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“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.”
