“I assure you, Kana is one of the best in the field. She knows her stuff.”

And he didn’t care. He was masterful at shutting down. Hell, he’d been in the army for six years—he knew how to keep his thoughts locked up, with the key thrown away. If this was what therapy came down to—getting jerked around—he was ready to say goodbye.

He threw his hands up. “Hell, I’m more than happy to just leave and not do this at all. So thank you very much. Have a good day.”

Michelle’s grip on his arm tightened, and she met his gaze straight on. Her eyes softened. “Please,” she whispered, and something about that one word on her lips said like a true plea, as if she couldn’t have wanted anything more in this moment, or ever, than for him to relent, had him doing just that. She repeated it, her voice even lower this time, and that word worked its way into his heart. He wasn’t sure why this was important to her, and he certainly wasn’t sure why she was important to him after only one night. But he understood this much—it mattered deeply to her that she not harm her job. He got that. He respected that. If sitting down with Kana for fifty minutes would help Michelle in some way, he could do that much.

Thank you, she mouthed just to him, her sexy lips wrapping around those silent words.

She turned to her associate. “Jack is a friend. I didn’t realize it was him when we set the appointment, and I don’t want to leave him hanging. I know he’ll be in good hands with you.”

“Absolutely,” said the other woman. “I’ve learned so much from Michelle, it’ll almost be as if I’m channeling her.”

Channeling her. The only way he wanted to channel Michelle was in the bedroom.

And there went his mind again. As he sat down on the couch, Michelle Milo turning on her heels, he feared it was going to be a painfully long fifty minutes.

She wasn’t in the habit of Googling patients before their appointments. Nor was she in the habit of Googling them while she treated them. The Internet offered too much information, and her job was not based on hunting for details from Facebook profiles or corporate web sites. Her job was to talk to people, to help them understand and to overcome challenges in their lives.

The answers to those questions were never found on the Web.

But Jack was no longer a patient. She’d sliced off that possibility immediately so that it could never bite her in the ass. Getting involved with a patient sexually was grounds for losing her license, and Michelle’s job was her world. She would never do anything to sacrifice her livelihood, nor would she ever willingly compromise the hearts and minds of her patients.

However, researching a lover was an entirely different matter. She’d known nothing about Jack the night before, and she’d relished the Just Jack mystery, the intrigue behind the toy salesman persona.