“And how long do you think your antiwoman pledge will last?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks. A couple of months.”

“A long time.”

His mouth turned down at the corners. “Tell me about it. But I don’t know what else to do. I won’t be that guy again.”

“Do you want to fall in love?” She held up her hands. “Not with me. That’s not where this is going. But ever?”

“I don’t know.”

An unexpectedly honest answer. “Because you’d be stuck?”

“I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“You were hungover. You couldn’t help yourself. I won’t tell anyone.”

Emotions flashed across his face. She tried to read them and couldn’t.

“I want to not treat women badly,” he said at last. “No, that’s not right. I was honest about what I wanted and if the lady agreed, then we had a good time. It was supposed to be okay for both of us. I don’t know what went wrong.”

“One of your temporaries wanted more.”

“And I couldn’t remember her name.”

He spoke with what felt like sincere regret.

“Now you want to be different.”

He looked at her. “If you think you can change me,” he began.

“I don’t.” She shrugged. “I don’t believe people can change each other. We have to make the choice to be different ourselves and then make it happen. You want to act differently around women, but you don’t know how. Has it occurred to you that maybe the problem isn’t that you couldn’t remember her name, but that you never saw her as a person in the first place? That you don’t see any of them as people?”

He glanced longingly toward the door. “Okay then. While this has been great, I need to go.”

“Five minutes,” she said quietly. “Give me five minutes. I’m really going somewhere with this and I think you’ll be interested. Plus, it’s not scary. I promise.”

He deliberately glanced at his watch. “Five minutes.”

“Thank you.” She paused while she figured out the best and quickest way to say what she was thinking, in a way that would get him to see her plan had real merit.

“You do what you do to avoid getting stuck. Which is the same as being in love, right? You don’t want the serious relationship.”

He gave her a brief nod.

“Logically you go the other way. A series of short-term, meaningless flings. And while there is some pleasure in that, it’s not exactly who you want to be.”

Another nod, this one slightly less cautious.

“Now you want to change, but don’t know how. I’m suggesting that part of the problem is you see women as either wives or playthings. You don’t have any women friends in your life.” She waved her hand. “I’m not counting family. Your mom, cousins and the like. I’m talking about the everyday garden-variety woman you interact with.”

He leaned back in the chair. “Go on.”

She told herself it was great that he hadn’t bolted. Now came the tough part. Telling him about her.

“My mom was my dad’s second wife. Kipling and I are half brother and sister. My mom was great. Sweet and loving. She adored my father.” Shelby drew in a breath. She told herself to stick to the facts. To stay in her head and everything would be okay. It was only if she lost herself in the memories that she got into trouble.

“My dad was a difficult man,” she began, then made herself stop. Martina, her therapist, was always reminding her to talk about the past with authenticity, no euphemisms. “No. That’s not true. He wasn’t difficult. He was violent. He beat my mother and when I got older, he beat me.”