The Polly Principle by Davina Stone

Chapter 8

Solo eyed the two overcooked eggs and limp piece of fatty bacon on his plate, and his stomach rose to meet his mouth. He had no idea why he’d ordered it except the brekky feast was the easiest thing to ask for from the grumpy woman behind the counter.

In truth, all he could focus on right now was meeting Polly at 8 a.m. and the fact that she had his god-damned wallet. He’d been trying to remember if there was anything in there she could have sussed about him. No. The emergency numbers were on his phone. There was only the photo in his wallet and there were none of Emma. He’d shredded them, but that one of him and Drew and Pop, that had been good times—great times, in fact. He couldn’t bring himself to get rid of that one, even when everything he could ever claim as friendship between them had blown apart.

He sighed, raked a hand through his hair, picked up his knife and fork and looked up to see Polly marching towards him.

A part of him wanted to laugh. He could imagine her as a little girl, pugnacious and determined, curls framing a Shirley Temple face. Probably into everybody’s business even then. Precocious. The sort of kid you loved and hated at the same time.

Like now. The totally confusing urge to take her in his arms and kiss her, or put her over his knee and… back up the truck, all sexual fantasies must be kept right out of the picture from now on. With the effect she had on his body, and her being privy to the contents of his wallet, his sleep had been fitful. He’d had to take a very cold shower to get rid of his morning glory.

Enough was enough.

“Hi.” She bounced her bag onto the table, drew out his wallet and almost threw it at him. “Money’s all gone. Credit cards too.”

He gave her a sideways smirk, said “thanks”, and shoved it deep into the inner pocket of his jacket.

She leaned over, both palms on the table, and peered onto his plate. “Euwie. Not nice. Should have warned you to avoid the brekky feast. And never, ever eat the rissoles.”

“Yes, Ben told me.”

“Hmmm, I’m gonna get a coffee. Back in a sec.”

Trying not to let his eyes follow her as she flounced off to the counter, he cut off a tiny rectangle of bacon and put it in his mouth. A film of lukewarm grease coated his tongue. He followed it with a mouthful of cardboard toast, which got stuck in his throat as he tried to swallow.

In no time Polly was back with her coffee. “Guess we could have gone to The Healthy Bite café, but I’m a bit off it at the moment.”

“Oh, why?”

“No reason.” A pause, followed by a little quirk of the lips. “Okay, I’ll fess up. I used to have a long-term fuck-buddy thing going with the guy there and, unfortunately his new wife works in the café with him so, you know, I don’t want to look like I’m stalking.”

“Are you?” He kept his tone light.

She was edging her fingers around her coffee cup. “No, of course not. But I guess it gets awkward once there’s another person who could misunderstand things.”

“That was their wedding on Saturday, right?”

“Yep. Sort of changed the dynamic. And they’re not going on a honeymoon yet, so I thought I’d keep my distance.”

Solo nodded. Why was there this strange contraction behind his ribs? Was it the wistful look on her face that kept jabbing him sharply in the region of his chest, or something from further back? Past and present blurred. Hurt about the past, yeah sure, he could be pretty clear what that was about, but hurt right here and now? Shit. Was he actually jealous? For God’s sake, man, grow up! One night and he was Mr Moonie Teenager.

He picked up his coffee cup, ready to hide behind it. “You guys were serious?”

She cast him a quick glance. “No, never actually. But we were good mates for years, and I miss that—quite a lot, to be honest. There, now you have it, Polly Fletcher factoid number one. I have a heart, after all.”

Solo took a gulp of coffee, a warm wave of something like relief softening his belly before a hit of bad coffee made it tense up again. “Urgh. Maybe you could get over it for the sake of decent coffee.”

Polly gave him a dazzling smile. “Well, Dr Jakoby, I’m sure in a few days I will. One thing you’ll learn about me, I never pine for a man.”

“Great philosophy.” Solo forced a grin. This time the knot in his stomach had nothing to do with the coffee.

He put his knife and fork down. He couldn’t actually eat with that disconcerting gaze surveying him over the top of her cup.

“Guess we should discuss this group we’re going to be running together,” he said.

Polly put her cup down. “How much group facilitation have you done in the past?”

He shrugged. “Some. Mainly while I was in psychiatry training. Once you’re fully qualified you get too bogged down in sorting out medication reactions and keeping people from self-harming. Lots of crisis work.”

“Yeah, much the same for social workers. You said yesterday you had experience working with PTSD?”

Solo willed his spine to relax, then flexed his fingers and noticed her eyes went to his hands. “Yes, a reasonable amount.”

“I mean counselling, not just doling out the medications?”

“I’ve counselled people with PTSD, yes.”

“In what context?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw, as it always did when he clenched his teeth. He glanced at her face as she took another sip of her coffee, her lashes sweeping her cheeks. Had she read the newspaper articles? Would she suddenly put it all together? The photo in his wallet was burning its way through his chest.

Solo cleared his throat. “Like I said, the hospital I worked at had a contract with Veterans’ Affairs, so there were a few soldiers from Afghanistan, some older guys who’d been through Vietnam, plus a few police officers. Then there was a wave of people who’d been through the bushfires and lost everything. Yeah, I guess I’ve done my share.”

Polly relaxed back in her chair. Solo breathed again. Why the hell would she make the connection anyway? It’s not like they’d named him. He was just Doctor X. The cameras had caught the back of his head. It was Drew they were interested in, not him.

“In the first session, just take your lead from me,” Polly said. “I’ve been running this group for the past two years, it’s sort of my brainchild. It’s a space for participants to talk, to discuss coping strategies, but just as importantly to gain support from one another. We try to keep off the topic of medications. That’s for them to discuss with their doctors. Oh, and we take it in turns to bring cake.”

“Cake!”

“Yeah, cake. The participants don’t, we bring it. Ben and I take it in turns. Sometimes I bake. Not right now because I’m dieting.”

“You’re dieting?”

“Yep, the lemon diet.”

Solo raised an amused eyebrow. “Just lemons?”

“Until midday, and then lemon and rice soup alternating with a kale and lemon smoothie for two weeks.”

“What the hell for?”

He realised he’d fixed her too hard with his gaze, genuinely surprised that she could want to change a single glorious curve, and he noticed the base of her neck flush, then mottle. Her hand flew up and pulled the edges of her collar tighter, and her eyes did a totally un-Polly-like skitter around the busy canteen. “Oh, um, bum fat. Hard to shift. You know, and the thigh thing…”

Solo grinned, his own neck suddenly hot, and he flicked a look at his untouched food and then back at her. “I had no complaints,” he said, and his voice sounded deeper, husky, as something twanged and hummed below his waist.

Really, it took nothing, nothing at all for his thoughts to turn into a haze of Polly-induced lust.

A certain part of him felt smug as the cloud of pink and white warred for attention on Polly’s cheeks. “Um—okay. Subject change in order.” But she wriggled her butt on her chair and he was as certain as he could be that her thoughts were going the same way as his.

Maybe, for all her bravado, she hadn’t quite moved on from Saturday night either. Which made him feel much happier than it should.

He picked up his coffee, took a swig and made a face. “Okay then, what made you decide to do social work?”

She looked slightly startled. Hesitated. “I wasn’t clever enough to be a doctor.”

“Oh, come on… I bet you were.”

“I guess in my family you didn’t consider it. Three generations of farmers. Social work was branching out into unknown territory. Though my gran was a nurse before she married Gramps, which is about as far as we got in the world in terms of professions. I’d probably have made a pretty good nurse; I love pulling bits of glass out of body parts, but I’m not very good at taking orders, particularly from doctors.”

Solo couldn’t help a smirk. “You don’t say?”

She smiled, a tiny bit sheepish, her lips softer without lipstick, in some ways even more sensual. He remembered how they’d moulded to his, the way her tongue had explored his mouth, and another spear of lust hit his groin.

Proximity clearly wasn’t desensitising him. He wanted her like crazy.

“Seriously, why did you choose social work?” he said, pulling his dick-brain into order.

She looked suddenly uncomfortable, like he’d poked a glass shard into her own personal wound. “My childhood wasn’t so great.”

Something about the matter-of-fact admission surprised him.

“There was a lot of fighting between my dad and mum. I was the peacekeeper. Guess it seemed natural to continue that when I got older.”

Solo blinked. This, he had not expected.

“Oh, right,” was all he managed, struggling to find something suitable to say.

Her lips quirked. “Hard to imagine me as a peacekeeper?”

“No, that wasn’t what I was thinking at all.”

She twirled both hands in the air, swayed her shoulders. “I was the singing, dancing baby of the family who came in and made everyone laugh, defused the tension, helped Gran clean up the breakages, bathed Mum’s fat lip.”

“That bad, eh?”

A rogue curl jiggled out of its confines and he watched as she pulled out a hair pin and shoved it back into place. He almost felt sorry for it.

“Occasionally. Outright blows between them only happened a handful of times. I made sure I gave award-winning performances before it got to that.”

“Sounds pretty shitty.”

“Not as bad as losing your parents in a plane crash.”

“At least my early memories of Mum and Dad were happy. My parents never had fights, as far as I can remember.”

She stared into her coffee cup. “I’m really not sure why I’m telling you all this, Dr J.”

“Shortened to Dr J now, am I? Next it’ll just be ‘hoi you!’”

She kept her head down, but he could see a little smile playing on her lips. “You got it.”

An awkward silence ensued, Polly stroking the handle of her coffee cup with one finger, him tearing a piece of crust off his toast and toying with it.

A sudden smack on his shoulder made him jump and he looked up to see Leon’s big frame. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure, why not.”

Polly flung herself back in her chair. The button of her blouse strained and he caught a tiny show of white lacy bra and looked away quickly. “We’re discussing the PTSD group.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot, when’s Ben off on his break?”

“Today’s his last day for four weeks, lucky bugger,” Polly said. “Singapore to see his parents, then France, Italy, Croatia.”

Leon grinned. “Nice to know my country is a tourist destination. From war-torn to tourist-ravaged.”

“I’ve heard it’s beautiful,” Solo said politely.

“It is. Went back last year. You’d never know, unless you scratched the surface. Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan. What do we have all these bloody wars for?” Leon’s expression took a downturn. “Now we have truckloads of traumatised people trying to put their lives back together and the repercussions for their families go on and on and bloody on.”

Polly made a face. “Off your soapbox, Leon.”

To Solo’s surprise, Leon’s craggy face turned up in a disarming grin. Polly seemed to have a unique way of insulting people into taking themselves less seriously. “Do you want one of my wife’s apple strudels for the PTSD group this week?”

Polly beamed. “Are you trying to let Solo off his initiation ceremony?”

“It seems a bit unfair to pitch him into baking straight off. I don’t think Ben’s ever forgiven you.”

Solo squared his jaw. There was no way he was going to look like a complete dud in the cake-making stakes. “I don’t need any favours, thanks, Leon.”

The corner of Polly’s lips kicked higher. “You’re prepared to bake a cake for Wednesday night? Do I have your word on that?”

Solo fortified his shoulders. Pushed his chair back and picked up his almost-untouched plate. “My solemn word.” And with that he turned and stalked off, with the combined chuckles of Polly and Leon in his ears.

Gran’s chocolate cake.

He’d probably be able to remember the recipe.

And if not, heck, he’d improvise.

No way was Polly Fletcher going to have him on his knees over a cake.