Page 17 of Mountain Impact

It’s mine.

Chapter 7

Isolde

A young man in the third row looked at his watch―never an encouraging sign for a speaker. Isolde took a deep breath and looked around the room quickly, relieved to find most people were still nodding and making eye contact.

Time to wrap this up.

She usually enjoyed her Thursday lunch-time sessions with new trainees. They joined the gendarmerie with fresh ideas and high hopes and, while it wasn’t her job to scare them, it was her job to make sure they knew where they could turn to for help, should they need it.

Today, however, she was having trouble concentrating. Her thoughts kept going back to Drake. Four days had gone by since the crash, and the topic was finally dying in the news. It looked like the mayor and his chief of staff had been hard at work making sure the town’s reputation wasn’t affected. But that wasn’t Isolde’s concern. She was worried about Drake, and how bleak he’d looked the last time she’d seen him, at the meeting with the mayor the day before.

She hoped she’d done the right thing by clearing him so quickly. It had felt like the right thing to do, but―

One of the trainees put up her hand to ask a question.

“Will our boss find out if we go speak with you?” a young woman asked from the first row.

Isolde shook her head quickly, glad for the question, and answered it honestly, to the best of her ability.

The perception that anything they shared might not be confidential was the number one barrier preventing police officers from seeking counseling. And, of course, Isolde had done a lot of thinking on this topic after the debacle with Drake’s file six years earlier.

She’s often thought of what she could have done differently in that case―excepting the obvious, of course, as she and Drake should never should have slept together in the first place, or at least not before telling their superiors about it. That had been a breach of … everything.

Isolde had taken steps to ensure Drake was informed of the laws pertaining to confidentiality and privilege, and made sure he understood what the information he shared with her during their sessions together would be used for. What she hadn’t been able to do, due to a combination of IT and human error, was to warn him, before the dossier went out, that she would be recommending further time off for him.

He’d taken the formal recommendation as a punishment, and, furthermore, a personal betrayal. She’d tried to apologize, but Drake had ignored all her calls and, she assumed, deleted all her messages. He’d never given her the chance to explain.

Over time, she’d convinced herself she was over him―except she knew she was lying to herself. It was obviously too late now to pick up that relationship where they’d left it off, but her body didn’t care about that. It wanted to be closer to him.

There were no further questions, so Isolde wrapped up the session and headed outside. In the corridor, she almost tripped over a dark shadow.

“Bailey!” she said, reaching out to rub the dog’s dark head. She looked up to see Hiro Habu, Bailey’s dog handler and a member of the PGHM, striding quickly in their direction. She looked behind him to make sure Drake wasn’t there as well, as she didn’t think she could bear to bump into him again. But the corridor was empty.

“Sorry, Dr. Durant. She knows it’s time to head home,” Hiro apologized.

There’s a man who won the genetic lottery.

He was tall and lean, with golden skin and dark, soulful eyes. She’d heard someone mention his mother was Japanese and his father French―they must have both been very good-looking. But his good looks didn’t faze her―only one man in this building managed that.

Isolde laughed. “Good for you, Bailey. I’m going home as well as soon as I wrap up a couple files.”

Bailey made a strange, purring noise that made her sound more like a cat than a dog.

“You like that, huh,” Isolde said, rubbing the soft fur under her neck gently.

“Careful, Doctor, or you’ll be here all night,” Hiro said, smiling more with his eyes than his mouth.

A few minutes later, opening the door to her office, Isolde realized she was smiling. Bailey was, by far, the best destresser.

Chapter 8

Isolde

He jinxed me.

Drake jinxed me by talking about my car like that.