Healing Sands by Stephen Arterburn, Nancy Rue Page A

it hadn’t already.

CHAPTER NINE
    S ully always prayed before a session. That was the one thing that still came naturally. The rest might not, seeing how it had been a year since Nashville and his last one-on-one client. He hadn’t even intended to work with this one, but he didn’t think Kyle was ready for Ryan Alexander-Coe, and Martha already had a full load. Besides—Ms. Coe was something of a time bomb, and even Olivia had spotted her as a potential lawsuit.
    He pretzeled his legs into a bow in the butterscotch corduroy chair-and-a-half. Face resting in his hands, he breathed in God. And Light. And Christ, Light from that Light. Light on the only path he’d found he could follow.
    God-in-Christ . . . shine through me . . . help me to lead her to make some sense of herself . . .
    Sully breathed into the prayer until he came to a level place where perhaps Ryan Coe’s new path could start. Then he opened his eyes and reached for the folder on the trunk between his chair and the identical one Ryan would sit in.
    He grinned as he glanced over the paperwork she’d filled out the day before. To use a psychological term—she was a pistol. Small woman with a big mind. Gunned you down with her shotgun eyes. Wasn’t going to put up with—how did she say it?—having Ephesians thrown in her face.
    She also said—both in yesterday’s interview and on her form— that she wanted help controlling her anger. I need coping skills, she’d written. There was no doubt that she had a short fuse, but Sully didn’t think just anything lit it. Whatever got her going came from someplace deep. The trick was going to be letting her find the God-path, but getting her to let him lead for a while. She must be something on the dance floor.
    He perused the form for her occupation. Photojournalist. Formerly employed by the Associated Press, but currently working for the Las Cruces Sun-News. He salivated mentally. That might be a road worth going down.
    A tap on the door was followed by Olivia’s head. He’d heard her staccato laugh in the reception area earlier, punctuating Kyle’s urging her to go back to school and get her degree. Martha was going to have to assign Kyle more clients before he started having sessions with the receptionist.
    â€œShe’s here,” Olivia whispered.
    â€œWho?” Sully whispered back.
    â€œMrs. Coe.”
    â€œOkay. Why are we whispering?”
    â€œBecause she scares me.”
    Sully stood up and strode to the door. “Is she armed?”
    Olivia’s eyes popped, and Sully smiled at her.
    â€œYou’re teasing me,” she said.
    Sully followed her out to meet Ryan noticing on the way that Olivia looked less like she’d caught the latest sale at the Goodwill than she had previously. Her hair was up in one of those messy bun-ish things, but at least it wasn’t dangling in her face like leftover goat food. He wondered if Kyle had counseled her on that too.
    â€œHere he is,” Olivia said to Ryan and then skittered to her desk.
    Ryan’s bright eyes were focused completely on Sully, as if she expected him to begin the session right there. He ushered her back to the counseling room before she could start firing questions at him.
    As it was, she was barely seated in the oversize chair, which held her like a big hand, before she had the first one out. “Do you do cognitive therapy?”
    They were obviously dispensing with the pleasantries. He’d go with that for now.
    â€œYou’re familiar with it?” he said.
    â€œIt’s where you give the patient alternative ways of thinking and reacting—in my case, to anger.”
    If he had to guess, Sully would say she’d looked up anger management on the Internet the night before.
    â€œThat’s basically it,” he said.
    â€œGood. That’s what I want. I already tried watching football and screaming at the ref and throwing