She latched onto Carla’s words about refocusing the patient. She flashed back to all her coursework on how to manage over-interest in the therapist. But this was such a messy stew.

  Even so, she had to wade through it. Step by step. First, address the issue professionally.

  “I take it you’re referring to the Page Six item over the weekend about the man that I’m dating?” she asked, deliberately not using his name. A patient didn’t need to refer to her lover by his name, after all.

  “Well. Yeah. And that picture of you guys dancing at Lincoln Center that showed up this morning on Page Six.”

  That was news to her.

  Michelle dug her fingers into her palms, and told herself it was all going to be fine. She’d been in sessions all day and prepping for Paris. She hadn’t been online, and hadn’t checked her work or her personal email either. And while she felt a small ounce of relief that the photo that had appeared was one of them dancing outside, rather than of them inside on the balcony, she was still bothered that the gossip rags were following them at all. Weren’t there far more interesting people to photograph than her and Jack, even if he’d been deemed New York’s most eligible bachelor?

  “And does it bother you to see my photo online?” Michelle managed to ask, concentrating on her client, not on her own reaction to being in the tabloids.

  “It’s weird,” Shayla said loudly. “It’s completely bizarre. Honestly, I’ve always thought of you as a blank slate. Someone who existed in the little framework of this office.” She gestured to the four walls.

  “And now you realize I’m both a therapist and a human being.”

  Shayla nodded. “Yep.”

  Michelle took a breath, clasped her hands, and addressed the elephant in the room once more. “So, here’s the deal. I’m a human being. I date. I see plays and movies. I have a brother, and I have good friends. I like to go out to dinner. I like to try new restaurants. I enjoy fall in New York City, and I’d like to have a dog someday. There you go. That’s me. I’m not a blank slate. I’ve never been a blank slate,” she said, pausing to gauge Shayla’s reaction. Her client’s eyes were fixed firmly on Michelle. Good. “But the time we spend together is not about me. It’s about you. And I’m not going to address any specifics of my dating life. I do, however, want to keep working with you and helping you sort out the matters that are most important to you,” she said, her voice clear and direct. This was how things would be done. Take it or leave it. “Can you keep doing that?”

  Shayla gulped and nodded. Red bloomed across her cheeks, and her eyes turned watery. “Yes,” she squeaked out. Then, she chased it with a choppy, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Michelle said softly. “Truly, it’s fine. I’m here to help you, though, and I want nothing more than to do just that.”

  “Thank you. I’m just so scattered and emotional with the divorce pending,” she said, and they returned to what mattered most during the fifty minutes they had together.

  Later that morning, Clark Davidson arrived for his appointment, dressed sharply in a suit. Michelle suspected he was a high-powered businessman, fitting this in during his day. Quickly, they dived into the marital challenges that had brought him here.

  “It’s as if any true intimacy has died. My wife and I don’t have that authentic connection anymore,” he said, and his words made the hair on her arms stand on end. She’d written a paper for a journal that used those terms. True intimacy and authentic connection. They weren’t trademarked or coined by her, nor were they unusual words. But they weren’t often used by her patients. It was as if he was quoting her back to her. “I read that in one of your papers,” he added, flashing her a grin.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and smiled that he was so open about it. It all made sense. “I hope it was useful.”

  “Very much so. I hope you don’t mind, but I read a bit of your research before I made the appointment. That’s my field. I’m a market researcher, so it’s sort of a natural habit for me. And I was impressed, so that’s why I had wanted to see you,” he said, fiddling with the wedding band on his left finger.

  “And I’m glad you found me,” she said, and privately she was grateful that all he seemed to care about were her professional credentials, not her personal track record in bed. “Let’s talk some about why you feel true intimacy has died. Can you give me an example?”

  He nodded several times and exhaled heavily, as if what he was about to say would be hard. “I feel like Sarah doesn’t want to have sex anymore. The other night I was—”

  He hacked sharply. A loud, bark of a cough. Then came another. His hand flew to cover his mouth, and he coughed once more, like a wheezing trombone. His cheeks began turning red.

  Michelle sprang up. “Let me get you some water,” she said, and quickly headed to the door, then down the hall to the small kitchen tucked in a corner of the office suite. She opened the fridge to grab a water bottle, but it was empty. Crap. They’d need to replenish the supply. She swiveled around, spotted a clean mug from the cupboard, filled it from the tap, and returned to her office, the sound of wheezing like a homing beacon guiding her back. She handed him the cup, and he gulped most of the water down greedily. Then he took a deep breath, and finished it off.

  “You okay now?” she asked gently.

  He nodded.

  “Do you want more?”

  He peered in the cup and tossed the rest of it back. “I think I’m better now. That was embarrassing. I’m so sorry.”

  “Please don’t apologize for coughing. Shall we go back to your concerns about true intimacy?”

  They chatted more, and as he shared his concerns about the lack of sex with his wife, she felt a strange sense of déjà vu. She flashed back to her last session with Shayla. The problems mirrored Shayla’s challenges. Shayla had even said before that her husband had a paranoid side. Could he be so worried about trying to keep her that he was infiltrating her therapist to try to learn what sort of advice Shayla was getting? Could this man actually be Shayla’s husband? With a fake name?

  No, she sharply admonished herself. Plenty of couples had marital woes and there was no need for her to jump to any conclusions, and assume Shayla’s hubby was here under false pretenses.

  She had no true evidence that he was a fraud, so she mentally talked herself down. For now she had to treat him as she would anyone else. Besides, he seemed open to some of her suggestions about reconnecting with his wife, so she recommended a book for him that she thought might be helpful. “I don’t have a copy to loan you, but perhaps you could check it out on Amazon or your bookstore,” she said, and he grabbed a pen and small notebook from inside his jacket.

  He spread the notebook open on the ottoman in front of him, then dipped his hand into his pocket once more and pushed on a pair of glasses. “Can’t see a damn thing up close without these on,” he said, then wrote down the name she gave him, folded up the paper and removed his glasses once more. She caught the briefest glimpse of him with the glasses on—thick and black—and it was as if she’d been shot back to the night she went to Gia’s with Jack. The man she’d bumped into outside her building had worn glasses like that—thick and black. He’d had dark hair too, but it was longer, wasn’t it? The memory was far too fuzzy, and that’s all she could latch onto. It had been such a lightning-fast encounter that more than two weeks later she couldn’t recall any more details.

  And really, what were the chances that this man was the same guy? Even if she had bumped into Clark, maybe he’d just been doing his research and scoping out the building before the appointment, to get the lay of the land. A lot of patients did that. That was normal. Plus, he’d said he was a market researcher, so it would make sense that he’d checked things out in advance.

  But after he left, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Perhaps it was simply this day. Perhaps it was a side effect of Shayla’s nosiness. Lately, she’d been feeling like others knew things about her before she learned them. And she didn’t like being in that position.

  She didn’t have another session for an hour, so she locked her door. She never locked her door. But then, she was about to do something she rarely did. She was going to Google a patient. She’d made it a point not to search out her patients online—what mattered was what they shared in her time with them. Still, Clark Davidson had left her feeling unsettled, no matter how hard she tried to apply logic to the situation. She flipped open her laptop, and plugged his name into Google.

  She found a Clark Davidson who was a realtor. A Clark Davidson who was a sales manager at an advertising technology company. And a Clark Davidson who was a lawyer. But none were market researchers. And none of the images that returned matched the man who’d been in her office.

  She dropped Shayla’s name into Google next, but very little turned up about her that Michelle didn’t already know. Where she went to college. Her brief time working at an art gallery. Some of her charitable donations. She moved onto Facebook next, even though she didn’t have a Facebook profile for herself, and had never felt any need to. Dropping Shayla’s name into the search bar on the social site made her feel dirty. She felt even seedier when she spotted the icon for photos on Shayla’s profile. But they were set to private.

  Michelle closed the browser, disgusted with herself, and grateful that she’d been stopped from going too far. The tabloids were already invading her personal life; she didn’t need to start doing that to a client. It would simply be wrong.

  Perhaps Clark was just a troubled man who needed help. Not someone who’d studied up on her more than she would have liked. She hopped over to her work email, and smiled broadly when she read a note from her Paris contact, Julien, about how much they were looking forward to her talk.

  She was excited for the trip too. The only problem was she’d miss Jack terribly during those five days she’d be away. Especially after she took her phone from the desk drawer and clicked open a new note from him.

  from: justjack@gmail.com

  to: michellewithtwols@gmail.com

  date: Sept 22, 11:47 AM

  subject: You

  Hi. You might have seen the picture of us dancing at Lincoln Center. We’re online again on Page Six. I know this is probably more than you bargained for the night we met. I guess I’m just used to it now. The press has been fascinated with my dating, or non-dating, as the case was until I met you. I suspect it will all blow over soon, and they’ll move on to someone else in this city. I hope you don’t mind, though, when I say that I can’t stop looking at this picture of you in my arms. It captured that moment so perfectly and everything I see when I look at you—you are so beautiful and in this photo you look simply incandescent. I am going to miss you when I go to California later this week.

  She closed her eyes and let that gorgeous word wash over her. Incandescent. Who said things like that? Who used that kind of an adjective? Only a man like Jack. A man who loved the symphony, and who loved her ass. A man who was refined on the outside, and filthy on the inside. Her lips curved up in a naughty grin as she lingered on her dirty, sexy, sophisticated man. When she opened her eyes, she searched out the photo of the two of them, quickly reading the caption. Sob, sob. Looks like things are getting serious with the sex toy mogul and the shrink. They were spotted dancing outside Lincoln Center Saturday night. They look so happy together we want to cry. Don’t tell us you’re off the market, Jack!

  She beamed in spite of being in the public eye once more. She beamed because Jack was right. She did look incandescent. Because she was looking at him. She didn’t see what everyone else saw. She didn’t see a sex toy mogul and a shrink. She saw a man and a woman, dancing, gazing, holding.

  That’s what she saw.

  Surely, that’s all anyone could see.

  * * *

  But her good mood from Jack’s letter didn’t last. Because there was a knock on her door later that afternoon, and Kana popped in.

  “Hey. How’s it going?” Michelle asked.

  “Great. May I sit down?”

  She gestured to the couch. “Lie down and tell me about your mother,” she joked, and Kana laughed, but the laughter quickly faded.

  “So, you’re seeing that guy you sent to me?”

  “Whoa,” Michelle said, holding up her hands. “Does everyone read Page Six?”

  Kana crinkled her brow. “Um. Yeah. I love that site. I’m addicted, like half of Manhattan,” she said, brushing her black hair away from her face. “Anyway, I just wanted to make sure he was never your patient. You said he was a friend the day you referred him to me.”

  She shook her head. “He was never my client.”

  “Good. Because you’re one of the best, and I just want to make sure you weren’t leaving yourself open to an ethics investigation.”

  “No. God, no. I swear,” she said, and dropped her head in her hands in frustration. Then she lifted her head and met Kana’s gaze straight on. Her colleague was simply concerned, that was all. And Michelle owed her the facts, given that Kana was involved, in a way, now. “I met him the night before. I didn’t know he was scheduled to see me. We hit it off and as soon as we both realized he had an appointment, I marched him down to see you. I haven’t crossed any professional lines.”

  “Good. I’m just looking out for you. Besides, I wouldn’t want to have to report you,” Kana said in a deadpan voice. But when Michelle stared at her without cracking a smile, Kana quickly added, “I’m kidding. I’m totally kidding,” then laughed to emphasize her point.

  But Michelle didn’t reciprocate. Even though she knew she was 100 percent above board on that count, the notion that someone else might question her ethics sickened her.

  * * *

  She arrived early to the consulting group that afternoon, and snagged some one-on-one time with Carla, updating her on Shayla’s session, then Clark Davidson, then the photo from Lincoln Center.

  Carla listened, and was quick to answer. “I don’t think we need to freak out, but this is a good reminder to be careful.”

  She hadn’t expected that. She’d assumed Carla would reassure her. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re dating a man who’s in the public eye. Who the press adores, and fawns over. That man also runs a sex toy company that is well known for supplying to BDSM clubs, and for better or for worse, some people find those clubs seedy. That’s just reality, and you can’t change that. That’s why you need to be more cautious than if you were dating a cop, or a teacher, or even the CEO of a dishwasher detergent company. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Michelle said with a crisp nod. Carla had always given her smart advice.

  “He doesn’t have to worry about boundaries and public or private lives in the same way you do. You’re an intimate relationship therapist, and you have to be cautious, in the same way that a teacher or police officer would be. Society has certain expectations about different professions, and we’re in one of those professions where we have to be circumspect. The reality is there are bound to be speculations about your sex life now,” she said, giving new meaning to the word blunt.

  “So that’s it? This is not an It’s Raining Men situation?”

  Carla laughed. “No. But I’m not saying you shouldn’t date him. If you enjoy his company and he’s good to you, then by all means, have some fun. What I’m saying is be aware of these eagle eyes that can’t seem to stop looking at him, and now at you. For better or for worse, the man is a magnet for the cameras.”

  Michelle nodded, agreeing with her mentor. “I don’t think I realized just how much. We started dating a few weeks ago, and no one noticed. No one cared. And now, in the last few days, Page Six has taken an avid interest. And it was so uncomfortable when my patient asked about him. She just kind of word-vomited up this whole thing about whether we used his sex toys. Talk about boundaries,” she said, shaking her head in frustration.

  Carla gave her a sympathetic smile. “Look, you won’t be the first psychotherapist to deal with dating someone in the public eye. It’s not as if you’re forbidden from it. The key is to manage it properly. That’s why I said to be careful. You don’t want your patients or colleagues to start seeing you in a particular light, and seeing you only as this man’s lover. That won’t help. And if that keeps happening, I would have to stop referring patients to you.”

  Michelle’s stomach dropped at that prospect. She valued Carla’s referrals dearly, as well as the chance she was giving her to lead the upcoming workshop. “I don’t want that to happen. I want to keep growing in my career.”

  “I know,” Carla said matter-of-factly. “So let’s take steps now to protect your career. And as frustrating as it may be, you need to operate under the assumption that you’re dating a celebrity. And until it becomes serious, and you’re engaged or married—not that I’m saying that will happen,” Carla said, holding up a hand when Michelle’s eyes threatened to pop out of her head because clearly she and Jack were never getting married, let alone going to date beyond thirty days, “—you simply need to be chaste in public, but behind closed doors,” Carla said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, even though it was only the two of them in her office, “feel free to have some fabulous sex.”

  “Carla!” Michelle pretended to be taken aback.

  Carla wiggled her eyebrows. “Is it fantastic? Is that why you’ve been glowing lately?”

  She brought her hand to her cheek, as if she could discover this so-called glow everyone kept noticing. “Am I glowing?”

  Carla laughed. “No. But you seem happy. Truly happy, and I hope you are. And I also hope you’re having great sex. Because everyone should. Besides, isn’t great sex something to strive for in an intimate relationship?”