Page 42 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“All right. Let’s get started.”

She went to the adjoining paddock and opened the gate, which brought in the same three horses she had briefly introduced Loralee to yesterday.

The woman extended a shaking hand as the first horse trotted by her. And then she retracted her arm quickly.

“It’s okay,” Elizabeth said. “I promise.”

The session went pretty well, and when the horses went back into the neighboring paddock, she turned to Loralee. “Now, remember, don’t worry about anything you see as being a mistake. It’s all just learning.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to need a lot longer than a week here.”

“Well, you can always come back. We never really finish with ourselves.”

“I need to learn how to be as forgiving about myself as you seem to be.”

“Well, I’m not that forgiving of myself,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just working on me too.”

“Elizabeth,” Loralee said, looking at her. “Can I ask you...? You seem to be very intuitive about what it’s like to start over.”

“I’m a therapist,” Elizabeth said.

“I know. But I have a therapist. I’ve had a lot of therapists. And there’s just certain things they don’t seem to quite get.”

This woman was so guarded, so closed off, and Elizabeth could understand that. Elizabeth didn’t work in traditional therapy settings, but even so, she typically adhered to the best practice of not sharing her own story with a client.

But she could tell Loralee needed something to grab on to. Something to make her trust.

People talking at her meant nothing. She needed to know Elizabeth understood what it meant to start over. That she knew what it was to be a woman alone, facing an uncertain future. A woman who had lost a piece of her identity and had to find her feet again, on her own.

“I got divorced six years ago,” Elizabeth said.

Loralee’s eyes crinkled at the edges. “You don’t look old enough to have gotten divorced six years ago.”

“I got married very young. And I didn’t really know what I wanted. Much less how to carry on afterward. It’s been a slow process of figuring out who I am.”

A very slow process. One that wasn’t even close to completion.

But then, having a child complicated everything. Because she had to orient her healing around him. Which was fine. It was just that she hadn’t had alone time to figure herself out. To fix whatever she wanted for dinner or...

Unbidden, that Brody dream popped into her head again.

Right. Well. She hadn’t had the chance to do that either.

The only man she’d ever been with was Carter. And she’d been celibate for six years.

Which was fine. She had never really thought of herself as a sexual person. As far as she was concerned, the best thing about sex was being close to someone that you loved.

She had spent her life moving from home to home, and the thing she had liked about being intimate with Carter was how close she had felt to him. How secure. Of course, then she had discovered that just because she felt a certain way didn’t mean that another person felt the same. Didn’t mean they were having the same experience.

So it didn’t matter. Not really. If ever she fell in love again, she could explore that part of herself. But she didn’t need to do it otherwise.

She might have had an orgasm dreaming about Brody, but the idea of deciding to have wild, torrid sex with him, only to find herself struggling to climax...

Well, that horrified her.

“And are you doing it? Figuring out who you are?” Loralee asked, looking at her hopefully.

“Yes. I’m trying. It’s why I’m here too. To become a little bit more me.”

---