Take A Number: A Fake Dating Romantic Comedy

by Amy Daws

  “I just thought after the mishap it might help to mend some fences. You seemed upset when you realised I’d slept with your sister, so…” My stammering voice trails off as I take in the psychotic look in her eyes.

  “Tanner Harris?”

  I wince.

  “GET STUFFED!” she screams and slams the door in my face.

  I deflate as all hope of obtaining my clothes, wallet, and mobile crumbles to the cold ground beneath my bare feet.

  “Way to fucking go, Tanner,” I mumble, releasing my grip to push my long hair back from my eyes and then returning my hands to cup my shrinking nutty buddies.

  This is worse than last week when I had to jump from a second level balcony in West Yorkshire because the Spanish bird I met there didn’t tell me she was engaged. How was I to know the Catalan word for fiancé is promès? My dad was not pleased when pictures of me running through a back alley started popping up on Twitter.

  At least she tossed me my stuff.

  It’s brass monkeys out here and my boys need protection from the elements. I swerve my head around, looking for some form of shelter when a set of headlights begin to round the corner. I quickly scurry back up the stone steps to hide behind a pillar as I wait for the car to disappear. “How the fuck am I going to get out of this one?”

  I spot a red phone box about twenty yards away and wonder if I can make a reverse call from it. Most phone boxes are ornamental these days—an iconic landmark for tourists to take pictures in front of. But it’s worth a check considering I don’t think either Kat or her sister is going to come to my aide any time soon. Plus, I really can’t afford to knock on anybody’s door around here. We lost a match at Tower Park today and I could be recognised since I’m near there.

  My three brothers and I play professional football. My younger brother, Booker, and I play together for Bethnal Green F.C., which also happens to be the team our dad, Vaughn Harris, manages. So I know with absolute certainty that I’m in green and white country. Christ, I can even see our stadium from here.

  On top of that, four months ago my twin brother, Camden, put the limelight on all of us even more when his love affair with his surgeon was plastered all over the papers. It was a media nightmare during the time he signed a huge contract with Arsenal. Leave it to Cam to still get the contract offer after a hugely inappropriate snog in a surgical theatre.

  With all the recent publicity, the Harris Brothers have become a household name in the UK. My older brother, Gareth, was even asked to be on Strictly Come Dancing two weeks ago. So to go door-to-door right now and not have my shit blasted all over the Interweb is highly unlikely. I’m officially in the muck, and I have to figure a way out of this without making another headline or my dad will kill me.

  After checking to see if the coast is clear, I jog down the darkened path to the box. I swing open the door, ready to rush inside for warmth, and nearly topple over when I step on something.

  A deep, throaty voice croaks from beneath my foot, “Oi! I’ve got this box claimed so bugger off!”

  “Fuck, mate. Sorry. I didn’t see you there.” I step back, holding the door open with one hand and struggling with my twig and berries in the other.

  The scratchy voice resonates from under a mound of blankets. The man looks to be in his sixties, having a scraggly grey beard and big round eyes. He props his elbow on the large canvas bag that he was using as a pillow. His gaze falls to my hand. “Blimey, boy! You’re buck naked. Did you know that?” He lumbers up to more of a sitting position and props the door open with his boot, freeing my hand to cover more of myself.

  “I’m aware of my clothing status, thank you. I was hoping this box had a phone in it.” My teeth begin to chatter from the cold.

  “These don’t have phones in them anymore. Everybody knows that,” he harrumphs.

  I purse my lips. “Right, well, as you can see, I’m a bit desperate. Just…forget you saw me.” I turn to leave, giving him a proper shot of my arse as I go. Time to knock on some doors.

  “If you need to make a call, why don’t you just ask?”

  I pause mid-step and quickly turn on my heel to look back at the man. He’s waving a small flip phone in the air at me.

  “You have a mobile?” I ask.

  He shoots me a lopsided grin. “I may be homeless, but you should never be without a mobile, boy.” When he holds it out to me, I note his dirty fingernails and calloused hands. Mine look practically feminine in comparison. Regardless, I grab the mobile and he mumbles, “Here, I’ll give you some privacy.”

  “No, you don’t have to get up,” I argue, feeling like the biggest prat for uprooting this guy from his…home.

  “Do I need to remind you that you’re without trousers?” His voice is firm, but I swear I see mirth in his eyes.

  I wince and nod, feeling completely emasculated by this homeless man as we switch places. As I close the door behind myself, I note that it smells like our stadium changing room after a horrid and muddy game.

  I exhale. All right, Tanner. Now, who do you call?

  I have a big family. Three brothers, one sister, and a dad who pretty much runs my career. But as the token family screw up, even this is a new sort of low for me. Normally, Camden is my go-to since he’s my twin and we live together. Doing things for each other sort of comes with the territory, but he’s travelling with his team this week. Since Booker still lives at home with our dad in Chigwell, I know it’d take him at least thirty minutes to get here. And big bro Gareth plays for Man U, so he’s at his Manchester flat.

  Christ, if I call my sister, Vi, about this, she’ll have my balls on a skewer. She’s eight months pregnant as it is, so I really can’t get her riled up over something like this. Not only would she be raging pissed, but she would be disappointed, and that’d be worse than the humiliation of being cold and naked in public.

  I don’t know any of my teammates’ numbers by heart, so that leaves only one more option. I punch in the last number I can recall.

  “Hello?” a female voice answers.

  “Who’s this?” I ask when it’s not the voice I was expecting.

  “You called me. Who’s this?” the female voice bites back.

  A knowing doom creeps over me.

  “This is Tanner. Is that you, Ryan?” Definitely not the doctor I was looking for.

  “Tanner? Oh, how lovely.” Her voice is flat and monotone. “Yes, you guessed right. Well done. Gold star!” Her forced patronising tone is unmistakable and has become quite natural in all of our exchanges.

  “Why are you answering Indie’s mobile?” I ask, doing nothing to hide the annoyance in my voice.

  Indie is whom I was hoping to get a hold of. Indie is kind and good and decent. She also happens to be head over heels in love with Camden, so I know she’d have mercy on me. Her best friend and flatmate, Belle Ryan, on the other hand, will be less inclined to sympathise.

  “Indie’s in the bath. She told me to watch her mobile and only bring it in if Camden calls,” she snaps. “You might share DNA with the man, but you’re nothing like him.”

  A leer breaks across my face. “I don’t even want to know what you mean by that because, knowing you, it’s sure to be an insult.”

  “Another gold star, Harris.”

  “All right, can you just go get her,” I huff. “It’s an emergency.”

  “What’s happened? Did you twist an ankle climbing out some girl’s window again? Oh! Did her husband catch you this time and beat you to a bloody pulp like you deserve? Or did you call her by the wrong name while you were balls deep and she threw you through a closed window? Indie’s your doctor for football, Tanner, not an STD clinic for whatever sideshow escapades you get into in your personal life.”

  I bite back a growl and reply, “I’m stuck and I need a ride before someone sees me and calls the paparazzi. It’s…an urgent matter.” I glance down at my birthday suit and can’t help but feel that I’ve reached a new low with this one.

  She
huffs. “Give me the address. I’ll tell her.”

  I give her the directions before we hang up without so much as a goodbye. I’m actually surprised she offered to give Indie the message. My relationship with Belle Ryan is difficult at best. In the early days of Cam and Indie getting together, Belle and I did some heavy flirting that I was certain would turn into heavy petting and eventually heavy shagging. The sexual chemistry between us was intense.

  But all of that was before my brother decided to fall in love.

  A few months ago, Cam and I were at a pub called Old George with Belle and Indie, and just when I was about to seal the deal with the crazy hot Dr. Ryan, I saw Camden dancing with Indie. And it wasn’t the kind of dancing I’d seen him do a thousand times before with a thousand other birds at various clubs around London. It was the kind of dancing you feel ashamed to be watching because it was such an incredibly private moment. It was like they were Greek gods atop Mount Olympus and we were all watching from the lowly human plane. I couldn’t bring myself to turn away, but what I saw between them made me horribly uncomfortable.

  It was love.

  My brother—the knicker-dropping, smirking sod that is Camden Bloody Harris—was in love.

  A Harris Brother doesn’t toss out that emotion freely either. We only have two loves in our lives. Our sister and the gorgeous game of football. Nothing more.

  So, Indie Porter becoming a permanent fixture in my brother’s life pretty much puts a NO ENTRY sign on Belle Ryan’s sausage warmer. I’m a “shag ‘em and bag ‘em” type, and doing that with her would get my arse kicked by both my brother and Indie. My sister would be there at the end to finish the job.

  But, bloody hell, it’s not for lack of wanting. Belle Ryan is hot enough to resurrect adolescent wet dreams. She’s tall and curvy in all the right places. Her body is the kind of shape that hourglasses are inspired by. As it is, I’ve never been one for the skinny birds. They just seem too frail. Too weak. Too breakable. Belle, on the other hand, looks like the type that could give it as good as she takes it. She has gorgeous muscled legs that I’ve fantasised wrapped around my face; a trim waist that accentuates the perfect swells of her arse; and tits that make me want to cry over the fact that I’ll likely never see them. I’m a proper boob bloke, too, so it really is a shame because she’s sporting a lot more than a handful. Top her off with long, nearly black hair and dark eyes to match, and Belle Ryan is a sexy, crazy-hot mystery that my body begs to uncover.

  But I can’t uncover her because, as soon as I did, I’d be done and that would hurt Indie. And I never want to hurt Indie. I’ve become close to her the last couple of months. Since the start of our season, she’s been shadowing Bethnal Green F.C.’s team doctor. She used to be a surgeon with Belle at The Royal London Hospital, but after everything erupted in the media over her snog with Cam, she decided to leave there and shift her focus to sports medicine. She’s good at it, too. The entire team loves her and not in the perverted way that Camden was worried sick over. He asked me to look after her and make sure the guys treat her with respect. Now I see her like a younger sister, and the aftermath of hurting her best friend is a place I intend to avoid.

  So, after mine and Belle’s flirty moment at the pub, I flipped the switch on her. I turned off the Harris charm and backed off. Since then, she’s been hostile toward me. It’s a bit of a nuisance because Indie is constantly with my brother, so Belle and I have been thrust together a lot. And it’s not the horizontal thrusting that I excel at. She gives me a look like she wants to use my balls for a rousing game of Yahtzee.

  The problem is that her acting like a raging bitch toward me every time we see each other doesn’t ward me off of her. It only pours fuel on my fire. I’ve always liked the crazy ones, something my brothers give me a lot of shit about. It’s that fire in their eyes that erupts when you least expect it. The unpredictability. You never fully know how they’re going to react. It could be great, or it could be fatal. I guess I have a fetish for that sense of danger. On top of all of that, Belle’s a surgeon so she’s crazy smart along with all that hot anger.

  I’m a striker with a wide open net.

  Keep reading HERE.

  Read the BONUS EPILOGUE for Take A Number HERE.

  The London Lovers Series:

  Becoming Us: Finley’s Story Part 1

  A Broken Us: Finley’s Story Part 2

  London Bound: Leslie’s Story

  Not the One: Reyna’s Story

  A London Lovers/Harris Brothers Crossover Novel:

  Strength: Vi Harris & Hayden’s Story

  The Harris Brothers Series:

  Challenge: Camden’s Story

  Endurance: Tanner’s Story

  Keeper: Booker’s Story

  Surrender & Dominate: Gareth’s Duet

  Payback: A Harris Brother Spin-off Standalone

  Blindsided: A Harris Brother Spin-off Standalone

  The Wait With Me Series:

  Wait With Me: A Tire Shop Rom-Com

  Next in Line: A Bait Shop Rom-Com

  One Moment Please: A Hospital Cafeteria Rom-Com

  Take A Number: A Bakery Rom-Com

  Pointe of Breaking: A College Dance Standalone by Amy Daws &

  Sarah J. Pepper

  Chasing Hope: A Mother’s True Story of Loss, Heartbreak,

  and the Miracle of Hope

  For all retailer purchase links, visit:

  www.amydawsauthor.com

  At last, Dean and Norah are complete! This was a slow burn book for me in the age of covid and I couldn’t have completed it without my trusty team of helpers!

  My beta readers, Beth, Jennifer, Franci, and Jane Ashley Converse. Man, you guys are so clutch for me! You all help me out in ways that are unique to you and our friendship. I am so, so thankful you all still tolerate me and my endless book update emails and needy verbal processing. My stories are better because of you!

  My PA, Julia: Thank you so much for being my sounding board always and for reading whenever I need you to and your overall badassery. Thanks to my sister-in-law Megan for our boozy brainstorms. They are my favorite! And thanks to my editing and proofing eyes, Karen, Jenny, Lydia, and Julia. Squeaky clean books are so important, so thank you.

  Last but certainly not least, I always love to thank my family. For starters, my dad, who distracted me from writing on my lakeside writing retreat this summer. I didn’t get much done on my book, but sitting outside with you was more meaningful than words anyways. To my hubby who still occasionally takes his shirt off when I tell him to, thank you for dealing with me in all my neurotic ways. My eight-year-old, Lolo: You were a huge distraction being home with me this summer and I wouldn’t trade it for a million words.

  And to my special six angels in the sky…thank you for inspiring words and thoughts and feelings and perspective. You made me the mother I am today.

  Amy Daws is an Amazon Top 13 bestselling author of the Harris Brothers Series and is most known for her punny, footy-playing, British playboys. The Harris Brothers and her London Lovers Series fuel her passion for all things London. When Amy’s not writing, she’s watching Gilmore Girls or singing karaoke in the living room with her daughter while Daddy awkward-smiles from a distance.

  For more of Amy’s work, visit: www.amydawsauthor.com or check out the links below.

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