Heart Conditions (The Breakup Doctor Series Book 3) Read online

  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.”

  Sasha’s eyes slid over to me and the taut lines around her mouth eased ever so slightly. She uncrossed her arms and dropped them to her lap, resting one hand over mine out of Michael’s sightline. I squeezed my thanks.

  “Okay, Michael. What do you suggest first?” I prompted.

  “Well…” he said, inclining his head. “You need a Facebook page for the Breakup Doctor. You need Twitter. Maybe Instagram. But that’s basic—and it’s easy.”

  “And it’s stupid,” Sasha said, but her protest lacked some of its earlier heat. “This is still therapy—not some kind of celebrity fan page.”

  He sighed and looked out over the Caloosahatchee, with its hodgepodge of watercraft bobbing on the water. “Sasha, if Brook’s agreed to try letting me promote her business the way I successfully promoted the first band I represented into a major recording contract, can you at least start with the assumption that I know what I’m doing? Just a little bit?”

  Her glare didn’t falter, but she held her tongue. I had to hand it to him—Sasha in full-on homicidal mode was a not-unintimidating force to be reckoned with, but Michael was holding his own.

  “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Here’re some avenues I had in mind for expansion.” He pulled up a new slide with a bulleted list headed “Growth opportunities.” The headings were almost the same as the ones on the first slide, delineating all the diversifications of my current practice, with a few additions that made my eyes pop: “Speaking engagements,” “Magazines and Media,” “Books.” I saw a flare of interest in Sasha’s eyes too, but it was quickly extinguished.

  “This is just a long-range overview of my thoughts,” Michael said, “but I’m guessing you’ll be more comfortable starting slowly.” He hit a few keys and the last several items disappeared. “For now, I think you’re already maxed out with private clients. There’s only so many you can take on, right?” I nodded, and the first bullet point sailed off the screen. “With your column, we’re going to look at getting it picked up by other papers throughout Florida, with an eye to eventual syndication.” The mastheads of area newspapers whose names I recognized popped up at points across the screen like fireworks.

  “Fancy,” Sasha said dryly.

  He slid a smirk at her. “Presentation is everything.”

  The next bullet point wiped the screen clear: “Radio.” Sasha leaned in despite herself.

  “The radio plan is similar—but I think first we need to get you actually employed by the station. I assume this is another Big Eyes— I mean, a volunteer position for you?” he corrected with a quick glance to Sasha, and I nodded affirmation. “Well, no one’s going to even look at syndicating a drop-in guest. This is the first thing I’d like to address—approaching your station and seeing about putting you on the payroll—and getting you a show of your own.”

  “Whoa!” I said, just as a food runner showed up with our dinner and set the plates down in front of us. “I don’t know how to do all that technical stuff the deejays do.”

  “There are engineers for that. All you have to do is be the on-air personality—which you’re already doing.”

  “Well, I don’t think they’d be willing to pay me much, let alone offer me my own show.” As I spoke I nudged half my sweet potato fries off my plate and onto a spread napkin as Michael did the same with his regular fries, and we pushed our respective piles toward each other.

  “What are you two doing?” Sasha asked sharply.

  I realized it apparently just as Michael did: He stared at me with a startled expression that no doubt mirrored my own.

  “Oh,” I said quietly.

  He didn’t take his eyes from mine. “Old habits die hard.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s all keep our own side dishes to ourselves,” Sasha said flatly, and she dragged our napkins back to our respective plates.

  We all started eating, as intent on our food as if we were restaurant critics. Finally Michael filled the heavy silence.

  “I’ll see if I can compare the station’s ratings to what they were before you came on those shows. But either way, I think they know you’re a commodity. I’ve been listening in for a few weeks”—my eyes flew to his at that news, but Michael went on—“and the phone never stops ringing on your shows. That’s listeners—and that means ad revenue. And that’s our bargaining chip—similar to what we’ll do with your newspaper.”

  Sasha had stopped chewing and was fixing him with an assessing look. “You do know what you’re doing.”

  “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

  She lifted one eyebrow. “I think we can all agree you didn’t used to be so…”

  “Grown-up?” he asked wryly.

  She shrugged, as if uninterested. “Focused.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, and something seemed to pass between them that I missed. Then his lips curved slightly upward. “Thanks. But you might as well hold off on the compliments until we see if I can actually put anything in motion. So, Brook…is it a go?”

  “‘It’?”

  He tapped the screen. “The radio show, first off. I’d like to approach the station ASAP. Do I have your permission?”

  “Wait—you’re going to do it?”

  “That’s what promotion is. The talent never negotiates for themselves. I’m your representative. An agent. A representative can push for things that the talent has to stay clear of.”

  “It’s weird that you’re calling me ‘the talent.’ Like an inanimate object.”

  “As far as they’re concerned, Brook, that’s what you are. This is business—you’re the commodity.”

  “Or it just makes it easier to pimp people out if you can dehumanize them,” Sasha grumbled, but her barb was halfhearted.

  “Yes or no?” he asked me, ignoring her.

  I’d told Sasha that often people freaked out when they finally achieved everything they ever wanted. Here was an unexpected chance for me to show her how to embrace new opportunities—to not operate from a place of fear.

  Michael waited with a neutral expression and at least a good show of patience, letting me decide.

  Finally I wiped my grease-streaked fingers on my napkin and reached across the table.

  “Okay. Yes.” We shook hands. I couldn’t deny the jolt I felt at the contact.

  When we let go he left his hand extended and moved it over to Sasha. I thought that took a fair amount of courage, as I was pretty certain she was as likely to take a bite out of it as she was to do anything else. But my best friend shocked me by reaching up and meeting his grasp.

  “I’m not saying I’m not going to eventually punch you in the face,” she told him. “But if Brook wants to give this a chance, I’m always on her side.”

  His sudden wince told me she’d tightened her freakishly strong grip on his hand, and Sasha smiled a shark’s grin at him. “Always.”

  “What in the name of sweet Raptor Jesus was that?”

  Sasha laid into me as soon as the front door of Flamingo Joe’s closed behind us—after stalking backward from our booth, making
a vee of her fingers and pointing them at her own eyes, then Michael’s in a Mafia-movie “I’m watching you” gesture.

  “What was what?”

  She laid a hairy eyeball on me. “Don’t give me that. You two were all cozy-cozy with the side dishes and the repartee. What’s going on?”

  I stopped when we reached my car, looking at her over the roof. “I…I don’t know,” I said. “There’s so much history there…so much familiarity. It’s just easy to fall into that.”

  “Don’t let your guard down with him, Brook. No matter how much he may have changed or how sorry he is, you can’t trust him. Not ever again.”

  The finality of that plucked at something in my chest. “I don’t know, Sasha. You saw him. He’s…different—don’t you think?”

  I couldn’t read the long stare she gave me in the spotty illumination from the few parking lot lights. She made impatient clicking motions in the air with her thumb, pointing down to the car, and I hit the unlock button. As soon as we both slid in and the doors were closed she faced me head-on.

  “Mike Rowan. Tyler Engel. Joe Herrera. Jude Something. Guy from that band at Sharkey’s.”

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “All guys you told me were toxic after they dumped on me. ‘You don’t drink twice from a poisoned well,’ you told me. In fact, you suggested I get it tattooed on my arm. A bit hypocritically, as it now turns out,” she said with a glare.

  I sighed, dropping the ignorant act. Sasha was a bloodhound. “I know, Sash, but this is different. We—”

  “Are you seriously going to try to justify this? To me?”

  I didn’t say anything, looking down to avoid her eyes.

  “Honey…” Her tone was gentler now. “Are you actually considering getting back together with that—” She stopped herself. “With Michael?”

  Silence filled the car for a long moment.

  “I don’t know,” I said almost inaudibly to my lap.

  Air gusted out of her like a blown bicycle tire.

  “What about Ben?”

  “What about him?” I met her stare. “He has a girlfriend.”

  “You said she wasn’t his girlfriend.”

  “I don’t know!” I shouted. “I have no damned idea! I think I’m getting one message from him, and then I get something totally different. For all I know all of it’s just in my head and nothing’s changed with us—I still blew it and he’s still moved on. But meanwhile, the man I thought I was going to spend my life with—who I loved, for real, let’s remember—is back, and seems like a better person, a grown-up now, and he wants me, Sash. He wants me.” I fell silent again, looking back down at my hands, which still held the key I hadn’t pushed into the ignition.

  “Honey…” she started, but I shrugged her hand off my shoulder.

  “No. I can’t talk about this with you.” I tried to find a way to articulate what was churning inside me without hurting her feelings—or our friendship. “Look, you’ve got problems you’re dealing with, and I want to help you with that. I do. I want to be a good friend and a good therapist and help you figure out what you really want. But, Sash…” Heat speared into my eyes, and I felt the prickling of oncoming tears. “Everything you’re struggling with right now…that’s everything I want. So how can you possibly know what I’m feeling?”

  Silence dropped like a sandbag between us.

  “Because I’ve been there too,” she said finally, after a long moment. “Up until Stu I lived there—wanting so badly not to be alone, to be loved by the right guy. I get it, Brookie—I do. And I can’t explain why I’m freaking out when I’m finally getting everything I ever thought I wanted. But it doesn’t mean I can’t relate to what you’re feeling—the same way you were still a great Breakup Doctor even when you were neck-deep in the crazy after Kendall.”

  I gave a watery laugh. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “And you’re right—you don’t know what’s going on with Ben yet. And I get not wanting to cut things off with Michael until you do. Just…be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you get hurt. There are a lot of people in the mix who might get hurt.”

  Michael. Ben. Pamela. No matter who she was talking about, she was right.

  “I know,” I said softly. “I’m trying to figure this out.”

  “You know I’ve got your back whatever you decide, right?”

  I nodded, smiling through blurry eyes. “Yeah. I always know that.”

  Finally I put the key in the ignition and started the car, backing out of the parking spot. “You were terrifying back there, by the way.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?” Leaning back in the seat, she closed her eyes, smiling that creepy predator’s smile. “God, it was good to feel normal again.”

  We rode home in spent stillness, like the quiet hush after a squall has passed, until we turned off Summerlin and I pulled into Sasha’s apartment complex. Instead of idling in the visitor’s slot, I turned off the car and turned to face her.

  “What do you think about backing off on Operation Bring It On?”

  She slid a narrow glance at me. “Is this some new strategy?”

  “No. You said it was nice to be normal again.”

  “Threatening to castrate and garrote your ex…good times.”

  “It was,” I said, grinning, and she laughed.

  “Well, I won’t complain if we’re not all pregnancy, all the time. That’s what Stu’s doing and it’s making me crazy,” she said.

  “Agreed then—brief moratorium?”

  She blew out a breath as if she’d been holding it for a long time. “Agreed. Thank God.” Sasha reached for her door handle, then stopped and turned back to me. “But there is a built-in time limit here, don’t forget. I can’t put off making a decision forever.”

  “I know,” I assured her, realizing that neither could I.

  thirteen

  After Ben dropped off Jake on Thursday morning, his bright smile when I opened the door doing nothing to help sort my jumbled thoughts, Rae Ann Wilson was my first appointment. I was looking forward to seeing the change in her after our conversation last week and the homework assignment I’d given her. I suspected that simply taking better care of herself, looking more polished, would have done wonders for her self-esteem. I sequestered Jake in my bedroom—Rae Ann was strictly a cat person.

  But when my office door opened, it did not reveal the woman I’d expected. Rae Ann hadn’t even made an attempt at grooming today, wearing the same slouchy sweats and sneakers I’d seen her in for months, no makeup, her hair pulled back in a plain, low ponytail. She galumphed into the room and slumped down into a corner of the chaise.

  “It didn’t work,” she said flatly, before I could even offer a greeting.

  “Oh?” I asked neutrally.

  “Before you ask, I did it—I got up every day and got ready. And I made an effort to leave the house more—I went to the post office instead of printing the postage from home, went inside to pay for my gas instead of paying at the pump, went into the bank instead of the drive-through, blah, blah, blah.” She lifted her feet onto the sofa and pushed herself back against the arm so hard I was surprised a chunk of food didn’t come flying out of her mouth. “First of all, it’s weird to ask someone about their hobbies while they’re making change for a twenty, okay? But I did it. And at first you were right—it was kind of nice to talk to someone besides Theo. But then…” She trailed off, glaring at her sneakers as though they’d insulted her.

  “Then what happened, Rae Ann?” I prompted.

  She transferred her scowl to me, and I had to fight my instinct to lean away. “Someone asked me out, Brook!” she snapped.

  I waited, but that seemed to be the extent of the egregious trespass against her. “Um…good?” I ventured.

&n
bsp; “No!” she whined. “Not good! I was in the checkout line in the grocery store yesterday, and they were slammed, so I grabbed a magazine off the shelf to kill time. And then I hear this guy behind me kind of chuckle, and he holds up his magazine to show me that we’re both reading the exact same article. ‘Great minds,’ he says. So like you said, I tried to talk to him, right? Instead of what I wanted to do, which was just turn around and mind my own business. So I did, and he was all friendly and we talked about the article for a few minutes, and he asked if we could meet for coffee later after we both unloaded our groceries at home.”

  As she paused for a breath, a dozen scenarios crowded my mind for what could have gone wrong.

  “So I say yes, and we agree on this place and a time, and he gives me his number just in case I need it…and…and…”

  I frowned in growing alarm as Rae Ann became increasingly distressed. Had the guy turned out to be some kind of predator?

  “And I never showed up, Brook!” She hurled the words at me like an accusation. “I left this really nice guy sitting there all alone, stood up, probably feeling like there was something wrong with him, when the truth is I’m the one who’s defective! You want me to date? I don’t know even how to talk to people!”

  She’d worked herself into near hysterics, breathing too hard and too fast, and swallowing air. I moved over next to her on the chaise and put an arm around her. “Okay. Okay, Rae Ann, slow down,” I said soothingly, rubbing her back. “It’s okay…it’s not your fault. You’re all right. Breathe.”

  “I…know it’s not…my fault,” she said raggedly, between hitching sobs. “It’s your fault. Why couldn’t you just help me get over Paul, like I came here for?”

  I didn’t want to explain my reasoning in the face of Rae Ann’s very real pain. Instead I simply sat beside her, making calming circles on her back.

  “You’re right,” I said when her tears finally stalled and her breathing evened out. “I pushed you too hard, and I’m sorry.”

  Rae Ann nodded sullenly, not looking at me.