in your life care about you and are here to help you get through this.”
“I know what I have. Just like I know what I have to protect.”
Julie mulled over his statement, finding his choice of words a little unsettling.
“What do you need to protect? And from whom? Your mother? Lyndsey?”
He became inordinately fascinated with the upholstered buttons on the arm of the easy chair, tugging at the closest one. “The people I love. I should have acted sooner. I should have protected my mom from Lloyd a long time ago.”
“How would you have done that? Your mother was a grown woman, making her own choices. What could you have done?”
After a long moment, he lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. I should have figured something out.”
She pressed him on the point as much as she could before it became obvious he didn’t want to talk anymore. He became more closed-mouthed and distant. Though they technically still had five minutes, she opted to end the session a little earlier.
“Thanks for…this,” Josh said. “The talk and stuff. It helped a lot.”
She had no idea what she had possibly been able to offer, but she smiled. “I’m glad. Will you come again?”
He hesitated just long enough to make the moment awkward. “I guess,” he finally said. “I don’t think I really need therapy or anything but I don’t mind talking to you.”
“Great.”
She quickly wrote her cell number on a memo sheet from a dispenser on her desk. “I’m going to give you my mobile number. If you want to talk, I’m here, okay? Anytime.”
“Even if I called you at three in the morning?”
She smiled a little at his cynicism, the natural adolescent desire to stretch every boundary to the limit. “Of course. I might be half asleep for a moment at first, but after I wake up a little, I’ll be very happy you felt you could bother me at 3:00 a.m.”
She wasn’t sure he believed her, but at least he didn’t openly argue.
Ross was thumbing through a magazine in the reception area when they opened Julie’s office door. He rose to his feet and she was struck again by his height and the sheer solid strength of him.
With that tumble of dark hair brushing his collar and those deep brown eyes, he looked brooding and dark and dangerous, though she had come to see that was mostly illusion.
Mostly.
Her insides gave that funny little jolt they seemed to do whenever she saw him and she fought down a shiver. She had to get control of herself. Every time she was around the man, she forgot all the many reasons she shouldn’t be attracted to him.
“Hey, Uncle Ross. I’m going to go see if Ricky is still shooting hoops out back,” Josh said.
“Okay. I’ll be out in a minute. I’d like to talk to Ms. Osterman.”
Josh nodded, picked up his backpack and headed out the door. Josh had been her last appointment of the day and this was Susan’s half day, so no other patients waited in the reception area.
She was suddenly acutely aware that she and Ross were alone and she ordered her nerves to settle.
“How did things go in there?” Ross asked.
She sent him a sidelong look as she closed and locked her office door. “Just fine. And that’s all I can or will tell you.”
“Did he tell you he insisted on going back to school today, over all my well-reasoned objections?”
“He did.”
“Am I wrong in thinking he should take more time?”
She studied him, charmed despite all the warnings to herself by his earnest concern for his nephew’s well-being. She knew Ross was trying to do the right thing for Josh and she could also tell by the note of uncertainty in his voice that he didn’t feel up to the task.
She chose her words carefully, loath to give him any more reason to doubt himself. “I think Josh needs to set his own pace. He’s supposed to graduate in two weeks. Right now it’s important for him to go through the motions of regaining his life.”
“He didn’t say much about school today on the way over here, but I know it couldn’t have been easy.” His features seemed hard and tight for a moment. “I know how cruel kids can be, how they can talk, especially in small towns.”
He spoke as if he had firsthand experience in such things and she had to wonder what cruelty he might have faced as a child. She wanted to ask, but she was quite certain he would brush off the question.
“Josh can handle the whispers around school,” she answered. “He’s a very strong young man.”
“He shouldn’t have to go through any of this,” he muttered.
“But he does, unfortunately. Whether he should or shouldn’t have to face it, this is his reality now.”
“I wish I could make it easier for him.”
“You are. Just by being there with him, caring for him, you’re providing exactly what he needs right now.”
He studied her for a long moment, a warm light in his brown eyes that sent those nerves ricocheting around her insides again. She wanted to stay right here in her reception area and just soak up that heat, but she knew it was far too dangerous. Her defenses were entirely too flimsy around Ross Fortune.
“Shall we go find Josh and Ricky?”
Could he hear that slight tremble in her voice? she wondered. Oh, she dearly hoped not.
“Right,” he only said, and followed her outside into the warm May sunlight, where Josh was shooting baskets by himself on the hoop hanging in one corner of the parking lot of the Foundation.
“No Ricky?” Ross asked.
“Nope. He must have gone home while I was talking to Ms. O. Left the ball out here, though.”
Josh shot a fifteen-foot jumper that swished cleanly through the basket.
“Wow. Great shot,” Julie said.
“My turn,” Ross said and Josh obliged by passing the ball to him. Ross dribbled a few times and went to the same spot on the half-court painted on the parking lot. He repeated Josh’s shot, but his bounced off the rim.
Josh managed what was almost a smile. “Ha. You can never beat me at H-O-R-S-E. At least you haven’t been able to in years.”
“Never say never, kid.” Heedless of his cowboy boots that weren’t exactly intended for basketball, Ross rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. “Julie, you in?”
She laughed at the pair of them and the suddenly intent expression in two sets of eyes. “Do I look crazy? This appears to
