Sacred Sins

Tess's office. She tossed a sable coat over the arm of a chair and posed. “What do you think of my new dress?”
    “It's very becoming.”
    “It is, isn't it?” Mrs. Halderman ran a hand over the thin, silk-lined wool. “Red is so eye-catching. I do love to be noticed.”
    “You've been shopping again, Mrs. Halderman?”
    “Yes.” She beamed, then her pretty, china-doll face drew into a pout. “Oh, don't be annoyed, Dr. Court. I know you said maybe I should stay away from the stores for a little while. And I did really. I hadn't been to Neiman's for almost a week.”
    “I'm not annoyed, Mrs. Halderman,” she said, and watched the pout transform into another beaming smile. “You have wonderful taste in clothes.” Which was fortunate, as Ellen Halderman was obsessive. She saw, she liked, she bought, often tossing it aside and forgetting it after one wearing. But that was a small problem. Mrs. Halderman also had the same routine with men.
    “Thank you, Doctor.” Like a little girl, she twirled in a circle to show off the flare of the skirt. “I did have the most marvelous time shopping. And you'd have been proud of me. I only bought two outfits. Well, three,” she amended with a giggle. “But lingerie shouldn't count, should it? Then I went down to have some coffee. You know that marvelous restaurant in the Mazza Gallerie where you can look up at all the people and the shops?”

    “Yes.” Tess was sitting on the corner of her desk. Mrs. Halderman looked at her, caught her bottom lip between her teeth, not in shame or anxiety, but in suppressed delight. Then she walked to a chair and sat primly.
    “I was having coffee. I'd thought about having a roll, but if I didn't watch my figure, clothes wouldn't be so much fun. A man was sitting at the table beside mine. Oh, Dr. Court, I knew as soon as I saw him. Why, my heart just started to pound.” She put a hand to it, as though even now its rhythm couldn't be trusted. “He was so handsome. Just a little gray right here.” She touched her forefingers to her temples as her eyes took on the soft, dreamy light Tess had seen too often to count. “He was tanned, as though he'd been skiing. Saint Moritz, I thought, because it's really too early for Vermont. He had a leather briefcase with his little initials monogrammed. I kept trying to guess what they stood for. M.W.” She sighed over them, and Tess knew she was already changing the monogram on her bath towels. “I can't tell you how many names I'd conjured up to fit those initials.”
    “What did they stand for?”
    “Maxwell Witherspoon. Isn't that a wonderful name?”
    “Very distinguished.”
    “Why, that's just what I told him.”
    “So, you spoke with him.”
    “Well, my purse slid off the table.” She put her fingers to her lips as if to hide a grin. “A girl's got to have a trick or two if she wants to meet the right man.”
    “You knocked your purse off the table.”
    “It landed right by his foot. It was my pretty black-and-white snakeskin. Maxwell leaned over to pick it up. As he handed it to me, he smiled. My heart just about stopped. It was like a dream. I didn't hear the clatter of the other tables, I didn't see the shoppers on the floors above us. Our fingers touched, and—oh, promise you won't laugh, Doctor.”

    “Of course I won't.”
    “It was as if he'd touched my soul.”
    That's what she'd been afraid of. Tess moved away from the desk to sit in the chair opposite her patient. “Mrs. Halderman, do you remember Asanti?”
    “Him?” With a sniff Mrs. Halderman dismissed her fourth husband.
    “When you met him at the art gallery, under his painting of Venice, you thought he touched your soul.”
    “That was different. Asanti was Italian. You know how clever Italian men are with women. Maxwell's from Boston.”
    Tess fought back a sigh. It was going to be a very long fifty minutes.

    W HEN Ben entered Tess's outer office, he found exactly what he'd expected. It was as cool and classy as her apartment. Calming colors, deep roses, smoky grays that would put her patients at ease. The potted ferns by the windows had moist leaves, as though they'd just been spritzed with water. Fresh flowers and a collection of figurines in a display cabinet lent the air of a parlor rather than a reception room. From the copy of Vogue left open on a low coffee table, he gathered her current patient was a woman.
    It didn't remind him of another doctor's office, one with white walls and the