Numbered Page 5

  Quentin had no idea exactly what he had done to make Julia so angry, but he sure did hope the hot chocolate would go some way to compensate. The last thing he needed was a cranky best friend cramping his style.

  He parked himself on the floor on the opposite side of the coffee table to the two women, and manoeuvred himself so his long legs were pointing sideways, rather than fighting for space under the table with Julia. Quentin knew how challenging it could be to find enough space for your body when you were as tall as Julia. He didn’t want to accidentally offend her any further. As Julia looked up from her Cousin It position, Quentin almost felt sorry for her. She really was well and truly plastered, and she was going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow. He wondered what had made her hit it so hard on a Monday night. Then he remembered.

  ‘Oh.’ He grinned, raising his mug. ‘So here’s to near misses, hey?’

  Poppy frowned delicately at him and Julia raised one elegant eyebrow and twisted her mouth into a snarl. ‘What fucking near miss?’ Julia’s voice had not got any less posh as she had become more and more inebriated. In fact, if anything, she was articulating more slowly and carefully. Quentin was sure he’d never heard another woman swear so profanely with that much panache.

  Quentin tipped his mug towards Poppy. ‘The results,’ he said, frowning back at the two of them. ‘Today.’ He thought about Poppy crying with joy at the club, and nodded at Julia. ‘Poppy told me she got the all-clear.’ He smiled, unnerved by Julia’s can-I-castrate-you-now-or-should-I-finish-the-hot-chocolate-first stare. ‘Didn’t I tell you I have a nose for these things?’ He winked at Poppy. ‘And I’m never wrong.’

  ‘You sure did,’ Poppy agreed, reaching across and squeezing his hand quickly. ‘So awesome, huh?’

  ‘So you can put your bucket list away for a while yet, right?’ He closed his eyes and tried not to think about his ongoing concern that she was going to try number ten a few more times for good measure.

  He didn’t care, he didn’t care, he didn’t care.

  He opened his eyes and Poppy was staring at him curiously, her pretty mouth full and her lips parted, her head on the side tipping that enticing pigtail lopsided, and her eyes dancing with curiosity.

  Who was he kidding? He cared alright. The thought of this mystifying little firecracker having the sort of wild sex she’d had with him on Saturday with someone else sat like a fat stone, hard and heavy, in his stomach. The thought of her making that gurgly squeal with someone else, sitting on another man like a wanton cowgirl, lifting her hair … He shut his eyes again. Man, this chick was getting into his head. He needed to think about something else.

  ‘So,’ he tried again. ‘How are the chocolates?’ He realised neither woman had tried them yet so he gestured for them to drink up.

  Poppy brought hers to her lips experimentally, her pink tongue darting out to lick some froth, chocolate powder and marshmallow oozing from the top before she took her first sip. She closed her eyes like she was praying as she sipped. Her eyes fluttered open as the stuff hit her tastebuds, and her gaze was all dreamy and sensual. ‘Oh my god,’ she whispered reverentially.

  He realised he normally wanted to be alone at confusing times like this. Except now he didn’t. He wanted to be alone with Poppy. He wanted to lick that errant smudge of froth from her top lip and see if it tasted anywhere near as good and chocolatey and sinful as she did.

  ‘I’m sure that’s what all the girls he drags home say to him,’ Julia snapped, taking a long swig from her own mug, and allowing only a small widening of her eyes to give away the pleasure assault her mouth had just experienced. ‘Not bad,’ she conceded haughtily, ruining the effect with an ill-timed hiccup.

  Quentin felt obliged to defend himself. He didn’t want Poppy thinking he was some kind of sleaze because he played guitar and sang in a rock band. Because there may have been some girls in the audience tonight who may have been hoping to get a bit friendly after the show. Because any other time that might have seemed like a grand idea.

  ‘Hey, Julia,’ he drawled, shrugging sassily and fixing her with his best little-boy, wide-eyed smile. ‘I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.’

  Poppy clapped in delight but Julia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Who framed Roger Rabbit?’ She was almost snarling. ‘You’re really going to quote Jessica Rabbit to me?’ She stood up quickly, knocking her knees unpleasantly on the coffee table as she rose and drew herself up to her full five feet eleven inches. ‘I am Jessica Rabbit,’ she declared, poking at her substantial bosom.

  She sure was some woman, Quentin thought, watching her unfurl the elegant length of her body. She was built like some old-time goddess – tall and long and endowed with more than her fair share of dangerous curves. The kind of woman Quentin adored. Tall as they came, even shoeless. Ballsy and sharp and at the top of her game. She was the kind of woman who knew the score and took no prisoners. And with her long red hair and perfect skin, she was someone’s idea of heaven on a stick.

  Just not his. Not anymore.

  He blinked as the thought settled in his brain. Holy crap, where had that come from? He flicked a quick glance over at Poppy, staring adoringly up at Julia.

  ‘Isn’t she something else?’ Poppy asked, tugging on her friend’s hand to encourage her to sit again. Julia lurched drunkenly downwards, tucking herself with great logistical difficulty back under the coffee table and making short work of her hot chocolate.

  ‘She certainly is,’ Quentin agreed, watching the way Poppy’s lips stretched right up into her cheeks when she smiled and liberated these two tiny adorable dimples which were somehow higher than dimples were on most other people. He wanted to stick his pinkie in one of them and see if it was for real. But he needed to deal with this whole Quentin’s-a-bad-influence vibe he was getting from Julia. ‘Look, Jessica,’ he started, grinning in what he felt was a pretty winning way.

  ‘Ms Rabbit to you,’ Julia huffed.

  ‘Ms Rabbit,’ he said, working hard on a smile but feeling strangely and unfortunately that he possibly came off as looking somewhat constipated. ‘I’m not a bad guy. You shouldn’t get the wrong idea. Just ’cause of the … y’know.’ He shrugged and tried for the little-boy smile again. Even though it hadn’t been so successful the last time. ‘The rock-band thing.’

  Julia pursed her lips and gestured at the surfboard hanging prominently on one of the walls. ‘And the surfer thing.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he agreed, spreading his hands open as though to say, exactly.

  Julia gestured to the trophy cabinet that could be seen in the next room, bulging with faux-gold statues of various sizes, most featuring an image of a man with a football. ‘And the football thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Quentin agreed hurriedly, suddenly feeling like perhaps he was losing the advantage. ‘Anyway,’ he squeezed Poppy’s hand, ‘they’re stereotypes, all that stuff about what certain …’ He fought to find the right words. ‘Certain kinds of people might get up to in their spare time.’

  Poppy nodded at him sympathetically and took a huge swallow of her drink.

  Julia, who still looked kind of hazy around the eyes, seemed to be sharpening up by the minute. ‘So you’re not,’ she said, drumming her red-painted fingernails on the table, ‘the kind of guy who sleeps with women all the time.’

  He shook his head and examined his fingers delicately as if to say: these callouses really are a guitarist’s curse.

  ‘Or the kind of guy who makes sure women get really interested in him, then ditches them when the next best thing comes along.’

  He shook his head again, this time making a manful effort to meet Julia’s eyes and look sincere. ‘No way.’ Well, not usually. Not for the most part.

  Julia kept drumming, tapping the table so hard Quentin expected to see the tired old glass shatter under her attentions. Man, something was really eating this chick tonight; was she always like this? She plugged on. ‘You don’t take drugs; consort with undesirables; go to the wrong kind of part
ies; make plans you don’t keep; or leave jobs to take off to Southeast Asia just because the mood strikes you?’

  Holy shit, that was more words in one sentence than Quentin usually said in a whole day. And was she only guessing here, or did she have some weird clairvoyance trick going on?

  But Poppy saved him from answering. ‘Juju,’ she protested, placing a restraining hand on the arm with the drumming fingers. ‘You do all those things.’

  ‘So?’ Julia shook her head furiously, like she was finally losing her grip on her fragile self-control. ‘So? So? Soooo? What I do …’ She stabbed the table. ‘What I do,’ she repeated. ‘Is not the point. The point is you don’t, Poppy. You don’t do them. You don’t hang around people who do those things. So what I am trying to ascertain here is whether Mr-Rock-God-Surfer-Boy-Football-Legend does them. Because let me tell you.’ Julia spat out each of the last four words as though they tasted nasty. ‘I can’t help but feel that the two of you aren’t compatible. That this whole …’ She made a circling motion to encompass the two of them. ‘This whole thing simply isn’t going to work.’

  Content she had made her point, Julia slumped down against the coffee table again, eyeing Quentin as though she dared him to disagree.

  Quentin chewed his lip, looking at the wild redhead, who seemed really worried about what kind of influence he was going to be on her best girl. He thought about all the women, and their mothers, fathers and brothers, who had thought he was no good over the years. All the times he had heard some version of this particular speech. And he for one had always heartily agreed with them. But right now a plaintive voice rose up inside him in protest.

  A valiant voice said: You’re wrong, Jessica Rabbit; this is different.

  But how to find the words for that, on the basis of the last two days, and with this terrifying woman cross-examining him? But in the end, and yet again, he didn’t need to find the words at all. Because Poppy started laughing.

  She smacked Julia playfully on the arm. ‘Of course we aren’t compatible. Jeez Louise, I could’ve told you that without you being so mean to the guy who only a few minutes ago made us these sensational hot chocolates. I wouldn’t even need to develop a basic algorithm to work it out.’ She screwed up her nose in a friendly but assessing way at Quentin. ‘I wouldn’t even need to run a sampling questionnaire with him.’

  Quentin felt compelled to protest, but he wasn’t sure at what exactly. ‘Italian hot chocolates,’ he said instead, somewhat weakly.

  What the hell was with this woman? Why was she here, lounging on his coffee table, confusing him with her chocolatey hair and her whole sexy Buddha thing, if she didn’t think they were compatible? They had felt pretty damned compatible on Saturday, as they’d lost the afternoon and a good part of the evening together. And wasn’t compatibility at the heart of it? Wasn’t it what all girls were after?

  ‘I’m not interested in compatibility,’ Poppy sniffed, wriggling around to Quentin’s side of the coffee table and inserting herself into his lap. He could hardly believe the confidence (or was it cluelessness?) of this girl. That she could sit there and baldly say that they weren’t compatible, and then come over for a cuddle, like some outrageous cat. He should tip her off him. He should stand up and start cleaning mugs, giving both of these unreasonable, befuddling, rule-breaking creatures the cue to leave. He should clear his throat and speak up and defend himself.

  He should, but the problem was that Poppy had started wriggling around in his lap, trying to scrape the last dregs out of the mug with her index finger, and it was fuzzing his brain and constraining his capacity to act rationally. She was just so compact but curvy, and she smelled so good, and his poor, tired, musician-surfer-footballer brain simply couldn’t keep up whenever she was around, but he still liked watching the play of her clever mind through the open windows of her eyes.

  ‘Oh ho,’ Julia snorted in Poppy’s direction.

  Quentin could feel Poppy tense on his lap as she twisted her body towards Julia. ‘Oh ho what?’

  It was a challenge. He wasn’t sure how, or why, but he could feel it thickening the air. If there had been a main street and a couple of cowboy outlaws, this would be the showdown.

  ‘Oh ho, you don’t care about compatibility. You’ve made a life on compatibility.’ Julia was speaking quietly but deliberately, her face scrunched as she looked over at Poppy on Quentin’s lap. ‘Your study, your career.’

  Poppy flicked her hair dramatically and it whacked Quentin in the face. He didn’t care, as long as she kept sitting on his lap. ‘And how’s that working for me, Juju?’

  Julia grimaced. ‘There’s the perfect person for you, waiting out there.’ Her voice was deathly quiet now, and there was something in her eyes that Quentin couldn’t quite understand. How had this got so damn serious? Some booze, followed by some excellent (if he did say so himself) hot chocolate. Julia looked like she was pleading with Poppy. And quite frankly, he was getting kind of offended. And it took a lot to offend Quentin. Most things just didn’t seem like they were worth the effort.

  ‘Really?’ Now Poppy’s voice was quiet, too, and damn if there wasn’t some undertone that Quentin couldn’t grab onto. ‘You really think so, Julia? Now?’ She put this queer emphasis on now and Quentin felt something stir to life inside him. What was going on between these two? What was the conversation they weren’t having in front of him?

  Before Julia could answer, Poppy flicked her hair again and changed speed. ‘Anyway, like I said, screw compatibility. I want some fun.’ And again, Quentin felt like he should somehow be offended to be referred to as the fun, when fun was being juxtaposed with compatibility. But once more the offence didn’t seem to want to show its face, with Poppy moving the way she was so intimately against him. All he felt was a warm glow and some bewilderment at the way this woman seemed to fit exactly right into the hollow of his body.

  Goddamn it, he sure hoped he didn’t have to get up anytime soon.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said, trying to keep his tone low like he used to when he worked with horses at his father’s stables. ‘How about this, Jessica? Let’s make a game of it.’ Julia shot him another one of those laser-force stares, but he ploughed on. ‘You like games?’ He was almost sure she did, because he saw her eyes twinkle slightly. But she’d rather chow down on a razor blade than admit it right now.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she purred.

  ‘Well, I tell you what, Jessica. How about you get to ask me three questions. Any three questions you like. To make sure I’m not an axe murderer or stealer-of-virtue. And I promise you I’ll answer honestly.’ It was a gamble, but Quentin understood gambling. And he understood games.

  Julia nodded, and Poppy squeaked enthusiastically from his lap. Quentin was (almost) relieved when she shimmied off his legs and went back to sit next to Julia. At least he might be able to fire up some synapses with her over there. Except now he found himself confronted across the table by both Julia’s shrewd (and increasingly sober) gaze, and Poppy’s frank one.

  ‘Okayyy …’ Julia began, starting up that irritating drumming with her fingers again. She paused, and Quentin could have sworn she was just working the build-up of tension. ‘Have you ever had a threesome?’

  He laughed. ‘That the best you got, Ms Rabbit?’

  She opened her palms towards him as if to say: Well, you gonna answer or not? And he couldn’t help but notice that Poppy looked really, really interested.

  ‘A foursome,’ he said, keeping his voice even and deep. ‘If you count my guitar. But, you see—’

  Poppy interrupted. ‘Were they both girls? The other two, apart from your guitar?’

  ‘Is that one of the three questions?’ Quentin smiled lazily at her.

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy said.

  ‘No,’ Julia overruled her. ‘They’re my questions. Quentin said. And that one’s a waste.’

  ‘To you, maybe,’ Poppy mumbled.

  Julia waved her hand at Poppy. ‘Listen, hon. I can gua
rantee you that boy—’ and she pointed at Quentin like he was an old man perusing pornography in a service station, ‘—has never been with a boy. He likes girls.’

  ‘Women,’ Quentin corrected her. And it was true. He did like women. Far, far more than girls. Especially, he thought, looking over at Poppy’s flushed cheeks and bright eyes, that one over there. ‘So.’ He eyeballed Julia, placing his palms flat towards her this time. ‘What else you got in the tank, sister?’

  Julia was like quicksilver. ‘What’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had?’

  Quentin fired back. ‘Define relationship.’

  Julia groaned. ‘Something where you both agreed you were together, monogamously.’ She chewed her lush bottom lip then added, ‘For longer than a night.’

  Quentin stared into the air, making quick calculations. ‘Seven weeks,’ he said finally, feeling pretty impressed with himself that he’d managed to remember the German yoga instructor. Of course, she’d only been in town for eight days during those seven weeks. But still.

  Poppy’s pretty face wrinkled in disbelief. ‘Oh my god, seven weeks. That’s all? Who was she?’

  Quentin shrugged and grinned at her. ‘Is that your last question?’

  ‘Yes,’ Poppy said quickly.

  ‘No,’ Julia overruled her again, placing a restraining hand on her arm. Something sly and rather scary slid over Julia’s features then. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘Shoot,’ Quentin said, shrugging his shoulders like the interrogation meant nothing and he wasn’t at all worried by what she was going to ask next.

  Julia eyeballed him critically. ‘What was your leaving score?’

  Quentin frowned. Really? ‘My high-school leaving score?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Julia almost purred.

  Oh no, not this. Quentin hated this bit. He’d had enough of this from his father, his teachers and everyone else who had ever tried to tell him what to do. Did he really need to pass some intelligence test to date this woman? He considered telling Julia to go jump, then he glanced at Poppy, and she looked somehow so nervous and vulnerable. She was biting her lip, and she reached out and squeezed his hand.