Indecent Suggestion - By Elizabeth Bevarly Page 0,83

were indeed love. The kind of love that bound two people together forever. As for the rest of it…

Well. That was why she’d taken the day off.

She made it to Dorcas Upton’s office downtown in even better time than she had on her first visit with Turner, not caring that she didn’t have an appointment. She’d camp out in the hypnotherapist’s office all day if the woman was booked solid. Becca wasn’t leaving until she had some answers. But when she told the receptionist to ask Dorcas if she could fit her in, the hypnotherapist herself came into the outer office to usher Becca inside.

She still looked like a school librarian, Becca thought as she followed Dorcas to her office. Today, though, the other woman was a study in gray, her slim wool skirt stopping at her knees, under a charcoal tweed blazer donned over a pale gray blouse. Her hair was wound atop her head in the same sort of knot she’d worn before, and the black half-glasses sat perched on her nose. Her professional attire was at odds with Becca’s casual dress. She herself had thrown on the first pair of jeans she found in the drawer, along with a slouchy blue sweater and her battered bomber jacket.

“I am so glad to see you, Becca,” Dorcas said as she closed her office door behind them. “I was going to call you myself this morning as soon as I had a free moment. I’m so sorry about what happened with you and Turner.”

“Just what did happen, anyway?” Becca asked.

The hypnotherapist explained exactly what Turner had already told her, but with more detail—and more apology—until Becca had no choice but to accept that her worst suspicions were confirmed. She really had only responded to Turner sexually because of the instructions Dorcas had fed to her while she was in an altered state. Her reaction to him hadn’t been genuine at all. She hadn’t been making love with him because of any honest emotional response, but because she’d heard a word spoken aloud. And it had been a silly word, at that.

So that kinda sucked.

“But, Becca,” Dorcas added quickly after concluding her explanation, “there’s something very, very important that you need to know about hypnosis.”

“What’s that?” Becca asked halfheartedly. Frankly, she didn’t want to know anything more about hypnosis. What she did know had already bummed her out really badly.

Dorcas leaned forward, folding her elbows carefully on her desk and weaving her fingers together. “Whatever has happened between you and Turner since our session,” she said, “it was bound to happen eventually, with or without hypnosis.”

Becca studied her through narrowed eyes. “What makes you say that? Turner and I were just friends before we came to see you.”

“Were you?”

There was something about the way Dorcas voiced the question that put Becca on the defensive. “Yes,” she said tersely. “We were just friends. We’d been friends since elementary school. Nothing more.”

Then she remembered what Turner had told her Saturday, and realized that wasn’t true. Not for him, anyway. For herself, though, it was. Wasn’t it?

“You’d never been attracted to each other before coming to see me?” Dorcas asked. “Sexually, I mean?”

Becca opened her mouth to say of course not, but hesitated. There had been those few—very few—occasions when the two of them had gotten a little closer than “just friends” normally did. But on those occasions, there had been other factors at play. Overactive teenage hormones, for instance. Or too much spiked eggnog. Things that messed with an otherwise rational mind. Had they been thinking clearly, Becca and Turner never would have fooled around the way they did. And besides, they’d always stopped before they went all the way.

“Well, there were a couple of times when maybe we were attracted to each other,” she told Dorcas reluctantly. “Sexually, I mean. But we never actually had sex. It was just a few kisses. A little groping. It didn’t last long.”

Dorcas nodded slowly, seeming to find this information a lot more interesting than Becca did. “And what made the two of you stop before actually having sex?” she asked.

“I made it stop,” Becca told her. “Because I came to my senses and realized what a bad idea it would be.”

Now Dorcas smiled. The sort of smile, Becca couldn’t help thinking, that indicated she was very pleased with Becca’s answer. All she said, though, was, “I see.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” Becca told her, feeling defensive again for some reason. “What’s been happening between