Time Out of Mind (Suncoast Society #43)(2)

They also had to be able to afford their services. And they had to be over eighteen years old.

It wasn’t just celebrities they treated. Anyone able to pay their way in and meet the criteria could seek treatment there. They had clients fly in from overseas, especially people sent there by rich Japanese parents who wanted to keep a scandal literally far from their shores.

He’d only been back at The Compound for five days now. It was nice to settle into a routine when he’d spent the last three months freezing his nuts off in f*cking Norway babysitting a woman who was a frustrated, bratty submissive babygirl with severely undealt-with daddy issues.

Once he’d pegged her particular niche in his undocumented personal categorization criteria of the people he dealt with, and treated her accordingly, she’d been easy to manage. Carrot and stick. She’d been starved for healthy attention and praise, and he gave that to her in a non-dysfunctional way, managing to get her through the shoot.

And she’d set a personal best of never missing a day of shooting or being late for a call time and it being her fault.

He couldn’t blame her for her only time being late, the flat tire and long, cold wait until someone on the production crew could come back for them. Especially since he’d been driving at the time and hadn’t seen the damn pothole in the fog and pre-dawn gloom.

No, he didn’t get sexual, much less very personal with his clients, beyond what was required for his job. He never even mentioned BDSM to them.

He didn’t need to. Most of them didn’t know much about the lifestyle beyond “the movie.” They didn’t have to. He took care of it—and them—for them. Resulting in happy directors and producers, happy business managers, talent who were on the road to rehabbing their lives and reputations, and his own bank account making him smile when he looked at the direct deposits.

Too bad he couldn’t say as much about his personal life.

Unfortunately, his professional life precluded him having a personal life. Which was okay, for now. He was socking away money for an early retirement and departure from California. He could return to Florida, since he’d maintained his license there, and start working for any number of high-end addiction facilities. Wouldn’t pay nearly as much, but the cost of living there was far less, and by the time he was ready to finally give up on California, he’d have what he needed to make up for what he’d lost in his divorce.

Well, except for his peace of mind.

No amount of money could restore that.





By noon, Doyle was pretty sure he wanted to bend at least three of the clients he’d seen over a spanking bench and paddle their asses red.

Since he couldn’t do that, he satisfied himself with visualizing it while trying to pay attention to them.

He got it. They were early in their recovery, still grasping at straws for excuses, and had not yet realized that the addiction was stronger than they were. It was easy to say it to someone from the other side, but another thing for a person new to recovery to actually internalize it.

He’d internalized it as a kid, with a dying single mother, his father having died years earlier. A kid who finally woke up in his own puke one too many times and realized if he didn’t get his shit together, he might be dead, too.

And he hadn’t wanted to die.

At the time, he hadn’t known anything about twelve-step programs. He couldn’t have afforded a box of bandages, much less in-patient treatment. He’d just…tried.

And kept trying.

Until one day, the trying was a little easier, and he’d managed to stay sober for over a year. He’d also managed to pull his shit together in time to graduate high school just before his mother lost her battle with uterine cancer.

He’d put himself through college and swore he’d stay sober and make her proud.

Unfortunately, he’d stuffed some things about himself down deep, along with the addiction he’d forced himself to battle into a truce.

Things that hadn’t come out until later.

The Dom stuff, he knew that early on, in his early twenties.

He couldn’t make himself admit he was bisexual until he was twenty-nine. By that time, he was already married to Kathy and thought he was doing the things he was supposed to be doing to be “successful.”

Not so much, it turned out.

At least he’d managed to maintain his sobriety, never wanting to return to those dark and ugly days when he was a kid thinking that relief and escape would lie in drinking enough, maybe enough so he wouldn’t wake up the next morning.

Until he’d realized how that was only killing his mother’s spirit a little faster than the cancer was.





After morning sessions, Doyle headed out to find lunch in Laguna Beach. He could have eaten at The Compound for free, but needed to walk some tension off. His morning clients were all alcoholics, no drug addicts or multiple addictions today. Two whiny college coeds, a depressed housewife, a needy acting coach, and a lawyer having a midlife crisis when, in reality, he had nothing to bitch about except the fact that he substituted alcohol for facing his lack of ambition.

Feeling like this, Doyle knew, meant that he needed out of the office.

ASAP.

He stopped at a local wood-fired pizza place. It’d give him plenty for leftovers later. He’d just received his order when his personal cell rang from a local number he didn’t recognize. He almost let it go to voice mail but decided to answer it in case it was his next lucrative sober companion assignment.