Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he’d inherited it like a congenital disease—a lack of the ability to love. If he couldn’t love Aubrey, what the hell was wrong with him? That’s what he’d really like to figure out. He bet Michelle would know. He was sure Michelle would have all the answers as to what ailed him.
But it wasn’t as if he could ask her those questions. Not now. Not for so many reasons.
“I just saw the shrink,” he said in answer to the ornery question.
“Ah. Then all that talking has got you pissed off.”
“Hardly any talking from me. More like the questions she asked.”
“So how is it going?”
He heaved a sigh as the light changed, and the cars squealed to their stops at the red. Casey started to walk, but a cab careened by, not bothering to stop. Grabbing her quickly at the waist, he tugged her back.
“Careful,” he said, his heart galloping.
She looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes. “They’re crazy here.”
“Everyone’s crazy. Just watch out, Case.”
“Anyway, so how is Dr. Milo?”
“Here’s the thing,” he said in a clipped voice. While his sister didn’t need to know he was sleeping with his almost-shrink, he didn’t like lying to her. He could skirt the details. “It didn’t work out with her so I’m seeing someone else. A few floors down.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised. “Is the new one good?”
He shrugged.
“Jack,” she said, like a plea.
“I’m trying, but I don’t know that anything is going to make a difference. It happened. I said what I said to Aubrey and she’s dead, and there’s nothing that I can ever say or do to unwind things.”
She grabbed his shirt collar and shot him a rueful look. “Don’t say that. Besides, you need to work on this. You need to fix your head. We have a business to run and a big charity event coming up soon,” she said, her words a reminder of the gala they were supporting to fund breast cancer research. “I got a call from a reporter at the New York Press. She does lifestyle pieces, and she wants to do one on you, a year later.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “I don’t want to do a piece on me a year later.”
“I know. But it would be good for business. The press loves you. And this isn’t Page Six. New York Press does classy pieces. I think it would be good for business, and good for you. You're the Soldier-Turned-Sex-Toy-Mogul, and one of NYC's most eligible bachelors, so get your butt in gear and stop all this self-loathing.”
“I don’t hate myself,” he said, then tapped his breastbone as they neared their office building. “Something in here doesn’t work properly. No shrink is ever going fix it.”
Besides, everyone was better off if he didn’t try again. If he didn’t get close to anyone, he wouldn’t have the power to wound her. If he didn’t love a woman, he would never hurt that woman by breaking her heart.
She rolled her eyes. “You are going to fix yourself. Because it’s time to move on.”
His phone buzzed with a text from Michelle.
M: I’m going shopping right now.
J: For?
He tucked his phone away, but was eager for her answer.
CHAPTER NINE
Disguises
She was surrounded by fake schlongs.
“Explain this to me,” her friend said in her crisp, British accent. “How large does a vagina need to be to accommodate this?” Sutton’s eyes sparkled as she held a monster-sized vibrator that might have been as long as her arm.
“You need a jumbo size vagina for that,” Michelle answered, tapping a fingernail against the fleshy dildo that could likely double as a truck.
Sutton set the toy that neither woman would be buying back on its shelf. “Seriously, I do not want to feel as if I’m fucking a truck when Reeve is away on shoots,” Sutton said. She had freely admitted to spending more time with her toys while her actor husband was shooting a new movie in Canada. “Anyway, we’re not here for me. We’re here for you.”
They wandered away from the alien-size dildos at Eden on the Upper East Side to a classier section of the still-quite-classy shop. Michelle had scanned the sidewalk up and down before they’d entered the store, then had been careful to survey the shop itself to make sure the coast was clear. Sure, a patient could walk in at any given moment, but she was taking her chances anyway because she didn’t want to wait for an online delivery.
A flurry of tingles rushed down Michelle’s spine as she spotted The One. Jack hadn’t used that toy on her, but still, just knowing that he’d played a role in its creation excited her. Then again, most things he did thrilled her. Their first two weeks together had been nothing short of spectacular. It was everything he’d promised when he’d made his most unusual proposition. Nights of bliss. Nights of pleasure. Nights with him were that and only that. They’d laughed, and teased, and flirted, and then they’d fucked. Every time, she’d felt as if he were fucking the hurt and the longing away. The ache inside of her from the last several unwanted years was being erased. Jack Sullivan was a crash course in learning to heal.
She had something in mind for him. He’d had a busy week, so she wanted to surprise him with a treat. She and Sutton perused a section of the store with smaller toys.
“What does one get for the man who makes these things?” Sutton mused.
“It is quite a quandary, isn’t it?”
“I mean, it’s not as if you’re going to peg him.”
Michelle cracked up, one hand on her belly reining in a huge laugh. “I’m absolutely not ever going to peg him, or another man. I like my men to be men. And I like their assholes to remain virgins,” she said in a whisper as she draped an arm around her friend.
Sutton raised an imaginary glass. “To virgin assholes. May they always remain un-penetrated.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
Michelle spotted the gift that she wanted for Jack. She snatched it off the shelf, marched to the counter, purchased it, and then left with Sutton.
“How are things with you?” Michelle asked. “Do you miss Reeve, with him in Vancouver right now?”
“Terribly,” Sutton said, clutching her heart. “I should be used to it, but I’m not.”
Sutton and Reeve had been together for two years, married for one. A powerful casting director, she’d helped him earn his first big break, but once he nabbed the role in Escorted Lives, his career took off like a shot.