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Running her hands over her pencil skirt, she collected herself. “I have the same fears most people do. Fear of failure. Fear of being alone.”
“I bet you’ve never failed anything in your life.”
It was a fair bet for those who knew her now. But she hadn’t always been this way. If Sean had known her as a child, he’d have different things to say. At the very least, he wouldn’t compare her to John Wayne.
“Never failing only makes the stakes higher,” she said, smoothing out a wrinkle in her yellow blouse. “Anyway, fear is normal. You’ve hit rock bottom, and you don’t want to go back. You have every right to be scared. Just acknowledge it, and like John Wayne says, saddle up.”
His fake smile wasn’t encouraging. This discharge really had him rattled.
“The most important thing for you is not to give up on yourself. Remember we talked about the reasons to fight? Just keep replaying that in your head.”
He sat in silence, gazing out the window. The rock garden under the willow tree was supposed to be a therapeutic place of refuge. She always thought it looked more like a graveyard.
Normally, Sean was pretty chatty. They’d talked about the meaning of life, religion, books, everything. He was a deep thinker, and for that, she enjoyed him as a client. So this staring silently out the window was a little worrisome.
“You have all your contacts, right?”
He nodded.
“And your phone is back on?”
“Yes.”
She tried to catch his gaze. “You still have a week left. How about you come back to see me twice more?” She smiled warmly. “Maybe I’ll watch a John Wayne movie and we can discuss it.”
He rumbled a laugh, making her feel a bit better about his mental state.
“What?”
“I can’t picture you watching John Wayne.”
Scowling, she shifted and crossed her legs. “Why not?”
“You seem so . . . proper.”
This time, she laughed. If he only knew. “Maybe so, but we have lives outside of here. I’m not my job, just like you’re not your addiction.”
He smiled slyly. “There’s no ring on your finger. No pictures of kids on your desk. What kind of life do you have outside of here?”
Averting his gaze, she swallowed hard. That hit close to home. Bastard. She almost laughed. There was truth there. Reading dirty books every night with her vibrator as her only company wasn’t a life. She talked big about courage and facing your fears, but was she living it?
Usually she didn’t let anything hold her back from what she wanted, least of all fear. And up to this point she’d been pretty forward in figuring out the BDSM stuff. But something about Banner, the conviction of his intentions, made her nervous. On an intrinsic level, she knew that if she took the next step with him, there was no going back.
“Sorry,” Sean said. “That was uncalled for. I’m sure you at least have a boyfriend or something.”
Ignoring the fishing, she smiled slightly, then grabbed her schedule book off her desk. “Tuesday at eleven, okay?”
He nodded, then stood up and looked down at her. “I think you’re right, Kate. Being afraid will drive me back to rock bottom. And I don’t want to be there again. I’m gonna stay positive.”
“Good.” She watched him leave the room, pleased with his change in attitude and hoping it would last.
As for her, it was time to practice what she preached. She took her phone out of her desk drawer, texted Banner, then hit SEND before she could chicken out.
Chapter 2
Answering work e-mail was the most boring part of Banner’s day. He’d spent all morning trying to avoid it, but eventually there was nothing left to read, sign, or sharpen. The first lines of several messages should have piqued his curiosity, but they only made him want to bang his head on something. He didn’t feel like being a responsible adult today, but the boss wasn’t allowed to have tantrums. Although his protégé, Belle, fielded a lot of the nuisance messages for him, there were some he had to answer himself.
Annoyed by the rub of his shirt cuffs against his desk, he unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them back to his elbows, revealing the ravens tattooed on one forearm and the world tree on the other. Although he never let business acquaintances see his tattoos, knowing that they were there under his business attire gave him some comfort. He hadn’t always been Mr. Suit and Tie Guy, let alone Mr. Wholesome Family Business Guy, and even now the trappings of the respectable world chafed. This hadn’t been what he’d wanted out of life. Not by a long shot.
