Chapter 9 #2
And there went my mind again. As I sat down on the couch, Michelle Milo turning on her heels, I feared it was going to be a painfully long fifty minutes.
Michelle
I wasn’t in the habit of googling patients before their appointments.
Nor was I in the habit of googling them while I treated them.
The Internet offered too much information, and my job was not based on hunting for details from social media profiles or corporate websites. My job was to talk to people, to help them understand and to overcome challenges in their lives.
The answers to those questions were never found on the Web. Besides, it was always better in the long run to let a client tell me who they were and not rely on gossip.
But Jack was no longer a patient. I’d sliced off that possibility immediately so that it could never bite me in the ass.
I informed the receptionist and she blocked my access to his information right away.
That was a necessary protection for therapists and patients when there was even a whiff of a conflict of interest. Getting involved with a patient was grounds for losing my license, and this job was my world.
I would never do anything to sacrifice my livelihood, nor would I ever willingly compromise the hearts and minds of my patients.
I even googled the ethical code too for the professional association I was part of and was relieved to see I’d handled things properly.
I sent a note too to my mentor, checking in with her.
However, researching a lover was an entirely different matter. I’d known nothing about Jack the night before, and I’d relished the Just Jack mystery, the intrigue behind the toy salesman persona.
I scoffed to myself.
“Toy salesman, my ass,” I muttered as I plugged his name into Google, and up popped a website for Joy Delivered.
Oh, my.
The man was a funder and partner at Joy Delivered?
A thrill ran down my spine, electric and hot.
I knew Joy Delivered, and it had delivered for me, night after night.
I had a drawer full of Joy Delivered goodies, and they were the Louboutins of the sex toy world, as my friend Sutton liked to say. Everything else paled in comparison.
“Once you’ve gone Joy Delivered, you’ll never leave your bedroom,” Sutton had once said in her pretty British voice when the two of us had popped into Eden, a sex toy shop on the Upper East Side.
Personally, I vastly preferred the comfort of online shopping—you never knew in New York when you might run into a colleague, a patient, or a researcher you were submitting a paper to.
But Sutton had insisted, and so I’d gone along, acquiring one of many battery-operated boyfriends.
Sutton was right.
I was Joy Delivered or bust now. A true brand loyalist.
When I was tired and simply wanted to take the edge off before bed, I’d fire up some of my favorite naughty sites, grab the Fly Me to the Moon mini vibrator and take care of business in mere minutes.
Other nights, I’d spent more than a round or two with The One—a delicious rabbit-styled vibrator that I swore had some kind of special homing device for finding my G-spot.
Oh, I’d practically sung arias from the way that baby had me perform.
My eyes fluttered closed as I flashed back to some of the orgasms his toys had wrought. Did he design them? Did he know what they did to women? Did he test them out on his lovers, making sure the butterflies, the bunnies, the fly-me-to-the-moons did the trick, and then some?
Would he try his latest products on me?
A burst of heat spread through my belly, settling between my legs.
I dropped my hand under my skirt, brushing my fingertips against the cotton panel of my lace panties.
My breath caught as I pictured Jack watching, telling me to spread my legs, offering to test his newest products on me, even though he hardly needed any help.
The man’s cock should have a statue erected in its honor.
A national holiday named for it. A parade to celebrate its length, width, and most of all, its feel.
Hot tingles raced through my body, causing a sweet ache between my thighs.
I sat up straight.
I did not need to get turned on in the office, and certainly not from perusing my lover’s website.
Wait. Was he my lover? He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He was a one-night stand, and I was simply a curious woman conducting the necessary post-mortem research.
And really, why not post-mortem some more?
I hunted for more Jack Sullivan. One of the first results mentioned that his company was the gold sponsor for a charity gala supporting breast cancer research next month.
The company even sold a small, pink pocket-sized vibrator called The Divine, and donated half of the proceeds from that product to breast cancer.
Damn. Not only was he fantastic in bed, he was a philanthropist. We needed more of that in the world. Especially these days.
One of the next results was an article in a business magazine headlined Soldier-Turned-Sex-Toy-Mogul.
I snickered at the shameless headlines. Then the world snickered at me, and the way goosebumps rose across my arms and legs as I read more.
He’d helped start the company to support his sister’s dreams, and that—that was sexy in its own way.
Emboldened by this man candy trail, I continued on it, hunting out more details.
I found an article from last night in a local news outlet.
New York City’s Most Eligible Bachelors
Sex toy mogul Jack Sullivan tops this year’s list of the city’s most eligible bachelors in business. Don’t you think he needs a new woman to mend his broken heart? Makes you just want to nab that man even more.
My heart fell when I read those words. I brushed aside my naughty thoughts, focusing instead on the man behind the headlines. A pang of concern took root inside me as I read on, clicking until I’d learned exactly why he’d come to see me.
His fiancée, Aubrey Sheen, had been a former Olympic skier, who’d died on the slopes in a freak accident a little more than a year ago.
Apparently, the pair of them had traveled to Breckenridge, Colorado for a ski weekend seven days before their wedding.
On the last run of the day, she’d crashed into a tree on an intermediate trail that she held the speed record on. She’d died on impact, the reports said.
My throat hitched as I read the story, and the ones that followed it. Months later, the local press had started hounding the eligible-again bachelor about his status, and apparently being a widower—or near widower—had made him all the more appealing for those who cared about such things.
I was not one of the people who cared about such things. Not one bit. I cared instead about the fact that somehow that man was hurting, and he wanted help for it.
But it wasn’t my job to help him. It was Kira’s now. I’d probably never see him again. Such a shame, since being with him was about the only thing that had made me feel like it was possible to see past my own heartbreak.