Chapter 9
SURPRISE
Jack
No way.
There was no way she was my new therapist.
This was a cruel joke my sister was playing on me. Casey had to be setting me up, right? Or Nate, who loved to pull these sorts of pranks. Except Nate had no clue I was here and I hadn’t given my friend a single meaningful detail about last night.
Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me and I was seeing Michelle everywhere. If I closed my eyes, counted to ten, and opened them again, perhaps the Dr. Milo my sister had booked this appointment with would turn out to be someone else.
Anyone fucking else, please.
Anyone but the absolutely enticing sex kitten I couldn’t stop thinking of since last night’s mind-blowing up-against-the-wall-in-a-dimly-lit-hotel-room sex. Not the owner of the hottest pair of legs, the most sinful mouth, and the wildest abandon I’d ever encountered.
I had plans for her. So many plans. Positions. Places.
Frozen still, we were two statues caught in shock.
I gripped the doorframe and swallowed hard.
Michelle’s brown eyes were wide, etched with complete surprise as her hand remained wrapped around the doorknob, her knuckles white from the tight hold she had on it.
The silence lasted, spinning from one second to the next, to the next.
As if this moment of sheer dumb bad luck would unspool if we did nothing.
As if it would rewind into something that made sense. Finally, she went first.
“I suppose I have the answer now to the ‘what’s your last name’ question,” she said in a strained voice.
I nodded. “Sullivan. Jack Sullivan.” Then, manners and protocol kicked in. I extended a hand. She stared at it as if it were an object acquired from a distant planet, a space rock she needed to study. But then she took it, and the second we made contact, memories of her hands slammed into me.
I pictured them in my hair, grabbing my ass, trailing over my chest. Touching her own breasts.
Desire rolled through me, and I tried to tamp it down. To banish the thickening lust that was clouding my head as I flashed back to last night.
Was I supposed to tell her all my problems? All the troubles that gnawed at me? The guilt that liked to play hide-and-seek with my heart, reminding me when it peeked out from around the corner that Aubrey’s death was something I’d unlikely ever come to peace with.
That’s why Casey had sent me here; Casey was the only one who knew precisely why the mythology the press had assigned to my newly-single status was horseshit. As if they could understand my heart, and my reasons. I hardly understood them myself.
I barely unloaded on my sister; I couldn’t imagine telling Michelle what had brought me here.
Correction: Dr. Milo. Doctor of Social Work, as the diploma on her wall informed me.
“And you’re Dr. Michelle Milo,” I began. “Or Dr. Milo, which was the name I had on my schedule. I didn’t know last night that my Michelle was the same Dr. Milo.”
She flinched when I said my Michelle. The words surprised me too; I shouldn’t feel any sort of ownership for her, less than twenty-four hours after meeting. But hell, she was the first woman I’d felt a real thing for, a true fucking emotion, since Aubrey.
Maybe that emotion was lust.
Maybe it was lust plus possibility.
I didn’t know, but I’d enjoyed my time with Michelle in and out of the sheets. Even if it was too early, I was staking my claim to her.
She didn’t seem to want it, though, because she let go of my hand.
Did she think I’d scoped her out beforehand and tried to seduce her? That I’d pursued my therapist in advance, in some sort of clandestine operation? “I swear, I had no idea,” I added, wanting to make sure we were crystal clear on that point.
She shook her head and shushed me, then grabbed my lapels, jerking me into her office, and shut the door with a lightning kind of speed.
“I don’t want anyone hearing us,” she said, still in a whisper. She stepped away from me, walked to her couch, and pressed a button on a noise machine on an end table. A low hum filled the room. She turned around. “To preserve confidentiality,” she said, waving her hand at the whirring machine.
“Of course.” Was she talking about the two of us, or other patients?
She looked me straight in the eyes. Her gorgeous browns were steely. “First of all, there’s no need to call me doctor. I’m not a medical doctor, so I don’t use the title. Michelle is totally fine. Second, I can’t see you.”
The words hit hard in the chest. Like the sharp edge of a jagged rock.
“You mean tonight?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
She nodded, but seemed flustered now, too, fiddling with the collar on her blouse as she spoke.
“I mean, now. I can’t see you here. I can’t treat you.
It’s one hundred percent against the ethical code.
You can’t sleep with your patients. It’s the single biggest reason therapists lose their license,” she said, and her voice rose.
I could hear the frustration in it, but it was laced with self-loathing too. She was pissed at herself.
“All those stories about patients falling for therapists are glamorized,” she said. “It’s wrong. It’s just plain wrong.”
“I wasn’t your patient last night,” I said, ready to absolve her of her guilt. I knew a thing or two about that awful emotion.
She clenched her hands at her sides, as if she were channeling all her feelings there. Frustration, perhaps? Annoyance? Or was there regret flowing through her veins too? “I had an appointment scheduled with you already.”
“But I didn’t know it was you. You didn’t know it was me…did you?” I asked, as the possibility dawned. My brain was spinning now, and it wasn’t making pretty kaleidoscopic images. Maybe she’d been the one scoping me out clandestinely.
“No!” She jammed her hands in her hair, and whatever she’d been keeping under the surface bubbled up.
Her voice rose. “I never would have done that. Jack, I don’t even know a thing about you, except you sell toys.
I don’t even know what kind of toys you sell.
Do you sell Legos? Weebles? Dolls?” She raised her eyebrows in question as she fired off options.
That was delightfully old-fashioned. “Does anyone sell Weebles anymore?” I asked.
“I don’t know! Do you run a toy store or something? A chain of them?”
I didn’t even bother to contain the grin as I shook my head, laughing deeply. “My current claim to fame is that I sell sex toys.”
Her jaw went slack. She sank down onto the couch, dropped her head between her legs and breathed out hard. For a second I thought she was having an anxiety attack, but she popped back up, grabbed my elbow, opened the door and escorted me out of the office.
“You need to see someone else,” she said, marching me down the hall to the stairs, two flights down, then into another hallway. She walked me into another therapy practice, then mouthed thank god when she spotted a door open.
She tapped twice, then stepped inside. “Kira, hello. I think Friday at two is one of your free hours, right?”
“Yes,” said the woman named Kira. Her dark hair was sleek and looped in a ponytail at the nape of her neck.
She wore a long hippie skirt, a red shirt, and bangles on her arms. She looked young, perhaps late twenties.
A flag from the Kingdom of Bahrain hung on her wall and told me she was probably from that country.
“Is there any chance you could take my two p.m.? I have a conflict,” Michelle said, then turned to me. “Jack, this is Kira Amani. She works in another practice. I’ve referred other patients to her. She’s excellent and you will be in good hands.”
“Wait a second. Who said I just wanted to switch?” I asked, digging in my heels. My mental health wasn’t a game of hot potato. This was my fucking messed-up life, and I wasn’t some assignment to be passed around.
“Kira is great,” Michelle said, in a too-professional tone. All the sexiness, all the teasing, and all the shock was gone, replaced only by a cool businesslike demeanor.
“But Casey made the appointment to see you,” I said pointedly. Didn’t she get it? It was hard enough for me to show up in the first place. Now to be pawned off?
“I assure you, Kira is one of the best in the field. She knows her stuff.”
And I didn’t care. I was masterful at shutting down. Hell, I’d been in the army for six years—I knew how to keep my thoughts locked up, with the key thrown away. If this was what therapy came down to—getting jerked around—I was ready to say goodbye.
I threw my hands up. “Hell, I’m more than happy to just leave and not do this at all. So thank you very much. Have a good day.”
Michelle’s grip on my arm tightened, and she met my gaze straight on.
Her eyes softened. “Please,” she whispered, and something about that one word on her lips said like a true plea, as if she couldn’t have wanted anything more in this moment, or ever, than for me to relent, had me doing just that.
She repeated it, her voice even lower this time, and that word worked its way into my heart.
I wasn’t sure why this was important to her, and I certainly wasn’t sure why she was important to me after only one night.
But I understood this much—it mattered deeply to her that she not harm her job.
I got that. I respected that. If sitting down with Kira for fifty minutes would help Michelle in some way, I could do that much.
Thank you, she mouthed just to me, her sexy lips wrapping around those silent words.
She turned to her associate. “Jack is a friend. I didn’t realize it was him when we set the appointment, and I don’t want to leave him hanging. I’ll make sure our receptionist knows to remove his information from my computer immediately. I know he’ll be in good hands with you.”
“Absolutely,” said the other woman. “I’ve learned so much from Michelle, it’ll almost be as if I’m channeling her.”
Channeling her. The only way I wanted to channel Michelle was in the bedroom.