AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 13
Swiping the mascara wand over her lashes, Polly propped Alice against the mirror.
Or, to be more accurate, her phone, with Alice on FaceTime.
Alice’s face bobbed in and out of view.
“What are you doing?” Polly asked, then frowned as the screen went dark for a moment.
“Digging the veggie patch in Dad’s garden.”
There was a blur of a pink nose, whiskers and two wide staring yellow eyes and then the sound of Alice complaining in the background. “Get away, Beelzebub.”
Polly’s eyebrows flew up. “Beelzebub?”
“Dad’s cat. He’s a devil of a mouser, that’s how he got the name.”
“Could you tell him to scoot? Two’s company, three’s a crowd, kind of thing?” She’d never been much of a cat person; they always had this look like they knew best.
“Be gone, Beelzebub,” Alice ordered. The flash of a bushy tail, then some liberty-print gardening gloves took brief centre screen before Alice’s smile flashed back into view. “So, tell me everything about this guy.”
Polly poked the mascara wand in her eye and blinked madly. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Oh, come on, you’ve been as coy as a vestal virgin lately.”
“Me? Virginal?” Polly placed her mascara down and debated on her lipstick shade. Possibly Crimson Seduction was a little too obvious.
A backdrop of weeping willows and puffy clouds framed Alice’s head. “Beelzebub’s gone. I’m all ears.” Alice peered eagerly over her glasses.
Honestly, what harm would it do to tell Alice? For one thing, she was 12,000 miles away in Cambridge. And it wasn’t like Polly hadn’t dissected plenty of dates with her best friend in the past. Trouble was, this feeling like someone had shaken and then uncorked a bottle of champagne inside her wasn’t something she was used to. Nor was the way her breath hitched at the memory of those metallic eyes, as if they could strip her naked with a glance.
“Okay, he’s probably just over six foot, dark, good-looking in an unconventional way, seriously nice pecs…”
Alice’s face cracked a big grin. “So far so good.”
Oh god,she was actually blushing, she could feel it doing its slow creep. This was crazy. She did her best to firm up her voice, but the words still came out all breathy. “He’s not macho, not my usual hunk style at all, to be honest. More lean, mean muscle, I guess. Not big… urm, he’s actually quite big… in certain places.”
“I see!”
There was nothing for it but to fill Alice in on the night of Jake’s wedding, the shock of finding out Solo was her colleague. It took a few minutes to finish the story.
Alice’s glasses took up most of the screen. “You like him, don’t you?”
“I have a case of the screaming hots, if that’s what you mean.”
“I think it’s more than that.”
Polly held up two lipsticks to her phone “Which one, Munchkin?”
Alice stabbed a finger. “The one on the left, or is it your right and my left?”
“Helpful.”
“Go on.”
“He intrigues me, that’s all,” Polly said, unfurling the bright-red tip of the imaginatively named Rosebud Red. “There’s some mystery around why he left his job in Sydney.” Should she mention the photo? The strange text messages Carts had told her about? But there didn’t seem enough to build a substantial case on, and she didn’t want Alice to think she’d gone weird and romantic like one of the Brontë novels her friend adored.
“Oooh, tell me more.”
