She bows her head down, and I almost feel sorry for being such an asshole, but she and I are moving way too quickly on Heath and what she already knows, and I’ve never allowed someone to get that close since Laura.
Until the woman in front of me.
Now, she’s off limits. Someone I really shouldn’t get involved in because conflict of interest and all that shit, butshit.
Of course, she’d be someone who’s linked to a part of my life that I wasn’t ready to share yet.
“Mr. Wolfe, I’m trying?—”
“Micah.”
“Mr. Wolfe.” When she glances back up, she’s scowling at me, but she can do whatever she wants. Sienna still looks absolutely stunning in that damn dress that leaves everything to the imagination and creates the desperate need to unwrap it. I’d actually like to know if that’s legal in the school system or whatever. Surely, there has to be some dress code or something. “I promise you that this meeting is confidential. Unless there’s abuse in the home?—”
“I’d stop there, if I were you,” I suggest through a tick in my jaw. “His mother isn’t in the picture. It’s just him and me.”
“I understand. I want to get him with a therapist.”
“No.”
“Mr. Wolfe?—”
“Call me that one more time, Sienna, and I’ll come around that desk.”
Her nostrils flare, but she keeps that professional manner about her because I’m in her place of work, her career, she’s not going to waste it away on me. “Heath needs someone that isn’t me and isn’t you. Someone who will see things from the outside and teach him how to express himself properly.”
“He’s six.”
“And if we don’t help, who knows how he’ll evolve. I’m not going to ask any more about his mother, but it seems as though since she’s not around, he could be rebelling and feel some sort of emptiness around him.”
A few ticks go by, and from the way this conversation is veering, I need to think about it. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
You can drop the professional act and bend over.
“No,” I reply instead, keeping to the theme of our meeting. “Was there anything else?”
“Yes.” She pulls out a piece of paper and hands it over to me. Before I can even take it, I notice the random color of crayons and two small figures. “Heath adores you. It speaks a lot to how much you mean to him. Anything I ask them to draw, Heath decides to create you and him doing something different.”
The picture is of him and me playing catch, both of us with brown mitts and stick-like bodies with blobs of clothes over them.
“A real Picasso over here.”
“He loves to draw.”
“He does.”
Sienna pushes her chair back and slowly rises from the only piece of furniture in the room that separates us. “Mr. Wolfe, I understand being a single parent can be rough. Anything you need, please let me know.”
“I appreciate that.”
“There’s a, umm…bake sale next week. A lot of the parents help out, and I think Heath seeing you in a school setting would maybe help.”
Yeah, I don’t bake.
“That’s a little out of my wheelhouse, Miss Vesper.”
“It doesn’t have to be homemade. People buy baked goods all the time.”
