3. Kieran

Chapter 3

Kieran

“ Y our brother and his wife are here.”

Looking away from the white caps on the Pacific, I nod at my head of security, Sven. He touches his ear and speaks to one of his men.

“He’ll receive them on the back patio. Is the chef still here? Okay, ask him to put something together. Light fare.” He pauses. “No alcohol.”

I don’t dispute the order. Sadly, the person who knows me best is a man whose company I pay for. Sven is a special case, though, and worth every cent. He’s been with me for years, has seen me at my lowest and highest—both figuratively and literally—and we share a bond deeper than most conventional friendships. Life-and-death situations will do that for you.

Resigning myself to the coming inquisition, I walk away from the cliff, past the glittering pool, and up a set of steps to the covered deck that spans the back of the house. Sven follows, ever my shadow.

I drop onto a padded chaise, cross my ankles, and fold my hands over my stomach. Said stomach is gurgling, still recovering from the obscene amount of booze I’ve poured into it over the last week. My liver’s protests, at least, are silent.

My head feels like wet cotton sits between my ears, my typically whirring thoughts subdued. I have no idea if it’s the hangover catching up to me or the oddness of this morning. The office. The woman.

It’s been a long time since I was so unnerved by another person. Or felt as challenged. I can’t shake the suspicion that everything she said and did was carefully orchestrated, from the too-small chair I sat in to her every movement and word.

Who the fuck is she?

And why does she seem familiar?

The latter question I can thankfully answer—my hungover brain was clearly hallucinating. There’s no way I could have met and subsequently forgotten that woman. Not when she dug under my skin in seconds and made my fucking bones vibrate.

Alistair walks outside first, followed by his wife of five years, Gail. While the effusive chatterbox is perfect for my brother and I generally like her, I also find her utterly exhausting. They settle close together on the outdoor couch opposite my chaise, looking like the cover photo of a magazine profiling lives of the rich and beautiful .

Gail smiles and waves at Sven; Alistair gives him a brief nod before shifting blue eyes a shade lighter than mine to me.

“Well?” he barks, ever the battering ram. “How’d it go?”

I ignore him and narrow my focus on Gail. Her smile wavers and her eyes don’t quite meet mine. Anxiety rolls off her in waves. Killer instinct, my brother calls it. My innate ability to hone in on a person’s mental state has served me well in life. It’s second nature now, so fine-tuned that meeting someone I can’t read is highly unusual.

It’s been a highly unusual day.

“How do you know Dr. Stirling?” I ask Gail.

A personal favor is the only conclusion that makes sense for why I was seen on such short notice on a Saturday. While I couldn’t sense much of anything beneath Stirling’s Fort Knox exterior, instinct tells me she doesn’t give a rat’s hairy ass about my money, celebrity, or even the fact I’m, as she expressed, “one misstep from the psych ward or a rehab facility.”

Moreover, according to the preliminary profile my private investigator scrounged up this morning, most of her clients are rich and famous. He’s the one who likened her to the Wizard of Oz. As much as it irritates me, having met her, I see merit in the comparison.

Pink infuses Gail’s cheeks. She glances at Alastair and laughs nervously. Realizing my error, I swear silently; it didn’t occur to me until this moment that she might be one of Stirling’s clients .

You’re slipping, Kier.

I’m scrambling for a way to pull my foot out of my mouth when Gail says in a too-high voice, “Funny story, actually. We were roommates in college. Until this morning, I hadn’t spoken to her in years.”

As I absorb this unexpected information, Gail turns to Alistair with a contrite expression. His brows rise, curious rather than suspicious, and he reaches for her hand. I look away.

“Sorry for not mentioning it, honey,” she murmurs. “I didn’t intend for it to be a secret.”

Even with my gaze on a potted plant, I feel her furtive glance at me. She did intend for it to be a secret. From me, at least. Curious . More importantly, why ?

Before Alistair can reassure her—he can do that shit out of my sight—I ask her, “Undergrad at UCLA?”

Gail has a communications degree, but to my knowledge, she didn’t do any post-graduate work.

She nods. “I was a junior when I moved into the apartment. Talia was already living there. I think she was a year or two ahead of me? I can’t honestly remember.” She giggles breathlessly. “College years, you know?”

Frowning, I compare that to the bullet points from my PI. Gail and Stirling—I can’t think of her as Talia —are the same age, thirty-one. Her PhD would have taken five or six years, which means she graduated anywhere from two to four years ago. But it doesn’t add up. The woman I met today was far too confident and successful for what should be a relatively new career. Which either means she graduated high school years early or accelerated her degrees. Or she didn’t complete her degree and is a fraud.

I make a mental note to text my PI to go ahead and compile a more extensive dossier. With dates and receipts.

When I surface from my thoughts, I find Alistair staring at me over the rim of a glass of iced tea while Gail munches on a small plate of grapes and berries. I look at the nearby table on which trays of food and pitchers of water and tea sit—none of which I noticed being delivered.

Another slip.

Rubbing the throbbing spot on my forehead, I brace myself. Alistair has been surprisingly patient, but the look in his eyes tells me his patience is dangling by a thread.

“How was it?” he asks, more demand than question this time.

I lower my hand back to my stomach and shrug. “Fine.”

Just because he’s genuinely concerned about me doesn’t mean I won’t make him sweat. He’s my brother, after all.

“Just fine?” he grumbles, glancing at Gail. She blinks wide eyes at me. Interestingly, her color is still high.

“I have another session with her tonight.”

Alistair’s confusion is as telling as Gail’s suddenly blank expression. My brother glances at her. “Is that normal? To see a therapist on a Saturday night?”

She hurries to swallow the food in her mouth. “I don’t know,” she says, but it comes out like a question .

This time, Alistair’s stare on his wife is laser focused. “Gail?” he asks in a voice I know means business. It’s made grown men’s balls shrink across many a conference table.

She cracks instantly. “I’m sorry. I had the idea of calling her and it snowballed from there. Maybe I didn’t really think it through.” She glances wildly between us. “It’s just… Talia has always been an unconventional woman. Brilliant to the point it’s kind of scary. I saw an article last week about her and I thought… I don’t know, that Kieran might benefit from someone like her. An out-of-the-box thinker.”

Alistair glances at me in bafflement. I shrug back at him. Gail’s distress isn’t comfortable to witness, strumming the brittle strings of my protective instincts, but I want to hear where she’s going with this. Obviously, she knows about those disturbing certifications on Dr. Stirling’s wall and just as obviously, she withheld that information from my brother. His reaction would have been far more inflammatory than mine. I have no doubt he would have quashed the idea outright.

Oddly, it makes me respect my sister-in-law more.

“Honey, what are you not saying?” Alistair’s effort to sound gentle misses the mark, probably due to the thunderous scowl on his face.

Gail glances at me. The panic in her eyes is too much for me to take. I clear my throat, bringing my brother’s attention to me. “I think she’s dancing around the fact that Dr. Stirling is best known as a celebrity sex therapist.”

Alistair laughs, but when neither Gail nor I join him, the sound abruptly stops. He turns horrified eyes on his wife. “You sent him to a sex worker?”

Gail gasps. “Of course not! Sex therapist .”

“What’s the difference?” he cries. “She asks about your feelings while she tickles your pickle?”

There’s a slight scuff of a shoe behind me, between five and seven feet away. Intentional. I’m sure Sven’s face is impassive, but inside he’s having a good laugh at my expense and wanted me to know it. Arse.

While Gail explains to my idiot brother the difference between sex work and sex therapy—while thankfully stressing the fact Stirling is also a regular psychologist—I rub at my forehead again. If I’m going out tonight, I’m need to catch a few hours of sleep beforehand.

Facing Stirling with weakened faculties is not an option.

“…dominatrix on the weekends.”

Catching the tail end of Gail’s whispered words, my head whips up so fast a muscle twinges in my neck.

“ What ?”

They stare at me. Gail flushes again, this time bright red from jaw to temples. My brother looks constipated. There’s another scuff behind me, a little louder. Sven’s version of dying of laughter.

Dropping my feet to the ground on either side of the chaise, I lean forward. “Repeat that.”

Alistair squares his shoulders. Color creeps up his neck. “Gail was merely telling me that Talia paid for college by working as a—” He swipes a hand over his face, a wheeze escaping as his fingers pass his mouth. “Fucking hell, this is too much.”

“Dominatrix and kink educator,” finishes Gail, refusing to meet my stare.

There’s a suspicious gasping sound behind me. I throw a glare over my shoulder at Sven, whose eyes are dancing so hard they’re sweating.

Alistair murmurs, “She’s not going to, ehm, whip him or anything, right?”

“Don’t be an ass,” Gail hisses back.

I cradle my pounding head in my hands and groan. “What has my life come to?”

The question still floats in my mind eight hours and a restless nap later as I slip into the back seat of my BMW and Sven settles behind the wheel. He refuses to let me sit in the passenger seat; I gave up arguing with him about it years ago.

He starts the car and circles the drive, heading toward the gate at the bottom where he pauses to push a button on the visor. As the massive wooden slab slowly moves aside, his eyes meet mine in the rearview.

“You sure about this?”

At least he’s not laughing anymore. He has his game face on—or game voice since his face never changes.

While he didn’t attempt to talk me out of this arguably insane venture, I can tell he’s not happy. He doesn’t like taking me to some random address in the Valley despite the fact the other two members of his team left ahead of us to scope it out. I also doubt my relaying what Stirling said at the end of our session—that we’d have the place to ourselves—gave him any comfort.

It didn’t give me much comfort, either.

“Just drive before I lose my nerve,” I tell him.

He drives.

About ten minutes in, he gets a call from one of his men, Gabe. I listen to the report: the location is a small, nondescript warehouse, just as the satellite image search indicated. There’s approval in Gabe’s voice as he tells Sven the building is highly secure, with an abundance of external video surveillance and high boundary walls topped by barbed wire. The entrance and three emergency exits—both sides and rear of the building—have keypad security and more cameras.

I tune the rest out. I appreciate Sven’s vigilance, as always, but if I delve too deeply into what he and the other two do for me on a daily basis, I run the risk of a swift slide into paranoia.

Been there, done that.

Instead, I think about how public record listed the address we’re driving to as owned by Shadow Healing Arts LLC. A rather ominous business name, but a fitting one based off my first impression of the woman who owns it. And, you know, the fact she dominates men sexually .

No fucking wonder she raised my hackles.

I close my eyes and try to think calming thoughts, but instead, I see Stirling’s smile at the end of our session. It came out of nowhere, like a summer downpour after a morning of blue skies in Galway. Shocking, impossible to evade, and as irritating as it was captivating.

Her teeth weren’t entirely straight, the most notable imperfection a left eyetooth that sat slightly forward, overlapping the tooth beside it a bit. I have no idea why the detail bothers me to the extent I’m thinking about it hours later. Maybe because the rest of her was so objectively flawless.

While not my type in the least, I can still admit Stirling’s a stunning woman. Tall and willowy in stature, but with a fluidity of movement that speaks to physical strength. Natural breasts, average in size from what I could glean with a quick glance. Rose-colored lips, the bottom plump, the top bowed. Eyes caught in the rare space between brown and yellow, their shade all the more impactful for the dark lashes and brows framing them.

I agree with my brother’s knee-jerk assessment after he insisted Gail show him Stirling’s photo—that her looks are reminiscent of a young Brooke Shields. But while Shields’s beauty is warm, inviting even, Stirling’s is somehow off-putting. Like a modernist painting that captures your attention but leaves you with a vaguely unsettled feeling.

My lack of physical response to the woman doubtlessly puts me in the minority of men—or women for that matter— who find themselves in her path. Even Alistair and Gail looked a bit dazed after staring too long at her photograph.

Despite my verbal agreement to give her three weeks, I haven’t decided one way or another whether I’ll continue her so-called therapy after tonight. Not because I think she’s bad at her job. I’m sure she helps all sorts. Disturbing extracurriculars and certifications aside, I can even acknowledge an intellectual curiosity about her methods. It isn’t often I see that razor-sharp awareness in someone’s eyes outside Lumitech’s labs. Like knows like—just as I do, she sees the world as a puzzle to solve. Or perhaps a foe to conquer.

The simple truth is I don’t believe what’s wrong with me can be fixed. If it weren’t for Alistair and my purely scientific curiosity, I wouldn’t be entertaining this madness at all.

“We’re here,” says Sven, jolting me from my thoughts.

He drives through an open chain-link gate and parks beside a black Lexus. The gate rattles as it slides closed behind us, obeying a remote in the hand of the woman standing near an open door.

Her dark hair is still pulled back, though she’s changed into athletic leggings, a fitted long-sleeved shirt, and trainers. Shadows make her cheekbones stark and eyes dark. Light from the building behind her defines her statuesque form, paying special homage to the tuck of her waist, the flare of her hips, and long, shapely legs.

Even the stalwart Sven stares a few seconds too long before turning off the car and exiting—and he bats for the other team. As for me, I’m gratified to realize I might as well be looking at Mrs. Murphy, the elderly lady who lived in the flat above ours growing up and who used to ring us for sugar without pants on.

As I get out of the car and walk toward Stirling, however, I have a disturbing thought.

I wouldn’t terribly mind seeing that crooked eyetooth again.