Read Online Sisters in Love (Snow Sisters, Book One: Love in Bloom Series #1) by Melissa Foster - Free Book Online Page B

herself slipping into her therapist persona easier
than she’d thought possible.
    Blake looked down at his hands, then back up
at her.
    God, he’s handsome . Stop
it!
    “Yes, Dave, my friend.” He paused and looked
around her office. “Dave Tuft was my best friend. He died in a
skiing accident on Saturday.”
    “Saturday?” She couldn’t keep the surprise
from her voice. “But you were at the bar last Saturday night. I saw
you, remember?”
    “Avoidance,” Blake said with a straight face.
“It’s one of my…one of the things I need to work on. Look,” Blake
leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, “I’m not someone who
doesn’t see his own faults. I know I’m a…I’ve been a bit of a…”
    Danica raised an eyebrow, secretly
reassessing what she thought of him by his honesty. She had little
tolerance for lies, although in this case, lies might make her job
much easier. She’d instantly be turned off by lies, while honesty
was harder to resist.
    “Well, I’m that guy.”
    Come on. You can do it, Blake . “That
guy?” Danica was not going to spoon-feed any client, including him.
Especially him. She couldn’t wait to hear if he fessed up to being
the person she saw him as.
    “ That guy. You know. The one who dates
a different girl every night. The one who accidentally hits a woman
in the nose, then looks at another woman while she’s standing there
bleeding.”
    So, he did know what he was like. “Before we
talk about all of that—and we will talk about all of that—I’d like
to get an idea of your familial background.”
    Blake groaned and leaned back in his
chair.
    “I’m not a therapist who believes that you
need to relive your childhood in order to make progress, but I do
like to know what you’ve experienced, so I can better help you.”
She pulled off her normal speech without a hitch. That was
easy . Danica squeezed her pen so tight that her knuckles stung.
This was where the bad guys came out. Molestation, emotional abuse,
any of the triggers from childhood could bring even the strongest
man to tears—or to aggression. She watched for the telltale signs
of the latter while he answered.
    “I know I have to talk about this, but it’s
difficult.” He took a deep breath, and Danica watched a brief look
of pain pass through his eyes. “My mom left when I was three.”
    “Have you seen her since?”
    Blake shook his head. “She didn’t leave a
forwarding address. I lived with my father.” Blake looked out the
window, his eyes serious, as if he was contemplating something.
When he turned back toward Danica, she saw the same softness she’d
caught a glimpse of when he’d first elbowed her in the café. “He
did the best he could. Worked two jobs, spent time with me. I’m not
a kid who was ignored or abused.”
    That helps . She waited patiently for
him to continue. All clients had this lull in admission. Danica
knew better than to prompt them. How they continued was often very
telling.
    “I don’t see him much. He moved away, and
I—”
    Danica waited, listening to the faint road
noise filtering in through the closed windows. She waited until his
discomfort with the silence became evident in his fidgeting. She
was used to this. Blake fidgeted. She waited.
    “Hell, I don’t know. There’s no real reason
we don’t see each other except probably that he’s old and I’m
selfish.”
    Yes! One point for being self-aware! She nodded, hiding her enthusiasm for his honesty and wondering
what he might be hiding. Everybody was hiding something.
    “Okay, so no mom growing up, and Dad was a good
guy. That’s all I need for now to be able to move forward.” She set
the clipboard down on her desk and relaxed a bit, steepling her
hands beneath her chin. “Tell me about Dave.”
    Blake’s eyes went from serious to sad, then
settled on something in between. “He was my business partner. We
skied together.”
    Danica nodded, waited.
    He looked down, then spoke softly. “He