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Chapter 5
This was bad.
She’d been talking to herself most of the drive home, muttering and cursing out loud. When she’d finally navigated her car into a sardine-sized parking space in the narrow street, several houses up from hers, Polly’s mood was in deep conversation with the soles of her shoes. Storming inside, she slammed the front door and threw her bag in a crumpled heap on the floor. She’d spent the last thirty minutes replaying her conversation with Solo, batting around in her head what she should have said, how much cooler and wittier she could have been.
Saturday night shag, he’d called it. By default, that meant her. She was a shag. A shag was a rather ugly sea bird with a big beak. Not a woman.
Nice to know.
Except a part of her, the small rational part that was no bigger than her pinkie right now, knew she’d started it. She’d used the shag word first, not Solo. She wanted to hate him, but it was actually herself she hated for completely losing her cool and behaving like a bitch in the first place, and that made it even worse. She stomped into the kitchen and yanked open the fridge to be met by a shrivelled carrot, two sticks of celery and a half-consumed pot of hummus.
Oh, and three lemons.
No way could she face starting the lemon diet today. She scanned the shelf for anything worth drinking. But she’d cleared out the alcohol in anticipation of the new eating plan and besides, she rarely let herself drink when she was alone. That was a slippery slope and she knew too well where it could lead. Nor, for that matter, would Rowena take kindly to her raiding her stash of fine reds.
Especially when Rowena was overseas visiting Alice and Aaron. By rights that should make Polly really happy, because pairing those two up had been herpiece de resistance.
Except right now the house felt so damn lonely without them.
She grabbed a glass, held it under the tap and filled it to the top with water, before sinking down at the kitchen table. She wasn’t one to fret, didn’t allow herself bad moods. Life was too short. And even if her childhood had been less than happy, when Gran had bought her a thumbed copy of the kid’s classicPollyannafrom the book exchange van that used to rotate around their wheat-belt towns, she’d just about inhaled the “be glad” philosophy. They shared the same name, more or less, so in her nine-year-old logic, they were almost the same person. Always see the bright side, find the silver lining in even the worst experience, right?
Except now.
Because now she didn’t feel like being glad. She had prickly sensations behind her eyelids and her nose was oddly stuffy.
The guy seemed to have got to her. Which was unheard of. That didn’t happen to her, did it?
So what was it about Solo Jakoby?DoctorSolo Jakoby. Sure, yeah, mind-blowing chemistry, fantastic sex, yadda, yadda, yadda, but there was something else, wasn’t there? Something brooding and troubled about him, something that belied his super-sexy looks, the Jack Sparrow swagger and repartee of the other night.
It hooked her in, intrigued her. Pissed her off.
Gah! A few days of proximity and she’d start to notice all those jerky annoying things that always put her off guys. He’d develop a nervous tic in one eye, or keep saying some annoying word, likeseriously, orjoy, or he’d eat pickled onions straight out of the jar for lunch and talk with his mouth full. Besides, she reminded herself, she had the sticking power of a Teflon pan when it came to dating, so she’d be over the whole thing in the blink of an eye.
Straightening up, Polly opened the freezer, feeling relieved when she found one Weight Watchers’ chicken korma staring back at her. The lemon diet could start tomorrow. Lemon juice for breakfast. Lemon and rice soup for lunch. Shit, did she even have any rice?
About to forage through the pantry, she heard her phone ring and had to sprint down the passage to her bag. When she managed to grapple it out, Joe’s name flashed to message bank. Again. Damn, she’d meant to call him on her way home but all her obsessing had pushed it out of her mind.
She rang back and her brother picked up immediately.
“Poll, finally. Did you listen to my voice message?”
“Um, no, sorry, super-busy day at work. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I was calling about Dad’s seventieth.”
“Oh, of course.” Guilt did a 180-degree twist in her gut. She kept trying to forget the fact that Dad was turning seventy in a month and a party was planned up at the farm.
“You are coming, aren’t you?” Joe’s voice held an edge of worry. Her older brother was in charge of holding the farm together, overriding the bad times, putting money aside during the good times while Dad swung from frenziedly working 24/7 to drinking binges that saw him disappear for days on end.
Polly sighed and tugged her hair out of its confines—she could almost hear her curls sigh with relief. “Of course, what do you want me to do?”
“Mim’s making up a list.”
“Right. Are Dad and Mim in a good space?” She tried to keep the cynicism out of her voice.
“Yeah, they’ve actually been getting on well recently.”
“None of Dad’s dark nights of the soul then?”
