Davis gave a curt nod, then turned on his heels.

  Jack took off for downtown, hailing a cab, and arriving at Bradshaw’s building fifteen minutes later. He buzzed 2C, then waited, muttering c’mon under his breath.

  “Hello?” It was a man’s voice, and Jack was ready to strangle him, so he called upon some extra stores of his best friend—restraint.

  “It’s Just Jack. I believe you wanted to talk about backing off. I’m on your steps.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Jack leaned against the railing of the stoop, watching through the glass panels of the brown front door. Soon, he saw a man descend the stairs, then reach the ground level. He looked exactly as Michelle described. Standard businessman. Gray slacks, button-down shirt, loosened tie. He had dark hair and dark glasses.

  He opened the first set of doors, then the second, stepping out onto the stoop.

  Jack dug his nails into his palms to refrain from pummeling him, from grabbing this bastard by the throat and shaking the goddamn life out of him. That would do no good.

  Instead, he took a different approach. He extended his hand. “Clark Davidson, right?” he asked, and Nick smirked. Jack continued. “Market researcher, I understand?”

  Nick smiled wickedly in response. “I see she’s been revealing patient-client confidentiality,” he said, tsk, tsking under his breath.

  Jack fumed. “Don’t even go there,” he said in a hiss.

  Nick pretended to bug out his eyes. “Why?” he asked in fake shock. “What are you going to do to me?” Nick’s eyes traveled to Jack’s clenched hands. “You gonna hit me, Soldier-Turned-Sex-Toy-Mogul? Why don’t you try? Why don’t you see how I spin that?”

  Smoke billowed from Jack’s ears. He gritted his teeth.

  “Keep it all inside,” Nick continued, taunting. “Because they don’t call me the Spin Doctor for nothing. You touch me, and I will find a way to make everyone hate you too.” Nick laughed, revealing perfect white teeth. “Or maybe, take your chances. Take a punch at me. I turned your girlfriend into garbage. You think I won’t find a way to pulverize you?”

  Rage coursed through Jack’s veins and he grabbed the man by the shirt collar. “You can’t touch me. I run a fucking sex toy company. I sell dildos for a living. There is nothing you can do to me. My reputation doesn’t matter.”

  “I know,” Nick said with an evil glint in his dark eyes. “You’re the fucking Teflon man, Jack. The press loves you. They love the grieving widower story. They love that you run a business with your sister. You’re impenetrable. No one gives a shit if you like it dirty. No one cares if you fuck a woman on the Met Life Tower. Same way with Henry. He runs BDSM clubs with his wife, who’s a cancer survivor. I can’t touch her. But you,” Nick said, poking Jack’s chest, and he was ready to throttle the man. He’d started this war by going after Henry’s business solely to knock down his brother-in-law. He’d already hit below the belt. Now he was firing bullets, by throwing around all the private times he’d learned about from their emails, “you gave us the perfect target.”

  The anger burned Jack’s throat. He gripped Nick’s collar harder. “I gave you nothing.”

  Nick cackled and shook his head. “You’re wrong. You gave us everything we needed to take down our opponent. Because you started screwing a shrink. An intimate relationship psychologist, at that. I couldn’t have planned it better. It was like taking candy from a baby. It was my easiest job ever. Because she takes herself so goddamn seriously. She’s so perfectly above board. She does nothing wrong. Never a professional misstep, until you. We already got to Denkler through his sister. The easiest way to take him all the way down was through you. And now you’re going to stop, aren’t you?”

  “Stop what?”

  “Oh, I suspect when you leave my doorstep in twenty seconds, you will go to Denkler’s and tell him to resign from the race. Or I will happily share all those emails and texts. My God, the things the two of you did.” Nick said, recoiling, as if he were disgusted with Jack. “She’s dirty. She likes it dirty, doesn’t she?”

  The rage spread like wildfire in Jack’s blood. He twisted Nick’s collar, pushing the man who once called himself Clark against the railing of his stoop.

  “Do it. Push me over. Break a bone. And I will find a way to call you a pedophile. You think you’re so fucking untouchable? No one is untouchable. For all I know, you might even sell child pornography.”

  Jack eyes were about to pop out of his head. He wanted to snap this man’s neck, to crack every single bone in his body. But he knew he would only hurt Michelle and his sister and everyone at his company if he did that. Instead, he spat on him. It wasn’t the least bit satisfying. Then he let go, and backed off.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” Nick said, taunting.

  “No. That’s all you’re getting. You fucking scum.”

  Nick held out his hands, like a big-shot boxer gloating in the ring. “Politics, baby. We’re the scummiest.”

  “You did all this to win a councilman race?”

  Nick laughed. “I did it because it’s my job. My job is to help my client win. By any means necessary. Conroy wants a victory in the Upper East Side, and I’m delivering it to him. Now, you do as I say. You go tell Denkler he needs to step down from the race by the end of next week or I will fucking bury your woman. Maybe I won’t leak any more texts. Maybe I’ll escalate,” he said, biting off that word as if it were filthy. “Hell, maybe I’ll even go straight to the ethics board and say she tried to seduce poor, vulnerable Clark Davidson in her office, too.”

  “You have no soul.”

  “Of course I don’t. You should try it some time. It’s freeing. Now I need to go wash my face. Because I know where your mouth has been,” he said, and Jack broke. He ripped in two. The rational, logical part of him evaporated, and instinct took over. He lunged at Nick, and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw.

  Hard.

  So hard, the man’s lip cracked.

  Then he did it again.

  Nick yowled, and the sound was satisfying for about a second as Jack shook out his hand. He reached into his back pocket, grabbed his cell phone, and showed it to Nick. “By the way, cell phones are such nifty spying devices, don’t you think? Feel free to go after me for assault. I’ve got this entire conversation recorded for posterity.”

  Then he walked off. When he could speak again without breathing fire, he called his sister and told her it was time for Plan B.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Plan B

  Davis wasn’t sure if he liked this guy. He wasn’t sure if he wanted him anywhere near his sister ever again. But he respected her choices, and if she was in love with him, and was happy, then he’d support her.

  Right now, she was asking him what he thought about Jack’s Plan B.

  Seeing as how his sister had already lost one-third of her clients, and it was only day two of the story from hell, he didn’t see how Plan B could hurt. Especially since the Page Six story had taken on a life of its own and spawned viral videos on YouTube. Stupid spoofs of patients seducing shrinks, and vice versa. Many were rising up through the social world, his sister’s friend Sutton had told him, warning him to keep Michelle off YouTube. That Page Six story had the longest legs he’d ever seen.

  “Not a problem,” Davis had said when Sutton called earlier. “I don’t think Michelle even knows YouTube exists.”

  “Oh, stop it. Your sister is not clueless to the social media world.”

  “No. She’s not. She just prefers to do other things. But I appreciate the heads up, Sutton.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s pretty shell-shocked. Her mentor called and told her the workshop she was leading was axed. More clients cancelled. The backlash is pretty bad. They did a number on her with that story. It was like a match that started a whole fire.”

  Sutton gave a sympathetic sigh. “I’m so sorry. It’s awful. Give her my love.”

  “I will,” he said, then returned to his sister, who told him about Jack’s plan.

  She wanted to know if it could do more damage.

  “It’s so hard to say,” he answered. “But I honestly don’t know how it could do more damage. Maybe it could deflect the attention to him, where it should be.”

  “It’s fine,” she said, her monotone voice an echo of his sister. She was vibrant and sharp, like a high-definition TV. Now, she was playing in black and white as she listlessly opened her fridge, grabbed her water pitcher and poured a small glass.

  “It’s not fine. This should never have happened. It pisses me off that this happened,” he said, treading dangerously close to what he wanted to say. How can I not blame this guy you love?

  She drank the water, then set the glass on her counter. “It’s not his fault, Davis. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

  He held up his hands, knowing he’d been caught. “Michelle, you’ve worked so hard for your career, and I hate that this guy’s support of a political campaign is killing you.”

  She scoffed. “I know. But I don’t even care anymore.”

  “That’s not true. You do care. You care about everything.”

  She shot him a rueful smile. “And look where it got me. Everything I’ve worked for is going down the drain.”

  “You’ll reinvent yourself,” he said, grasping her hand, changing tactics. He had to. His annoyance with Jack wasn’t helping. He’d have to let it go. “And I’ll be here every step of the way.”

  “I know. I just want to go away. Maybe I should take the job in Paris,” she said in an offhand voice.

  Davis straightened his spine. “You were offered a job in Paris?”

  “Sort of. Well, almost. After my keynote, Julien introduced me to one of his colleagues, Denis. I talked to Denis for a while. He was impressed with my findings, and he emailed me yesterday to say he wants to talk more to see if I’d be interested in working with him. It was one of the many emails I received when I landed. I haven’t had a chance to respond yet. I had a lot going on,” she said sarcastically, and the fact that she’d recovered even a modicum of humor gave him a sliver of hope that she’d be okay.

  “Do you want to talk more to Denis?” he asked gently.

  She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m sure he hasn’t seen the reports yet, and when he does, he won’t touch me with a ten-foot pole either. You might as well just tell Jack that his Plan B is fine. I’m going to take a shower. I have to see the ethics board in an hour. Why don’t you look at the email and tell me what Denis said? I can’t bear any more bad news.”

  When he heard the shower running, Davis scrolled through his sister’s work phone. It was the safe phone, as he’d started calling it. Her personal phone was the one that had been hacked. They’d been able to figure that much out since only details from her personal email had been revealed in the story, and she hadn’t been emailing Jack while they were in Paris, so at least their time there was untouched, she’d said. She’d smashed her personal phone with a hammer last night.

  He’d reset her work phone for her this morning, so they knew that one was clean.

  He thumbed through her notes, looking for the one from Denis and read it quickly.

  * * *

  Michelle didn’t think she could take another surprise hit. When she saw Jennifer from her consulting group leave the office of the ethics board on the Upper West Side building, she asked her directly, “What were you doing there?”

  Jennifer held up her chin, and flashed a small smile. “I went in on my own. I wanted to tell them how much I admire you. How I know everything being said is wrong. That you’re the victim, here, of a smear attack that has nothing to do with you.”

  A tear of gratitude threatened to escape. “You did that for me?”

  The young therapist nodded. “I did. I don’t need to know the details. I don’t believe the stories.”

  “Thank you,” Michelle said, truly touched. She didn’t even know Jennifer that well, which made the effort all the more meaningful.

  Jennifer leaned closer and whispered. “I bet it was that client you mentioned who was checking you out. Probably a psycho.”

  “Probably,” Michelle said, then walked through a green door and into the office. She told her colleagues the same story she told Carla, that she told Kana, that she told anyone who’d asked. “He was never my patient.”

  It was the whole, entire truth, and it was all she had to go on. Kana had been there too, they said. Kana had explained that Michelle had referred Jack to her that very first day. More evidence, but she feared it would never be enough.

  When she left, she checked her voicemail, and found more cancellations. She was hemorrhaging faster than a slashed artery. Sometimes the truth wasn’t enough to change the reality.

  * * *

  Jack knocked on the green door. A graying man who looked like a professor invited him in. He was with a woman who had her hair pulled into a tight bun, and another man, who looked to be middle-aged. They were in charge of Michelle’s professional fate. They held the power to take her license away.

  The graying man went first. “Take a seat.”

  Jack sat on a hard brown chair. “I know you didn’t call me, but I needed to be here.”

  “We are glad you found us. We treat all these situations seriously. Let’s start at the beginning.”

  “She refused to treat me. It’s that simple. Everything else is a lie. Everything is spin. It’s the press trying to make it look a certain way.”

  Later, he joined his sister in midtown, who introduced him to her friend at The New York Press. Her name was Caroline, and he sat down with her at the corner table of a quiet cafe. Caroline wore her red hair in a tight braid down her back, and had a pink knit scarf around her neck. She shook his hand. “I’m going to take notes the whole time,” Caroline said, diving right into the matter as she began typing on her laptop. “Let’s start with the news of the hour, of course.”

  “The one about me being a guy who happens to be dating a shrink?” he said, doing his best to keep it light.

  She laughed. “Yes, that one.”

  “Here’s the story . . .”

  He’d expected her question, and he’d answered honestly, as he’d done before the ethics board. He didn’t know if this would be enough to save Michelle. But the problems had all started with perception. The media’s perception of him. The public’s perception of sexuality. Nick’s perception of fair targets. If this had all started with warped perceptions, even the ones about him, he could at least set those straight.

  After addressing the first question, Caroline dived into a bigger one. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, why did you see a psychologist in the first place. Was it because of Aubrey?”

  Ah.

  The root of his problem. Of his struggles. Of what had sent him down the path and into Michelle’s arms in the first place. The last thing he wanted to do was blame a dead woman. The truth of their split was something the deceased didn’t need heaped on her.

  But he could come clean about his own emotional state.

  “You know, it was. But probably not for the reasons everyone thinks. I cared about Aubrey deeply, and I mourned the loss of her as anyone would. But by the time I went to see a therapist, I had a different issue to deal with surrounding her death. We had an argument that same day, a few minutes before her run, and she died shortly after. I’m going to live with that guilt. And I have been living with it for the last year, and I was ready to let it go. That’s why I went to a shrink. To start to move past the regret I felt over the things that were said in those final moments. I was able to do that with another therapist, and also with the support of friends, family and people I love.”

  He wouldn’t vilify a dead woman, but he didn’t want to be known as the grieving widower anymore. “And that includes the woman I’m in love with. And yes, she happens to be a shrink, and I’m pleased to say she’s not my shrink.”

  Caroline continued typing, then looked up at Jack, pausing over the keys. “I also understand from Casey that you have some new plans in the works related to the political campaign you’ve been supporting.”

  Jack nodded. “Yes, we do,” he said because he hadn’t asked Denkler to withdraw. That was never in the cards. Denkler was trying to do good for the city, and he’d been forced into a corner. Jack wasn’t going to continue to let Michelle, nor his business, his sister, his friends like Henry and Marquita, nor his life be dictated by a bully. Nick “Clark Davidson” Bradshaw might be able to spin a tale to the tabloids and start a viral trend, but that didn’t mean everyone would respond to his tactics. “But we’d really rather show you. Do you have a minute to go to Eden?”

  Caroline shot him a curious look as she closed her laptop. “I love Eden,” she said in a whisper.

  “So do a lot of people,” Casey said, then dropped her voice too. “Have you tried The Wild One? It’s divine.”

  “God, I know. It’s amazing,” Caroline said.

  Minutes later, they’d reached the store on the Upper East Side. Even from across the street, anyone could tell it was packed. Casey had unleashed the marketing promotional plans on social media that morning, earlier than planned, since they’d switched to Plan B. But the change-the-conversation tactic needed to be moved up. Jack wanted to take all the attention off Michelle and off the BDSM clubs too. He’d gotten into this business in the first place because he believed in pleasure, and all the different routes to it. He believed playing dirty was best reserved for a true war, and for true lovers in the bedroom.

  Caroline peered at the large sign in hot pink print on the front of the store.

  “All proceeds from any Joy Delivered products bought at Eden in store and online for the rest of the year will be donated to breast cancer research. May your days and nights be filled with pleasure beyond your wildest fantasies.”

  Caroline’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit. That could be a lot of money.”

  Casey jumped in. “So far today, in the first few hours of the promotion being announced, we’ve raised several thousand dollars. We planned to wait until the charity gala this week to make the announcement, but now seemed a better time.”