Forever Love at Wildflower Lock (The Wildflower Lock #4)

Chapter 13

13

Daisy wasn’t cross with Theo; she couldn’t be. Only the night before, he had proposed to her in a more romantic manner than she could have ever dreamt of, but she wished she had had just a little more preparation for meeting his parents. She should have brought something with her – a cake, perhaps, or one of the pecan tarts she had been making recently for the café. They had been flying off the shelf and would have been a perfect gift. Instead, she was turning up with a bottle of wine that someone had left on the boat the night before. Fingers crossed it was a good one.

‘I just wish I could get changed first,’ Daisy said, wishing she hadn’t worn a material that crumpled so much for such a long journey. ‘And are you sure they don’t mind us staying at theirs? We could get a hotel.’

‘Really, you are fussing about nothing. Look, they might take a bit of time to warm up to you, but once they see how much I love you, they’re going to be just as smitten with you as I am,’ Theo said.

Daisy knew the words were meant to comfort her. They didn’t.

‘What do you mean, “take a bit of time to warm up”? Why will they need to warm up to me? Do they know things about me already? Is it because I didn’t go to university? Are they the type of people who only like you if you’ve got a proper education? What am I saying? Of course they are. They’re bloody lecturers.’

‘Will you stop?’ Theo said, reaching across and placing his hand on her knee. ‘There is nothing about you that my parents shouldn’t love. I’m just warning you that they can be a bit peculiar. A bit standoffish sometimes.’

Daisy was feeling worse and worse.

‘What do you mean, peculiar? Standoffish? I need examples. Do they know things about me? Like about Christian? Is that why they don’t like me? Because I didn’t know what I was thinking before we first got together? Or was it the trip around London? They think I’m irresponsible, don’t they? That I’m a bad influence on you? Oh God. This is going to be terrible. It is, I can feel it.’

‘For goodness’ sake.’ Theo snatched his hand off Daisy’s knee and took her firmly by the shoulders, and swivelled her around in her seat so that she was looking directly at him. ‘Daisy, I want you to remember one thing and one thing only: I love you. I love you so much that I want to spend the rest of my life with you and no one else, and I’m hoping that you feel the same way.’

‘I do,’ Daisy said, though her heart was beating so fast at the impending disaster of meeting his parents, she was almost breathless.

‘Then that is all that matters. Nothing else matters. I said my parents can be a bit peculiar because they can. They’re the type of people who still think everyone else should know the difference between a smoking jacket and a dinner jacket.’

‘What the hell is a smoking jacket? Is that even a thing?’ Daisy said, the panic surging once again. ‘Should I have one? Are they something women wear too?’

‘Daisy, listen!’ Theo’s sharp voice brought her back to the moment. ‘I moved hundreds of miles to be away from my family and I moved hundreds of miles to be back close to you. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?’

‘You’ve moved a lot around the country?’ Daisy said, almost sure that wasn’t the right answer.

‘No,’ Theo replied. ‘It means that their lifestyle, and the way they sometimes act, isn’t what I want to be around. You are. You are it for me, Daisy. I want you to meet them because they are my family, the people who raised me. They are the ones who shaped so much of who I am. And you? You are going to be the person I spend the rest of my life with. Who will shape my future and the person I will become. It makes sense that you should meet. But at the end of the day, this weekend could go perfectly or be a complete and utter disaster, and it wouldn’t change how I feel about you, okay? You are the one I love. The one I intend to live with until I’m old and grey. Got it?’

The loud sigh which followed indicted that Theo had come to the end of his speech, though he looked at her as if he were expecting an answer, but Daisy still wasn’t sure what she was meant to reply. All she had really got from the conversation was that there was a very good chance Theo’s parents weren’t going to like her, and she just had to suck it up until they could get back to Wildflower Lock, and it would just be the two of them again.

‘I guess so?’ she said, not sure what else to say.

With a smile and a look of relief on his face, Theo kissed her lightly on the cheek before turning his attention back to the car.

‘Great. Then it’s time we got this show on the road.’