by Holly Hart
As she walks over, I remove my suit jacket and half roll-up my sleeves. I’m careful not to go too far; careful to hide the marks that lie beneath.
I take a deep breath before she arrives at the table. She’s not late, I was just half an hour early. I don’t know why, but there’s something about this girl that has me acting like I never do – acting nervous, acting like a teenage boy taking his high school crush to prom.
It ends here. I’ve got to remember who I am: Harlan fucking Wolfe. If I want Skye – and I do, from the second I laid eyes on her, I’ve wanted her – then I’m going to get her, whatever it takes. And in Skye’s case, I’ve got a funny feeling that whatever it takes will include not acting like a dominant prick.
So yeah, it’s gonna be a learning experience…
“Skye, I’m glad you came,” I smile.
“I wasn’t under the impression you left me with any other choice… Boss,” Skye says.
She shoots me another smile – except this time it really is a shot. She took aim, and she fired. I’m going to have to remember that she’s no pushover.
The verbal wound stings, but it doesn’t make me back away.
Please, sit,” I smile, gesturing at the seat opposite me. “You didn’t like the dress I sent over?”
Skye doesn’t answer. At least, not directly.
“We need to set some ground rules,” she finally says.
“I’m all ears,” I smile, studying Skye carefully. She looks nervous – yet determined. Whatever she’s about to say, it has been on her mind all night. I’m a betting man – and I would stake good money on it.
Her beauty sucks me in. I can’t look away.
Skye’s hair is a gorgeous red. It shimmers whenever it catches the light. Her eyes are a deep, yet somehow icy blue – and the freckles that dot her face lay a tempting trail to her lips.
I force myself to look away, because I’m pretty sure Skye isn’t thinking what I’m thinking.
I can’t come on too strong. Not yet. But I will.
“I need to treat you like any other patient. This doesn’t work if you’re my boss.”
“Deal,” I say. I’ll say anything to keep her sitting across from me. I know I will.
“I’m serious,” she replies. “The dress…anything like that has got to stop.”
“You didn’t like it?”
Skye squeezes her eyes shut for a second and lets out a tiny, breathy sigh. “I loved it,” she says. “It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen.”
“So why didn’t you wear it?” I ask curiously.
Skye pauses, chewing her lip – and her cheeks twitch. My forehead furrows as I study her once again. It’s strange. She’s not like the other girls who try to date me – the gold diggers, the women who only want me for my wealth.
Their faces – paralyzed from the Botox – are as false as their intentions. Even without expressions, they are easy to read. They all want the same thing; a thing I’ll never give them. I’ve got too much to protect. Not just my money, but my family.
But Skye’s not like that. I can read her, too. Her face doesn’t hide a thing. It’s a wide open book. Except this book’s written in a language I can’t understand. It’s a strange contradiction.
It only makes me want her more.
“You won’t fire me, right?” she says quietly, but bravely nonetheless.
I grin, “Right.”
“If I wore that dress,” Skye begins, wringing her hands earnestly, “then what does that say about me?”
“That you appreciate high-fashion?” I grin.
Skye shoots me a look that makes me feel very small indeed. Hell, if I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed that a girl as little as her could look so fierce.
“No,” she says in a barely-concealed snarl. “It says that I’m the kind of girl who’s happy to trade her ethics for the finer things in life. It says that I can be corrupted. You can understand that, can’t you?”
I nod my head slowly.
The truth is I’m impressed. I must have almost a decade on Skye – a decade, and a twenty-billion dollar fortune. Even so, she just talked to me like she was my equal. She showed that she was willing to be the best side of herself.
“I think I do,” I say. “You know what, Skye? I think you’ll do alright. Not a lot of people stand up to me, especially not my employees.”
A strange atmosphere settles between us. It’s like we’re two wild animals sizing each other up – preparing for a fight. I guess, in a way, we are. Two animals constrained by society, fighting with our words, but doing battle over something far more precious.
A waiter arrives to take our order. “Would either of you care for a drink?”
“We’ll have a bottle of champagne. The Veuve, a ‘72, if you have it?”
The waiter inclines his head without needing to make a note of our order, utters a polite “Certainly, sir,” and quietly departs.
“So it’s a deal?” Skye says pointedly – treating the interruption as though it never happened. I like that, too. She’s persistent. She found an opening, an advantage – and she’s damn well going to press it.
I grin and stick out my hand. “It’s a deal.”
Skye reaches out with her hand and we shake. The contact is exquisite. It’s delightful. It’s like fireworks exploding in my fingertips. I hold on just a second too long – I don’t want this moment to end.
Easy, tiger.
Skye’s eyes flicker down, and I notice that my shirt sleeves have pulled up just an inch too far. My shrapnel scars are exposed, and I quickly let go of her hand and tug my shirt’s crisp white material down to hide them.
“Why don’t you start by telling me how you got those,” Skye asks softly. Her eyes are clouded now. It looks like pity to me, and I hate it.
I drag my tongue across my bottom teeth. “That’s classified,” I say. “I could tell you –.”
Skye’s eyebrow kinks upward. “But you’d have to kill me? You’re full of shit, Harlan. Or should I just stick with boss?”
Fuck me. This girl’s got some balls on her. I don’t know if it’s pity I see in her eyes, now – or a challenge.
I grin back, the awkward tension of a moment before forgotten. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, Skye?”
She shrugs, takes a sip of the glass of water in front of her – and does exactly what she said she would. It turns out that maybe I don’t want to hear the truth. To hear the way that this gorgeous woman truly feels about me.
“Okay, then. You’ve got a problem with control, Mr. Wolfe –”
Mr. Wolfe. Now that hurts.
“Mr. Wolfe was my father,” I interject with a broad grin, trying to deflect.
“You’re doing it now,” Skye says. She cuts to the heart of the matter. She’s the knife, and I’m butter.
“You’re deflecting, and I don’t even know if you know you’re doing it. The dress – that was one example. You want to shape the environment around you. You want to bend it – me – and anyone else around you to your will. And if you keep going,” she shrugs sadly. “Trouble sleeping will be the least of your problems.”
The silence between us is crushing. I clench my fist, and feel adrenaline spiking in my bloodstream.
“You’re reaching, Skye,” I growl.
“Am I?” She fires back. “Am I really? Or am I shining a light on a part of your soul that you’d rather stayed hidden? Tell me – how many exits are there to this room right now? If someone attacked, which is the best escape route?”
I bite my lip, but my eyes do the same dance they’ve been doing every thirty seconds since I stepped into this restaurant. There are three entrances – the reception, the service entrance and a small door at the far end of the bar that might or might not be locked.
I lean backwards, and my chair creaks beneath me. I’m angry, now. My fight or flight reaction is in full swing. I take a deep breath, and force the tension to seep out of me. It takes a co
nsiderable effort.
But Skye made her point well. If there’s one thing I respect, it is smarts like that.
“Okay, you win,” I grimace. “We’ll play it your way. What do you want to know?”
It hurts me to back down, but with Skye I’m happy to play the long game. There’s no point falling at the first hurdle when I’ve got all the time in the world to seduce her.
If anyone’s falling on a sword here, it’s going to be her, on mine.
“I want to know where you got those scars,” Skye says. She kinks an eyebrow. And don’t tell me it’s classified…”
I run my fingers through my curly hair. My right leg is jittering now, jumping up and down. It’s restless, like it always is when I think back to how I won the scars that now mark my body.
“The Navy,” I reply simply.
Just because I’ve agreed to play Skye’s game doesn’t mean I’m going to let her win. If she wants to unravel my secrets, then she’s going to have to get her hands dirty and do it herself.
“I pegged you for ex-military the second I saw you. You all … carry yourselves the same way. But is that all you’re going to give me?” Skye frowns. “What ship?”
“No ship. I was in the SEALs. Team Six.”
Skye’s eyes widen as she processes that fact. Still, the girl’s a professional – that much is clear. She assimilates the information as though it’s no more interesting than the obituaries section in a small town newspaper.
“Okay then,” she smiles sweetly, rubbing her hands together. “We’re getting somewhere now, aren’t we? Doesn’t that feel better?”
Skye bites her lip and looks at me. I swear she knows what she’s doing because I find the way she looks right now all kinds of suggestive. I want to sweep every last piece of cutlery off this table and take her right here, right now – and damn the audience.
The waiter returns, and pours each of us a glass of champagne as we sit in silence.
“So I’ll sleep tonight?” I reply the second he’s gone. “That’s it? You’ve prodded and pried around in my head, and everything’s coming up smelling like roses?”
“It’s not that easy,” Skye sighs. A couple of tendrils of her long red hair dance in front of her eyes, and she flicks them away. “You know it’s not. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come to me for help.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well –,” she says, looking pointedly at the champagne flute I’m twirling between my fingers.
“You could lay off the booze, for a start. But I’m a psychiatrist, Harlan – I don’t run a pill mill. I’m not just going to write you a prescription so you can drift off into a chemically induced sleep every night. I’m sure a man with your resources could find a hundred doctors willing to do that. I’m just not one of them.”
The meal finishes more awkwardly than it started. When it’s done, neither of us order desert. I’ve built my entire career – from the Navy to now – on the principle that if it hurts, I must be doing something right.
On that basis, then Skye’s my soul mate.
I know deep down that she’s right – about everything. I can’t cure my insomnia without dealing with whatever’s causing it – just like you can’t take an enemy stronghold without wiping out the machine gun nest guarding it.
But this meal has opened a Pandora’s Box. I can’t help but wonder whether I truly want to find out where it leads.
“We do this my way, Mister Wolfe,” Skye says as she pulls on her coat. “Or we don’t do it at all. From now on, I’ll see you in office hours. Thank you for dinner.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Skye
We meet for our first session, late, in my office.
Wolfe Capital’s enormous Wall Street headquarters is deadly quiet.
I’ve never seen the building this empty. The traders were given a thousand dollar mid-week bonus, and instructions not to be seen dead within a mile of the firm’s trading floor the second the markets closed. Traders being traders, they were only too happy to leave early. I dread to think about how drunk they are by now.
I’ve even sent Tyler home, ignoring the look of puppyish disappointment on his face. “No, you haven’t done anything wrong, Tyler – and yes, that’s everything I need for tonight…”
Most importantly, I’m dressed like a 1920s housewife – from the plain gray skirt that drops well past my knees to the formless jacket draped over my shoulders. My drab outfit is coolly calculated.
I need to reframe this whole relationship. I’ve got to stop Harlan from seeing me as a sexual object. He needs to see me as exactly what I am – his therapist, not his lover. And if accomplishing that goal takes me dressing like the nerdy kid at school, I can handle it.
I hear a knock on the door, and let Harlan in with a curt nod. My face is stone, but inside, my heart is thumping fit to burst.
“Thanks for seeing me so late,” Harlan says, flashing me a four hundred watt smile I’m coming to dread.
I say dread because every time he turns that knee-weakening beam on me, I feel like a schoolgirl with her first crush. It’s not healthy, and it sure as heck isn’t professional. And tonight’s all about appearing – being – professional.
It’s a new start.
I gesture at the patient’s couch. “Please, take a seat. Or lie down – whatever makes you more comfortable.”
Harlan winks at me. “Anything you say, ma’am,” he grins. “And I mean that… anything.”
I turn my back on him, and walk back to a chair set a few yards away from Harlan’s couch. I take the time to compose my features. “Skye is fine,” I say.
“As you wish,” Harlan says. His eyebrow twitches upward. “Skye…”
Damn.
Harlan has started as, I’d bet any money, he means to go on. He’s going to be a tough patient – adversarial, no doubt. Nothing’s going to be easy, not with a man like him. I’m worried about the challenge, and yet I can’t deny it, I’m kind of excited as well.
I take a deep breath and launch straight into my questions.
“How long since you last slept?” I ask, the name of my pen hovering over an empty notepad.
“At all or enough?”
“Why don’t you take it from the top,” I reply.
I’ve found over the course of my career that it’s best to let your patient do the talking. People hate silence. They naturally seek to fill it.
However, there is a small problem – I think Harlan knows that little trick just as well as I do. My office clock ticks like a metronome in the background as I wait for his response. We sit there in silence – a silence that doesn’t seem to bother Harlan Wolfe one little bit. I tap the nib of my pen against the notepad.
I study his face while I wait for his response, in an entirely professional capacity, of course. His hair is dark, slightly curly, and shiny with obscene health – and the odd, stray gray. His face is mostly unlined, and he doesn’t display a hint of the tiredness that I know is dragging him down.
“About a week, I guess,” Harlan says. “It all started about then.”
“What did?” I ask, probing.
“Exactly what you asked,” Harlan replies, with an amused expression on his face.
I stifle a grimace. I was right. Harlan’s sessions are going to go exactly as I imagined they would. Slowly…
“How long do you usually sleep, then?” I ask, switching up my strategy.
“About five hours, give or take.”
“That’s not much.”
“All I’ve needed since the Navy,” Harlan replies.
I nod thoughtfully.
“What about last night? How many hours did you get?”
Harlan shrugs. “Two… maybe three at a stretch. Not enough.”
“Take me through it,” I say. “Step-by-step, as though you were preparing for bed.”
Harlan looks me directly in the eye and raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t need to say a word. My cheeks redden instantly under hi
s examination.
“How detailed do you want me to get?”
“Tell me everything,” I say. My voice sounds choked in my throat. I can’t help it. Harlan is throwing me off my game.
“I try and get to bed around eleven, I guess,” Harlan says without breaking eye contact. “I sleep naked, with the AC set to exactly 66°.”
He says that word – naked – so casually, without so much as blinking an eye. Harlan knows exactly what he’s doing, but so do I. It’s a defense mechanism.
Harlan might not view it precisely that way, but that’s what it is. I’ve seen it before – a thousand times – although I’ll give him one point for being the most attractive man to attempt it with me… But I know Harlan’s game. He’s trying to throw me off the scent of whatever is really the problem.
I know that he would do exactly the same thing in a pitch meeting with an investor, or in front of Wolfe Capital’s executive board. It’s a strategy – one that has allowed him to get to the very peak of the business world.
It is a simple, clear, but extremely powerful strategy – never let anyone in, never admit to failure, never appear vulnerable.
“Do you have nightmares …” I ask, attempting to steer the interview back on track and expose a crack in Harlan’s apparently perfect façade, “… about your time in the SEALs, or anything else.”
“Never,” Harlan replies with such immediate self-assurance that I know he’s telling the truth. “It’s not that I’m waking up all the time, Skye. I’m just not getting to sleep in the first place.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” I smile.
Harlan pauses, studying my face once more. “I watched the video, you know,” he says.
I take a second to breathe. Harlan’s throwing out a hook, and I should know better than to lunge for it. But still …
“What video?”
“The video of the speech you gave to the ‘Women in Wall Street’ conference – all about traders and the high occurrence of,” he grins, “sexual dysfunctions. It got me thinking. Is that why you became a therapist, Skye? To try and fix yourself?”
Don’t engage.
Harlan continues without missing a beat. He sits up, and lazily drags his tongue across his bottom lip before speaking. “I can do it, you know Skye. I can make you come.”