ALSO BY SOPHIE KINSELLA
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
Shopaholic Ties the Knot
Can You Keep a Secret?
Shopaholic & Sister
The Undomestic Goddess
Shopaholic & Baby
Remember Me?
Twenties Girl
Mini Shopaholic
This is an advance copy eBook file.
Copyright © 2011 by Sophie Kinsella
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DIAL PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kinsella, Sophie.
I’ve got your number: a novel / Sophie Kinsella.—
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-385-34206-3 (alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-679-64468-2 (eBook)
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Businessmen—Fiction. 3. Cell phone theft—Fiction. 4. England—Fiction. 5. Chick lit. I. Title.
PR6073.I246I93 2011
823’.914—dc22
2011031146
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
www.dialpress.com
246897531
First Edition
For Rex
1
Perspective. I need to get perspective. It’s not an earthquake or a crazed gunman or a nuclear meltdown, is it? On the scale of disasters, this is not huge.
Stop, Poppy. Don’t even try. I’m not laughing—in fact, I feel sick. I’m walking blindly around the hotel ballroom, my heart thudding, looking fruitlessly on the patterned blue carpet, behind gilt chairs, under discarded paper napkins, in places where it couldn’t possibly be.
I’ve lost it. The only thing in the world I wasn’t supposed to lose. My engagement ring.
To say this is a special ring is an understatement. It’s been in Magnus’s family for three generations. It’s this stunning emerald with two diamonds, and Magnus had to get it out of a special bank vault before he proposed. I’ve worn it safely every day for three whole months, religiously putting it on a special china tray at night, feeling for it on my finger every thirty seconds … and now, the very day his parents are coming back from the States, I’ve lost it. The very same
Professors Antony Tavish and Wanda Brook-Tavish are, at this precise moment, flying back from six months’ sabbatical in Chicago. I can picture them now, eating honey-roasted peanuts and reading academic papers on their his ’n’ hers Kindles. I honestly don’t know which of them is more intimidating.
Him. He’s so sarcastic.
No, her. With all that frizzy hair and always asking you questions about your views on feminism.
OK, they’re both bloody scary. And they’re landing in about an hour, and of course they’ll want to see the ring—
No. Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive. I just need to look at this from a different angle. Like … what would Poirot do? Poirot wouldn’t flap around in panic. He’d stay calm and use his little gray cells and recall some tiny, vital detail which would be the clue to everything.
I squeeze my eyes tight. Little gray cells. Come on. Do your best.
Thing is, I’m not sure Poirot had three glasses of pink champagne and a mojito before he solved the Murder on the Orient Express.
“Miss?” A gray-haired cleaning lady is trying to get round me with a Hoover, and I gasp in horror. They’re Hoovering the ballroom already? What if they suck it up?
“Excuse me.” I grab her blue nylon shoulder. “Could you just give me five more minutes to search before you start Hoovering?”
“Still looking for your ring?” She shakes her head doubtfully, then brightens. “I expect you’ll find it safe at home. It’s probably been there all the time!”
“Maybe.” I force myself to nod politely, although I feel like screaming, “I’m not
I spot another cleaner, on the other side of the ballroom, clearing cupcake crumbs and crumpled paper napkins into a black plastic bin bag. She isn’t concentrating at all. Wasn’t she listening to me?
“Excuse me!” My voice shrills out as I sprint across to her. “You are looking out for my ring, aren’t you?”
