Free Daisy's Secret by Freda Lightfoot

unprepared to be challenged by an unknown male in what was now her own home, let alone one so flagrantly pleased with himself.
    ‘I didn’t hear the front door bell?’
    He threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘I announced myself with a shout from the back door. That’s the usual method here in the country. You must have been too absorbed to hear me.’
    For several long moments each considered the other. He with curiosity, she with open animosity. Laura recognised at once that the man was exceptionally good looking, which rather seemed to undermine her confidence all the more and she found herself rubbing her dusty hands over her jeans, now rather grubby themselves after days of scrabbling about in attics and old cupboards. She even found herself tidying away a few straying wisps of hair.  
    He was about her own age, in his mid-thirties, and with an unruly thatch of black curls that flopped over a wide brow. Beneath this were winged eyebrows that were still quirking most irritatingly upwards as if amused by some private joke, and long curling lashes over wickedly teasing, light blue eyes. The whole set in a face that bore the kind of chiselled features usually seen on male models, if sufficiently weather-beaten to indicate a life spent largely outdoors that in no way detracted from his charms.
    Laura felt herself becoming slightly flustered by the impact of this blue eyed scrutiny and levered herself quickly to her feet, setting the visitor’s book carefully among the bundle of letters on the bureau as she did so.
    ‘Interesting is it, reading other people’s love letters?’ Before she had gathered her thoughts sufficiently to answer that one, he went on: ‘Perhaps you like your own way too, to be prying so swiftly into her affairs. You won’t find any hidden share certificates or premium bonds, I’m afraid. I don’t think Daisy believed in saving for a rainy day. Always claimed she’d had plenty of practise dealing with those in the past. I think she gave away more money than she ever spent on herself.’ When still she didn’t reply, he frowned and asked more politely, ‘I take it you are the granddaughter?’
    Laura stared blankly at the hand thrust out before her, making no move to take it as she struggled to damp down the hot curl of anger spiralling up inside her. Eventually he slid it back into his pocket with a shrug. He was wearing jeans and a blue checked cotton shirt open at the neck over a white T-shirt, despite the cold wind that had sprung up outside and was now blasting its way through every crack and cranny. It crossed her mind, inconsequentially, that if the house didn’t have some sort of heating system, it would cost a fortune to put in. But was that a good enough reason to return to the home fires of Cheadle Hulme?
    ‘Hello? Anyone at home?’ He interrupted her thoughts with a quizzical smile. ‘Would you like me to go out and come in again? I seem to have lost your undivided attention.’
    ‘I don’t think you ever had it. Who the hell are you, anyway?’ Laura switched into attack because she knew, instinctively, that her cheeks had gone quite pink, though really she’d no reason to be embarrassed. And she certainly had every right to be going through Daisy’s papers. ‘I’m trying to deal with my grandmother’s affairs. But I still haven’t caught your name, which is…?’ Asked in her frostiest tones.
    ‘Sorry. Remiss of me.’ Again he thrust out the hand. ‘David Hornsby, your nearest neighbour, and lessee of the land.’ The smile might have been considered encouraging, or simply vague, for his gaze had moved back to the bundle of letters which Laura had left propped on the drop down lid of the bureau. ‘Never seems quite right to me, to pry into a person’s life just because they are dead.’
    Laura took a moment before answering, quietly drawing in a calming breath. ‘My grandmother was 79, old enough to have decided long ago which material she wished to