I’m listening. Talk to me.”
“Okay, here’s the thing.” Jamie took a deep breath for courage and plunged in. “What am I going to do when Dr. Hampton asks me about Kell? I mean, Kell essentially is my sex life. There’s no way to avoid talking about him.” She shook her head. “I am getting such bad vibes for this afternoon’s session. It’s make-or-break time.”
“Yes, it is. So here’s what you’re going to do.” Donna stood up, signaling for Jamie to do the same, and the two of them began walking toward Jamie’s car. “While Mom and I are ruining our budgets this afternoon shopping at Olde Hyde Park, you are going to go to your session and face the truth that you still love Kellan Chance and you always will.”
Jamie felt like screaming. There it was, like a big-banner headline flying across the blue sky for all the world to see. Her biggest fear just baldly blurted out. Her denial was instant. “I do not—”
“Oh, you do so. Don’t lie to me or to your therapist. He’ll see right through you. Instead, work with the man to try to figure out why it is that you keep breaking Kellan’s heart. And your own.”
A second denial rode Jamie’s lips, but the words wouldn’t come. Everything Donna said was true. She couldn’t live with the man and she was even worse without him. And right now, she was without him. Yet he had the power, without even being aware of it, to destroy everything she’d worked so hard for.
Jamie sighed in defeat. Loving Kell, or not loving him, was the last thing she could do anything about. But it also the one thing she had to do something about.
1
JAMIE TRIED to remember the last time she’d had a thirty-minute conversation about sex with a man and hadn’t at least been turned on first. She couldn’t come up with any time before today. Thank God. But now here she was, with her therapist, a slight older man with a gray beard and a notepad, sitting in his private, low-lit office. Talking about sex. For thirty minutes!
“I don’t have a problem with sex,” Jamie assured her therapist for the tenth time. “I like it a lot. Well, at least I did before this conversation. Now I may never want it again.” She grinned, but when the therapist didn’t even crack a smile, she hurriedly added, “Just kidding. Don’t write that down. Okay, so you’re saying I have a problem with one member of the opposite sex, right?”
“I don’t know, Jamie. You’d have to tell me.”
“I did tell you. Sex for me is pronounced Kellan Chance. You’d think the man and I were star-crossed lovers, and I’m compelled to keep reliving the tragedy.”
“Tragedy?” Dr. Hampton raised a graying eyebrow. “Is that how you see your relation—” A knock on the door interrupted him. “I’m sorry. Will you excuse me?” He stood up. “Roberta wouldn’t knock if it weren’t an emergency.”
Jamie waved a dismissive hand at him. “Please, go ahead.” Secretly thrilled with this temporary reprieve, she added a smile. “Take your time.”
Dr. Hampton nodded and crossed the room, quietly opening the door and leaving the room. Jamie watched him, thinking she needed to develop that soothing technique. She couldn’t seem to enter or exit a room without wrenching the door open or banging it closed. If only she could close her aching—and arousing—thoughts of Kellan Chance as easily.
It was true. Where Kellan was concerned, her heart and mind and body simply would not allow her to rest. He was entrenched in her senses. She felt certain she could smell his scent, taste his kiss, feel his touch…even after not seeing him for a year. No. Jamie leaned forward, crossing her arms atop her knees and resting her forehead against them. Do not think about him, Jamie. You’ll only lose.
She raised her head and stared across the soothingly lit and comfortably furnished office where Dr. Hampton plied his psychiatric trade. “I can do this,” she said softly to the man’s diplomas hanging on the wall behind his huge walnut desk. “I can and I will,” she said with more force, already feeling better. “I don’t have anything to worry about.”
Except Kellan Chance.
Slumping, Jamie muttered a mild expletive. The man is going to drive me crazy. She then remembered her conversation earlier with Donna about being crazy. Yeah, crazy about Kellan. Worse than that, she knew she still loved him, as Donna had accused. Not that loving him has done me any good, Jamie fussed. Kellan will never change. She knew it was true. The man, despite all his wonderful qualities, physical and otherwise, was a thrill seeker, a danger junkie. Her exact opposite. He was also, without being aware of it, her worst enemy. Or he would be, if the truth ever got out.
That truth was that Jamie had fallen for Kell—the classic “wrong man”—and hadn’t been able to get over him. In fact, she was so hopeless where he was concerned that her academic curiosity had finally taken over and had plunged her into research, which had fueled her doctoral thesis: Women Who Fall For “The Wrong Man”: Why Do They Do It?
How could she have known that, in psychology circles, her research and the resulting paper would be hailed as groundbreaking? That was another secret she wasn’t able to share with Donna or anyone else—her secret book deal with a major publisher who wanted her to develop her thesis into a nonfiction, self-help guide on relationships. Once she signed the contracts, she’d have a lot of money and even more publicity. But there would be no binding contract until she rewrote her thesis into lay terms, and made it slick and glossy in short chapters chock-full of advice, conclusions, lessons, and, worst of all, answers. Help.
The publicity plan scared Jamie the most. The publisher wanted to spring her on the public, present her as the one woman in today’s world who had all the answers about relationships. Jamie could read the caption now, headlining her photo on some glossy magazine page: What does this woman know about relationships that you don’t?
Not a damn thing. She still couldn’t believe this was happening to her. Who would have guessed that the woman from New York that she’d found herself cornered by at that faculty mixer—all Jamie had known then was the woman was someone important’s sister—was also a high-powered literary agent?
Even now, Jamie could remember how, out of sheer desperation for something to talk about, she’d spouted off about the research she’d done, the interviews, her conclusions, et cetera. And then the woman produced a business card, gave it to Jamie and said Kid, I’m going to make you a star.
Whew. A book like this was all about perception, Liz Clendenen, the agent—her agent—had told her. In Jamie, the publisher believed they had the right author, providing she turned out to be an entertaining writer, too. She was young. Attractive. Articulate. Educated. Yep, she had all the credentials, everything they could hope for. All in one package. Except…and only Jamie knew this…she was a fraud. She, too, had fallen for the wrong man. And she still wasn’t over him. That made her a victim of her own syndrome. Frankenstein’s monsterette. Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde.
I have to quit bringing up Kellan to Dr. Hampton. He could unwittingly blow the whole book thing, along with my license to practice, if he thinks I have serious unresolved issues here. Jamie wondered how this could be happening to her. Just when everything fell into place in her life…it all fell apart. She had this unbelievable chance to succeed beyond her wildest expectations, and she’d lost control over her own destiny. Her feelings toward Kellan Chance could torpedo everything.
It had always been this way for her in her life. Every time she tried to do anything positive,
