When it finally did ring, Daisy almost jumped out of her skin.
And it wasn’t Noah, either.
She answered it cautiously, seeing a London number on her screen. She wasn’t supposed to take calls in work, but she’d never been able to resist answering her phone, except when it was her mother calling, and especially not now, when it might be Noah.
‘Am I speaking to Daisy Jones?’ an unfamiliar female voice asked, and Daisy was gripped with a sudden dread. The last time she’d been asked that question over the phone, it had been a nurse calling to tell her that Freddie had been admitted to hospital. What if something had happened to Noah – a car crash, a fight with Ian?
‘Yes, I’m Daisy,’ she gulped.
‘I have a call for you from Mr Carstairs. Please hold, while I transfer you.’
‘Who?’ Daisy asked, but the line had gone silent.
‘Miss Jones? Emmett Carstairs.’
‘Oh, hi.’ She still had no idea who this man was.
‘I liked your idea very much. I’d like to meet with you to discuss it.’
Oh, Emmett Carstairs, from Rosebush. ‘Great,’ Daisy croaked, leaning against the wall for support.
‘I’m in Birmingham this evening. Are you available tomorrow?’
‘Yes, no.’ Damn it, she was working, and though she was tempted to throw a sickie, her conscience wouldn’t let her. She hadn’t been in this job long, and Ken had been nothing but nice (in his own gruff way) to her, so far.
‘That’s not a problem,’ Mr Carstairs said when she explained the situation. ‘You’re based in Worcester, aren’t you?’
Daisy nodded, realised he couldn’t see her and forced out a, ‘Yes.’ It sounded squeaky, and she cleared her throat.
‘Yes,’ she repeated, now sounding like someone who’d been smoking forty fags a day for the past twenty years.
‘I’ll take a detour on the way up from London and meet you somewhere. Wait a minute.’ He must have placed a hand on the receiver because all she could hear were muffled voices.
‘My secretary tells me there’s a decent pub in Norton, just off Junction 7 on the M5, called The Cripple Creek. Do you know it?’
She didn’t but she wasn’t going to say so. ‘I do,’ she replied.
‘Say six-thirty?’
‘I’ll be there,’ she promised, her head swimming, and so she found herself sitting at a table later that evening, clutching a glass of white wine in her hand, and feeling vaguely sick.
Mr Carstairs was late, and the later he was the more anxious Daisy became. She was already fraught with nerves because Noah still hadn’t contacted her, and was worrying herself silly about it, and she was sure she was about to throw up.
She’d chosen a table not too far from the door and sat facing it, so when a man in his late forties, slightly balding and with a paunch approached the table, she was about to tell him she was waiting for someone, when she spied his briefcase. If he’d been wearing a suit, she might have twigged earlier, but he wore an open-neck shirt and jeans and didn’t look like her idea of what a CEO should look like.
‘Daisy Jones?’ he enquired.
Daisy rose and breathed out a sigh of relief as she took his outstretched hand, and shook it.
‘Let’s order first,’ he suggested. ‘I could eat a scabby cat. Sorry I’m late, but the traffic was diabolical.’
Diabolical, was it? Maybe it was diabolical all the way to London and beyond. Maybe Noah and Connor had stopped off for something to eat and they hadn’t got there yet. Maybe—
Mr Carstairs stuck a menu under her nose and Daisy picked the first thing she saw, not really caring what she ate.
‘Tell me about this idea of yours,’ he said after the waitress had taken their order. ‘I’ve read your email, but I want to hear it from you.’
Zoe’s email and Zoe’s idea, Daisy mused, but she took a deep breath and began.
‘I know there are companies out there who already do personalised cards,’ she said, when she’d finished explaining the concept (and not very well, because she wasn’t totally sure how it would work herself, and she wasn’t convinced it was such a good business idea anyway). ‘But my plan is to take things to a whole new level of personalisation, by offering tailored verses and images, aimed at the individual the card is for, and no one else. It would mean more interaction with the customer, but the card would be considerably more meaningful.’
‘Hmm.’ He leaned back, allowing the waitress to place his meal in front of him.
Daisy didn’t so much as glance at hers. She desperately wanted to check her phone again, and she was far too uptight to eat.
‘Can I just say before we go any further, that I don’t want to relocate,’ Daisy said. Not only did she not want to, she couldn’t afford to – she’d read enough in the papers to know that London house prices were way out of her league. She’d be lucky if she could afford to live in a cardboard box under a flyover!
‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, Miss Jones,’ he said, tucking into his steak with gusto.
Daisy hadn’t picked up her fork yet, and she waited impatiently for his response.
‘Okay, here’s what I think. We already have a personalised card facility. I’d have to check some figures, but I’m pretty sure your idea won’t be cost effective. At present, the customers themselves do the majority of the work, choosing from a variety of styles, verses and images. The start-up costs were significant, but the running costs are minimal. What you are suggesting would make the card to cost ratio prohibitive to most of my customers.’
Daisy drooped a little, but not too much. Her heart wasn’t really in it.
‘Have you got any work you can show me?’ he asked.
‘Personalised stuff? I didn’t think to bring any.’ She hadn’t actually written any, was nearer the truth. ‘I didn’t think there was any point because you wouldn’t know the person the card is referring to.’ Phew, got out of that one!
‘What about your regular work?’
‘Um.’ Actually, she did have some with her, and she dragged a sheaf of paper out of her bag and handed it to Mr Carstairs.
He was silent while he read them, and Daisy risked a quick glance at her phone. Nothing.
‘They’re good,’ he said. ‘I could use you. Are you sure you won’t consider relocating?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Pity. If you change your mind, drop me an email. I don’t usually do any recruiting myself, but you intrigued me. Good luck with your business proposition,’ he said as they made their way to the exit.
‘Thanks.’ She shook his hand again, and made her escape. It had been worth a shot, she supposed, and if Rosebush had taken on all the difficult stuff and left her to construct the messages and verses, then it might have worked. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a job, was it?
When she got home she flung herself on her little single bed and checked her phone for the umpteenth time, to make sure she hadn’t missed his call or that her phone hadn’t run out of juice.
He must be there by now. A four-hour drive, he’d said. Allowing for them not setting off until late-morning (teenagers were notorious for not being able to get out of bed before at least eleven o’clock), and even allowing for a couple of pit-stops along the way, they should have arrived hours ago.
Unless, she swallowed convulsively, thinking of her initial response to Mr Carstairs’ phone call earlier, they’d had an accident.
How would she know? No one would think to tell her. Itching to phone him to make sure he was okay, Daisy sat on her hands.
Not yet. Give him time. Connor was his priority right now. He’d said he’d call, so he would. She just had to be patient. Or maybe he’d dropped Connor off at Kate’s, and had done an about-turn and was on his way back at this very minute.
Her phone buzzed.
No call, but a text instead.
Arrived safely. Going to stay the night. Speak tomorro
w.
She stared at the screen, willing it to say more. Talk about bare – brief, emotionless, saying nothing except the bald facts. No inkling of how the meeting with Kate went, or whether things had been sorted out with Ian. Or even, if Noah had to drag Connor into the car and tape him in his seat in order to take him back home.
And where was Noah sleeping? Kate’s house?
The green-eyed monster roared in Daisy’s head and jealousy so strong it hurt, swept through her.
‘She’s marrying Ian,’ Daisy muttered aloud. ‘She doesn’t want Noah.’
But what if he still wants her, the nasty, insistent little voice muttered back.
Chapter 35
Daisy spent the rest of the following day not really with it, too worried about what might be happening with Noah. When he finally did phone her later that evening, she was almost at the end of her tether. She dashed upstairs to speak to him, away from the pricked ears of her mother and grandmother and their sideways glances.
Containing her anxiety with difficulty, she asked, ‘How is Connor?’
‘Fine, I think.’ Noah sounded distant, and Daisy didn’t mean in terms of physical miles. He seemed to have withdrawn from her a little (okay – a lot). Gone was the easy banter which had peppered their previous phone conversations, and in its place there seemed to be a wary reluctance to talk, on his part anyway.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I suppose.’
What did that mean?
‘Daisy, we – I – have had a chance to think, and I don’t believe that me living nearly two hundred miles away is doing Connor any good.’
“We”, as in Noah and Kate? And why should him living so far away bother Noah so much now? He’d lived in Worcester for years; Connor had grown up with the knowledge that his dad lived a four-hour drive away and that he couldn’t simply pop round the corner to see him. What had changed? Connor or Noah? Daisy suspected the latter.
It could be a mixture of things, like Noah finally realising that Connor wasn’t a child anymore, that his son was heading rapidly towards adulthood, and perhaps Noah wanted to have more of a relationship with the boy than the current distance would allow. Or maybe, like Connor, Noah didn’t want Kate to marry, either. Seeing her again (and Daisy had no idea when Noah had last seen his ex), may have rekindled feelings Noah had thought long extinguished.
Hope flared briefly in her as she considered another possibility. There was a chance that Noah had offered to have Connor stay with him. It might suit the newly-weds better not having an inquisitive teenager in the house. Though that scenario mightn’t bode too well for Noah and Daisy themselves, in that they hadn’t even slept together yet. What would their chances of making love be, when there was another person in the house, one who was most likely attuned to every touch, every kiss. It would certainly make things awkward, but it wasn’t impossible.
‘What are you saying?’ she asked.
‘I’m thinking of moving to Brighton.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s not definite, just a thought we’ve been bandying about.’
‘We?’
‘Kate and I.’
Bloody hell, the way he said that, it sounded as though they were back together already. A hole formed in Daisy’s chest where her heart used to be, and the pain of it made her gasp.
‘Daisy?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘It won’t be for ages yet. I’ll have to sell the house, but the first thing is to get another job, and things like that don’t happen overnight. I’ll still be living in Worcester for a while yet.’
But your heart won’t be, Daisy thought. It’ll be in Brighton with the woman you still love, and your son.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We can talk then. Fancy dinner?’
Did she?
She desperately wanted to be with him, but she wasn’t sure if she could stand seeing him, knowing that he didn’t really want to be with her. And she also wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk anymore. What was there to discuss? Which estate agent he was going to use? What hospitals were within travelling distance? How seeing Kate again had reminded him of how much he’d once loved her, and possibly still did?
This was going to hurt (her, not him) but she had to decline.
‘I don’t think it’s wise,’ she said with a hitch in her voice. She tried to hide it by turning it into a cough, but the cough became a sob, and she abruptly ended the call, not wanting him to guess how much she was hurting.
Bye, Noah, my love.
She stared at her phone, thinking about what she’d just called him in her head – “my love”. And she realised that she actually did love him. It wasn’t just a figure of speech.
Her feelings for him had crept up on her and caught her unawares, ambushing her when she hadn’t been expecting it. She had no idea when it had happened. One minute she’d been normal and not-in-love, and the next she realised exactly how much he meant to her.
And now she’d gone and ended it.
How was she supposed to carry on, going to work, sleeping, having drinks with friends, when the man she loved was no longer in her life. If he ever really had been.
No, he had been, she was sure of it. The connection, the spark between them, had been real. There was no faking it, and it hadn’t simply been lust, either. Not on her side, though it might have been on his. If Kate hadn’t come back into the picture, they might have stood a chance; but she had, and Noah had laid his cards on the table.
She had no idea how to deal with this. These feelings were nothing like she’d experienced when she’d walked in on Freddie with another man. Looking back, she knew what she’d felt had been more like hurt pride and shock, rather than a shattered heart and savaged soul. Both heart and soul had been a bit battered and slightly bruised, but they had mended soon enough. If she’d really loved Freddie as much as she’d assumed she did, she never would have recovered from his betrayal so swiftly.
She didn’t think she’d ever recover from this.
How had she been so stupid as to fall in love? Her mother and nan had warned her enough times about the risks of giving your heart to a man. Look what had happened to them! Daisy really was destined to end up a lonely old spinster, and to her dismay, the thought actually appealed to her.
‘If I can’t have you,’ she sang forlornly, tears trickling unheeded down her face, ‘I don’t want nobody, baby.’
Then the sobbing started in earnest, and she threw herself across the bed, giving in to her despair.
When the knock came some time later (maybe minutes, maybe hours – she’d lost track of time), she ignored it. If her mother said, ‘Plenty more fish in the sea,’ or ‘He’s not worth it,’ or, her favourite, ‘All men are bastards and can’t be trusted,’ Daisy was going to deck her.
The knock came again.
‘Go away,’ she said, her words muffled by the pillow she held to her hot and clammy face.
‘It’s me, Zoe.’
Bugger. She didn’t want to speak to Zoe either, but after what her sister-in-law had done for her, Daisy felt she couldn’t ignore the other woman; it would simply be too rude, so she sat up, wiped her throbbing, swollen eyes on the edge of her duvet and called, ‘Come in.’
Daisy expected Zoe to ask what was wrong, to be surprised to see that Daisy had been crying, but all Zoe did was perch next to her on the bed and put her arms around her. The touch of another person, someone who cared about her, was enough to set Daisy off again, and she cried until her sobs turned to hiccups, and she felt weak and drained. And still the tears trickled down her cheeks unchecked.
Finally, taking a tremulous breath, she gently extricated herself from Zoe’s embrace. Her sister-in-law hadn’t uttered a word the whole time, and now Daisy’s meltdown was out of the way (though she suspected it was the first of many), Daisy expected her to speak.
But Zoe remained silent, until eventually, haltingly, Daisy told her what had happened.
> ‘He still loves Kate,’ Daisy concluded, after a long, drawn-out, rambling explanation.
‘You don’t know that,’ Zoe pointed out.
‘I do, I can feel it here.’ She jabbed herself in the chest.
Zoe stared at her.
‘Okay, I know I was wrong about Freddie,’ Daisy admitted, ‘but I didn’t love him. We didn’t have that special something, so I wasn’t as attuned to him as I am to Noah.’
‘If what you say is true, then you still don’t have that special something with Noah, because he loves someone else,’ Zoe stated.
‘That’s harsh. Kick a girl when she’s down, why don’t you.’
‘I’m not doing any kicking. You’re doing it to yourself, by assuming that because he wants to be nearer his son, he’s still in love with this Kate.’
‘He more or less said so. He kept talking about “we”.’
‘It doesn’t mean he loves her,’ Zoe said calmly. ‘It simply means they are parents together.’
Daisy heaved a large sigh. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s moving to Brighton.’
‘You could always go with him.’
‘There’s only one little problem with that idea – he hasn’t asked me.’
‘Did you give him a chance to?’
Daisy shrugged.
‘I thought not.’ Zoe stood, and Daisy noticed how rounded her sister-in-law’s stomach had become. Her pregnancy was now obvious to anyone who knew.
‘We’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks. Why would he ask me to move to another city when we hardly know each other,’ Daisy said.
‘If the connection is there, then time is immaterial. You can fall in love in a heartbeat, or you can be with the same person for years and not experience true love. Take you and Freddie…’
‘Okay, I get it, but Noah still hasn’t asked me,’ Daisy said.
‘Why don’t you call him back?’
Daisy shook her head. If he wanted her, he’d ring her. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asked, changing the subject.
A Very Lucky Christmas Page 23