Numbered Read online

  Numbered

  AMY ANDREWS

  AND

  ROS BAXTER

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  About the Author

  Amy Andrews and Ros Baxter are sisters who are as close as they are different. Amy married the first boy she ever loved. Ros tried to remember the name of her first love the other day and gave up and had a chocolate bar instead. Amy thinks everything will work out. Ros thinks everything will get found out. But for all their differences they are fiercely close and desperately proud of each other. Nothing feels real until it has been spoken aloud to the other. They both love to talk, laugh and write, preferably over a bottle of bubbly and something coated in chocolate.

  To our father, Noel Baxter, who taught us every day that fatherhood isn’t about the big and flashy but about being there and showing up.

  We are proud to call you our dad.

  Contents

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Quentin Carmody didn’t do early mornings, heights or bossy women. So as he peered out of the tiny plane at the breaking dawn and then back towards the tawny-brown eyes of the woman viciously punching her iPhone, the last thing he wanted to do was jump.

  But Quentin had made a promise. I’ll go first.

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time, a sure-fire way to impress this girl, who was as cute as hell but wound tighter than one of his father’s antique clocks.

  Sure, I’ll jump out of a plane with you. No problems. I’ll even go first.

  To tell the truth, jumping out of a plane hadn’t exactly been what he’d had in mind as he’d looked across the counter at five-feet-two of pointy sexiness. Kind of like a young Anjelica Huston. With curly hair. It hadn’t exactly been what he’d meant when he’d handed over her cheese-and-tomato sandwich on wholegrain (not wholemeal), cut into four triangles. When he’d looked right into those feline eyes, held onto the plastic plate a few seconds too long, while she’d tugged at it, and he’d said: ‘You look like a girl who needs to take some risks.’

  What he’d had in mind had involved a lot less equipment than jumping out of a plane required. Fewer clothes in general, really.

  He sighed. A guy had to start somewhere.

  He’d been snookered, of course. Because he’d seen the challenge in those intriguing eyes as she’d pushed those ridiculous glasses back up her nose. He’d seen her look him up and down and try to find the easiest way to blow him off. That quirky mouth that looked like it was about to make some wisecrack had opened intriguingly. He’d felt something stir south of his belt buckle as she’d spoken.

  ‘Take a risk? Sure. Come jump out of a plane with me. Tomorrow.’

  Now here they were. He watched his instructor adjust their straps and check their packs, and thought again how this was just not his kind of sport. Too much equipment, too much hassle. Leaving aside how altogether weird it was to be strapped to another dude, even if it was in a purely functional kind of way. He momentarily wished he could be surfing, if he had to be up this early at all. Why waste a beautiful sunrise on this madness?

  Quentin flicked a quick glance back at her again. Poppy. This girl had the wrong name. She should have been Rose. Great face, lots of prickles. She was sitting on the pint-sized bench behind him, studying her iPhone like it held the secrets to the universe. He already knew what was making her look so intent. He’d sneaked a peek at the phone when she’d gone to the bathroom for the sixth time back at the hangar. It was a list, detailed in one of those clever apps that help busy people organise themselves.

  Quentin never needed lists. He believed in keeping life simple. But he chuckled as he recalled this particular list.

  Dawn skydive from small plane (with propeller but also backup engines).

  Rappel down cliff face on significant mountain (at least 2000 metres above sea level).

  Take some form of hallucinogenic drug (ensuring pre-testing for purity).

  And so on.

  Man, this chick was specific.

  He hadn’t had time to read the entire catalogue, but he’d had long enough to notice it seemed to go on in a similar vein up to item number twenty.

  His instructor and partner-in-nylon, Calvin, flashed the two-minute signal on calloused fingers. The guy looked like he’d been on seven hundred tours of Iraq. Kind of like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. Which was exactly what you wanted in a parachute professional. He had more tattoos than Quentin’s drummer. And this guy’s tattoos were a lot more badass, too. Quentin had told Spike that inking ‘percussion’ across your knuckles was kind of lame. It takes more than ten letters to make a badass knuckle tattoo. That was the problem with drummers. They didn’t listen. But they always seemed to get laid anyway.

  Quentin looked over again at the diminutive figure concentrating intently on her list as she sat swathed in nylon and rope. Even under all that gear she still looked tiny. Her pointy little chin rose slightly when she glanced up and eyeballed him back. She looked kind of green, but her golden-brown eyes flashed in a way that was a bit disconcerting. It made him feel annoyed but sort of tingly at the same time.

  He figured this was the time to offer the bossy minx some words. A bit of the old Q charm. No doubt she was anxious. Time to drive home his advantage. Demonstrate what an evolved guy he was. But also tough, you know. Cool. Problem was, he didn’t necessarily feel so cool. In fact, he felt rather sick.

  Not afraid, he quickly assured himself. Probably just the unusual early morning and lack of breakfast. He laced his hands together, stretched his long arms over his head and winced. And possibly the tiniest shred of a hangover. Occupational hazard. It was important to have a drink with the manager after the gig.

  He shook his head. Time was a-wastin’. What should he say to her before he turned to jump? Some words of comfort. He searched his considerable bank of classic movie quotes for the right piece of advice. Something that would tell her she had nothing to worry about. That this was gonna be a piece of cake.

  Maybe Lauren Bacall? You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow. Hmmm. She might not get it.

  He frowned. She might even think he was being lewd.

  Here’s lookin’ at you kid? Everyone knew that one, right? Too clichéd?

  Just as he prevaricated, Calvin gave him the signal that he was about to count down from five on that big fist. And Quentin had it. As he made for the door, ignoring the thrumming in his blood, he turned his head towards her and performed his signature move, flicking his overlong dirty-blond fringe out of his eyes.

  The engine noise was so loud he had to yell.

  ‘May the force be with you!’

  As Quentin’s body connected with the first cold rush of air, he heard her throaty chuckle follow him down. Down, down, down.

  * * *

  The petite body hurled itself at him, hard enough for him to register, even through his shock and all those layers of nylon, that although she might look small she was all woman. ‘That was fucking amazing!’ Her face was lit up like someone had shone a torch into one of her ears. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  Poppy had just landed, crashing with a kind of clumsy eleg
ance into a patch of grass. As soon as she had detached from her instructor, she’d hurtled over to him.

  ‘Oh my god! I feel like I just died!’ She was still hugging him fiercely around the waist and squealing into his chest, surprisingly strong for such a small woman. Her grip on him was ferocious. He got it. The thump of adrenaline was still making his skin tingle and heart gallop as well. But he couldn’t find the words to explain that while she was pressing so closely against him. Instead, he cradled her heart-shaped face and lifted it up to look at his. There was something about this girl.

  ‘Let’s get a drink.’

  * * *

  Poppy arched above him like a wild thing. Her skin was flushed down her neck and across her chest and he was mesmerised by the shadow play on her breasts. It was late afternoon and they’d been in bed for seven hours.

  Quentin’s whole body was on fire. Again. He pushed himself harder up into her, wanting to see if he could get her to make that noise again, the one that sounded like a cross between a gurgle and a squeal. He scraped rough hands down the long expanse of her, from throat to thigh, amazed again that such a tiny package could hold so much power. And passion.

  As he reached her thigh, her face changed. It became intense, concentrated. She raised her arms to pull sticky hair off the back of her neck. The unconscious move elevated her breasts and framed her face in a way that tipped him over the edge. He yanked her down beside him and drove into her. She slammed herself back against him, tilting her hips and pulling on his in an effort to bring him deeper into her. Finally, he heard it again. That gurgly squeal.

  It was like the voice of angels.

  As they lay pulsing and confused in the March heat, he became dimly aware of his surroundings again. The old ceiling fan in his bedroom fought against its better judgement to make another lazy revolution. His big wooden bed made its cranky settling sound. The framed Nirvana poster on his wall seemed to wink at him – 1994, Le Zenith, Paris. They’d been on top of the world at that gig.

  The way he felt right now.

  As an ex-footballer, sometimes surfer and wannabe rock star, Quentin had been fucked by cheerleaders, surfer girls and groupies, but he had never, ever been fucked like that. He thought about James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. “My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.”

  And yet nothing about this girl made him feel like using a line anyone else had ever used before.

  He wanted to mark the moment. He wanted to turn over, kiss this girl one more time and tell her how amazing it had been. And as soon as he could move again, he was going to do just that. But for now, he planned to lie there, sniffing her chocolatey-smelling hair and continuing to pat this really smooth piece of skin in the middle of her back.

  Trust a girl to upset the plan.

  He felt her drawing away from him, rolling out of bed and scrabbling on the floor. Oh no. Not yet. ‘Where you going?’ His voice sounded strange and hoarse, or maybe it was because his ears weren’t working properly yet. They had that underwater quality often brought on by really loud gigs and outrageously good orgasms.

  ‘Nowhere.’ She was back, propped on one elbow, glasses perched on her nose.

  Every one of his cells yelled with joy. Until they saw she had company.

  She was holding that damn iPhone, and viciously punching buttons again, a frown of concentration creasing the smooth spot between her lush eyebrows.

  How could she even work her fingers? The girl must be a genius. His felt like his would never function again.

  Quentin moved to lean lazily onto one elbow as well, trying to make it look effortless, but still struggling to coordinate basic movement. ‘What is it? You gotta be somewhere?’

  ‘Hmmmm?’ Poppy didn’t look up from her work on the phone.

  He nudged her and motioned to the phone. ‘Looking at your schedule?’

  ‘What?’ She focused on him at last and he was relieved to see that she continued to look flushed and strung out. Whatever she needed to check must be important.

  ‘Oh, no, sorry. It’s nothing.’ She had the good grace to look abashed. ‘I just …’

  ‘Good, then.’ Quentin laughed, plucking the phone from her small hands and holding it at a stretch above his head. Hoping she might come fetch.

  ‘I was just … er … crossing you off my list.’

  ‘Your … list?’ A vague memory stirred in a part of Quentin’s brain. A part that had been pushed way back by the hours of ridiculously good sex. Oh yeah. The list. On the app on the phone. Some kind of ‘things I wanna do’ list.

  Poppy gazed down at her fingernails, and the flush that Quentin was pretty sure had been caused by hours of passion started to deepen. She looked suspiciously like she was flushing from embarrassment. Or guilt? She looked up at him slowly as she spoke. ‘Surely you don’t think I do this all the time?’

  Quentin wasn’t stupid, despite living what his father called ‘a lifestyle unworthy of yourself’. But he really did not have the faintest idea what she meant. Summoning a superhuman effort, he commanded his brain to work.

  What the hell was she asking him again? Oh, that’s right. Did he think she did this all the time? He wasn’t normally this vague – what was this witch doing to him?

  He shook his head at her question. Did women really think men cared about that stuff? Did he care if she did this all the time? Definitely, definitely not. He could honestly say he did not give a flying fuck whether this girl dragged guys home every other day to have her way with them for seven hours. He was just glad as hell she’d decided to do it with him. Today. And hopefully maybe again. Sometime. Now. How to find a way to say that.

  As the possible word combinations formed in his head, he became aware that he was walking on dangerous ground. Women were notoriously crazy and unpredictable when it came to matters of how men perceived them, and he was completely sure he’d never been able to work out why.

  He was pretty sure I guess you do wasn’t the right answer.

  He rejected I couldn’t care less as well, quickly followed by Let’s go again and I’ll tell you what I think afterwards.

  Eventually, he decided it might be one of those cases where actions speak louder than words. He held up the phone and took a quick picture of himself before handing it back to her and sneaking in for a kiss while he was close. Mmm, mmmm. Yep, he hadn’t been imagining it. She definitely smelled like chocolate but tasted like watermelon. Now how the hell did she accomplish that?

  Satisfied, he leaned back into one of his super-soft pillows. A man needed a good pillow when life could be so trying. And women so confusing.

  But she was looking at him expectantly. ‘Well?’

  Was this some kind of test? Oh no. He’d never been much good at those. ‘We-ell?’ He drew the word out, hoping for a hint.

  ‘Do you think I do this all the time?’

  Play it safe. ‘No,’ he said, finally making a decision. ‘Definitely not. I’m assuming it was the—’ He studied her face carefully for signs of wrong-stepping. ‘Post-skydive adrenaline?’

  That sardonic smile curved up on one side. He almost cheered. He’d got it right. For once. Time to bring this baby home. ‘Hey,’ he whispered to her, reaching up to stroke the side of her face. ‘You should definitely skydive more.’

  She laughed, and he liked it. It sounded like the way men laughed, or kids. Full and throaty and without any artifice. ‘Well, I definitely don’t. Do this all the time. In fact, I’m only doing this because of my list.’

  It was Quentin’s turn to frown. Surely he hadn’t heard right.

  ‘That list again?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You mean crossing the skydive off, right?’ He didn’t want to sound precious but somehow diminishing what they’d just done to an item on a list made him feel terrible.

  She shook her head slowly, wrinkling her cute nose like a muddled guinea pig. ‘Er, no.’ She gave him a small smile. It looked extra small beca
use he’d seen the really, really big one many times over the last seven hours. ‘I meant the …’

  ‘The …?’ He prompted her with his eyes. Come on. You’re a big girl. Fess up. No way was he gonna help her tell him he was an item on some list.

  ‘The … whoopee.’

  ‘The whoopee?’

  She nodded again, encouragingly, like a mum when a kid starts to get the answer right.

  He took his hands and placed them firmly on her shoulders. She looked into his eyes with her big serious brown ones. ‘Okay, first. No-one calls it whoopee. Anymore. If they ever did. And second, what the hell …?’

  Quentin’s head suddenly hurt a lot. He played lead guitar in a band for chrissakes. He understood one-off experiences. There’d been times, lots of times, hell maybe most times, when he’d been looking for exactly that. And other times when some girl was looking for it, too. He was totally cool with that. That’s what people did, sometimes at least. And hey, if getting crossed off some list meant getting hot sex off a gorgeous almost-stranger he was down with that.

  Or was he?

  The strange girl called Poppy grabbed his hands and held them to her chest like a supplicant nun. ‘Come on now, don’t be like that, Quentin. Please.’ She waved her iPhone in the air as if it held all the answers.

  He glanced down at his hands in hers. She was sitting cross-legged, tangled up in his navy-blue sheets, and she looked tiny and almost innocent. Well, apart from the post-orgasm flush that lingered around her shoulders and neck. His hands seemed enormous compared to hers. He knew they were big anyway. Big hands helped in his line of work. Lines of work. But grasped in hers they appeared huge.

  He felt clumsy, like an ape trying to woo a fairy.

  ‘Okay,’ he breathed, willing himself to be cool. He gave himself a bit of a pep talk. You’re a man, man. Men dream about this shit. Being used for their bodies. ‘Can I see it, then?’

  ‘See what?’ She flicked her eyes to the side. She damn well knew what.

  ‘The list.’ Quentin allowed his voice to deepen. ‘Please.’