The Holiday Swap

by Zara Stoneley

  The Holiday Swap

  ZARA STONELEY

  A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  HarperImpulse an imprint of

  HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2016

  Copyright © Zara Stoneley 2016

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

  Cover layout design by HarperCollinsPublishers

  Cover design by Alex Allden

  Zara Stoneley 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.

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  Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008201722

  Version 2016-08-17

  PRAISE FOR ZARA STONELEY’S BOOKS

  ‘A great treat for readers who love their books jam-packed with sexy men and horses’

  Bestselling author Fiona Walker

  ‘Fans of Fiona Walker will love this book’

  That Thing She Reads

  ‘A delightful romp stuffed with fun, frolics and romance’

  BestChickLit.com

  ‘Stable Mates is up there with Riders and Rivals’

  Comet Babes Books

  ‘Move over Mr Grey, the Tippermere boys are in town! Highly recommended’

  Brook Cottage Books

  ‘A seductive fascinating novel. Mucking out the horses just got sexy’

  Chicks That Read

  This book is for you – whether your dreams are small, or mighty visions, believe in them.

  ‘The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.’

  — J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for Zara Stoneley’s Books

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part 1

  Chapter 1 – Daisy. Cheshire

  Chapter 2 – Daisy. White Elephants

  Chapter 3 – Flo. Paris and Back Again

  Chapter 4 – Flo. Heading Home

  Chapter 5 - Daisy and Anna. Barcelona

  Chapter 6 – Flo. Another Kind of Proposal

  Chapter 7 – Daisy. The Morning After

  Chapter 8 – Daisy. Saying Goodbye

  Chapter 9 – Flo. Barcelona Airport Departure Lounge

  Part 2

  Chapter 10 – Flo. Tippermere, Cheshire

  Chapter 11 – Daisy. New Friends

  Chapter 12 – Flo. Scooters Are Easier

  Chapter 13 – Daisy. Blue-Sky Space

  Chapter 14 – Flo. Home Sweet Home?

  Chapter 15- Daisy. Seeing Clearly

  Chapter 16 – Flo. Poetry and Wine

  Chapter 17 – Daisy. Handbags and Hippy Cats

  Chapter 18 – Flo. Living the Other Dream

  Chapter 19 – Daisy. Finding Mr Right

  Chapter 20 – Flo. Past Mistakes

  Chapter 21- Daisy. Heading Home

  Chapter 22 – Daisy. Sandcastles

  Chapter 23 – Flo. Fanning the Flames

  Chapter 24 – Flo. Christmas Eve

  Chapter 25 – Daisy. Turkey and Sprouts

  Chapter 26 – Flo. Promises to Keep

  Chapter 27 – Daisy. New Year’s Eve in Cheshire

  Chapter 28 – Flo. New Year, New Start?

  Enjoy a Winter Break in Barcelona…

  Or Capture a Warm and Fuzzy Feeling in Cheshire!

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Zara Stoneley

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  PART 1

  Chapter 1 – Daisy. Cheshire

  Daisy Fischer wound the baling twine round her finger twice, effectively attaching herself to the gate, before she realised what she was doing, and stopped.

  She had to be losing her mind.

  Jimmy, her long-term, on-off boyfriend, could not have asked her what she thought he just had. Could he?

  She sneaked a sideways glance at him under her fringe, hoping he wouldn’t spot her peeking.

  Jimmy was swinging the spade he was holding effortlessly from side to side, showing off his best rugged-man-in-the-country look. Over the years she’d known him he had relaxed into his role a bit; there was the first hint of middle-aged spread spilling over the waistband of his jeans (quite noticeable from this angle), but the forearm on display was still muscular. He was grinning, showing off the dimple she loved.

  And he was staring at her bum. Which simplified matters. He didn’t look like he’d just asked her marry him. He looked, well, like Jimmy always looked.

  Daisy straightened up, pushing her dark hair behind her ears. She really had to say something, because it was getting to the point of rude if she didn’t. And her back was starting to ache.

  He winked. The cheeky wink that had every girl in Tippermere fluttering her eyelashes, even though Jimmy really was more than a little 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 fie
ld 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, 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.

  Chapter 2 – Daisy. White elephants

  ‘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.

  ‘Come on.’ His grin was all lopsided. Why, oh why couldn’t she grab the box? ‘You’re making me nervous here, put me out of my misery.’ He lifted the lid, encouraging a positive response.

  ‘Oh Jimmy.’ She put one finger out, not quite daring to touch the diamond that she should have been desperate to see. ‘It’s lovely, you’re lovely, wonderful.’ Oh God, she was sounding like a bad greetings card, and she was going to cry. It suddenly hit her, and her stomach lurched as she looked at the ring, the words that had automatically tumbled out of her mouth summed it up. That was the thing. She thought he was ‘lovely’, which maybe wasn’t quite the same as being madly in love in an ‘I want to marry you kind of way’. ‘It’s just a shock. I didn’t expect…’

  ‘To be honest,’ the look had turned to bashful Retriever now, ‘I know we’ve always kept it casual.’

  Yeah, thought Daisy. At the start, Jimmy had always been the one to say it was daft to get too involved; he didn’t like commitment of any kind. Not even the kind that meant he’d agree to accompany her to the wedding of one of her best mates. And, to be honest, she realised now that it suited her; it had worked. She’d soon moved on from that crazy-crush elation because the cheeky Jimmy had noticed her as a teenager (which was rather a long time ago now) to the realisation that maybe they weren’t a match made in heaven. They were comfortable. In a few years’ time maybe they’d be too comfortable. Oh God, surely when you agreed to marry a man, your toes should still be curling up and your skin prickling all over when he kissed you?