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Lottie Phillips

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Acknowledgements

Extract

Dear Reader

Advert

About the Publisher

To my Dream Team, thank you

Daisy adjusted the focus on the camera and zoomed in. He was waving his hands about as if to say ‘ta-dah, look at us, in Amsterdam, without a care in the world’. He made her laugh when he tried to be the joker. He wasn’t a joker at all, he was quiet, reserved, and serious, but her heart soared at his efforts to always make her happy, and she clicked the shutter over and over again, as if wanting to impress this moment on her mind forever.

‘Beautiful lady, what are you doing standing over there?’ He smiled at her and then, much to her horror, and in a very un-Hugh-like manner, he gestured to a man busy making his way to work, his briefcase in one hand. ‘Isn’t she one of the most gorgeous women you’ve ever set eyes on?’

The man grumbled, looked momentarily in her direction and gave a small smile and a nod.

‘Hugh!’ she shrieked, dying internally of embarrassment whilst also secretly enjoying the attention.

‘Well,’ he called over the cobbled street to her. ‘They all need to know!’ He paused, fumbled in his pocket. ‘You think that was embarrassing, wait for this!’

Her heart quickened. What was he doing?

He stopped, looking briefly serious and said more quietly, ‘Daisy, come over to this side.’

He brushed his foppish fringe out of the way with his free hand, the other remaining firmly in his pocket. ‘Curtains’ he had told her gravely, ‘they’re called curtains.’ She knew he was dying to cut them off but, again, he wanted to fit in with her friends.

‘How can a hairstyle be called curtains ?’ he’d asked the day before. ‘I mean that’s a house furnishing, not a haircut.’ She had kissed him all over, inhaling deeply the scent of Ralph Lauren Polo and told him he should have the haircut he wanted. Eventually, he agreed; post-Amsterdam, he would visit his favourite barber and get rid of said house furnishings.

She watched him steadily now, refusing to go over to his side, teasing him. She swallowed a laugh as he shuffled from side to side impatiently in his Skechers. Skechers had been another display that he was a ‘man of the time’. The fact that they were still alarmingly white and new made them even more conspicuous. They didn’t suit him and he hated wearing them but as he told her, ‘I don’t want you to think I’m just some boring finance guy who wears chinos and boat shoes.’ Even though they both agreed that he was in fact all of the above. Maybe not boring, just well behaved . Daisy, on the other hand, was a party animal that flitted between the gym, clubbing – she had to show Hugh ‘big box, little box’ – and the odd lecture. Why exactly she had chosen French, she had no idea – and as she had pointed out to her main lecturer, her classmates were French; where was le justice in that?

‘Excuse moi, uhh…’ She had paused, given herself time to think with the old ‘uhh’ trick and said, ‘Mes amis…’

Her lecturer had cut in, smiling kindly. ‘Just speak English.’

‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘My classmates are all French, where’s the justice in that?’

Mr Faron smiled. ‘Why did you choose French?’

Truthful answer: she thought she might finish the three years as a cultured, thin, beautiful, long-fingered, cigarette-smoking woman who rattled off the language to her sexy French friends.

‘I want to go into business with the French,’ was what she had actually said.

What her teacher didn’t understand was that she came from the back end of beyond, in other words a farm in Gloucestershire, and she had never really had a penny to her name. So she had wanted to better herself.

It was partly the reason she had fallen for Hugh. He was intelligent, very serious and could talk about stocks and shares and GDP something or other in his sleep; actually, come to think of it, Daisy knew he actually did talk about those things in his sleep.

She brought herself back to the now, and after a moment or two more of watching Hugh, she couldn’t bear it any longer. Why did he look so nervous?

She jogged over to the other side of the bridge towards Hugh, who went to take her hand, but instead she teasingly dipped down to sniff a display of perfectly formed yellow tulips. As she bent over, she was aware of Hugh’s eyes on her and she pretended to study the flowers. She knew he was undressing her with his eyes. Not much guesswork involved, really, as she wore a crop top and bike shorts. She was lucky, she guessed, that she hadn’t piled the weight on at university – she was, as Hugh affectionately called her, a gym bunny. They had met in their second year; the most unlikely couple, according to her friends. Yet, here they were, at the end of their three-year degrees, in Amsterdam, carefully avoiding the subject of what they planned to do next.