She took her phone from her purse, pretended to scroll through photos, and snapped a shot of the two of them.

  Casually, as if she were just anyone in attendance, she mingled and circulated, walking past them a few times.

  But by the time the event started to wind down, she’d learned nothing more about tomorrow’s papers, so she hoped it had simply been a social media slip-up. Surely those happened all the time. Even so, she dumped the photos in a reverse image search when she returned home to her laptop. She found the guy with glasses. He was second-in-command at a strategy firm that specialized in campaigns. She Googled him some more, and found his nickname

  The Spin Doctor.

  The moniker made her skin crawl. She closed her laptop. She fired off some of the photos to her brother, adding her usual assortment of silly captions.

  Good thing she hadn’t given up the sex toy business to become a detective, she mused. Besides, it was probably just an errant tweet.

  * * *

  Michelle looked at Jack as the plane landed.

  His eyes were wide. He blinked once, then twice as the jet applied the brakes when the wheels touched the runway. He winced as he stared hard at his phone, scrolling slowly with his thumb. He shut his eyes, squeezed them tight, and it seemed as if he were wishing away what he was reading.

  Wrapping a hand around his arm, she asked him if everything was okay. Before he could answer, her phone buzzed, coming alive again now that they were on the ground.

  “No,” he whispered in a strangled voice.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, and her phone buzzed again, then bleated loudly. She snapped her eyes to the screen out of habit. Davis. He never called her work phone.

  A chill ran through her bones as she answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you okay?” he asked, and her heart seized up when she heard his voice. This was how he sounded the night he’d told her their parents had died. He was the one who had answered the door when the police officer knocked to deliver the news about the fatal accident on the icy road. He was the one who’d found her in her bedroom upstairs, listening to music, and turned off the radio to tell her. He was the one who had delayed college for a year to help her finish high school because they were suddenly all alone. Just the sound of his voice sent her back to that night, but she couldn’t figure out what the hell he could be calling about now. The worst had happened. There was no one left but them. Unless something had happened to Jill.

  A lump rose up in her throat. “Is Jill okay?”

  “Jill’s fine. You didn’t see the story, did you?”

  “No. I just landed,” she said, her voice shaky. “What is it? Just tell me.”

  “I’m waiting at baggage claim for you. It’s not good, Michelle.”

  Shame spilled over in her waves as her mind raced through possibilities. Pictures of her and Jack in the perfume shop doorway, on the train, even at the Grand Colbert. Oh Lord, had her skirt blown up? Had someone seen that jewel in her ass?

  But that would have been welcome compared to the story.

  Jack handed her his phone, and wrapped an arm around her as she read. “None of it is true. We’ll fix it. I promise. I swear,” he said, kissing her forehead as the written words sliced through her, like sharp knives, chopping her career to tiny pieces.

  Sex Toy Mogul Becomes Sex Therapist for Shrink

  By Staff

  Today we learned that a certain prominent psychologist’s couch folds out into a bed. And who’s the bedfellow for this *cough, cough* intimate relationship therapist? (Intimate indeed!)

  None other than New York City’s most eligible bachelor. Jack Sex-Toy-Mogul Sullivan has been providing sex therapy for a sex therapist.

  The psychologist, Michelle Milo, who heads up several prominent New York City professional organizations and supposedly counsels patients on all their intimate issues, didn’t wait long to pounce on her celebrity patient. (Can’t blame you, Dr. Milo, he’s a hottie!) They’ve been playing sexual healing games since he began seeing her to mend his broken heart. Hell, did she ever do a bang-up job! You may recall they were spotted at dinner and at the symphony, and we’ve learned their relationship didn’t start with such innocent dates. It began in the most forbidden way! Scandalous!

  Sources tell us their relationship started in her office when he went to see her to cure his woes. Poor guy has been missing his deceased fiancée, the Olympic medalist Aubrey Sheen, and Dr. Milo gave him a little loving between the sheets to make him all better. Evidently, he’s done the same for her.

  She first treated him at her office in an intake appointment that involved more than just talking. She then bumped him to special patient status, beginning “therapy” sessions, as they referred to them, after hours. “Looking forward to another ‘therapy’ session with you this evening,’ he told her, to which she replied, “Will you be bringing any battery-operated friends?” The answer? When he plays sex therapist for her, he brings along his products. Well, duh. He IS a sex toy mogul. We just want to know which models you use, Jack. You know, so we can try them in our therapy games too.

  Patients of Dr. Milo might want to consider themselves warned. We have it on good authority he gave her the business in her office. Bring hand sanitizer before you bare your soul to the *cough, cough* intimate relationship shrink.

  His phone clattered to the carpet of the plane with a dull thud. Her hands shook. Her chest heaved, and shame flooded her veins from head to toe. Her insides were mangled, like a rusty saw digging through her chest, carving up pieces of her organs. Serving them to the press. She could smell the acrid scent of her career going up in flames as her reputation was burned at the stake.

  Someone had clearly hacked her private email with Jack, and twisted their inside jokes and their naughty notes into a sordid story, making public what was supposed to be private, and what was so very personal.

  She dropped her head to her knees. The flight attendant stopped and asked if she needed a bag. Michelle waved her off as dry heaves wracked her body. Jack rubbed her back, tried to comfort her, to tell her he’d get to the bottom of this. But even if he did, the damage was done.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Spin

  The messages were too much.

  They were overwhelming.

  All that buzzing on her phone had been a stockpile of voicemails from clients canceling all day long. Clients calling in shock. Leaving messages like, “How can we trust our sanity and therapy to you when you are playing therapy games with him?”

  Colleagues ringing her up. Carla wanting to know what the hell had happened.

  The last message was the worst. The newspaper called—the real paper, not the gossip tabloid. The reporter wanted to know if she had a comment on the New York Chapter of the Association of Intimate Relationship Psychologists’ statement that its ethics division was opening an investigation into whether she slept with a patient and took advantage of him.

  She hadn’t returned that call yet. That article was slated to run in The New York Press tomorrow.

  Inside the safety of her own apartment, her brother tried to soothe her, but there was nothing to be done.

  “We will figure this out. We will take care of this,” he said, echoing Jack’s sentiments from the plane. The two men she cared deeply about were here, having met in the most bizarre of circumstances when Davis was waiting at baggage claim. Her brother had wrapped her in a hug, and then shook hands with the man she was sure he’d rather not be meeting. He had known they were together—she told him before she’d left for Paris who she was traveling with—but he didn’t know the details that were now being splashed all over the papers.

  She curled up in a ball on her dove-gray couch, grabbing a blanket and huddling under it, clutching her phone. As if she could protect herself from more bad news by staying close to it. Making sure she didn’t miss a single solitary piece of shit being flung her way.

  “Do you have any idea how this happened? How someone got your emails?” Davis asked.

  Michelle shook her head, too shell-shocked to even think rationally.

  “Who would have a reason to do this?” he said, continuing to prod. “There’s always a motivation. Whoever did this had to have motivation.”

  Michelle managed a humorless laugh. “You’re such a director. Always thinking about motivation. Even at a time like this,” she said.

  “He’s right,” Jack said, weighing in. “Someone has it out to get you. Is there any chance it could be one of your patients?”

  “No,” she said emphatically. She wanted to believe they wouldn’t skewer her like this. But she knew it would be foolish not to consider the possibility.

  “Wait,” Jack said, snapping his fingers. “You mentioned something in Paris—”

  The phone rang, stopping him and she flinched all over. “Let me answer,” Davis said firmly.

  She shook her head. “It might be a client.” She put the phone to her ear. “Michelle here.”

  “On the couch? Is that true?” It was Shayla.

  “Hi. And no,” she said, because the time in her office was on the chair.

  “Oh, thank God,” she said with a relieved sigh. “Anyway, I’m so glad you’re back. Because my husband is freaking out. When can I see you?”

  Michelle was amazed that Shayla was completely focused on herself when the world around her was cratering. But then, at least one client was interested in someone other than Michelle, and she vastly preferred not being the center of other people’s attention.

  “I just landed. We can set something up for tomorrow. Is that soon enough?”

  Shayla agreed, but when the call ended, Michelle latched onto something. My husband is freaking out. Could it have been Shayla’s husband who did this? Was Clark Shayla’s husband after all using a fake name? Was this his way of driving some sort of wedge between his wife, and the shrink he thought was encouraging her to leave him?

  “Michelle,” Jack said, and she flipped over and looked at him, amazed that mere hours ago she’d been flying home, blissfully unaware that her career was being tanked. “You said in Paris that you had a new client. You thought he was checking you out during a session, and then in the next one he knew too much about you,” he said, repeating her words back to her. He’d remembered every single one. “Standard businessman, you said. He had dark hair, dark glasses. He looked like someone you bumped into outside your office.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Could it have been him? Did he take your phone? Did he have access to your phone at all?”

  “No,” she said, but then she swallowed back the word as the memory unfolded before her eyes. Clark coughing. Michelle leaving him to get water. Was that enough time? “Well, there was this one time right before we went to Paris,” she said, and explained what happened during Clark’s last session. “But he didn’t take the phone. At the end of the session, it was still there in my drawer where I keep it.”

  Jack shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. “He doesn’t have to take it. There’s software that can clone a phone like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “All he had to do was have access to your phone for a minute, maybe two. Were you gone long enough?”

  Down the hallway. Opened the fridge. Didn’t see bottled water. Grabbed a mug. Filled it from the tap. Walked back to the office.

  “Yes,” she said as the chill seeped from her bones into her skin.

  “He had to have done it. He took your personal phone while you were getting water and dropped an app on it that clones it. I bet that’s what he did. Then, when he was on his computer watching the cloned phone, he was able to steal your password to your email.”

  Her brain pounded against her skull. Her mind was swimming, slipping further under water, gulping for air.

  “But my personal phone has a screenlock. My work phone does too. How would he have gotten past it that quickly?”

  “It’s easy to break screenlocks,” he said, grabbing his own phone, and showing her the screen. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking for until he tilted it in the light next to her couch. When he had it angled just right, she gasped. The streaks from his fingerprints revealed his own screen lock. “The oils from your fingers. All he had to do was hold it just so to see the pattern you make.”

  “But why?” Davis asked, pressing once more. “What does someone have against my sister?”

  Something caught her eye on his phone. An incoming email flashed across his notifications, and she swore it was from Michelle with two Ls. Her veins filled with ice. Before he could answer, Michelle pointed to his phone. “You have a new email from me,” she said, in a dead voice.

  from: michellewithtwols@gmail.com

  to: justjack@gmail.com

  date: Oct 1, 6:32 PM

  subject: You like it dirty?

  Try this for dirty. There’s more with this came from. Back off now or else we’ll really hit below the belt.

  Jack turned to Michelle and her brother and gave them the answer. “They have nothing against her. It’s me.”

  * * *

  Her brother was a fighter. He had his fists clenched and was ready to go knock some teeth. Jack understood the impulse. He was ready to go to war for Michelle too. But he knew enough about battle to know this—you don’t go to war without understanding the enemy.

  Everything you can possibly learn.

  That mantra had served his country well during his time in the army. He had to apply restraint now. Casey had sent over a batch of photos from an art show last night, and had captioned them My lame attempt at playing Nancy Drew.

  But that lame attempt might be what they needed.

  He showed each one to Michelle. First, a thin, baby-faced man.

  She shook her head.

  Next, a blond man.

  “Not him.”

  He clicked on a guy with slick dark hair who looked eerily familiar, and the fingers of his memory reached all the way back to the night he’d met Michelle. He’d seen this man at The Pierson. This man had been watching Denkler. And watching Denkler meant watching Jack and Henry. Watching Jack turned into seeing him with Michelle.

  She shook her head. He wasn’t Michelle’s fake client.

  “It started with him, though,” Jack said, seething. “They’ve been on us from the start. From the very first time Henry and I met with his brother-in-law. It was the night I met you. Conroy’s guys have been watching every move Denkler made from the get-go. They must have been tailing Denkler that night when we met him. Then they stayed on me, and saw me with you.”

  “What the hell?” Davis said, interjecting, as he held out his hands as if to say what gives.

  “There’s one more picture,” Jack said.

  He reached the last photo and the quick release of breath, the slow-motion change in her expression, and the way she dropped her head into her hands said it all.

  “That’s him. Clark Davidson. That’s what he said his name was. Oh my God, I feel so stupid,” she said, and her brother sat next to her, draping an arm around her to comfort her.

  “You’re not. He pretended to be someone else. You’re not stupid.”

  She lifted her face. Her eyes were rimmed with red. “I even looked him up. I never do that. But I just got this vibe from him. I tried to track him down online. He said he was a market researcher, but I found nothing, obviously.”

  Jack stepped away from them, and called Casey. “I need the name of the guy with the glasses,” he told her.

  Casey answered quickly. “Nick Bradshaw. He’s second-in-command at a strategy firm.”

  “Home address?”

  She was quiet for a minute, typing away. “Nope. Private.”

  “I’ll find it,” he said, and hopped on the Federal Election Commission page on his phone. This guy was into politics, so chances were good he’d have donated over the years to campaigns, and if he did, his address would be public record. Sure enough, a contribution to the last presidential election revealed that the fucker lived in the Village.

  “I need to go,” he said to Michelle, then turned to Davis. “Will you stay here with her?”

  “Of course,” he said protectively, narrowing his eyes. Jack got the meaning behind the stare. Jack was merely the lover who’d brought down a heap of trouble on Davis’s sister, his family, his blood. Her brother had been the man in Michelle’s life—her steady, her constant, the one person who got her through the shittiest times of all. Seeing that cool stare made Jack even more determined to prove himself. He had to right this ship.

  He knelt down by Michelle, took her hand, and looked her in the eyes. It wasn’t the sadness that stunned him. It was the defeat. The look of ruin already. This had the potential to destroy her career.

  “I love you,” he said, because it was all he could say right now that mattered. Anything else was an empty promise. This was the only true thing.

  “I know,” she said, managing the sliver of a smile.

  “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry this is happening. That they’re going after you. It’s all my fault,” he said, clasping her hand tighter.

  She shook her head. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix this right now.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, but he knew it wasn’t okay to her. It wouldn’t be okay to anyone. She just wasn’t the type of person who’d blame him, or anyone.

  He left, but her brother followed him into the hallway, letting the door close behind him. “Don’t hurt my sister,” Davis said, his features stony.

  “I won’t hurt your sister.”

  Davis shook his head in frustration. “I mean it. If this is on you, you better make things right. As right as you possibly can.”

  “I have a sister too. I would do the same, and say the same if I were in your position. Michelle means the world to me, and I’ll do everything for her.”