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.”