Page 41 of The Life Daisy Devlin Designed
“I promise to feed you,” Matt said.
Daisy could tell he was smiling. Even though she felt a bit manipulated, she found herself smiling in return.
“I’ll see you then.” She hung up and caught Laura’s expression. “What?”
“Just wondering how high you can jump in those shoes.”
Daisy told herself it was no different from anything she’d do for any other client. “Very cute.”
CHAPTER 18
“It’s my Knight in Shiny Buttons!” Matt flung open the front door and stepped back to let Daisy into the hall.
She beamed at him, wondering if she should mention that she’d knit the cropped green cardigan with tiny pearl buttons herself, but Matt was already striding away towards the kitchen.
There were two vans parked in the driveway, but the house was quiet.
“Where is everyone?” she asked, hurrying to catch up.
“The crew are on lunch break in the garden.”
“Right. Listen, Matt, Kenny knows what he’s doing.” She hoped Kenny didn’t think Matt was being a bit highhanded. Although in fairness to him, he tended to let most criticism roll off him. “It’s not like the house would have fallen down.”
He sighed. “I know, I’m sorry. To be honest, I’m half-regretting agreeing to let out the grounds. And now all this! What was I thinking?”
Idly, Daisy wondered when Matt found time to work – though being in a different time zone probably meant working oddhours. Which had to be tricky, even if nothing else was getting in the way.
“It’s hard to say no to such a good deal.” She folded her arms so she wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch his arm like she used to when he’d been worried. Instead, she excused herself and stepped outside, closing the sliding door behind her.
Kenny, Alec and two other men were sitting at the patio table eating lunch rolls and drinking mugs of tea. She nodded as she met Alec’s eye, and he nodded back, looking at her with interest over the rim of his mug.
“Howaya, Daisy.” Kenny scraped back his chair, and stood, offering it to her. “Sit yourself down, I’ll get another one.”
Daisy sat, and waited until Kenny came back with a rather battered chair for himself, while the others shuffled around to make room for the extra chair.
Kenny gave Daisy a level look. “Yer man filled me in on this nonsense with the singer and the camera crew. Fucked if it makes any sense to me. One minute he’s renting out the grounds for a load of summer gigs; the next some singer and her hangers-on are taking over the whole place to make a documentary. Sure, who agrees to that while they’ve got builders and decorators in? They’ll be in our way.”
“I hear you, Kenny. But I don’t think Matt could turn down what they were offering. So given that he’s our client, would it be possible to get all the heavy work done in the next two weeks?”
Kenny looked around at the others, who simply shrugged. They were all waiting for Kenny’s decision. He rubbed his nose and sighed heavily.
“I reckon all those bathrooms were put in around the mid-1930s when this place became a guest house,” he said finally.
Daisy nodded. “I agree.”
“Which means a lot of the internal walls were just sand and rubble.”
“Or in this case, underwear.”
“None of them are load-bearing walls. But theywillhave to be rebuilt – they’re coming apart.”
Daisy nodded again.
“I told yer man that, but what would I know? I’m only the bloody foreman.”
God, the last thing she needed was tension between Matt and Kenny. Especially with this new deadline.
“Don’t take it personally, Kenny. Matt’s always been a bit of a control freak.”
