Zara Stoneley - The Holiday Swap - The perfect feel good romance for fans of the Christmas movie The Holiday

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.

‘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.