Page 84 of The Secret Holiday Kiss

‘Of course she was.’ She frowned. ‘You had the foresight – after everything that happened today – to make sure the treasure hunt was ready?’

‘I can’t let Mistingham down. Besides, by the time I’d spoken to Mo, I was feeling more hopeful than I’ve felt in months. Because of you, Daisy. I don’t think you understand what you’ve done for me.’

She shrugged, tears threatening again. It had been a long, emotional day, and she’d had her fair share of brandy, too. ‘I care about you, Avery. I didn’t want you to deal with it alone.’ Her laugh was watery. ‘I figured it was important to protect my secret holiday kiss, to make sure he was doing all right, considering how good he is at making me happy. At kissing me and … other things.’

‘Other things, eh?’

‘Yes. Other things.’ She smiled up at him. In the soft glow of the floodlights, his eyes looked silver. He still had dark smudges beneath them, he was clearly exhausted, but he seemed lighter, too. She had helped with that. She had made a difference to her Avery: sexily scruffy, seriously sizzling, dangerously diverting. Perfectly permanent, a little voice added.

‘Want to remind me what those other things are?’ He took her hand and led her towards the house.

Daisy went willingly, calling the dogs, watching them race ahead through the front door. Avery didn’t even seem to notice them.

They finally made it up to her room, after long hugs from Sophie and Harry, and from May, who was staying in another of the spare rooms for the night, all of them deciding she shouldn’t be at home on her own after the evening’s revelations.

Slowly, with the lamplight low and the curtains open, Daisy and Avery undressed each other, holding eye contact the whole time, every touch careful, the intensity heightened by the day’s events, and their exhaustion, and the brandy in their bloodstreams, so that by the time they were under her covers, Daisy could hardly bear it, she was so ready to give in to her pleasure.

They didn’t need words; they said everything they needed to with their eyes and their hands and their bodies, their lips finding each other’s again and again. When, eventually, she closed her eyes, wrapped in Avery’s warmth, she felt as if something fundamental had changed between them.

Their secret holiday kiss arrangement seemed wholly inadequate now, and she wondered how she was supposed to go back to being who she had been before she’d followed the dulcet tones of Jimmy Nail up that alleyway and found Avery Hudson and the beautiful house he was building. How could she go back to her new-old life, all the promises she’d made herself and the dreams she’d been planning to follow, now she’d discovered something that was so much better?

Chapter Twenty-seven

The weather gods shone on Mistingham on the first day of the treasure hunt, and Daisy stood at her bedroom window in jeans and her beautiful grey-blue jumper from Hartley Country Apparel, with a large mug of milky coffee, and watched Avery work. The sky was a bright, blistering blue, the sea was a deep navy with white slivers dusting the surface, and the parkland looked beautiful, the grass still green, the trees a mix of dark branches and bushy, evergreen foliage.

Then there was Avery, crouched next to the hare sculpture – which had one ear sweetly folded over, as he had promised – and he was applying some sort of resin or wax, probably to protect it from the elements. Even from a distance, Daisy could see it was a thing of beauty, that Avery’s talent stretched beyond house builds and loft conversions.

The events of yesterday felt like a strange dream. The black door and the awful, slimy scammer, Avery’s weariness when he’d finally admitted everything to her.

But also, in some ways, she was grateful. Not for what he’d been through – she wished he had never accepted that B and B job – but for how it had brought them closer, made them work through it together: Avery admitting his vulnerabilities, Daisy finding a solution through Mo. And OK, maybe she’d forced the issue by following him, but she understood why it had come to that: his need to be seen as capable and strong, the shame that must have been a large part of the fear he felt.

‘Right.’ She took her mug and her iPad and went downstairs, settling herself at the kitchen table, the large windows supplying some much-needed sunshine.

‘What are you up to?’ Sophie asked, coming into the room with Clifton at her feet. ‘And how are you feeling?’

‘A lot better,’ she said. ‘I slept really well.’ After a whole lot of not sleeping, she didn’t add.

‘I’m glad. Avery seems bright and bushy tailed, too.’ She gestured to the window.

‘He has to get the treasure hunt sculptures finished. He got Kyle and Omari to set them up yesterday, and now he’s weatherproofing them.’

‘May said there are a couple on the green. A squirrel and a robin. I haven’t examined the hare properly yet, but it looks beautiful even from here.’

‘You don’t mind that the treasure hunt includes the parkland?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘The manor is part of the village, and we’re not precious about the state of the grass – not in winter anyway. And everyone’s coming here for the ball. It seemed churlish not to let Avery include it.’

‘I don’t mind either,’ Daisy said dreamily.

Sophie laughed. ‘You mean because you get to see your man through the window?’

My man, Daisy repeated silently. There was that phrase again. She shrugged, her smile nonchalant. He was a holiday romance: they had agreed that from the start. She opened her iPad, scrolled to her proposal for Mary and Winnie. It was finished, save for a couple of final details, and she wanted to be able to put work aside – apart from her Zoom with Lars’s carpenter on Monday – and focus on the festivities.

‘Is this what you’re doing for Mary and Winnie’s house?’ Sophie asked, peering over her shoulder. ‘It looks incredible.’

‘I wanted it to be comprehensive.’ She had provided supplier details and an itemization of all the materials, the paints and fabrics, the fixtures and fittings she had selected. She had given them high-end, mid-range and lower-end options for each, so that when the house was finished and they had their remaining budget, they could pick the most suitable items. ‘So they’ll know what to do, where to get things from, when I’m not here.’

‘I guess Avery could use this, too. His team can buy and fit everything.’