Her dad pushed his glasses up his long nose and grinned back at her. “Doesn’t matter—you’ll always be my little one.”
“So how are things today?” The pub’s business had fallen off since the factory closed down and villagers had to travel fifteen kilometers to the next village for work.
He took off his glasses and started to clean them with the torn corner of the bar towel. It was her dad’s biggest tell—a sure sign that business hadn’t picked up.
“Life can’t be all beer and Skittles,” he said with a wink before putting his glasses back on.
“Have you tried out any of the changes I outlined the other month? I know you’re used to how things go now, but if you just implemented a few changes—”
“You still want me to add more wines and have a tasting night?”
“It’s a growth industry.” She’d included the studies to back it up.
Her dad twisted the towel in his hands, dropping his gaze. “That may be the case in Manchester, but this is Bowhaven.”
Glancing around the pub and seeing every person with a pint in their hands, she couldn’t really argue that point. “Well, what about hiring a waitress so Mum could add to the menu and draw in more customers?”
“That would be an investment, and we’ve been managing just fine for years.” What went unsaid was that no Yorkshireman ever wanted to part with a handful of pounds unless he was forced—and no one could force her dad to do anything, even if he was about the most soft-spoken man on the planet.
Despite the frustration encircling her lungs and squeezing them tight, she pressed on. “And the suggestion that you branch out and sponsor some events to get the pub name out there?”
He fiddled with the wire rims of his glasses. “No time for that, poppet.”
The familiar flush of annoyance burned her cheeks. No time or no will? Every suggestion she offered up was gently ignored. If she couldn’t get her parents to listen to her ideas, what hope did she have that the village council would ever make a move to draw in some tourist pounds?
“Dad, I explained—”
“He knows, Lady Lemons,” Daisy said. “Give him time to consider or add to your idea instead of pushing so hard all the time.”
Her back stiffened. Not just at the interruption but at that dratted nickname. The American had obviously talked to her sister, who may have lost her hearing thanks to a bad case of bacterial meningitis, but the girl—woman, really—hadn’t lost a step when it came to listening in on others’ conversations thanks to her lip-reading skills and the huge mirror that spanned the length of the bar.
Brooke turned to face Daisy. “Lady Lemons?”
“Yep.” Her sister nodded. “That’s what Nick called you.”
Nick? That familiarity only led to trouble. “You mean Mr. Vane?”
“He doesn’t like being called that.”
A glowering Riley tapped Daisy on the shoulder, drawing her attention, before saying, “And how would you know this?”
A pink blush tinted Daisy’s cheeks. “I gave him a lift.”
And that explained how he’d disappeared so quickly from the roa
d to the village. “And where is he now?” Brooke asked.
“In the beer garden playing Jenga with Megan and the others,” Daisy said.
Megan Page? The woman with the psychotic dog? Great. That was just the type of impression Bowhaven needed to make on the future Earl of Englefield. Bloody hell. Could this day get any worse?
“He’s a hot one,” Daisy said, a teasing glint in her blue eyes, the ones that matched the shade of Brooke’s own. “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for leaving crumbled scones in the sheets.”
On Daisy’s other side, Riley, his jaw clamped unnaturally tight, suddenly grew very interested in the dark depths of his pint.
“Daisy!” Brooke exclaimed even as the mental picture of a shirtless Nick Vane in a bed of rumpled sheets crashed into her otherwise business-only brain. “You can’t say that about him.”
“Why not?”