by Tina Beckett
He just sort of happened to wander past the monitor a lot.
‘They sound like they’re having a ball,’ Joe told him. Joe was catching up on paperwork at the nurses’ station. The whole hospital seemed as if it was snoozing, and in the silence Polly and Ruby’s voices could be heard clearly.
He’d told Polly about the monitor. She’d know whatever she was saying could be overheard but it didn’t seem to be cramping her style.
‘The flour looks great. No, sprinkle some more on, Ruby, it looks like snow. Hamster, no! It’s snow, you idiot, not flour. Oh, heck, it’s on your nose—no, don’t lick it, it’ll turn to paste—no, Hamster, noooo...’
‘Uh oh,’ Joe said, grinning. ‘When my kids sound like that I go in armed with a mop. You want to go home and check?’
‘I should...’
‘Should what?’ Joe said, and eyed him speculatively. ‘Think of something else to do? You’ve been thinking of other something elses to do for the past two hours. Don’t you need to pack?’
‘I’ve packed.’
‘Then don’t you need to go home and spread a little flour?’ His brows went up. ‘But Dr Hargreaves is there, isn’t she? A woman in your living room.’
‘With my niece,’ he snapped.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ Joe said.
‘Ruby’s cute.’
‘I didn’t mean Ruby and you know it. Polly’s gorgeous. We’re lucky to have her.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re going away tomorrow.’ His nurse administrator’s eyebrows were still raised. ‘Not having any second thoughts about going?’
‘Only in as much as Polly needs care.’
‘Care?’
‘She’s diabetic.’
‘And I have a bung knee. We can commiserate.’ Still the speculative look. ‘So why don’t you want to go home now?’
Because I might want to kiss her again.
Because I do want to kiss her.
Neither of those thoughts he could say aloud. Neither of those thoughts he should even admit to himself.
Polly...a wealthy socialite, a woman who was here for two weeks while he was away, a woman who...
Made Ruby chuckle.
A woman who made him want to pick her up and carry her to his bed.
A woman who he wouldn’t mind protecting for the rest of her life.
Whoa... How to go on a hundred-mile journey in four days. He didn’t know her. She was so far out of his league...
But he was there. He wanted her.
‘Go home,’ Joe said, watching his face, and Hugo wondered how much of what he’d been thinking was plain to see. ‘Go and spend some time with her. Heaven knows, you could use a friend.’
‘I have friends.’
‘None like Polly,’ Joe retorted. ‘And isn’t that just the problem? I’d go nuts without my Hannah, but for you... My Hannah’s already taken and there’s a limited dating field in the Valley. And now you have Pollyanna right in your living room.’ He paused as Polly’s infectious chuckle sounded through the monitor. ‘Hannah or not, wow, Doc, I’m almost tempted to head over there myself.’
‘I’ll go when it stops raining.’
‘Like that’ll happen,’ Joe said morosely. ‘Forty days and forty nights... This is setting in bad. But it’s not raining women, not on your parade...’
‘Joe...’
‘I know; it’s none of my business.’ Joe held up his hands as if in surrender. ‘But she’s there, she’s gorgeous and you have no reason not to be there too. Go on, get out of here. Go.’
* * *
He went. Of course he went—there was no reason not to.
It was wet and it was windy. He opened the front door and was met by a squeal of protest.
‘Uncle Hugo, noooooooo!’
‘Uh oh,’ said another voice and he stared around in amazement. The other voice said, ‘Maybe you could shut the door?’
The door opened straight into the living room. The living room was...white.
Very white.
‘We may not have thought this through,’ Polly said.
She was sitting on the floor threading popcorn onto string. Or she had been threading popcorn. She was now coated in a cloud of flour. It was all over her hair, over her face and nose, over the floor around her.
Over Hamster.
Ruby was closest to the door. She seemed to have escaped the worst of the dusting.
‘You made it blow,’ she said accusingly as he finally closed out the gale.
‘Flour?’ he said, and his niece sent him a look that put him right in the dunce’s corner.
‘It’s snow. We made a nativity scene. See, we’ve made everything out of pods from the banksia tree, even the camels, and we got really wet looking for the right banksias, and then we spent ages getting everything dry so we could put them up along the mantelpiece and we put flour over the bottom to look like snow only Polly said I probably put too much on, but it looked beeeyootiful but now you’ve opened the door and you’ve ruined it.’
And her voice wobbled.
She really was fragile, Hugo thought, bending down to give her a hug. Last year had been tragedy for Ruby, and it still showed. She expected calamity.
‘This isn’t ruined,’ he said gently. ‘It’s just flour.’
‘It’s snow to make Polly feel better when we’re not here.’
‘And Polly loves it,’ Polly said and then she sneezed as if she needed to accentuate the point. ‘Ruby, it’s still great. Look what we’ve done, Dr Denver. All we need you to do is chop down a tree.’
‘With an axe,’ Ruby added. ‘I wouldn’t let Polly do it on her own.’
‘Very wise,’ Hugo said faintly, looking round his living room again.
At chaos.
His mother had kept this room perfect. ‘The Queen could walk in unannounced and I’d be ready for her,’ his mother used to say and she was right. His mother might even have made Her Majesty remove her shoes and leave the corgis outside.
‘It was wet,’ Ruby said, noticing his sweep of the room and getting in first with her excuse. ‘Polly needed something to do.’
‘And now she has something else to do,’ Polly decreed, using Hamster as a lever to push herself to her feet. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, Dr Denver, you seem to be dripping on our snow and our type of snow, when dripped upon, makes clag. So I suggest you stop dripping and start helping thread popcorn while I clean up your mess...’
‘My mess?’
‘Your mess,’ she said and grinned. ‘Walking in on artists at work...you should know better.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t,’ he said faintly and he looked around at the mess and he thought for the first time in how long...this place looked like home.
What was better than this? he thought.
What was better than Polly?
* * *
He chopped down a Christmas...branch?...while the girls admired his axe technique. They all got wet, but what the heck; he was beyond caring. The branch dripped as he carried it inside but there was so much mess anyway that a little more wouldn’t hurt. Then he cooked while they decorated.
He cooked spaghetti and meatballs because that was his speciality. Actually, he had three. Macaroni cheese was another. He could also do a mean risotto but Ruby didn’t like it, so to say their menu was limited would be an understatement. But Ruby munched through raw veggies and fruit to stop him feeling guilty and Polly sat down in front of her meatballs and said, ‘Yum,’ as if she meant it.
They now had two Christmas trees. Ruby had declared Polly’s silver tree was too pretty to take down until the last minute so there was a tree in each corner of the living room. There was ‘snow’ on every flat surface. There were strings of p
opcorn and paper chains and lanterns and Polly’s amazing gift boxes, plus the weird decorations and nativity figures they’d fashioned out of banksia pods.
Polly ate her dinner but every now and then he caught her looking through to the sitting room and beaming.
She’d dressed for dinner. She was wearing another of her retro dresses. This one had splashes of crimson, yellow and blue, and was cinched at the waist with a shiny red belt. The dress had puffed sleeves and a white collar and cuff trim.
Her curls were shining. Her freckles were...freckling. She did not look like a doctor.
She looked adorable.
He didn’t want to leave tomorrow.
How could he fall for a woman called Pollyanna?
How could he not?
‘We’ve done good,’ Polly was saying to Ruby and Ruby looked where Polly was looking and nodded her agreement.
‘Yes. But you’ll be here by yourself.’ She sounded worried.
‘Me and Hamster,’ Polly reminded her. ‘I’m glad your uncle agreed to let him stay. I might be lonely without him.’
‘Won’t you be lonely without your mum and dad?’ Ruby asked and Polly’s smile died.
‘No.’
‘Won’t they be lonely without you?’
There was an uncomfortable silence. Polly ate another meatball but she suddenly didn’t seem so hungry.
‘They have lots of friends,’ she said at last. ‘They’ve booked a restaurant. They’ll have a very good party.’
‘It won’t be much fun if you’re not there.’
‘They’ll hardly miss me,’ Polly said stoutly. ‘Whereas if I wasn’t here Hamster would miss me a lot. Plus Hazel Blacksmith’s promised to teach me to tat.’
‘Tat,’ Hugo said faintly. ‘What on earth is tat?’
‘You come back after Christmas and I’ll show you. Whatever it is, the house will be full of it.’
‘That’ll make a nice change from soggy flour.’
‘Bah! Humbug!’ she said cheerfully and got up to clear the dishes. Instead of getting up to help, he let himself sit for a moment, watching her, watching Ruby jump up to help, feeling himself...wanting.
It wasn’t fair to want. He had no right.
To try and saddle her with Wombat Valley and a needy seven-year-old? And...
And what was he thinking?
He was trapped. He had no right to think of sharing.
* * *
At Ruby’s request, Polly read her a bedtime story while Hugo did a last fast ward round. The hospital was quiet. The rain had stopped, the storm was over and what was left was peace. The night before Christmas? Not quite, but it might just as well be, he thought. The whole Valley seemed to be settling, waiting...
Waiting? There was nothing to wait for.
Of course there was, he told himself as he headed back to the house. He was heading to the beach tomorrow. Ten glorious days of freedom.
With Ruby.
He wouldn’t have it any other way, he told himself, but he knew a part of him was lying. His sister’s suicide had killed the part that enjoyed being a skilled surgeon in a tight-knit surgical team. It had killed the guy who could head to the bar after work and stay as late as he wanted. It had killed the guy who could date who he wanted...
And it was the last thing that was bugging him now.
Dating who he wanted...
Polly.
He wanted Polly.
And she was waiting for him. The light was fading. She was sitting on the old cane chair on the veranda, Hamster at her side. She smiled as he came up the steps and he had such a powerful sense of coming home...
He wanted to walk straight to her, gather her into his arms and claim her as his own. It was a primitive urge, totally inappropriate, totally without consideration, but the urge was so strong he held onto the veranda rail, just to ground himself.
Do not do anything stupid, he told himself. This woman’s ethereal, like a butterfly. You’ll be gone tomorrow and when you return she’ll flit on. Life will close in on you again. Accept it.
‘Ruby’s asleep,’ Polly said, leaning back in the rocker and rocking with satisfaction. ‘I read her to sleep. Boring R Us.’
Nothing about this woman was boring, he thought, but he managed to make his voice almost normal. ‘What did you read?’
‘The Night Before Christmas, of course,’ she told him. ‘I just happen to have a copy in my luggage.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘My nannies read it to me every Christmas.’ She sailed on serenely, oblivious to his dry interruption. ‘I started asking for it to be read about mid-November every year. I can’t believe you don’t own it.’
‘My mother didn’t believe in fairy tales.’
And her eyes widened. ‘Fairy tales? What’s fairy tale about The Night Before Christmas? Next you’ll be saying you don’t believe in Santa.’
And Hugo thought back to the Christmases since his father died—the struggle to stay cheerful, Grace’s depression—and he thought... All we needed was a Pollyanna. A fairy tale...
His parents had been down-to-earth, sensible people. He thought of his sister, crippled by depression. He thought of his father, terse, impatient, telling the teenage Grace to snap out of it.
Grace might still be alive, he thought suddenly, if she’d been permitted a fairy tale.
And... Life might be good for him if he could admit a fairy tale?
A fairy tale called Pollyanna?
‘Polly...’
‘I need your help,’ she told him. ‘You’re leaving at crack of dawn and we need to pack the silver Christmas tree without making the living room look bereft. I don’t intend to have a bereft Christmas, thank you very much.’ She rocked her way forward out of the rocker and it was all he could do not to step forward and...
Not!
Somehow he managed to calmly follow her into the house and start the demolition process, following instructions as to which decorations would stay and which would go.
‘I wonder if I could make a tatted angel for your tree next year,’ she mused as she packed golden balls into a crimson box. It seemed even the crates she stored things in were a celebration. ‘What do you reckon? If you get an angel in the post, will you know what to do with it? Will you value it as you ought?’
She was kneeling by the tree. The Christmas tree lights were still on, flickering multi-coloured patterns on her face. Her eyes were twinkling and a man wouldn’t be human...
He didn’t go to her. There was a mound of tinsel and a box of Christmas decorations between them. It had to act like Hadrian’s Wall.
To stop himself scaring this butterfly into flight.
‘Polly, I’d like to keep in touch,’ he ventured and she went right on packing decorations as if what he’d said wasn’t important.
‘I’d like that too,’ she said. ‘But you’re behind the times. Ruby and I already have it planned. We’re going to be pen pals—real pen pals with letters with stamps because that’s cooler than emails. Ruby will send pictures of herself, and of Hamster too, because I’m starting to think I’ll miss him.’
Pen pals.
‘That’s good, as far as it goes,’ he said cautiously. ‘But it’s not what I had in mind.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘The kiss,’ he said and her head jerked up and the atmosphere in the room changed, just like that.
‘The kiss...’
Stop now, the sensible part of him demanded, but there was a crazy part that kept putting words out there. ‘It meant something,’ he said. ‘Polly, I’d like to keep seeing you.’
‘That might be hard if you’re in Wombat Valley and I’m in Ethiopia.’
‘You’re really thinking of Et
hiopia?’
‘No,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I can’t.’
‘Then how about an extension of your time in Wombat Valley?’
The question hung. It had been dumb to even ask, he thought, but he couldn’t retract the words now.
‘Stay here, you mean?’ she said cautiously.
‘We could...just see.’
‘See what?’ Her eyes didn’t leave his face.
‘If you and I...’
‘I don’t do family.’ She stumbled to her feet and a crimson ball fell onto another and shattered. She didn’t appear to notice.
‘Polly, this isn’t a proposal.’ What had he done? He was appalled at the look of fear that had flashed across her face. ‘I’m not asking for permanent. It’s far too soon...’
‘It’s not only too soon,’ she snapped. ‘It’s stupid.’
‘Why is it stupid?’ He knew, but he still found himself asking. Did she know what a trap his life was?
But it seemed she was worrying about a different kind of trap. ‘Hugo, it’s true, I kissed you and I felt...like I might be falling for you,’ she managed. ‘But it scared me. I don’t want to go there. I can’t. You worry about me, and Ruby hugs me, and even Hamster wriggles his way round my heart like a great hairy worm. But I came here to get away from family, not to find myself more.’
Her words cut, but they were no more than he’d expected.
To hope for more was stupid.
So now what? There was a strained silence while he tried to find a way forward. He’d thought he’d put away his love life when he’d left Sydney, but somehow Polly had hauled it front and centre. He wanted...a woman like Polly?
No. He wanted Polly herself, yet he had no right to haul her into his own personal drama. How could he possibly think of adding his constraints to hers? There was no way through this tangle to a happy ending.
So now? Now he had to get this situation back to a relationship that could go forward as it should. Employer and employee, nothing more.
‘You don’t think you might be propelling things forward just a tad too fast?’ he ventured. ‘I’m not asking you to commit to Wombat Valley for life.’ He tried smiling, aching to ease her look of fear, but the fear stayed. It seemed she wasn’t good at pretending. The employer, employee relationship was finished.
