The Polly Principle by Davina Stone

Chapter 7

Never had Solo wanted to light a cigarette quite as much as he did now.

Anger warred in his gut with an even stronger urge to grab the hand Polly had placed on his arm, drag her out of the bar into the warm night air, find a dark alley somewhere and kiss her senseless.

Abruptly, he picked up the pool cue, turned and passed it to Polly, making sure his gaze didn’t fix anywhere in particular, because every part of her seemed to turn him on. He wouldn’t be surprised if her big toe turned him on… he flicked a glance down to see glittery silver nails on toes encased in strappy sandals, and had to turn away as his jeans tightened.

He put the coin in the slot and balls tumbled out. When he turned back, Polly was standing with one hip kicked out, busily chalking the end of her cue with fast little strokes of her fingertips. His gaze dipped to the dark stain at the v of her thighs, and he wished his eyes hadn’t been drawn there. Everything about this woman shouted sex, great sex, sex he wanted so much more of.

You’re just lonely, mate.

Of course, that’s why she was affecting him so much. He had no friends here; he’d buried his pop eight weeks ago and then there was the hideous mess with Drew.

He frowned fiercely at his pool balls as he scattered them on the table. Sydney was thousands of miles away, and right now he needed to focus on getting one up on Polly Fletcher. Whipping her ass at pool would do for starters.

“Who’s going first?” she threw at him with a little upward flick of her eyebrows.

“I’ll toss a coin.” He pulled out his wallet from his back pocket, winkled out a dollar coin and threw the coin in the air, catching it.

“What’s your call?”

“Heads.”

He drew his hand away, took a glance. “Tails. I start.”

“Pphhht.”

When she pouted like that it conjured up… oh fuck, never mind. He grinned to hide the fact that his brain had just migrated way down south. God, this girl hated to lose at anything. Feisty. A wildcat, in bed and out. Not like anyone he’d ever met before. Not at all like Emma…

Solo pulled himself up short. He was going to enjoy the moment, not let the past spoil it. He bent down, ordered his brain to be rational, and putted his balls with careful precision. Three scattered into separate corners, two netted. He cast Polly a glance over his shoulder and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes flick quickly from his butt. She bit her lip and flounced past him.

She flunked, hitting so hard that one ball actually bounced off the felt liner. She swore under her breath. Solo smiled.

The game seemed to see-saw infuriatingly. One ball to him, one to Polly. He got distracted every time she bent down and her full butt cheeks wiggled in his face. And then, worse still, she started to ask questions.

“Okay, Dr Jakoby, since we have no choice, we might as well get to know each other, professionally.” She emphasised the word as she waltzed past with a little jab of her elbow into his ribs.

He leant on his cue and eyed her with the expression he used with patients whose moods were at risk of escalating. Calm, appraising. No emotion that could raise the stakes. Inside, his heart was hammering. “Sure.”

“How about we take it in turns?”

“Sure.” No, not fucking sure at all.

“Okay.” Polly thrust her cue with deadly precision and a ball went into the net. “My turn. What made you train to be a psychiatrist?”

“You’re clearly wanting a one-word answer?”

She cast him a dark look, suddenly realised he was joking and grinned. “Don’t be a tool.”

“Thanks. My parents were both doctors, so—”

“Were?” God, she sure latched onto small details. “Have they retired?”

Solo hesitated. Already things were going down a path he didn’t want them to.

“No. They’re dead.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was only seven when it happened. Plane crash.”

She straightened up and appraised him. Then he saw it sink in and her eyes flew wide. “Shit, that’s heavy. What happened?”

Something about the forthrightness of her gaze made him feel like he could open up. “They were ophthalmologists. They’d gone on a medical vacation to Papua New Guinea to perform eye surgery in the remote villages when their aircraft crashed in the mountains.”

“Oh, Christ. That’s, just… shit.”

“Yep. You could say that.”

“Who brought you up, then?”

“My nan and pop. Nan died three years ago; Pop died just over two months ago.”

“Heck. Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you so I lose?”

Solo blinked. Somehow her irreverent comment loosened the tightness that blanketed his heart. He threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, that’s the master plan.”

She bent down. He couldn’t help his eyes sliding to her butt again, the almost heart-shaped gap at the juncture of her thighs. Such a perfect spot to nuzzle his hand.

Death and sex. Freud would have a field day.

“So why psychiatry? Why not ophthalmology?” Polly asked, after putting a ball into the net.

“Guess I wanted to stay alive.”

“That’s black. Seriously, why psychiatry?”

He took his turn. Struck at the balls. Missed spectacularly. “I feel faint at the sight of blood.”

She frowned. “Are you joking?”

“That’s the honest-to-god truth.”

Her nose wrinkled and a sudden memory of kissing the tip of it lurched through him.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “How would you have got through your medical training if you’re blood phobic?

“It had its moments. I had to see someone for desensitisation training and the guy happened to be a psychiatrist. He was an amazing man, Dr Brian Crayshaw, wise, compassionate, funny. I guess knowing I was a med student, he told me a fair bit about his work, about the human mind, suffering… despair… I started to delve into the DSM-5 after that.”

Polly nodded, clearly aware of the psychiatrist’s diagnostic bible. “Right. A bit of light bed-time reading.”

“I got hooked. I realised how complex the mind is, all the things that can go wrong, and how psychiatry can help put that right, and I knew I’d found my vocation.”

Polly studied him, her eyes suddenly serious. “So, Dr Jakoby, tell me, do you believe Freud when he said we are all done and dusted by the time we are seven years old?”

“To some extent I do. Not lock stock and barrel, obviously.”

“How about his theory of hysteria? All those repressed nineteenth-century women who collapsed onto his couch. Supposedly fixed by a good shagging.”

He grinned. “Now that I certainly agree with.”

Polly straightened and glided along the pool table towards him. His breathing was suddenly fast and shallow, every nerve on high alert. But this time she stopped just before she reached him and he didn’t know whether to sigh with relief or beg her to keep right on coming.

“I’ll tell you a secret.” Her head was within whisper distance, kissing distance. “Freud knew fuck all about women.”

He fought off the desire to nuzzle into her neck. “What makes you say that?”

“He thought we envied men their penises.”

“Don’t you?”

“Why would we? A clitoris is so much prettier.” She smiled up at him sweetly. “Don’t you agree?”

He lost his cool. Spluttered.

“Ha, by that look you obviously do.” Eyebrows kicked up over dancing green eyes. “It’s your turn.”

He shifted forward, holding back the tide of questions, the urge to crack her open, find what made this woman tick. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Carts appeared. Solo bit his lip, gripped his cue and forced a smile as disappointment roiled in his belly.

“Who’s winning?” Carts had a dreamy smile on his face. Walking Judith to her car had obviously met with his approval.

“Moi, of course. Back already? Carts, you are such a gentleman.” Polly was leaning lightly on her pool cue, rubbing her hand up and down it. Solo really wished she wouldn’t. He thought of her at work, handing the tissue box to the young girl curled up in her chair with such a sweet solicitous expression on her face, and it occurred to him that she was one hell of a complex woman.

“You’re only saying that to make me feel better about my abject lack of dating prowess,” Carts grumbled. “Same old story. Already taken or whipped out from under my nose.”

Polly gave him a motherly pat on the arm. “I promise the right woman is out there. It would never have worked with you and Alice. Neither of you would have made it past hand-holding. Besides, the height discrepancy was unacceptable.”

“That’s a discriminatory statement,” Carts muttered, to which Polly gave a wicked giggle.

“Who’s Alice?” Solo asked.

“My best friend,” Polly replied. “Long story.”

“Mysupposed best mate decided to fall in love with her just as I was about to ask her out,” Carts grunted. “And it’s all her fault.” He jabbed a finger into the flesh at the top of Polly’s arm. In return, she swiped him playfully on the butt with her cue.

“So how do you two know each other?” Solo asked. He guessed this was one way to get a bit more info about Polly without looking like he was nigh on drooling.

“We vaguely knew each other at uni and then saw more of each other through mutual friends over the years. That’s Perth for you. Six degrees of separation,” Polly said. “We’ll no doubt find out we know more people in common, even though you’re from Sydney.”

“Hope not.”

Solo hadn’t meant it to come out so sharply, and she cast him a funny look.

“Why? Are you on the run from something?”

His forehead tightened. “No. Time for a change, that’s all.” He turned abruptly back to the pool table and potted a hole in one.

End of conversation.

The three of them played a few more rounds, making light, meaningless banter, and the muscles down Solo’s spine slowly unlaced. This was what he needed right now. Fun. Pure, unadulterated, uncomplicated fun.

And heck, if he didn’t look at her that way, he would get used to being around Polly Fletcher, wouldn’t he? Desensitise himself just the way he had to the sight of blood as a medical student. He had to simply think of her looking neat and professional in her lilac blouse and slacks, hair pulled back, no make-up, talking in a calm voice to her patients. Yeah, he could do this. They were colleagues now.

Justcolleagues.

When they all decided some while later that no-one was sober enough to drive, the three of them stood out on the street and waited for an Uber.

In the back seat, Polly was pushed unnervingly up against him because they were ride-sharing and someone was already in the front, which meant Carts had to fold himself like a human tripod on the other side of Solo with his knees practically jammed around his ears. Solo’s thigh was pressed along the length of Polly’s, and he was consumed with the warmth of her seeping through his jeans and her perfume tumbling him right back to a hotel bed with bad springs.

In the space of a nano-second, Solo found he had to clasp his hands over his throbbing erection and hope to god she didn’t have X-ray vision.

But knowing what he did of Polly so far, she probably did.

* * *

Squished up next to Solo,Polly was trying not to respond to the steady thrum between her legs.

Out the corner of her eye she could see Solo’s hands clasped in his lap; hands that were tan and strong and those long, blunt-tipped fingers that looked like they belonged to a guy who rode motorcycles and worked on building sites, not a psychiatrist. Hands that had smoothed and stroked all over her body, bringing every inch of her skin into delicious focus…

And now… the heat of his leg against hers, his hands shifting and… and was he covering his crotch because… because…?

Polly wriggled, but the wriggle brought her thigh into more contact with Solo’s and she registered the immediate reflexive twitch in his quads, as if he wanted to come closer and shift away all at once; except there really was nowhere else to go with Carts jammed on the other side of him.

Her body screamed its response, heat flooding and pooling low in the crotch of jeans that had only just dried out from the prosecco incident.

Head averted, she stared at the city bars and restaurants gradually turning into houses. Told herself to focus on anything but his body. Instead, she homed in on Carts’ conversation with the guy in the front seat, who happened to be an accountant at a firm that Carts had tried to get a job in. She hadn’t a clue how they had got onto that, but that was Perth for you. Big enough to lose yourself in, small enough to know someone who knew someone.

Always.

Which was how people’s secrets eventually came to light. Because Solo Jakoby sure as hell had one. Was he running from a relationship break-up? She recalled the way he’d looked at her just before he left the hotel room on Saturday night, the sorrow in the depths of his eyes, darkening them to the colour of storm clouds.

Yes. She was certain of it. He was running from something. Or someone.

Outside Carts’ place, Carts wrestled his arms and legs out of the door with difficulty. As Solo scooted across the seat with a quick “see you at work”, his warmth and scent disappearing was almost a physical wrench. It would look wrong not to wave goodbye, so Polly gave a cheery little flap through the passenger door. All she caught of Solo was his hands dug deep into his jeans pockets and the crotch of his jeans and oh, shit-on-a-stick, the sooner he was gone the better.

As the car drove away, Polly let out a huge sigh and spread herself out on the seat. Her hand caught on something bulky and cool. A leather wallet. Holding it up to the light from a passing streetlamp, she opened it gingerly and peered at the driver’s licence. Her heart pattered against her ribs. Of course. Solomon Jakoby. Who else?

She was just about to close it and tell the driver to turn around when her eye caught on a photograph set into the clear plastic inner sleeve. Two kids, boys around the age of nine or ten, she guessed, and an old guy with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and an arm flung loosely around both their shoulders. As she peered, she could detect Solo’s grin in the smaller boy, that unmistakable hitch to his lips that was so appealing. The other boy looked about the same age but blonde. A handsome, wholesome-looking kid, with a bigger build than Solo.

Polly chewed at her lower lip, thinking. Was the old guy Solo’s pop? She guessed so. But who was the other kid? Solo hadn’t mentioned a brother. Maybe it was a cousin? Or a friend? And what was the significance of this photo? Why save this one?

And somehow, in amongst all this, she just couldn’t bring herself to get the Uber driver to turn around. It was wrong, so wrong. She wasn’t a snoop, she didn’t go through people’s belongings, but the little she’d learned about Solo Jakoby intrigued her beyond reason.

Glancing around as if there were some invisible special agent in the back seat with her, Polly popped the wallet into her bag.

She’d text him when she got home, tell him she’d found it and then give it back to him at work first thing tomorrow.

And of course, she’d leave it in her bag. She wouldn’t dream of rifling through it.

Absolutely wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.