Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse: A heartwarming summer romance to escape with in 2018!
‘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’
Читать Sunshine at Daisy’s Guesthouse: A heartwarming summer romance to escape with in 2018! онлайн беплатно
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 or at www.writercharlie.com
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
To my Dream Team, thank you
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
