‘Yes,’ I whispered. I exhaled. Things with Blake always seemed to get deep quickly. ‘Maybe we should move on from our complicated love lives,’ I said lightly then. It felt dangerous to be revealing this much suddenly.
Dangerous for my heart.
‘Sure,’ he readily agreed. ‘When we get back, I’ll start painting the pony enclosure. Then we can move the ponies in and do some practice rides with them. I don’t think Dylan is looking forward to me leaving, when he’ll have to take that over. He’s never been a horsey person. But when Willow puts her mind to something, she seems to see it through to the end, right? Dylan admires that about her too, I can tell.’
I nodded. ‘She was like that even when we were kids. I envy that about her now. I find it hard to make decisions. To trust myself, I guess, to actually make them.’
‘You recently made a huge decision, though,’ he observed.
‘Hmm. Yeah, but look what I’ve done since… Henry is here and I didn’t ask him to leave. I haven’t got the time and space I’d wanted when I left our wedding.’
‘I meant what I said about being here for you, Daisy. If you ever want to talk or anything. I like talking to you.’
I smiled. ‘Me too.’ I couldn’t help but reach over and put my hand over his.
Blake’s fingers entwined with mine. We both looked down at our hands. They felt comfortable being linked together.
‘Oh my God,’ Blake said under his breath then as he looked out of the window behind me.
I turned to follow his gaze and saw Sarah and Henry standing outside the café watching us with matching angry expressions on their faces.
19
‘Why is she here?’ Blake asked as we quickly moved our hands away from each other while Henry and Sarah came inside.
‘This is very cosy,’ Sarah said as she marched up to the table, throwing a glare at me then at Blake. ‘Henry said I was wrong about the two of you!’
‘I thought you’d gone back to the city,’ Blake said, confused.
‘I was about to but I stopped for a matcha latte, which they don’t do, can you believe?! And then Henry came in and said he was staying becauseshesaid there was nothing going on between you two. And I thought then I would try again with us. So I booked into the pub to stay too,’ Sarah said in an angry rush.
‘No, I didn’t say nothing was going on… I’m confused,’ I said, hating that Blake looked so frantic to see Sarah was still here too. Bloody Henry. He had clearly fired her up to stay in town.
‘I’m confused as well,’ Blake said. ‘I thought we agreed to have some time apart?’
‘Well, I’m not going anywhere now.’ Sarah crossed her arms. ‘If you think I’m letting her havemyman, you have another thing coming!’
‘And you belong with me,’ Henry added to me.
I looked across at Blake. He seemed just as lost as me. They were clearly not planning on giving either of us space or time. ‘God, we just came into town for paint and flowers,’ I said, frustrated. ‘Maybe we could all chill out a bit? People are staring,’ I added, feeling the two Pats and Paul giving us curious glances.
Henry looked down at me. ‘Why are you getting flowers?’ he asked.
‘I told you, I’m helping my cousin on her farm,’ I told him.
‘You’re working on a farm?!’ He scoffed at the very idea.
‘I’m helping my family out on the farm, yes,’ I snapped. Why did he seem so surprised? ‘You know, I grew up around here, I helped on the farm when I was younger, and flowers are kind of my thing, aren’t they?’
‘You always love the roses I buy you,’ he replied with a satisfied smile.
‘Her mum was a florist,’ Blake said as he glared at Henry.
I looked at him in surprise. There was that blush again.
Henry turned too, eyebrow raised. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
Wow, did Henry really not remember anything I had told him about my mum?
