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Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse: A heartwarming summer romance to escape with in 2018!
Lottie Phillips
‘A sweet and charming story.’ Kaye Temanson (NetGalley reviewer) on The Little Cottage in the CountryA delightfully heartwarming romantic comedy to get you in the mood for summer! A summer of new beginnings…Daisy Ronaldson’s whole life is turned upside-down when her husband dies from cancer. So when she discovers that he left her a wish: to turn their big English country house into a guest house, she’s in shock…At first it seems like just too big a challenge, but in the rush of making beds, painting rooms and preparing breakfasts, with her helpful (and handsome) friend James, Daisy realises that her heart is beginning to heal. In fact, she might even be falling in love again!Perfect for fans of Christie Barlow, Holly Martin and Tilly Tennant.Readers love Lottie Phillips:‘This book has left me with a great big smile on my face and a great big warm hug around my heart.’‘There is no amount of love and gushing too big for how much I simply adored this book. A must read for all.’‘such a charming read and amazingly brilliant from the first page.’‘Simply fantastic book highly recommend reading it worth more than five stars for sure.’‘A lovely warm hearted book’
About the Author (#uf0e5fe9c-1727-5c48-bb1c-25e97bfe254a)
LOTTIE PHILLIPS worked 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 @writercharlie (https://twitter.com/writercharlie?lang=en) or at www.writercharlie.com (http://www.writercharlie.com)
Also by Lottie Phillips (#uf0e5fe9c-1727-5c48-bb1c-25e97bfe254a)
The Little Cottage in the Country
Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse
LOTTIE PHILLIPS
HQ
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 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 (#u9bafb9b9-e273-5b43-8cb8-9ef5be65a40c)
About the Author (#u5ee1608c-1114-579e-99f7-1f9f9eaea52e)
Also by Lottie Phillips (#ua7a1cdfe-a609-5228-8804-b3eb8ff2f2f6)
Title Page (#u3938646b-2dcf-5996-b923-321608902dc3)
Copyright (#ubf09f1ce-23d5-50e7-b6b3-b46f1eeb0518)
Dedication (#u1de0c799-2e25-55bd-ab7e-7a71e167d0f7)
Prologue (#u08699a7e-29e4-5135-bea3-a53b77f1d74c)
Chapter 1 (#uef246118-d81b-5d55-b9eb-9d232bb70593)
Chapter 2 (#u5bb92695-f503-59b6-91b9-3833c6d06ddd)
Chapter 3 (#uf49f0455-7882-5781-ac00-d8632e9d254c)
Chapter 4 (#u758df454-1fb9-53de-bed7-cd71d6a501df)
Chapter 5 (#u2648643c-4ef2-52d6-a02c-cb9856db2309)
Chapter 6 (#u5a10edd3-af4f-5489-9002-1970fab7ad4d)
Chapter 7 (#uf3bb2263-38f9-5926-95f5-d891eca88897)
Chapter 8 (#u9edefa12-6fdd-5584-94ef-78c8fc3a0238)
Chapter 9 (#u1aa0d646-da19-5bfe-b2ef-4d59480eb5f8)
Chapter 10 (#u6053bc8f-6456-50f5-8659-1304491483f4)
Chapter 11 (#u3750250b-5902-5757-b359-37c1073c2227)
Chapter 12 (#u8add50e2-fb0d-5ed0-81f3-e4b5e59d880e)
Chapter 13 (#uaeff7c86-7a2e-50d5-b989-dfcb3155f8a0)
Chapter 14 (#u0944f3fc-8797-5694-8287-2f7e9cc97324)
Chapter 15 (#uab7576d3-841d-501c-8f3a-b83aebdddb20)
Chapter 16 (#uae313e80-3f31-5050-bd93-a25ea91b40a2)
Chapter 17 (#u485d4bd9-bc15-5d3e-bcf3-60fabca99d43)
Chapter 18 (#u7c4da09a-3473-5876-b4e8-04164dda106a)
Chapter 19 (#u15029a72-4ac2-5394-b91c-408623529dbd)
Chapter 20 (#u2fe0078d-0430-5e8b-8eac-945a698b4657)
Chapter 21 (#u0a646fd7-e05a-5858-8187-11d6ee1161e8)
Chapter 22 (#u4c94ee45-f118-5456-90f0-f4a5a78f2c9c)
Acknowledgements (#uc8319de6-3f8a-5f7b-965d-8d7c09ee15dd)
Extract (#u687c23da-7d35-588c-ac49-9f23d6a729ab)
Dear Reader (#u19e9070d-7223-5e8d-96d2-5ce72be673a7)
Advert (#u75bbf7df-68dc-576c-ad27-d5bb7a24a018)
About the Publisher (#u41ef81ac-1bbd-56b4-a55e-b778c05d6c5a)
To my Dream Team, thank you
Prologue (#uf0e5fe9c-1727-5c48-bb1c-25e97bfe254a)
Amsterdam, 1997
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.
Eventually, she looked up and took a sharp intake of breath; it was as if he had read her mind.
‘Hugh, what are you doing?’
He was down on one knee holding open a box. Inside, lay a simple silver ring with a diamond.
‘Hugh!’ she squealed. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
He still hadn’t spoken, red creeping up his neck.
Finally, he cleared his throat. ‘Daisy, would you do me the greatest honour and become my wife?’
She stood, mouth agog. Her life flashing in front of her. Wasn’t she too young? Hadn’t they only just left university?
She shook her head and his face crumpled but then she grinned; he looked confused. What was she thinking? She loved this man. They could spend the rest of their life together, have children, live happily.
‘Yes,’ she shrieked and hugged him so hard he wobbled and fell onto the pavement. ‘Yes, you silly, funny, beautiful man. I will marry you!’
She had lost all previous inhibitions and smiled at the now small gathering of onlookers who clapped her decision.
Hugh gathered himself, relief written across his features and he took her into a firm embrace, kissing her deeply.
‘We’ll be together forever,’ he whispered and she melted into his arms, as she breathed in the smell of cologne on his skin. She thought she could die happily as long as she was never separated from Hugh.
She had never felt so safe in her life.
Of course, she didn’t know that she would lose Hugh to cancer twenty years later.
Chapter 1 (#uf0e5fe9c-1727-5c48-bb1c-25e97bfe254a)
‘I have no idea why I let you talk me into this, Lisa,’ Daisy grumbled as she wiggled to and fro on the small changing-room stool. She had fallen for the Levi’s for Curvy Women bumph and now she would never be able to leave this store again.
No, really. She was officially stuck in the jeans. Oh, she had got as far as below her knees but then her generous size sixteen thighs and bum had decided she was beyond even Levi’s. Great.
‘Lisa, get in here now.’
She could hear giggling on the other side of the curtain and then, ‘Oh, I love them, they’re perfect.’
Daisy, now with a beetroot red face, looked at her sweaty, bloated body in the mirror and rolled her eyes. ‘Lisa, I’m so happy for you that your size ten self fits so wonderfully well in jeans from the normal Levi’s section, but if you wouldn’t mind helping me remove my cargo ship ass from these ones, I’d be so grateful.’
Eventually, Lisa could be heard moving her curtain across and then she shimmied into Daisy’s changing area. Lisa, looking amazing in her straight jeans and bra, took one look at her friend and burst into laughter, quickly righting herself when she saw tears in Daisy’s eyes.
‘Oh, Daisy, I’m sorry.’ She gulped. ‘I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. You’re beautiful.’
