He chuckled. “Is that something someone can do?”
Frustration flared inside her, but she tamped it down. “I just want you to understand that I’m really sorry. I wasn’t just saying it. I feel it throughout my whole body. I don’t mean to be so snappy with you, and I don’t mean to be so ineffective at communicating. Iamworking on myself, and Iwillget to the point where I can look you straight in the face and tell you I love you.”
She pulled away and looked up at him. “Okay?”
“Okay.” His mouth barely moved as he spoke the word. “And hey, I think you just said it.” His lips curved up into a smile, and he lowered his head to kiss her. Briar stayed in that moment, standing in the darkness within the safe, comforting circle of Tarr’s arms, the stroke of his mouth against hers, and his body heat combining with hers.
She wasn’t sure what love felt like, but she strongly suspected it felt just—like—this.
Briar eyed the three-story office building made of off-white stone. Various business names and logos sat up near the roof, and she saw the one she’d come for.
Premier Family Counseling.
Her heartbeat stuttered in her chest, but Briar turned off her SUV and reached for her purse. She’d left the farm early today, after telling Bobbie Jo why she needed to leave. She’d driven herself here. She’d planned to get lunch for her and Tarr on the way home from their favorite gourmet hot dog joint.
She wasn’t going to back out now, when all she had to do was walk inside and give a receptionist her name.
Tarr had offered to come with her to her first therapy session, but something about it felt too…intimate to her. She wanted to be able to talk freely—maybe even about him—and in the end, Briar had decided she needed to handle this appointment herself, from beginning to end.
She waited behind someone on a knee scooter, as the first floor housed a foot and ankle clinic, and then she stepped over to the elevator and pushed the button to go up. The counseling office waited for her on the third floor, and Briar pushed through the pristine glass doors easily. She approached the counter there, where a young woman probably five years her junior beamed up at her.
“Good morning,” she said. “Name?”
“Briar Prescott.” She pulled her purse across her body. “I had a referral from my primary care physician.” She plucked the card from the front pocket of her bag in case she needed it.
“Yes, I see that…Doctor Filigree?”
“Yes,” Briar said. “I have an appointment at eleven with Doctor Margrint.”
“Yep.” The woman looked up at her. “Have you been here before?”
Briar shook her head and pressed her lips together. This receptionist wasn’t the therapist, and Briar could tell the doctor about how nervous she was once she got called back.
The receptionist leaned over and picked up a clipboard. “We have all our first-time clients fill this out.” She handed Briar a pen and offered a smile.
Briar couldn’t bring herself to return it. She hated paperwork, because the doctor wasn’t going to look at it. She’d still make Briar say everything out loud anyway, but she hurriedthrough it and returned the clipboard back to the receptionist before retaking a seat in the waiting room.
Her nerves ran through her unbridled, and Briar found herself biting on her fingernails. She forced her hands back to her lap, and thankfully, a woman with lovely auburn hair opened a door, looked right at her, and said, “Briar?”
She stood and went with this new woman, who had to be closer to forty than Briar was. “We’re right here,” the woman said. “This is Doctor Margrint’s main office, as she’s just finishing up with a group session in the conference area.” She smiled at Briar as she moved past her, and Briar noticed she didn’t come in the room after her.
Instead, the woman loitered in the doorway. “Feel free to look around. There are snacks over on the counter to your left, and drinks in the little fridge underneath there. Doctor Margrint will be right in; shouldn’t be more than five or six minutes.”
Briar gazed at the huge floor-to-ceiling windows in this office, and the door had nearly clicked closed before she remembered to say, “Thank you.”
Gorgeous landscapes of the Rocky Mountains hung on the walls, and Briar gazed at them with joy singing through her soul. The doctor had a large, raw-edge wooden desk in front of the windows, but the whole left side of the office felt more like the waiting area she’d sat in with Tarr before their couples’ massage.
The snacks, the ice water with sliced cucumbers in it, the mini-fridge filled with bottles of sparkling water, Gatorade, and Diet Coke.
Briar almost didn’t dare to touch anything, but she admired the gold lamps with cream shades, and the dark mahogany bookshelves that held novels instead of Doctor Margrint’s textbooks.
Several seating options waited for Briar, and she chose a chaise, the way she would’ve at the spa. A blanket lay over thearm of it, and she slid off her shoes and covered herself with it, really sinking into the cushy furniture and sighing out her worries.
“Briar,” a woman said, and Briar practically jumped out of her skin. “Oh, don’t get up.” A brunette strode toward her, her navy pants clearly made from high-quality fabric as they swayed around her legs like dark water.
She arrived at Briar’s side and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m Doctor Margrint, and I’m so glad you found something comfortable for you.”
“This is such a nice place,” Briar said.
