Keeping Time (Steelwolf #2) - Stephanie Kay Page 0,1

door, the strap of my oversized purse slid down my arm and I struggled to right it without tipping my cup.

“Let me get that for you,” a man said from beside me. His voice was deep and settled over me like a warm blanket that I wanted to curl up in and use to block out the world.

I bit back a snort. A warm blanket. Really? What the hell was in this coffee? The foam must have gone to my brain.

“Oh, thanks,” I muttered, tilting my head to the side but not fully turning to see if the face matched the voice, which managed to send a spark through my body with six boring words.

Screw it.

I turned around to thank him again, as it was the polite thing to do.

And I swallowed my tongue.

Tristan freaking Sinclair was practically against me. What the hell was he doing at my office building?

“No problem,” he said, his eyes holding my gaze. Or maybe I just couldn’t look away. His dirty blond hair was pulled back from his face in a low bun, but as a long-time Steelwolf fan, I knew it would brush past his shoulders if unleashed.

It wasn’t as long as Jamie Steel’s, a man I hadn’t thought about in a long time.

Another lie.

I thought about him every time I looked at my son, my little miracle who was the result of one drunken night with a rock star. When I’d found out twelve weeks later that I was pregnant, I’d had no way of reaching out and so I never told him.

Then, when I was just over seven months pregnant, Jamie overdosed and died.

It broke my heart that James would never know his father. Not that I’d really known the man. That night had been a blur—a pleasurable one—but still a blur. No better way to celebrate your divorce than VIP passes to Steelwolf. At least that’s how my best friend presented it to me.

“Are you okay?” Tristan’s voice pulled me out of my memories.

“What?” I pushed my purse strap up my shoulder, trying to focus on the here and now. The past was in the past. I couldn’t change what had happened and didn’t want to. James was my everything.

Tristan nodded toward the open door I was frozen in front of.

“Oh, sorry.” I shook my head and walked into the building, heading straight to the elevator. I could’ve taken the stairs to my third-floor office, but this man had flustered the hell out of me and I needed to catch my breath.

He followed me into the elevator. Of course.

We both pressed the button for the third floor, our fingers brushing, and I forced down the sensation of his touch.

“So, third floor?” I asked, internally groaning at how awkward I was continuing to make this.

The corner of his mouth tilted up in a half-smile. “Yep. Third floor.”

Good lord, could this elevator move any slower?

When the doors finally slid open, I all but bolted out. “Have a good day,” I said, before I headed down the hall to my office. I refused to watch what direction he went in.

He probably thought I was some weirdo. At least I hadn’t mentioned his name. No need to add crazy fan to the list of my offensives, which I wasn’t. I liked their music, but I wasn’t obsessed.

“You okay?” Jessica, my office assistant, asked as I shut the door behind me. Luckily, there weren’t any clients in the small waiting room that I shared with two other therapists.

“Yeah. Fine. Tired. Stepped on a Lego,” I rambled.

Jessica laughed. “Barefoot?” I nodded. “Ouch. Don’t miss those days.” Her kids were in high school now, so Lego injuries were a thing of Jessica’s past.

I tried not to be jealous of that.

I caught up with her for a few minutes, making sure no one had called with an emergency or to cancel their appointments, before I walked into my office and shut the door behind me. I plopped down in my office chair and took a healthy swallow of my coffee.

Twenty minutes until my first client would arrive. Well, clients. Belinda and Bradford had been married for ten years, and I struggled to understand how many of those years had been happy ones. We’d done individual and couple appointments. Today, they were both coming in.

I was a marriage and family therapist—a divorced marriage and family therapist. I’m sure that some people wondered how I could help them navigate their relationships when I’d been unsuccessful with my own, but my