Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) (12 page)

Ben was already home by the time I picked up Jake and got to his house.

In fact, I saw as he opened the door to my knock, he’d had time to shower, judging from his damp hair that curled at the ends, and change into a pair of faded jeans I remembered from when we dated. A dark green t-shirt did lovely things to his hazel eyes and to the muscles the shirt clung to beneath it. For a fleeting moment I wondered whether, as I had this morning, Ben had done the male version of primping for my arrival.

I was trying not to let my heart leap to conclusions, but things like this were making it hard. So was Ben’s warm greeting as he let Jake inside and invited me in for a beer.

As we had yesterday, we stood together in the kitchen, taking sips of our brown ales in between Ben feeding Jake and letting him out while I filled him in on how the dog had seemed today (which was blissfully content). It was easy and comfortable and warm, the way we’d once sat together in the evenings telling each other about our days.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that Ben was dating another woman, it would have felt utterly…domestic.

I needed a day to regroup and work on my game plan with Sasha, given my lack of success so far. But first I had one more rabbit in my hat—this one involving Intern Paige. At lunchtime I brought her a sandwich and carefully explained what I wanted her to do. Then, Jake at my heels, I went in to eat at my desk—something I probably did too often—and texted Sasha to call me at the office.

I could tell when the phone rang a few minutes later that it was her from Paige’s loud announcement from the reception area: “Oh,
hi
, Sasha!” she shouted.

That was my cue. Silently I picked up the extension in my office, careful to press the mute button.

“You caught me in the middle of making a college loan payment,” Paige was saying—rather woodenly, I had to admit.

“Oh. Cool. Hey, Brook wanted me to call her on this line. She around?”

But Intern Paige determinedly plodded ahead: “Yes, my tuition isn’t really that bad because I chose an in-state school—and I’m paying it through partial scholarships, grants, and low-interest student loans.”

“Uh, wow. That’s terrific.” Sasha sounded perplexed; Paige wasn’t usually one for chitchat.

“Yes. And another thing is that my parents instilled in me the need for higher education. They helped me understand how important it is.”

I rolled my eyes. I’d written down a few bullet points for Paige to bring up, but I’d hoped she’d do more than read them.

“Is that so?” Sasha’s voice had taken on a predatory tone I knew well.

“That’s what I said.”

“That is fascinating, Paige,” Sasha said. “But I call bullshit.”

Dammit.

“What do you mean?” Paige said, sounding nervous.

“I have never met anyone more focused and serious about their schooling and career than you. I’m guessing you popped out of the womb with your eight-year college plan already formulated in your head.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be possible. Babies’ thought processes aren’t fully—”

“Your parents never said a word about college, did they?”

Dead panicked silence on the other end of the line told me I needed to step in and save poor Intern Paige.

I unmuted the phone. “It’s okay, Paige. Just tell her.”

“Um…they didn’t really care one way or the other. They just wanted me to be happy. Sorry, Brook.”

“My fault,” I said wearily.

“I knew it!” Sasha accused me.

I thanked Paige and let her literally off the hook—I hadn’t told her the reason I’d enlisted her for my college campaign, but one of the many excellent things about Intern Paige was that she threw herself wholeheartedly into anything I requested of her, no questions asked. She offered a hurried goodbye on a tangible wave of relief, and I braced to face Sash with a mouthful of apologies.

She made me grovel for her forgiveness before she offered it—and only after I threw in the promise of another foot rub—but when I told her about meeting Michael tonight, all was immediately forgotten.

“Really? Just the two of you, out at a restaurant alone? I don’t think so. I’m coming.”

I laughed. “Come on, Sash. I’ll be fine. It’s not like he’s dangerous.”

“You’re too forgiving of people. It makes you gullible. I’m not letting you get tangled up with him again without vetting things for myself.”

I tried to dissuade her, but when she threatened to call Stu and tell him to meet us there too, I finally relented and said she could come along. One of them I could control—but both Sasha and Stu in righteous-anger mode might be lethal for my ex.

I picked Sasha up after dropping Jake off at Ben’s—unfortunately before he’d gotten home from work—and I kept a hawk eye on her as we walked into Flamingo Joe’s.

It wasn’t that I was worried about what she might do to Michael when she finally saw him in person (although to be truthful, I did have my concerns). Mostly I wanted to see her reaction to the new-and-improved version of my former party-boy-musician fiancé.

He shot to his feet as we approached his corner booth, and I saw the moment he realized who was walking beside me: His whole face blanched, but he recovered almost immediately, pushing the smile back onto his lips.

Sasha reacted to him too. He wore a neatly ironed blue-and-yellow-striped button-down and nice khaki pants, a navy sport coat pulling it all together. His jaw was smooth from a fresh shave, his usually tousled hair tamed. He looked undeniably handsome, but disorientingly unfamiliar. I darted a glance down to his feet; the navy Converse high-tops comforted me—as much as I liked the new-and-improved version of him, I was glad the old Michael hadn’t completely disappeared.

I could tell she was momentarily thrown by the polished stranger in front of her who resembled my ex-fiancé, but I caught his smirk and the spark of amusement in his eyes that revealed the Michael we had known.

“Sashimi!” he said in a hearty tone. “Good to see you again.”

Sasha stopped dead in front of him and shoved a finger about an inch away from his nose, a black look on her face. “No. You do not get to call me that anymore, doucheface. Sit.”

Michael arced a glance to me, but to his credit he sat. Sasha loomed over him like an Amazon warrior priestess, trying to glower him into submission, but when he refused to cower away from her she finally broke off her death glare and followed me to the other side of the booth, saving me from my own internal dilemma: How did you greet your former fiancé? Did we hug? Shake hands? Slap a high five?

We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, but when it became clear that neither one of them was going to speak, I fired an opening sally. “So…I brought Sasha along because she was interested in hearing about your plan for my Breakup Doctor business.”

“I was
interested
in making sure you aren’t jacking my friend around.
Again
,” she bit out, still staring hard at Michael. “I don’t trust you. And I don’t like you. Brook’s a better person than I am, and for some reason she’s decided to acknowledge your sorry existence. But just so we’re clear…I don’t care what J. Crew store you raided, or how much product you glopped into your hair—if you’re here to screw with her, in any way, I will saw your scrotum off and shove it down your severed windpipe.”

I just about choked on my own saliva, but Michael merely nodded. “That’s fair. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you, Sashi— Sasha.”

Her finger jabbed toward him again across the table. “And don’t pretend you know anything about me, or that we’re still any kind of friends. You destroyed that along with your relationship with Brook.” Once upon a time Michael and Sasha had been close—sometimes I thought she had been almost as hurt as I was by his sudden defection.

“I know,” Michael said quietly. “I’m sorrier about that than I can tell you. About everything.” All trace of his forced joviality had evaporated, and I scanned Sasha’s face for any sign of softening, but her arms were knotted across her chest, her eyebrows colliding.

“What can I get you guys to drink?” The server’s interruption provided a welcome distraction—at least for me—and I gratefully ordered a glass of water. Sasha followed suit, Michael ordering iced tea. Before they could resume hostilities, I tried to steer things back to safer ground.

“Why don’t you show us what you have in mind for my business, Michael?” I prompted.

He looked at both of us, his gaze lingering for a moment on Sasha as if he were reluctant to take his eyes off her (I couldn’t blame him—you didn’t turn your back on a rabid coyote). But finally he reached over to where an open briefcase rested on the banquette beside him—a briefcase! From the man whose “business plan” for his old band had mostly involved notes scribbled on crumpled cocktail napkins—and set it on the table. He pulled open the top and tapped the keyboard, and the screen jumped to life to reveal a PowerPoint slide: an image of a broken heart with a Band-Aid patching it together, above the words “Breakup Doctor Promotional Proposal.”

Sasha rolled her eyes.

“Okay…here’s where you are now,” he began, hitting another key to advance the slide.

He’d done some homework, based on what I’d told him, pulling up each prong of my current business and then showing its organic reach: the number of clients I could fit into an average week, considering fifty-minute sessions and a nine-hour day; my group therapy clients (about ten to twelve per six to eight weeks); the circulation of the
Tropic Times
, where my weekly column ran; and ratings for the radio station where I did my twice-weekly appearances, as well as those of the individual shows I appeared on. Seeing it all laid out like that made me realize just how much my business had grown.

The server showed back up with our drinks and we ordered food, none of us consulting the menu—the bayfront restaurant was a longtime haunt for locals, and there was only one item Michael and I had ever ordered there: their famous grouper Reuben. Sasha ordered the grouper balls. “And a sharp knife for the balls,” she added to the server, but her flinty eyes were pasted on Michael.

As soon as the server left Michael resumed, pulling up a financial report, many of the spaces blank.

“You don’t have to tell me exact amounts if you don’t want to,” he said, swiping the touch screen with his thumb and finger to blow up the empty graph. “I just want you to start thinking about what’s yielding the best results, income-wise, so we can focus our game plan.”

“Hold it right there,” Sasha said, putting up a hand. “First off, it isn’t ‘our’ anything. This is Brook’s business—not yours. You’re just a tool.” She gave a mirthless smile. “Literally. Second, her financials are none of your damn business either. Is that what this is all about? Are you trying to cash in on Brook now that she’s a huge success when you’re such a complete and total failure?”

“Sash, he’s not—”

“No, that’s okay, Brook. She’s right—the specifics don’t have to be my business. I’d just like to try to help you maximize your potential.”

“And how much do you want her to pay you for this little maximization?” she retorted inexorably.

“Nothing right now.”

Sasha snorted.

I wanted to ask her to tone it down—we’d never get past the second slide at this rate—but there was a part of me that was basking in having someone tear Michael a new one on my behalf. I’d forgiven him, but I wasn’t such a saint that I didn’t enjoy seeing him suffer a little.

“Really?” she said, skepticism dripping from her tone like acid. “You’re doing all this just out of the kindness of your shriveled heart?”

Michael sighed and looked up, as if seeking divine intervention for the termagant across the table. “No, Sasha,” he said patiently. “As with any agent or manager, I will take a percentage of whatever contracts I’m able to negotiate for Brook. A standard fifteen percent,” he cut her off as she opened her mouth. “And only if Brook agrees. Does that seem fair?”

She just narrowed her eyes and looked out the window at the undulating river.

“It’s not really germane at the moment,” I jumped in, trying to smooth our own choppy waters. “Except for my actual counseling, the rest of all that doesn’t…” I trailed off. “I mean, I do charge a little something for the group sessions. And I get a stipend from the paper. But mostly those efforts are about reaching more people.”

Michael raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the red vinyl booth. “Is this Big Eyes all over again?”

When I’d had my old traditional practice, I’d often operated on a sliding scale to help people who didn’t have insurance or might not be able to afford therapy otherwise. Michael had always told me I slid things way too far:
I know you want to help everyone, but you can’t keep slashing your rates for every pair of big sad eyes and a sob story. It devalues what you’re doing.

“No,” I protested. “Well, a little,” I conceded immediately. “But you have to admit it’s good promotion—I get a lot of clients from the column and the shows.”

He spread his hands. “Which we’ve just determined you have a limited capacity for. Not the best use of your resources, Brook. And besides, it really deval—”

“—devalues what I’m doing,” I finished along with him. “I know, I know.”

He was smiling at me with fond exasperation, like a parent watching her two-year-old come inside covered in mud. “You can’t say no to anyone, can you?”

“I can say no.”

“I’ll bet if I offered to buy you a Joe’s Chocolate Volcano after dinner, I can prove you can’t say no.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

“Oh, really?” Sasha cut in flatly, her sharp gaze now pinned back on Michael. “She said no to
you
.”

Her harsh comment chased his grin away and served as a bucket of cold water in the face of our banter.

I didn’t actually mind the reminder. It was too easy to fall into our old comfortable rapport.

Michael shrugged and offered a weak smile. “Yes. She did. So you don’t have to worry, Sasha. Brook’s in no danger of letting her guard down with me. She can take care of herself.”

I thought she’d bristle at that, but she only growled, “Damn straight. Don’t forget it.”

I cleared my throat and put my hand on Sasha’s leg beneath the table. She’d always been protective, but I’d never seen her in full mama-bear mode to this degree. I wondered whether it was entirely because of Michael, or had something to do with budding maternal instincts. I fervently hoped for the latter. “This is a weird transition for us,” I said to them both, hoping to soothe the crackling conflict between them. “There are going to be some growing pains.”