3. Rewarding And Frustrating

3

REWARDING AND FRUSTRATING

“ Y ou can leave whenever you want,” Regan said to Miles two weeks later. “I’ll be here for another few hours doing online sessions.”

She found that some of her patients preferred that and it opened up a wider range of clientele. She didn’t always have to worry about people being local or coming in late with traffic either. Also, not taking time off of work because she’d schedule them later at night a few times a month.

No way she was doing it every night of the week.

When she started her practice a few years ago, it’d been slow and she’d been a one-woman show doing it all. Booking clients, checking them in, processing insurance and other payments.

But the more clients she got, thank you video calls, the easier it was.

Especially since they had to pay right when the session started via credit card and then it was little to no hassle on her part.

“Are you sure?” Miles asked. “I can stay.”

“I’ve got it. Just a client from Charlotte. He’s new. You’ll get all his paperwork to put together tomorrow. Before that, it’s Katelyn Buchanan.”

“Oh,” Miles said. “I saw her name, but when you said it was a video session I assumed she’d canceled. She always comes in person.”

“She and Zachery do, but she asked if it could be via video. I’m not sure what is going on since they canceled last week.”

“I might have seen her going into Trent’s office last week,” Miles said.

“That could explain the change in routine. Just lock up after yourself.”

“Leave your door open,” Miles said. “That way I can wave my hand when I go so you know you’re alone.”

“Sure,” she said. She liked that Miles was protective, but he was probably a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet and close to six feet. Sometimes she wondered if she could blow him over with a big breath.

He was fit with muscles that he showed off with his tight shirts and pants.

He wasn’t inappropriate by any means. Just flashy. It fit his personality and made her smile more than not.

Best hire of her life.

She went into her office and left the door open. It was four thirty and her call with Katelyn was at five. That gave her time to eat the other half of the sub she’d picked up at lunch. She’d be lucky to get out of here by eight since her second call was at six-fifteen. She wanted to give herself fifteen minutes between the calls as a buffer so no one was waiting.

New clients tended to be longer than an hour while she got some background information.

As she was taking the last bite of her sandwich, Miles popped his head in to wave. “Hang on,” he said.

She finished chewing and waited to see what he was doing. Then he showed back up in the doorway and tossed something in the air.

She reached out to catch it and saw it was a candy bar. “Oh, yum. What’s this for?”

“I got it earlier today,” Miles said. “I went to get one for myself and two popped out. Consider it your lucky day and you might need the sugar to get you through.”

“I’m so honored you’re sharing your chocolate with me,” she said. “What do I owe this surprise to?”

Miles waved his hand in front of his long body and took a bow as if he were soaking up applause for the closing act on Broadway.

“Just me being nice,” Miles said. “By the way, I updated your website for you. I said you were taking clients and pushed the video appointments. I also made a list of physicians I thought you could call or reach out to and extend services for referrals and Roni got some basic information a few weeks ago to push you as the new tenant in the building.”

Regan laughed. “You’re great for business,” she said. “I’ll look at it tomorrow and we’ll put something together. I know you enjoy making those calls too.”

Miles was silently clapping his hands. “I love selling you.”

She coughed out a laugh. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“If I could sell you another way, I know who I’d try it with.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let me guess,” she said. “The sexy PI next door.”

“You said he’s seeeexxxxy,” Miles said.

“No, you say it. I’m just repeating your words.”

“Because you think it,” Miles said, doing a spin and whistling as he walked out. “Enjoy your calls.”

She heard the door shut and the alarms set. Most times she wasn’t nervous about her clients, knowing they came to her with problems and issues of their own. But she was smart enough to look out and protect herself and be reasonable about it too.

Being alone at night and locking herself in was just plain smart.

A few minutes before five, she set up the video call and waited for Katelyn to join.

“Hello,” she said to Katelyn. “How are you doing this evening?”

“I’m fine,” Katelyn said. “Good. I mean, getting there.”

“I noticed you and Zachery canceled last week.” She wouldn’t say what she’d heard through Zander or Miles. “Is everything okay?”

“We canceled because I moved out,” Katelyn said, crying.

“Do you want to share what happened? I know you told me in our session together that you didn’t love Zachery anymore and that you didn’t want to work it out, but then when he came in, you didn’t speak up.”

Katelyn sniffled and blew her nose. “I just get so intimidated around him. He talks circles around me and makes me feel like such a fool. I hate that. I’ve never felt good enough for him. But when we left two weeks ago, he’d leaned down and told me that my pants didn’t look good on me and I shouldn’t wear them again.”

Regan felt her shoulders drop. “I’m sorry he said that to you.”

“It just struck me that I was tired of being walked over. I yanked my hand out of his and he wanted to know what he said. But I saw it in his eyes. He knew what he was saying and I wondered why I never noticed it before.”

“Did he get violent with you?” she asked.

“No. It’s just his eyes looked mean. Almost evil. He grabbed my hand to hold it again. It was a control thing. He pulled me to the side and he was telling me to stop being dramatic and causing a scene. Some guy saw it and I could tell he might intervene but then made a comment about the lawyer’s office on your hall and my feet just walked right into it without thought.”

She held back her smile. “What happened after you went into the office?”

“I knew I couldn’t see the lawyer then just by walking in, but I talked to the woman at the desk and made an appointment for another day. She was so nice and let me stay there for twenty minutes until we knew Zachery was gone and then I called my mother to come get me. I stayed at my mom’s that night.”

Regan was nodding her head. “Do you feel as if Zachery is a threat?”

“No,” Katelyn said. “I really don’t, but I needed time and I needed him to understand I was serious. That brings me to finding my own place. I told him I just wanted to be done, but now that I said it...I feel a little...lost. I don’t know.”

“It’s normal to feel that way. Even though it’s what you want, you can still mourn what is lost.”

They talked for the next hour. The conversation was all over the place and she tried to rein Katelyn back in but knew they’d need more sessions and agreed to continue weekly via video calls on Katelyn’s lunch hour for the next few weeks.

When the call was done, Regan made some notes and got ready for her next call.

Robert was thirty-eight and didn’t want his live-in girlfriend and family to know he was seeking help. That going out of town was better, but he was struggling with his identity and had been most of his life.

Though she seemed to have a lot of couples recently, she was getting a nice mix.

Once the call was done, she wrote down some notes and would finish it in the morning after she listened to the recording again.

For now she was too tired and didn’t have an appointment until ten in the morning.

She shut her laptop down, put it in her briefcase. Then she locked her door and shut all the lights in the office, locking it behind her and setting the alarm again.

When she turned to leave, Zander was coming out of his office.

“Late night?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have lots of them. I had to come back and get my laptop. I’ll finish up at home.”

“I’ll probably do the same though I just told myself I’d do it in the morning.”

Sometimes she couldn’t sleep and just needed to get her work done.

“Bad habit,” he said. “Or a good one. I find it comes with the territory of owning a business.”

“That’s true,” she said. “There is no nine to five in my career.”

“Sometimes my nine to five is night to morning,” he said, laughing.

“Part of the reason I chose to be this kind of doctor over a medical doctor,” she said. Her parents were shocked she didn’t want to continue with some other kind of medicine.

She’d never had any plans on being a surgeon, emergency medicine, or delivering babies. The three things her mother tried to push her toward.

Her father said she should have gone to be a dermatologist.

No. She didn’t want to treat patients that were physically hurt.

She didn’t even want to go for psychiatry. That focused more on mental health.

She wanted to help heal the injuries that weren’t visible to the naked eye but at the same time work with those who wanted to help themselves.

For a few years she’d found her career both rewarding and frustrating.

The frustration of meeting with clients like Katelyn and having a clear idea of what she thought her client wanted and then not seeing her speak up, to rewarding knowing that the path had been laid out and Katelyn needed to take the step when she was ready.

“I’m not big on blood and guts,” Zander said. “Seen my fair share on the force.”

“You were a police officer?” she asked. She hadn’t been aware of that fact.

“I was,” he said. He held the door open for her and walked down the stairs next to her.

“Not your thing?” she asked.

“I don’t always like to follow the rules. I bet you’re a rule follower.”

She laughed. “Maybe. Not always. There are some I will never break or cross, but I will try to help my patients any way I can.” Maybe sometimes she went a little overboard or took risks, but she felt she had to reach them. Her parents never took risks or ventured out to fix or solve those issues. She wanted her clients to know they should work hard at things if they really wanted it and if it meant she had to be the one to push them, then so be it. She angled her head. “I’m not sure I see you breaking the law.”

“Not the law,” he said. “Though I wouldn’t admit it if I did. But the rules. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you want to do with your life. I think I’m a blend of my parents and maybe I didn’t want to let them down, but staying on the force just wasn’t right for me.”

“You know I’m going to have to ask if your parents are in law enforcement too,” she said.

“My father is a recently retired captain. My mother is the DA. My sister Marley is an ADA.”

“I didn’t put DA Conway together with PI Conway,” she said.

“Conway is a common enough name,” he said. “But that’s my mom.”

“I could see where maybe you didn’t want to break too many rules and get caught.”

“Oh, I’ve been caught doing things I shouldn’t enough, but nothing I couldn’t get out of,” he said, smirking.

They’d reached the main lobby now and she turned to look into his dark eyes.

There were hidden secrets there for sure. Enough that her body felt some tingles.

“We might have all been there a time or two,” she said.

“I picture you as a do-gooder,” he said.

“That might have been used to describe me a time or two,” she said. “Not in a good way either.”

“I’m not trying to insult you,” he said.

He followed her to her car in the parking lot. It was dark out and she was positive he wasn’t parked near her, as there weren’t that many cars around.

“Are you walking me to my car for my protection?”

“I am,” he said. “My mother would have my head if I let a lady walk in a parking lot alone at night.”

Regan smiled but didn’t say a word until she got to her car. She turned. “Thank you for offering your protection.” She was trying to joke but deep down it felt nice and comforting he’d done that. Like five weighted blankets in front of a warm fire on a cold night.

“I’ve caught the tongue in cheek and I don’t care,” he said. “I can put my head on my pillow at night that you are pulling out of here safely.”

She nodded and climbed in, trying not to groan that her attempted joke might have come off snarky. He probably thought she was sarcastic and cold like her parents and she didn’t want that. She took a big deep breath, pulled away and saw him getting into a black SUV.

Yeah, Miles was right. Zander was sexy. But he was also chivalrous.

Not something she saw much of lately, and she could appreciate it.