The Life Daisy Devlin Designed

CHAPTER 28

“You look kind of good in that, you know.” Matt grinned cheekily as Daisy came back downstairs wearing an oversized grey tracksuit.

Daisy was pretty sure she looked like a pregnant donkey, but she’d been soaked through to her underwear, and all her clothes were now hanging over the backs of a couple of chairs upstairs.

“You lit a fire.” She crossed the room to the log stove and held out her hands to warm up.

“I thought we could do with one.”

Matt checked on the food cooking in the oven, and Daisy’s stomach rumbled as the smell wafted through the room.

She eyed the sofa. It wasn’t very big but she’d manage for one night. Upstairs there was a king-size bed with a roll-top end, but there were no other beds yet in the main house. Her eyes slid to Matt.

“You’re taking the bed tonight,” he said, reading her mind. “I have a blow-up mattress I can bring down.”

“I can take the ma– ”

“Don’t argue. Just make yourself comfortable. I want to take out the dinner.”

With a sigh, Daisy sat at one end of the sofa, and checked her phone, hoping James might have let her know how things were going: nothing. She hadn’t heard from him all day. Matt returned with plates of steaming food and a bottle of wine.

“It’s Shepherd’s Pie.” He looked a bit apologetic. “Not very summery, but turns out it’s just what the doctor ordered with this weather.”

Daisy put a plate on her lap and started to eat. “Wow, this does not taste like a frozen dinner!”

“They’re from a deli in Avoca.” Matt poured the wine. “They’ll do until I get myself organised enough to cook.”

“Do you still enjoy cooking?” There’d been a lot of pancakes, spaghetti bolognese and fajitas when they’d been together, she remembered.

“I prefer it when I have someone to cook for.” Matt grinned. “Although with my new kitchen, I’ll have no excuse.”

“So, did you have someone to cook for in the States?” Daisy swirled the wine gently in her glass.

He looked at her. “Sometimes. I never lived with anyone there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

What was she asking? It felt like they were dancing around each other. “That woman in the photo upstairs – was it recent?”

“Recent enough.” He sighed. “It’s complicated.”

Daisy wondered if it was behind his decision to come home. “All of this.” She gestured vaguely around the room. “It was a pretty dramatic move, Matt.”

“I know, yeah.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get a dog. I could buy some farmers’ boots and go for long country walks.”

Daisy started to laugh. “Come on, it’s not really you, is it? The big house in the country, the isolation.’

“People are full of surprises.”

She stopped laughing as she met his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d said that. And this time she wasn’t imagining an edge to his voice.

“Tell me more about New York?” she said.

Matt seemed to be choosing his words. “It was great for a few years. I had an apartment in one of the villages. You know those old brownstones you see in films?” He raised an eyebrow. “There was even an artisan bakery on the corner where I got my bread and organic coffee.”

“God, the notions!” she teased.

“I did have a favourite hotdog stand.”

“Better!”

Matt got up to throw another log into the stove, and Daisy watched the flames flicker up around it. She stretched, wriggling her feet in the dark, wool socks she’d borrowed.

She felt cocooned here, with the rain beating down outside. When had she and James last spent the night on the sofa together, just snuggling?

Matt sat back down beside her. Oh, brilliant, now she was thinking about snuggling!

“Do you know what I’ve just remembered?” Matt said.

Snuggling? “Um, you’ve ice cream in the freezer?”

“Sorry.” He grinned. “I was thinking of that time we spent a couple of days away in that little hotel in Donegal. The one with the shepherd huts?”

“They’d double-booked us with that elderly couple, so they offered to put us up in one of their huts for free!” Daisy buried her face in her hands. “I still have nightmares about being woken by that spider.”

“To think that your screams were the last thing it heard before I had to kill it.”

“Hey, only one of us was getting to spend the rest of the night in that hut!” She shook her head. “I’m pretty sure they heard me screaming in the hotel!”

“We did get a few funny looks the following morning at breakfast.” Matt was deadpan. “Although I figure they assumed we’d been having really great sex.”

It was pointless trying to pretend to be cool when your face matched your hair colour! All these memories that she’d managed to bury, or at least blur, were suddenly sharper than ever.

“Are you getting too warm?” Matt was looking closely at her. “We can move the sofa a bit away from the fire.”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.” She pressed a cool hand against her warm cheek.

He got to his feet. “I’m going to leave some clean sheets for you in the bedroom. Have some more wine, I won’t be long.”