Christmas at the Little Waffle Shack - Helen J. Rolfe Page 0,66
Giselle to her car. Now he wished he had it. ‘Oh, that’s right, you’ve decided it’s your duty to tell her what a bastard I am. Is that right?’
‘Someone had to let her know the truth.’
‘See, that’s where you’re wrong. Someone didn’t have to. I did.’ Harvey seemed taken aback. But at least it kept him quiet. ‘Lucy will get the truth but the only person she needs to get it from is me. You should keep out of it.’
‘I’m doing my best to, believe me. I stayed away from the opening tonight but when I was walking the dog I saw Lucy rushing home and she didn’t look happy. Somehow I got the feeling you might have played a part in it and when Melissa asked me if I was aware you were married and your wife was in town, I knew you had.’ He looked up at Lucy’s flat, the windows in darkness. ‘Do the right thing for once, Daniel.’
Daniel stared him down. ‘You always did this.’
‘Did what?’
‘Jumped to conclusions, refused to hear people out.’
‘It seems pretty clear-cut to me.’
Daniel harrumphed. ‘That’s your problem, everything always is with you.’ He turned to walk away. But he faced his brother one more time from metres away. ‘You weren’t the only son of Donnie Luddington, you know. You weren’t the only one who struggled and looked for an escape route.’
And with nothing else on his mind now apart from his bed, his duvet and a long sleep before he opened up his business tomorrow, he headed for the cottage he called home.
Chapter Twelve
Lucy’s eyes felt swollen when she woke, and when she put the tree lights on in the lounge her foot touched the wrapped tortoise still waiting for her to give to Daniel. She supposed she wouldn’t be doing that now. Perhaps she’d sell it on her website, or pass it to Tilly for her shop instead. She’d spent hours on it too, the joy at making someone a surprise, a gift that would mean something, never far from her mind.
She fed Shadow, fussed him even though his focus was on crunching his way through the biscuits sprinkled on top of the tinned food in his bowl. Daniel was married, he was expecting a baby. The lies kept mounting up. She’d thought Julian was the biggest liar she’d ever met but it seemed she’d well and truly fallen for whatever charms Daniel had used on her to prevent her from seeing he wasn’t much different.
Was it her? Was she a magnet for dishonest men?
She filled a big mug of tea, decided to stop feeling sorry for herself and went for a shower to wake herself up. Then she’d set to work, use her busyness as a balm for her loneliness and upset and maybe it would help her regain some semblance of the festive spirit that had well and truly done a bunk last night on her way home.
When her phone pinged it was Tilly, who had no idea how things had panned out last night. Unless, of course, the rumour mill had given her the news, but it didn’t seem like it when Tilly asked her if she had time to meet for morning tea at the tea rooms so she could tell her everything that went down last night. ‘Don’t leave out a single detail’, the message had said.
Oh, she wouldn’t. But Tilly was in for one hell of a shock.
Lucy got through the morning with her concentration intact, not losing too much of it to the waffle shack and its owner apart from cursing it as a place she probably wouldn’t get to enjoy now Daniel was firmly written into her bad books. Maybe she’d focus on the positive side – her waistline would thank her for staying away.
She finished off part of a trellis she’d designed and produced, she put the final touches to a wrought-iron basket a customer wanted to sit by the fireplace, and she took a supply delivery that would keep her going with enough materials for a couple of months. It was great to have all the space in her own workshop. Back when she was living with Julian she’d used the garage to work in but he’d hated it. He said her things were everywhere, which, to be fair, they were, but when you were using tools, some of which created sparks and got incredibly hot, you couldn’t do it cramped up. She’d done her best not to irritate him,