Page 32 of Sex, Lust & Lingerie

CHAPTER 20

Jaime

Islept restlessly. Too much shit was on my mind. None of it good. The future of Gloria weighed on my chest. I might be able to save her, but in my heart I felt like I was going to lose her. As I attempted to get in another hour of shut-eye, my cell phone rang. Groggily, I reached for it on my nightstand. I squinted at the caller ID. It was my shrink, Dr. Zimmer. FaceTiming me. It was 9:15 a.m. Which meant it was 12:15 on the East Coast. I had a standing lunchtime appointment with him every Wednesday. Something I never missed unless I traveled out of town for business. With the craziness of the last few days, I’d forgotten to cancel it, let alone remember it. Sitting up, I accepted the call and the good doctor’s kind, bespeckled face filled the screen.

“Jaime, I’m calling to find out if you’re okay. You’re fifteen minutes late for your session.”

Clad in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, I climbed out of bed and shuffled over to an armchair.

“I’m sorry, Doc. I forgot to cancel. I’m in LA. It’s been really crazy since we last met.” That was an understatement…a meeting with the Feds…an unexpected trip to Paris… a near plane crash… a detour to Los Angeles. And a wild rollercoaster of emotions.

He stroked his beard. “Do you want to tell me what’s going?”

At his soothing voice, the urge to vomit everything swept over me. Without mentioning the unexpected clandestine meeting I had following my last visit to his office which seemed like a century ago, I told him about my impromptu trip to Paris, beginning with my encounter with Victor outside Gloria’s hotel room.

“How did it make you feel to ‘kick his ass’?”

“Fucking good. I should have broken every bone in his body. And bashed in his balls.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. You sent him a message.”

I yearned to tell my therapist that I wasn’t done with the bastard. But that would open up a Pandora’s box of questions that I couldn’t answer. I was sworn to secrecy. Even Gloria had no clue about my agenda.

My therapist continued. “Let’s talk about Gloria.”

“What do you want to know?” There were a gazillion things I could tell him about Gloria. That she was sexy as fuck, gorgeous, smart, even funny as hell. Her pussy was made for me and she could send me to the moon and back.

“How do you feel about her?”

His question caught me off guard.

I hesitated. “She’s making me crazy, Doc.”

“What do you mean?”

“One minute she’s on fire. The next she’s an iceberg.” I went on to relate the events of the past couple days. Dr. Zimmer listened intently with few interruptions until I told him about the plane ride.

“She was scared out of her fucking mind. So was I.”

“About crashing?”

“No, about losing her.”

“I see.” My psychiatrist paused. “Who was the last person you were afraid of losing?”

The answer came quickly and I blurted it out. “My father.”

Dr. Zimmer nodded wordlessly. It was if he was cataloging my response. “So tell me, Jaime, what has transpired between you and Gloria since you’ve been in Los Angeles?”

Skipping over the kinky Skype sex, I told told him not much and that she seemed aloof. “When I asked her out for dinner last night, she told me she had a hot date.”

“Hmm. How did that make you feel?”

“Fucking jealous as hell. I’ve never felt that way before.”

“Do you know why?”

I shook my head. “Tell me.”

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