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,
