You've Got My Number: Warm your heart this winter with this uplifting and deliciously romantic story! Read online

  Foreword

  It’s said that life is stranger than fiction and this has proved to be true on several occasions during my life. There is a thread that runs through this story that many readers might find unbelievable, or that it pushes the boundaries of coincidence; but it happened to my family. All I will say is that the thread revolves around parrots, and what the doctor said to my husband some years ago, and the coincidences that followed, are inspired from real life.

  Contents

  Foreword

  About the Book

  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

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Thank you!

  About the Author

  More from Angela Barton

  Introducing Choc Lit

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright information

  Preview - Magnolia House

  About the Book

  You've Got My Number

  by Angela Barton

  Three isn’t always a magic number …

  There are three reasons Tess Fenton should be happy. One, her job at the Blue Olive deli is dull, but at least she gets to work with her best friend. Two, she lives in a cosy cottage in the pretty village of Halston. Three, she’s in love with her boyfriend, Blake.

  Isn’t she?

  Because, despite their history, Blake continues to be the puzzle piece in Tess’s life that doesn’t quite fit. And when she meets intriguing local artist Daniel Cavanagh, it soon becomes apparent that, for Tess, love isn’t as easy as one, two, three …

  Other books by Angela Barton:

  Arlette's Story

  Magnolia House

  Where heroes are like chocolate - irresistible!

  www.choc-lit.com

  Chapter One

  Daniel Cavanagh sat daydreaming out of a stone mullioned window, looking across the village green. The casement was wide open, allowing the intermittent breeze to flow into the room. The summer heatwave was making it difficult to concentrate on his artwork and a dull ache throbbed at his left temple. Rubbing the side of his head in small circles to ease the discomfort, he squinted through the heat haze that shimmered in the air above the stone ledge of his window. Absent-mindedly, he watched half a dozen red ants scuttling in circles, each one resembling an indecisive ink dot.

  At the far end of the green he could see The Royal Oak, decorated with hanging baskets and their wooden benches slowly filling with customers. Daniel’s stomach rumbled. He glanced at his watch and scratched a dried paint spot off the number six. It was five o’clock and he’d missed lunch, which would explain his hunger.

  Standing up, he whisked red paint from his brush in a jar of fresh water, causing the clear liquid to blush. Then, tapping the brush three times on the rim, he laid it on the table. As he left his studio, he reached for an old paint-stained towel and wiped his hands as he made his way down the enormous carpeted staircase. It curved in a wide semi-circle as if embracing the large crystal chandelier that hung from the double height ceiling. After crossing the hall’s parquet flooring, he pushed open the kitchen door.

  His kitchen was large but homely, with cupboards of oak. An Aga took pride of place in a brick alcove and his mother’s paintings hung on pale pistachio coloured walls. To one side of the room stood a large wooden table with eight chairs. Daniel threw the towel onto an old church pew, disturbing his two spaniels, Goya and Gogh. They had been curled nose to tail, but were now stretching and yawning.

  ‘Sorry, girls, I lost track of time again,’ said Daniel.

  He walked towards the fridge and opened it. Both dogs padded over to him and sat at his feet, looking hopeful. They cocked their heads to one side.

  ‘That look won’t swing it.’ He laughed. ‘Walk first. Then food.’

  He rubbed a tomato against his T-shirt and was buttering a slice of bread when the telephone interrupted him. Putting the knife down, he nestled the receiver into his shoulder and tilted his head to secure it there before continuing to make his sandwich.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hiya, it’s me.’

  Daniel immediately recognised the familiar voice of his twin sister, Denise. ‘Hi, Den. How are you?’

  ‘Could be better. This morning I was sitting in casualty waiting for a raisin to be removed from up Sam’s nose. And don’t you dare laugh.’

  ‘I’m not. Is asking how it got there a silly question?’

  ‘Apparently, to a four-year-old it made perfect sense to see how far up it could go.’

  ‘Is he okay? Did they get it out?’

  ‘That’s where it got embarrassing. We were assessed by a triage nurse and asked to wait to see a doctor. No sooner had she left than Sam sneezed and the raisin flew out of his nose and onto my lap. Before I knew what he was doing, he’d picked it up and eaten it. I dragged him out of there pretty damn quickly. I had to escape before the doctor turned up to see a giggling child chewing on the dangerous obstruction.’

  Daniel laughed as he placed two slices of ham on the buttered bread. ‘I suppose you could call that Sam’s raison d’être.’

  ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’

  ‘Sorry, I couldn’t resist.’

  ‘Anyway, I was ringing to find out if you’d thought of a date for your exhibition yet? I need to give my workaholic husband plenty of notice to book the time off.’

  Daniel sighed. ‘I don’t know, Den. It’ll be some months yet. I’m still at the making lists stage. I’ve got some canvasses to finish and I haven’t found a caterer. Then I’ve got the invitations to design and get to the printers. It’s looking like November, I’m afraid. Trouble is it’ll be winter and I don’t really want a hundred or more people trudging mud inside.’

  ‘Why don’t you hire a marquee?’

  ‘A glorified tent? You’ve got to be kidding. People will freeze to death.’

  ‘No they won’t. A marquee has more than one layer to it and is incredibly weatherproof and insulated. We went to a ball in one a couple of years ago for Simon’s company Christmas do, and they had huge heaters. There was snow outside and we were all as warm as toast wearing strappy ball gowns inside.’
r />   ‘You didn’t tell me my brother-in-law was a cross-dresser.’

  Denise giggled. ‘The women, you idiot.’

  Daniel took a few moments to mull this over while he cut his sandwich in half. He sat down at the table and his dogs curled themselves around his feet. ‘It sounds like it could be an option. I could whitewash the back dining room, the one with the patio doors leading out into the garden. That room could be the gallery, and the marquee could be just outside the doors for the food and drink.’

  ‘And dancing.’

  ‘At an art exhibition?’

  ‘Do you want the guests to look at your work, have a bite to eat and disappear somewhere else to party? You should hire a DJ and install a dance floor inside the marquee. Honestly, it’ll make all the difference. In fact, why don’t you combine our birthday in December with your exhibition? You can decorate the house all Christmassy and make it a party as well as an art exhibition. Friends and family will be coming anyway, so why not make it a birthday to remember?’

  Daniel raised his eyebrows as he sat in front of his untouched sandwich. ‘For a sister, you come up with some pretty good ideas, you know? Okay that’s the date solved, the seventh of December it is. Thanks, Den. I don’t suppose you’re looking for a personal assistant’s post, are you? I could do with you to help me with the rest of my list. In fact, the rest of my life!’

  ‘Sorry, Picasso, my hours are full of two small boys. Why don’t you ask in The Royal Oak for some catering advice? Anyway, I’ll let you get on. Think about the marquee.’

  ‘I will. Great to hear from you. Say hello to Simon and the boys for me. Bye.’

  Daniel lived alone at The Rookery, a large, impressive building adorned with turrets, mullioned arched windows and built in ten acres of manicured grounds. Six years previously, the papers had reported on the tragic motorway accident that killed his parents. His father, Robert Cavanagh, had been a renowned architect and his death alongside that of his wife, Helen, had made front-page news.

  At the time of the accident, Daniel had been travelling the world; or running away from his guilt, depending on whose viewpoint you listened to. He was struggling to settle somewhere permanently because he blamed himself for a firework accident that resulted in his best friend’s loss of sight in one eye. His incessant travelling assuaged his anxiety and eased his fitful nights, so that eventually what was meant to have been a few months travelling had turned into three years away from home as he’d tried to outrun his demons.

  His sketchbook had been his treasured possession. He was passionate about capturing the essence of each country and the spirit of the people on paper. He painted whenever he stayed long enough in one place, encapsulating a look of wonderment, a fearful frown or a euphoric grin with swift movements of his well-chewed pencil. These pictorial memories were then wrapped and shipped back home to be stored at The Rookery by his parents.

  Following his parents’ death, Daniel’s guilt had become more potent when mixed with grief. He refused to see anyone except his twin sister for weeks. Denise lived on the outskirts of London with her husband Simon and one young son at the time, a nephew Daniel had never seen due to his travelling. During his sister’s frequent visits, they’d spent hours sifting through old photographs, smiling as they remembered happier times and wiping away tears at the cruel reality of the present. She’d helped him organise personal papers and choose sentimental keepsakes. Their father’s study had been full of drawings and plans of buildings that would now never be built. Creations aborted and rolled up into cardboard tubes before being given the chance of existence in some burgeoning metropolis in the world.

  They’d walked for miles across the surrounding fields, each sharing their guilt and sadness as freely as they’d shared their mother’s womb thirty-two years earlier. As family ties beckoned, Denise’s visits had grown less frequent. To help fill the seemingly endless evenings, Daniel painted and drank his father’s collection of whiskey and port. If he wasn’t daubing a canvas with dark, melancholic pigments, he was staring at the television in an alcoholic stupor. It was usually during these long evenings when Daniel thought about his parents and his estranged best friend, Sean, most vividly. He tormented himself with unresolved guilt while watching the pulsing orange embers in the hearth collapse into grey ash. He blamed his absence for his parents’ death and his wrong decision for Sean’s loss of sight.

  It was on one particularly tormented evening, several months following his parents’ accident, when the number three took on a greater significance in Daniel’s life. As he sat alone listening to the grandfather clock’s unremitting ticking, he became fixated on that particular number. Two accidents. Didn’t bad things happen in threes?

  As he’d stood up to go to bed, he’d stopped at the library door. His eyes had lingered on the light switch as he pondered a theory. Perhaps if he switched it three times, it would prevent the third disaster from happening.

  OFF.

  ON.

  OFF.

  Having said goodbye to Denise, Daniel picked up his sandwich and bit deeply into the soft bread, groaning with pleasure while he chewed. Goya and Gogh stared at him, licking their lips and checking the floor for any dropped crumbs. He stretched in his chair and ran his fingers vigorously backwards and forwards through his hair.

  ‘Okay. How about that walk I promised you?’

  With the dogs on leads, Daniel opened the front door. He turned to close it before checking that it was locked. He tried the door a second time. It was still locked. Doubt tormented him, forcing him to try the door for a third time. Immediately the anxiety disappeared and he relaxed.

  Since his parents’ death, six warm summers had diluted the colour of Daniel’s demons, almost as if the sun had bleached them. But an underlying anxiety persisted. On most days he still felt the need to turn light switches on or off three times and still made three repetitions of several everyday actions. He always checked three times that The Rookery was properly locked and still found himself picking up the third newspaper from a pile in Jackson’s Store or choosing a trolley from the third stacked line at the supermarket. It wasn’t an obsession that stood out in a crowd. Only he knew of his little idiosyncrasies, and although he knew these foibles weren’t common, he was thankful that they gave him some order in an unpredictable world.

  He walked beneath the canopy of trees in his front garden, out of a set of iron gates and on to the cricket pitch opposite The Rookery. Although it was nearly five thirty, the sun’s heat felt good on his face and eased the ache in his temple. Insects droned overhead, drawing his eyes skyward. White contrails sliced through the sky like a giant game of noughts and crosses. Daniel inhaled deeply, relaxing his shoulders before letting his dogs off their leads, grinning as they tore off across a jigsaw of parched and cracked turf.

  Chapter Two

  Tess Fenton was scraping parsnips in the kitchen. She pursed her lips while considering her closest friend’s question. ‘I can’t remember,’ she told Holly.

  ‘You’re kidding me!’

  ‘I’m not. I’m being serious.’

  ‘Take a wild guess.’

  ‘Maybe a couple of months.’

  Sitting on the worktop, Holly stopped swinging her legs and leaned forwards, her mouth agape. ‘Months?’

  ‘It’s not compulsory, you know.’

  ‘Maybe not – if you’re eighty!’

  Tess chuckled as she patted her friend’s legs by way of asking her to move them. Holly bent her knees so that they touched her chin, giving Tess room to retrieve a serrated knife from the drawer.

  ‘Admit it, Tess, it’s not normal. You’re both still in your twenties, only been dating for a couple of years and already you can’t remember when you last had sex.’

  ‘Okay, yes! I admit things have changed over the past year.’ Tess top and tailed the sweet-smelling parsnips, blinking each time the knife hit the chopping board. ‘Blake drinks too much. He’s lazy. He’s been using pretentious words s
ince he’s been promoted and he chats online with Star Trek forums. Hardly grounds for ending things but… we’ve both changed since we met.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Well, you did ask.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I was only teasing.’

  Tess stopped chopping and rested her hands on the worktop. ‘But that’s just it, don’t you see? I’m not upset. It’s as if we’re two jigsaw pieces and every so often I have to chip pieces off myself to fit into our relationship. You can only adjust so many times before you’re not being true to yourself.’ She shrugged, took a roasting tin out of the oven and tentatively peeled open the steaming foil parcel with her fingertips.

  ‘Have you talked to him about it? He may not realise how you feel. Can’t you explain that your relationship isn’t healthy?’

  ‘Healthy?’ Tess leaned backwards to let the billowing steam escape from the foil. ‘I’d say there’s more life in this half-cooked bird.’ She poked the chicken and watched the oily blood ooze down its pale skin, then turned to look at her friend. ‘I think it’s time to face facts and end things with Blake. I want to change my job and bake for a living and find someone that fits my original jigsaw shape. It’s time for a new start.’

  In the hallway, Blake was resting his forehead against the kitchen door surround, inhaling the bittersweet tang of waxed pine. Sliding down the wall, he sat on his heels. What was the old adage? Eavesdroppers seldom hear anything good about themselves.

  A few minutes earlier, he’d let himself in to Tess’s cottage. Despite the frustrations of a hot day with a high pollen count and having run out of cigarettes, the smell of roast chicken when he’d entered had lifted his mood. As he’d removed his imitation brogues, he’d heard the soft mutterings of Tess and Holly. It was only when his name was mentioned that he crept towards the narrow gap left by the open kitchen door.

  Oblivious now to their conversation, Blake held his head in his hands and was hyperventilating as quietly as he could. Tess was going to leave him. His face felt hot. Pins and needles prickled his fingertips and his eyes stung. He was horrified at the thought that he might cry. God, he hadn’t cried since… since Spock died in The Wrath of Khan.