Barefoot in the Sun (Barefoot Bay)(7)

“Badly?” He fired the word at her, making her flinch. “You call that ending badly?”

She stared back. “Yeah, that was bad.”

“Was it bad for you, Zoe?” He really needed to stop. She didn’t have to know what he’d gone through all these years later.

“Bad enough,” she said, far too cavalier for his tastes.

Really? Had she ached like he did? Had she wondered what the hell happened to him? Had she searched newspapers and bribed postal workers and haunted every hot air balloon field in the state of Illinois?

“It was pretty bad for me,” he admitted, the words like stones in his mouth.

“I noticed,” she said dryly. “So bad you got married five weeks later.”

He should have seen that one coming. “Which is why, when I saw you in that lobby store in the Ritz a few years ago, the first words I said were ‘I’m sorry.’ Do you remember that?”

“I remember.”

“You were buying condoms,” he reminded her, a fact that had stuck in his craw for days.

“For a friend. Can we talk about my aunt?”

For a long moment he looked at her, his whole gut ripped right in half. Here was the one woman he had never forgotten—not for a f*cking day in nine years—asking him to do something she had to know he couldn’t do.

“Sure,” he said. “Why don’t we start with why you haven’t had her name cleared.”

“Why don’t we not, because if I needed help with that I’d see a lawyer. Last time I checked, you’re a doctor. An oncologist. And that’s what I need.”

At the little hitch in her voice, he put the past behind, instantly. “She has cancer?”

“We don’t know for sure that it’s cancer, but I’ve done a lot of Internet research—”

“You haven’t talked to a professional?”

She blew out a breath. “Damn it, Oliver, you know the situation. I can’t. But we did see this one guy who—it’s a stretch, but I suppose you could call him a doctor.”

He looked skyward. “Knowing your aunt, it was a psychic.”

“Actually, he was a healer in Sedona.” She sighed and gave an apologetic smile. “It was the best I could do. She doesn’t want to see a doctor, for obvious reasons, and she still puts a lot of weight in those signs sent from the universe.”

“Bad idea when the universe sends a tumor.”

Her expression grew serious. “That’s why I’m here, Oliver.”

Of course it was. Not because she was sorry he had his heart kicked in and missed her every day and still jacked off just thinking about the way she—

No, he’d stopped doing that years ago. Well, months.

“Anyway,” she continued. “This healer-doctor type made her swallow something awful—”

“Barium.”

“Yeah, and this endo…thing.”

“Endoscopy.”

“Then he suggested a…” She closed her eyes. “Biopsy, but that Aunt Pasha refused because we would have had to go into a hospital or surgeon’s office. That was a few weeks ago, and then we decided to come here so we could be in Barefoot Bay when Lacey’s baby was born.”

“And you decided to see me.”

“Well, I honestly never thought of you.”

“Not at all?” Damn it, he sounded pathetic.

“Well, other than the time I saw you at the Ritz and then, about six months ago, I was driving down this street with my friend Jocelyn, and I saw your sign on the door.”

The words hit low and hard. She had been here. Driving down his street. “But you didn’t come in.”

“She wasn’t sick then,” she said, as if any other reason for visiting would be unfathomable. “But last night, when you came in to deliver Lacey’s baby, I remembered you’re an oncologist and thought maybe I should…try.” Her voice cracked as she pushed herself up from the chair.

Zoe never stayed still for long; that hadn’t changed any more than her hair or clothes or her magnetic aura. All still there, torturing him. “So I decided I need you.”

Just like that. She needed him. In fact, she was willing to give herself to him, but not for the right reasons. And while that idea had incredible appeal, the motivation sucked. He’d had enough empty sex in his marriage, thank you very much.

“Tell me her symptoms,” he ordered.

She rubbed her hands together, pacing as if the office couldn’t contain her, already antsy from being in one room for ten minutes. “It started with heartburn, really bad, then she had trouble swallowing.” As she paused and the light hit her face, he noticed the shadows under her eyes and a slightly swollen lip from a lot of gnawing. “She gets really hoarse at times and can barely talk. Then she started to lose weight. Like, a lot of it.”

It wouldn’t take years of oncology experience to diagnose this, he thought glumly. Especially if a holistic doctor suggested a biopsy after an endoscopy. “Was she a smoker?”

“She doesn’t have lung cancer, he told us that. But, yes, she smoked and quit years ago, but…”

“How old is she?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say eighty-ish.”

His eyes widened. “You don’t know how old your aunt is?”

“Great-aunt.” She swallowed visibly and stared at him. “And we both know she’s not really that, either. Let’s say eighty for argument’s sake.”

So she probably had no access to family medical history. He stood, coming around the desk to the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to get some information for you on esophageal cancer, which is my guess. And some names of specialists who—”

She grabbed his arm. “I’m not going to a specialist, Oliver.”

Closing his hand over her fingers, he pressed gently, fighting the desire to pull her into him and kiss all that desperation away. “I’m not the right doctor for someone who hasn’t had a single diagnosis yet. You need to understand something: I don’t treat cancer with standard procedures. I work strictly in a cutting-edge and unorthodox way, and many of my patients are undergoing experimental treatments, many as volunteers to research programs being done by a clinic I’m associated with. Believe me, cancer patients don’t come to me first. I’m a last-resort kind of guy.”

“Well, you’re my only resort.” She stepped back. “And I’ve always been a big fan of unorthodox. I’ll volunteer her for anything. Where do we start? What do you need?”

He almost laughed at the open-endedness of that unanswerable question. He searched her face, still not quite used to the impact of Zoe, so much brighter, bolder, and better in the flesh than in his imagination. His gaze dropped to her mouth, the bow over a hint of an overbite, the pout of a lower lip that could suck the common sense right out of a man’s head.

Hell, just looking at her he felt everything below the belt threaten to rise up and demand attention.

“I can read your expression, Oliver.”

He hoped not. “What does it say?”

“Something pornographic.”

“That’s your mind, Zoe.”

She shrugged, unfazed. “Whatever it takes to get some of that unorthodox, experimental magic.”

For a few seconds, he almost considered it. During that flash of time, enough blood rushed south, a reaction he’d had to Zoe from day one. Maybe he simply couldn’t resist her when he was thirty and willing to pay any price for the pleasure of her body, but now he was old enough to know that the price was too high for him.

“It’s not magic,” he said coolly. “It’s medicine, and it’s got as many risks as payoffs. There are a lot of things to consider, Zoe. I can’t take a patient that hasn’t been referred by a traditional doctor of—”

“She can’t see another doctor and you know it.”

“There’s no way, not even a clinic or some kind of an emergency facility?”

She gave him a look of disbelief. “She doesn’t even exist, for crying out loud.”

Emotion rocked her whole body, making him want to reach out and steady her, but he didn’t. Instead, he exhaled softly. “It wouldn’t be proper medicine for me to treat her and—”

“Fuck proper medicine!” She grabbed both his arms and squeezed, desperation rolling off her. “Or f*ck me, if that’s what you want. I don’t care.”

That was the problem right there. She didn’t care.

“Will that work?” She pressed against him, surely feeling the bulge in his pants.

He put his hands on her shoulders, ready to push her away, but her breasts felt so good against his chest that he hesitated. “No,” he managed to say. “It will not work.”