I hadn’t known I was still that susceptible. It was silly. But it was the truth.
It had been four months since I’d seen him. Four months since I’d stood him up and then called him-when I’d known he wouldn’t be home-and left a message on his answering machine, apologizing and explaining that it was just too soon after my divorce for me to think about dating anyone.
That had been a lie.
It had not been too soon.
I was scared of the detective and what I felt when I was with him.
Noah Jordain had walked into my office one afternoon and my heart had skipped a beat. His searching blue eyes had looked right into my dark brown ones and he’d dared me to look away. A police trick, I’d thought. Did he even know he was doing it? I dared him to look away first. A therapist’s trick. He didn’t. We were evenly matched. He held out his hand and I shook it, aware of it being large, pleasantly dry, but not too rough. I could tell he had enormous strength in his fingers but that he was aware of it and was being careful. And then the impact of him hit me. Like a blast of steam. For a minute nothing mattered and I lost my bearings. This had not happened to me with anyone I’d ever met, and it shook me to my core. I know better than to attribute instant attraction to anything but past psychological association-someone who looks like someone else whom you liked a lot-or a hormonal, pheromone, chemical reaction between two mammals.
It hadn’t been that simple for us.
Faster than seemed possible, better than any shrink could have, he’d psyched me out and gotten under my skin. And that scared me. I don’t like things I can’t put a name to, or explain by some science or therapeutic logic. We might have been good together but, more likely, I think we would have destroyed each other. Neither of us was willing to keep from going too deep into the other’s psyche. It all happened too fast and…I ran.
After that I’d promptly forgotten about him.
So seeing his name that morning in the greenroom, I was surprised at my reaction. Obviously, he’d made a stronger impression than I’d thought.
Bullshit.
I’d known exactly how strong an impression he’d made. That was why I’d run. He was overpowering. Sure of himself. A little arrogant, but kind. Caring. And. And. And. Sexually powerful. Jordain made me think about getting naked, about skin on skin, about lips locking. I looked at him and remembered his lips on mine, on my breasts, pulling on my nipples, nuzzling between my legs. I leaned into him, smelled him, and couldn’t think of anything but putting my hands under his shirt, undressing him and doing whatever he wanted me to do. I wanted to surrender to that power. To let it take me over and see where it would lead. I had never thought about those things before I’d slept with him.
I had heard them from patients. I had dreamed them. I had even been thankful I did not feel that with my husband. It was too absorbing. I didn’t want to surrender to any emotion, to any passion. Ever.
Jordain had too much intuition about me. About what I thought. About how to touch me. About how to make my body curve to his. About how to blow on the spot where my neck met my collarbone with breath so hot I had to close my eyes and hold on to his arms with tightened fingers.
He would have weakened me.
And that was not the worst he could have done.
A flush of heat warmed the back of my neck. My celery silk shirt was suddenly sticking to my back and my olive gabardine jacket felt as if it was a whole size too small.
Turning from the paper, I took another sip of the coffee, which by then was lukewarm. And another. I looked down at the ring on my right hand-a butterfly made of white gold, paved with tsarvorite in the wings and just a few tiny diamond chips in the body. It had been a birthday gift from my daughter and her godmother-my surrogate mother, Nina. I touched the tips of the wings, which were almost, but not quite, sharp enough to hurt. They had surprised me with the present just days after the Magdalene Murderer had been apprehended.
Just days after I’d almost been killed, along with one of my patients.
Just days after the last time I spoke to Detective Jordain.
“Dr. Snow? You’ll be on as soon as this news break is over. Would you come with me, please?”
The air was freezing in studio 1A and I shivered as we walked down the hall, aware that I was cold over a layer of heat that was, like a memory, holding its own beneath the surface of my skin.
This was the last thing I needed to think about minutes before the camera focused on me.
“Do you need anything before you go on?” she asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
But that wasn’t true.
Eight
“I’m not here to talk about going into therapy myself. I’m here on behalf of a group of women who would like you to conduct private group therapy sessions for them,” Shelby Rush said.
More than twenty-five phone calls had come in on Friday afternoon, following my appearance on the Today show. The receptionist at the Butterfield Institute, where I practiced, said that all but one had asked what kind of health insurance I accepted and what my rates were. Five of them had said they would call back to schedule appointments after they checked with their insurance agents. I wasn’t planning on taking on all of them as patients. My schedule was already tight. But I’d meet them and evaluate them so that I could refer them to the right therapist at the institute.
One woman had asked for an appointment without inquiring about either my rates or the insurance, and now she sat opposite me in my pale yellow office, on the other side of my desk. Shelby was in her mid-thirties, attractive and articulate in a way that many women in Manhattan are. Her expensive clothes were unremarkable. Taupe slacks, white silk shell and black blazer. High-heeled Chanel shoes and a Gucci handbag-taupe fabric with interlocking Gs.
I dressed pretty much the way she did-but less expensively. The look was the same though: classic, tailored, chic. The New York City uniform for women over thirty. Not an expression of individuality so much as a way to win the fashion war that most of us were tired of once we left our twenties.
You can’t read us by these clothes. Our shoes and bags, our suits, shirts and slacks all mean nothing. Our secret souls aren’t exposed by the name on the label inside our jackets. They are not even visible on our faces.
Some therapists claim that they can get a glimpse of their patients’ real selves in their eyes, but I wasn’t sure of that anymore. Maybe it was because so many of the successful business professionals I worked with had learned the art of concealment and false impressions for work. Maybe it was because my talents lay more in getting people to open up, because they trusted I wouldn’t judge them. I don’t believe in popular psychology or fast fixes.
“What kind of organization do you belong to, Shelby? Why do you think I’d be the right therapist?”
She uncrossed her hands and looked down at her nails as if she’d find the answer to my question cribbed on the pale pink ovals.
I took her emotional temperature. She didn’t fidget, but she bit her bottom lip and held the skin between her teeth so long it seemed as if the action was actually preventing her from speaking.
“Shelby?”
“This is a little complicated, Dr. Snow.”
I nodded, encouraging her. She bit her lip again. I could wait as long as it took her to decide she was ready to tell me. I glanced at the two high arched windows on the south wall of my office. Beyond them was a three-foot-wide ledge-which, in Manhattan, many would call a terrace. It was only big enough to stand on and look down at the sidewalk or up at the sky, but I’d crammed the space with planters containing flowers and bushes that attracted butterflies.