With Good Behavior [Conduct Series #1]

by Jennifer Lane

  “Madsen, what did I tell you about my business? About this ship?”

  Grant cleared his throat. “Err, ‘It ain’t no fucking halfway house’?”

  Sophie tried not to laugh as Roger confirmed, “Damn straight. You think just because you saved that kid’s life you’re now my goddamn human resources department?”

  What was this about Grant saving a kid’s life? Sophie wanted details, but before she could open her mouth, Grant responded.

  “No, sir. I thought it might be good for business to have a beautiful woman serving drinks on your cruises, that’s all.”

  Oh God, the Adonis had just called her beautiful! Sophie couldn’t hide her pleasure, and there was a satisfied twinkle in Grant’s eye as he watched her react to his comment.

  Roger caught their subtle flirting and gazed at Grant with a newfound respect. She was one hot chick, and the fact that she’d served time made her even more mysterious. He glanced back and forth from one parolee to another, considering whether or not to hire the broad.

  “You ever worked as a server before?” he asked.

  She paused. “Sort of. I used to serve meals at a homeless shelter.”

  Roger raised his eyebrows. “Madsen, you brought me Mother Fucking Teresa?”

  “Hardly,” Sophie scoffed. “I doubt Mother Teresa was a convicted felon.”

  “True that,” Roger agreed. “So, what other work experience do you have?”

  “Um, not the kind that will be much help on a boat, I’m afraid.” She wondered if she should be truthful. After Grant gave her an encouraging nod, she confessed, “I don’t have much job experience because I was in school for a long time, um, studying to become a psychologist.”

  Rog’s eyes bugged out. “A psychologist?” A huge grin erupted on his face. “You got yourself one smart chick here, Madsen. She’s waaaay out of your league, sailor boy.”

  Grant was too absorbed in Sophie’s apparent discomfort to take umbrage at his boss’ insult. He held his breath, eagerly anticipating the conclusion of this job interview/interrogation.

  Still grinning, Roger mused, “Hmm, a psychologist. Can you hook Madsen up with some sleep medication then? The boy doesn’t sleep real well.”

  This last jab did not sit well with Grant, and his mouth dropped open in protest. “I can’t sleep because of your snoring! It would wake a man from a coma!”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad!” Roger argued.

  “I was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist,” Sophie jumped in. “I did not prescribe meds. I did therapy.” She blushed as she concluded, “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. I lost my license when I went to prison.”

  Grant watched shame and disappointment color her cheeks. She had experienced many recent losses too, just like him: career, family, and dignity, to name a few. Attempting to lighten the mood, Roger countered dubiously, “I don’t know about having a shrink around all the time. Are you analyzing me right now?”

  Sophie rolled her eyes. She had despised telling people her profession because they would invariably make some inane comment about their own mental health, or in Roger’s case, their apparent mental illness.

  “How original,” Sophie snidely remarked. “No, I’m not analyzing you. It would take a whole team of shrinks to figure out your crazy ass, and I simply don’t have the time or energy.”

  Taken aback, Roger scrutinized her carefully.

  “Wow, that’s the first time I’ve seen him speechless,” Grant observed. “Nice work, Sophie.”

  He turned to his boss. “You’ve made her suffer long enough, sir. Are you giving her the job or what?”

  Roger exhaled slowly, rubbing his hand across his bald head. After a few agonizing moments in which Grant and Sophie exchanged anxious glances, the boss finally relented. “Shift starts in thirty minutes. Eleven to eight.”

  “Oh!” Sophie replied worriedly. “Thank you so much, Roger, but is it okay if I start tomorrow? I have an appointment I have to attend today at noon.”

  “What kind of appointment?” he asked suspiciously.

  Finding Grant staring curiously at her as well, Sophie gulped. “Therapy. My PO is forcing me to see a psychologist once a week.”

  “A shrink gotta go see another shrink, huh?” Roger scratched his chin. “Are you gonna be late to work every Wednesday then?”

  “Oh, no, sir, I can ask for an earlier appointment in the future. It’s just too late to reschedule it now, and I have to make my session or I’m going back to prison.”

  Roger turned to Grant. “Did your PO force you to go to therapy too? You never mentioned that before.”

  Grant looked down and jammed his hands into his jean pockets, murmuring, “No, no therapy for me.”

  Sophie considered that Jerry must think she was a total nut job to single her out for treatment. “You’re lucky then,” she said.

  Turning to Roger, Sophie uneasily inquired, “Could you please contact Officer Jerry Stone by five today and tell him you hired me?” She rummaged around in her handbag until she located Jerry’s business card. Roger took it grumpily.

  “Be here at ten-thirty tomorrow so you can complete some paperwork,” he ordered. Roger narrowed his eyes. “If she screws up one smidgen, Madsen, I’m blaming you.” With this warning, he abruptly turned and left the couple standing on the deck.

  They stared at each other awkwardly until Sophie leaned back on the railing, taking in the spotless deck and gleaming metal of the ship. “So, um, what’s the pay like for this job?”

  “For somebody who used to be a doctor, it’s not great,” Grant admitted, stepping closer to her. “But it can be temporary to keep Officer Stone off your back while you look for something better. And I figure you can get lots of tips as a server.”

  “Oh? And why do you think I’d get lots of tips?”

  Her question had its desired effect, and once again he looked nervous, stammering, “Uh, well, you know, um, you’re quite attractive …”

  She grinned. “I’m just giving you a hard time.” Waves of relief coursed through Sophie, knowing she would not have to beg her father for a job. She leaned closer to Grant, catching a whiff of his bergamot scent, and her eyes flashed with mischief. “I bet the ladies tipped you very well when you were a server. They probably were all clamoring for the hot waiter.”

  A crimson blush crept up his neck. Grant swallowed and inched toward Sophie, feeling the urge to gather her in his arms once again.

  Staring into his blue-green eyes, which reflected the same hue as the river at the moment, Sophie felt a deep sense of intrigue. Yet the reality of obligations and cautions also filled her mind, and she broke their gaze. “I better go,” she said. “I have my stupid therapy appointment.”

  Then, looking back up, she added, “I cannot thank you enough for what you did for me today. Somehow you knew how hard it would be for me to crawl back to my father, and I am so grateful for your help with this job. I promise, I’ll work hard, and I won’t let you down.”

  “You don’t have to promise me anything,” he replied. “I’m just glad you’re not going back inside. I would miss seeing you every Wednesday.”

  “Well, now we get to see each other more often than that. Like tomorrow, for example. I’ll be here,” she smiled. As she turned to go, she caught a glimpse of the black White Sox jacket hanging over the railing where he had left it. “Don’t forget your jacket. You have a tendency to leave it places.”

  With that last piece of advice, she climbed onto the dock, and Grant watched her long, limber legs carry her away. He smiled as he headed toward the bridge. She said she would go to a baseball game with him! Even better, she would be working with him every day. He was quite proud of himself.

  10. The Slippery Slope

  What’s been on your mind, Sophie?” Hunter began their second therapy session.

  “Not much,” Sophie replied breezily, pasting a smile on her face. She was resolute not to reveal too much, determined to tread carefully this time arou
nd. In addition, she felt a bit distracted. Her mind kept floating back to the man she’d just left behind on the ship. Grant’s kindness had been astonishing, and she could not get over the compassion he’d shown to a stranger.

  Hunter sat back in his chair. An awkward silence descended upon them. She averted her eyes from his hazel gaze and stared instead at the fish tank, observing Nemo swimming lazy circles around the fake coral of his enclosed aquatic home. Sophie felt similarly trapped at the moment.

  Her gaze then traveled to the set of framed documents over Hunter’s desk. She stood to get a closer look at his credentials, but then realized she was behaving exactly like Logan Barberi had during his first session with her—cagey and evasive, attempting to deflect the focus from client to therapist. She knew she must be frustrating the hell out of Hunter with her silence.

  “Ten percent,” she finally said, sitting back down.

  “Ten percent?”

  Numbers had always come easily to her. Whereas most psychology doctoral students barely survived the rigors of graduate statistics, Sophie had thrived in the class, impressing her professor so thoroughly with her math skills that he had asked her to tutor the following year’s crop of students. Numbers were nice, neat, and tidy, unlike the messy ambiguity of people. Perhaps she should have taken her father’s advice and become an accountant for his construction business. Surely she would find herself in a better life situation now.

  “I was just thinking about something I learned in my Professional Issues class,” she explained. “Ten percent of male therapists admit to having sex with their clients. Only one percent of female therapists report doing that.”

  There was a slight lift to Hunter’s eyebrows. Of all the possible topics his client could begin with, this is what she selected. Was she coming on to him? “Were the male therapists heterosexual or homosexual?” he quietly asked.

  “I don’t think this study reported the therapists’ sexual orientation,” she said. Did he realize she knew he was gay? Sophie wasn’t sure how to handle the situation.

  Hunter began to speak and then faltered. Thank God he was out as a gay man in his personal life. He’d been out for fifteen years now, and it made life so much easier. Secrets could be quite destructive. However, he was not out to everyone professionally. He treated each client individually, only revealing his sexual orientation to particular clients, and only if it seemed clinically relevant to do so.

  Was Sophie’s comment a subtle way to test him about therapeutic boundaries? If she was a psychologist, had she perhaps heard about him being gay from a colleague? Deciding this situation warranted a disclosure, Hunter said, “Well, I definitely won’t be in that ten percent when it comes to you then. I’m gay.”

  She met his eyes for one of the first times in the session and swallowed anxiously. “I know. It was the deciding factor in me choosing you off that list. Well, that, and I heard that you are very good at what you do.”

  “Thank you,” Hunter responded. “Though I have certainly made my share of mistakes over the years.”

  “Haven’t we all,” Sophie said.

  “I want to be a good therapist to you, Sophie,” he said. “I sense that it’s quite difficult for you to talk openly in here. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

  “You’ve been fine. I just … I … I’m just so mortified about what has gotten me here. I don’t know if I can talk about it. I never imagined myself in this position … on parole after a year in prison, my career in ruins, on the other side of the couch …”

  Ah, he thought. She had mentioned the study as a way to talk about herself. “You feel embarrassed to be in that one percent of female therapists?”

  She sighed. “Precisely. Why couldn’t I be like the other ninety-nine percent? I committed the cardinal sin of therapists. I exploited my power. I exploited my client.”

  “It sounds like he may have exploited you as well. Not many therapists spend time in prison as a result of falling in love with their client.”

  “Not many therapists fall in love with a Mafia kingpin,” she countered. They sat quietly before Hunter broke the silence.

  “Has he been bothering you since you got out of prison?”

  A disgusted look crossed her face. “Apparently he’s nowhere to be found. Logan conveniently disappeared right when I was arrested, and no one has heard from him since.”

  “Whoa. So, the man you loved betrayed you, and then left you alone to deal with the fallout?”

  “Yes.” She felt bile in her throat, a rage that crept up her body with advancing tendrils of hostility and helplessness.

  “You must feel so angry and bitter, and totally paralyzed when you try to move forward—like there’s no way to get closure with him disappearing like that.”

  “Exactly!” she replied. “I haven’t had the chance to say one word to Logan since this all went down. He just … he just … left me. He screwed me over and then left me hanging.”

  Watching her breathing quicken and her jaw clench, Hunter asked, “What would you like to tell him, if he was right here in this room with you?”

  Her face contorted with anger. “I’d say, ‘How could you do this to me? You said that you loved …’” Abruptly she stopped. “What is this, the empty chair technique?”

  “No techniques, Sophie. Just two people talking. Just two people trying to make sense of the past so that they can move on to the future.”

  She folded her arms across her chest defensively, and Hunter sighed.

  “I know how hard this is, for a shrink to talk to a shrink. Therapy felt stupid and artificial at first for me too. I tried to ‘out-therapize’ my psychologist—attempting to identify his theoretical orientation and the techniques he was using—but I didn’t get anything out of it until I let go and started to tell him my story without censoring myself every second. You were doing so well. Can you try to get out of your head a little bit?”

  Sophie exhaled with frustration.

  “You seem like a sharp, caring woman,” he continued. “How did all of this happen to you? When you’re ready, will you share it with me?”

  Taking a deep breath, Sophie uncrossed her arms and fidgeted with her hands in her lap. One of the blue devil fishes darted up to the surface of the saltwater tank, then dived down to the rocks, appearing agitated for some unknown reason. Sophie wondered if the fish had signed contracts promising to maintain confidentiality. They must have heard quite a few shocking tales in their day.

  Whenever she thought about Logan while wasting away in prison, it was always the same. In reverse chronology, she would feel the intense fury and sickening betrayal of that last phone conversation before the police barged into her office. Then her hot rage would morph into a fire of passion when the scorching stimulation of their initial sexual encounter flooded her body. But the pull of swirling emotions from their tentative first kiss was what stayed with her the most—the tenderness of his vulnerability revealed at last, the ache of empathy she felt for his wounds, the relief of turning to each other, comforting each other with their sensual touch.

  It was that last memory that Sophie decided to share first.

  “I’d been seeing Logan for about five months,” she began, looking down at her lap. Hunter settled into his chair and waited for her to continue. “We were making zero progress in therapy, and the judge was expecting an update from me soon. I told Logan I’d have to be honest in my letter to the court—he wasn’t attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings or participating in therapy—but he didn’t seem concerned.”

  “Sounds tough to feel like you were pulling teeth every session, trying to help a client who didn’t want to be helped.”

  “Yes. He was tough.”

  “Were you in love with him then?”

  “No. I barely knew him.” She pondered Hunter’s question for a moment and then added guiltily, “But I was thinking about him a lot. I was having dreams about him—frustrating dreams where I was chasing him or some
thing stupid like that, and I …” She blushed as she admitted, “I found myself wearing shorter and shorter skirts on the days of our appointments.” She threw her arms in the air and then brought her palms on the side of her head. “God, I’m an awful person!”

  Hunter watched her berate herself, mentally filing away that observation. “So, if your client wasn’t talking, how did you spend the sessions?”

  “There was awkward silence at the beginning, and it was painful. Time would drag by. I’d try every trick in the book to get him to talk, but nothing seemed to work. He kept asking me questions about myself that I would try to deflect, but a couple of times he wore me down and I told him a few things. Then he would open up more, so I thought I’d found a way to get him to talk: reveal a little about myself, and get rewarded when he disclosed some personal information as well.”

  “What kind of information did you reveal?”

  “Um, benign stuff at first, you know, my age, that I was an only child, that I was from Chicago as well … We got into some good discussions about White Sox players, and I thought I was finally building rapport with him.

  “Then I somehow let it slip that I was trying to schedule lots of clients, and when he asked me why, I told him I had substantial debt from school loans. He seemed interested in that information. We ended up scheduling an appointment for one evening, and he wondered why I was free then, why I didn’t have a date that night. Stupidly I told him I was single.”

  She glanced nervously at Hunter, assuming he was thinking she was the most horrible therapist ever. “The truth is I have the absolute worst luck when it comes to dating.” Smiling, she added, “But maybe I’ll save that for another session.”

  “I look forward to it.” Hunter winked. “So, it sounds like your situation with Logan was the slippery slope.”

  “The slippery slope?”

  “There was a good paper written a few years ago on therapists’ ethical violations. The authors described how therapists never start off by saying, ‘I’m going to have sex with my client and ruin everything.’ On the contrary, the boundary violations start subtly, innocently, then insidiously grow into something more dangerous and illicit. The psychologist might reveal that he had just gone through a divorce, for example, which inadvertently tells the client he is hurting and available. Then the psychologist gradually reveals more and more about himself, and with each disclosure, the boundary between therapist and client grows fuzzier and fuzzier until it is completely breached.”