Free Larkspur Cove by Lisa Wingate Page A

machine when I came in. “Nice of you to join us, Henderson. Hear you had some adventures yesterday.” Fortunately, he was smiling when he said it. Remarkable, considering that I’d already called in this morning to tell Bonnie there had been a problem with Dustin, and I would be a little late. After yesterday’s debacle, if I were the boss, I probably wouldn’t have been as cheerful as Taz. In my two weeks of shadowing him while doing my in-office training, I’d learned that he was amazingly tolerant.
    “You missed the morning meeting. It was a quick one, though.” Taz’s belly lopped over the table as he upturned a second coffee cup and saluted my arrival with the pot. “Coffee?”
    “Please,” I said, making my way into the entry while juggling my briefcase, my purse, Dad’s car keys, and a cart full of counseling materials and CPS referrals I hadn’t read last night. The door hung open behind me, and since my hands were full, I hooked the toe of my shoe over the edge and pulled it shut. Taz’s secretary had promised me you got good at that maneuver after a while – a necessity, as Taz’s plan to move out of the strip mall that housed his practice was temporarily on hold. The fact that decent real estate cost money had kept him in the decaying building, sharing space with a hair salon, a doughnut shop, and a secondhand furniture store.
    Right now he was eyeing a box of chocolate twists the Cambodian lady next door had undoubtedly brought over. My boss was her favorite customer, and every time he got in the mood to actually follow his heart doctor’s advice and lose weight, Mai plied him with freebies. In my weeks of following him around while learning the business, I’d quickly discerned that flattery and food were the ways to his heart. Once you got there, it was a pretty big place, fortunately.
    The last thing I wanted to do was take advantage of that kindness. I wanted to prove myself by doing good work. Post-divorce adjustment or not, I needed to be competent and fully put together. Taz had hired me because the load of contract cases referred to his practice by CPS had grown beyond the scope that even a workaholic psychologist and his small staff could handle. He was so desperate that he’d given me the job, even though my only experience was the counseling time I’d racked up at a church-sponsored family crisis center in downtown Houston.
    “Tough morning?” Taz asked, tucking away the coffeepot while eyeing the doughnuts. He licked his lips, salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs.
    “Not so bad.” I was afraid to tell the truth and expose instability at home. No problems here. Nothing I can’t control.
    He raised a skeptical brow, studying me with one dull hazel eye wider than the other. One should always be careful when lying to a trained psychologist.
    Sighing, I snagged my cup of coffee from the table. “Just a little issue with Dustin. He and some friends had a minor run-in with the lake patrol yesterday. The kids were climbing on the rocks where they shouldn’t have been.”
    Taz’s gaze gravitated toward the doughnuts again, following the magnetic pull of carbohydrates and saturated fat. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
    “Well, I didn’t think so, either.” I relaxed and took a sip of my coffee, then leaned against the table. Taz’s counseling powers were working. I was already feeling better about the morning. Maybe the scene wasn’t as traumatic as it had seemed in the moment. Most things aren’t. “The game warden was a real jerk about it, though. He came by to tell me what a delinquent my son was.”
    My boss’s lips curved upward.“Sounding a little parentally defensive, there, are we?”
    I shrugged grudgingly. I couldn’t help being protective of Dustin. “Well, you know, the whole macho power trip thing was just a little hard to take first thing in the morning.”
    Taz fished a chocolate twist from the box, checking the hallway to make sure the secretary,