Barefoot in the Sun (3 page)

Which didn’t exactly exist, since she’d left Barefoot Bay on a whim that morning, plan free. So now what? Plead? Demand? Barter? Whatever she did, she had to be strong and unyielding. She would not take no for an answer. She would not—

“Turn around.”

Melt.

Oh, no. Falling into his arms would be much worse than running out the door as fast as—and hopefully with more grace than—she’d entered. Because once she felt those arms around her, all bets were off.

Slowly, she turned, meeting the gaze of a man who looked at her like he hadn’t eaten in days and she was a human cream puff.

While his eyes trailed over every inch of her, she took her own visual vacation, lingering on the things about him that had kept her awake so many, many nights. Not his classically handsome face, with all those angles of raw strength, and not his powerful shoulders or silky black hair. Zoe hadn’t fallen for “the man with the teeth,” as her Aunt Pasha had once described his movie-star smile, or the prominent nose that hinted at Roman or Greek ancestors, no doubt Julius Caesar himself.

No, Zoe loved the unexpected surprises of Oliver. Thick, bottlebrush, black lashes that feathered out to the side when he laughed at something she said. The muscle in his neck that flexed and tightened when he leaned in to kiss her. The tenor and depth of his voice when he whispered in her ear, the jolt of music when he said her name, the way his eyes shuttered before a kiss as if he were about to taste a fine French wine.

His eyes were open now, though, and slicing right through her. “How is the baby?”

For a minute she couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. That was the thing about Oliver. He made Zoe forget her train of thought, her vows of secrecy, her common sense. He made her dream of things that couldn’t be and remember things she was better off forgetting.

Things that were so, so good. Like the time they’d done it on the kitchen floor of his apartment. And the time he’d—

“I assume mother and child are thriving?”

Oh,
that
baby. The one he’d delivered last night. “He’s perfect. Just, yeah. You left quickly and Lacey wanted to thank you.”

“Is that why you’re here?” A shadow of disappointment darkened his eyes, gone almost before she could grab hold of it.

Or you could grab that excuse instead and run with it, Zoe. Run fast and far.

Damn it, why did the only person who knew her secret have to be a doctor committed to saving lives, making it utterly impossible for her to run, hide, and pretend everything was fine?

Because everything
wasn’t
fine, and he was the answer to the problem that kept her awake and in a low-grade panic more nights than not.

“Is it?” he asked again. “Are you the new family’s thank-you committee of one?”

He was trying to be civil, even kind, and that gave her a little hope. Maybe their history was enough to get what she came for. Maybe she didn’t have to make deals with the devil—although she would have. Right now, she’d do
anything
.

“It was no big deal,” he said after a few too many seconds had passed. “I’ve done a few emergency deliveries in my career.” Then he took a step closer, dipping his head almost imperceptibly, searching her face. “Zoe?”

“Oliver, you are one of two people in the world who knows the truth about me.”

It was his turn to blink, silent.

“And once you said you’d do anything for me.”

He still didn’t respond.

“Do you remember saying that, Oliver?”

“Of course.” He crossed his arms in a classic power stance. “What are you asking me, Zoe?”

She took a slow, steadying breath. “My great-aunt, Pasha, is sick. Really, really sick. You know that she…she can’t exactly sally forth through the health-care system because she…”
Is a kidnapper.
“Can’t.”

He stared at her.

“I need you to treat her. And never report it.”

His eyes narrowed as her demand sank in. “You’re asking me to—”

“Do something illegal, yes. I know you are a big, important, successful doctor who shouldn’t take risks that would possibly hurt your booming business, but I don’t care, Oliver, because—”

“Stop.” He was in front of her in one step, one hand on her shoulder, searing her bare skin, already too close.

“Will you?” she asked.

He was near enough for her to feel his warmth and the scent of air and woods, reminding her of the last time they’d kissed.

Go ahead, kiss him.

He dipped his head a tiny bit, not more than a millimeter closer, as if the voice in her head was loud enough for him to hear. “How could I do that?”

“Quietly,” she said quickly. “Discreetly. Under the table, off the books, and away from the prying eyes of your witchy staff.” She raised her chin, hating that he could feel her tremble. Let him think that quiver was because she wanted his help and not because every cell in her was screaming kiss, kiss,
kiss
.

Man, this might have been a bad idea. But she powered on. “That’s how you could do it,” she finished. “And you will. Because you…”
Loved me once.
“Always do what’s right.”

“I can’t—”

“You
will
.”

“Be this close to you and not—”

“I think you have a wife for that kind of thing,” she said, wrangling out of his grip. “I need a doctor, and you happen to be in the area, in the right kind of practice, and conveniently the only medical professional who will agree to treat my aunt without reporting her to the authorities.”

He searched her face, his expression impossible to read. But that didn’t stop her from trying. And staring.

“That could jeopardize my practice,” he finally said.

“How about jeopardizing her life? Doesn’t that mean anything to you anymore? You used to care about people who were dying, Oliver.”

He flinched so slightly she almost missed it. “I still do.”

“Then help me!” She pushed his chest, fueled by frustration. He snagged her wrist and held it immobile.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“What does that mean?” She shook off his fingers and he stepped back, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets as if to shackle himself.

His gaze dropped over her, as hot as his hands would be and sending just as many chills over her skin. “It means I’ll do what I can within certain parameters.”

“
Certain parameters
? So much for the Hippocratic oath.”

He let his eyes go lower, lingering on her chest, amber turning to ebony as he watched it rise and fall.

“Not to mention your marriage vows.”

He merely shook his head. “Those are broken.”

“Well, goodie for you, hot stuff. But I need a doctor, not a quickie.”

Ever so slightly, one brow lifted. “It was never quick with us, Zoe.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You are married.”

“I’m divorced. It was final last week.”

“You were with her at the grand opening last night.”

He shrugged. “Only as a favor. She’d been invited by some local socialite who backed out at the last minute and she didn’t want to go alone.”

Oh.
Oh.
“But I just saw her outside.”

“She dropped…” He inched back, casting his eyes down for a second. “Something off.”

A strange white heat rolled over her, along with the distinct and terrifying knowledge that the game had just changed. Oliver wasn’t married. Which meant she could—no, she
wouldn’t
. Never. Never, never,
never
.

Except…what exactly was Pasha’s life worth to Zoe? Everything. Anything. Even
that
.

She bit her lip and took a step closer. “I need help, Oliver. And I can’t get it anywhere else. I will do
whatever
you want.”

“What are you suggesting, Zoe?”

“You want me to spell it out? Three simple letters, then: s-e—”

He stopped her with a raised hand, taking a deep, slow breath and a long, hungry gaze over her body again. Every hair on the back of her neck stood up, electrified. As he looked at her breasts, her nipples popped against the thin material. As he stared at her hips, she grew warm and achy right between her legs.

When he got to her knees, those bad boys would forget their job completely and she’d be on the floor, like that night in the kitchen. But he never made it down that far.

“No.” He walked around his desk and sat in his oversized chair. “Why don’t you start by telling me what’s wrong with her.”

Holy hell. She’d offered herself as a human sacrifice and the son of a bitch turned her down.

T
he rejection stung. Oliver could tell by the drop in Zoe’s shoulders, the way her mouth fought not to open in surprise, and, of course, by the flinch of pain that turned her emerald eyes more of a flat jade green.

Still pretty—God, she was fucking gorgeous—but when he turned down her offer, the light went out of her face.

He’d hurt her. Fine. They were possibly on the road to even, then. Maybe when she was sitting on the empty floor of a deserted house crying like a damn three-year-old, maybe then they’d be approaching
even
.

“What are her symptoms, Zoe?” he asked, taking out a notepad to keep his itchy hands busy. Just so he didn’t even think about how much he’d rather lean forward and thread his fingers through that mess of caramel-colored curls, all whimsical silk and sass that somehow never changed.

Corralling her cool, she dropped to the edge of a guest chair, pointing at the paper. “No notes. This is private. Off the record, completely. You may not make a file for her.”

He angled his head. “You may believe the worst in me, but I honor patient confidentiality. Tell me what’s the problem.”

“So she can be your patient?”

“Tell me the problem.”

On a soft sigh, she settled into the chair and tucked her legs under her, making the flowy skirt float over her legs and hide her feet like a lotus flower.

“First of all, I don’t believe the worst in you, okay? We ended badly, I know, but—”

“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 fucking 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 fuck
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.”

She slid her hands around his neck, sending every hair there to full attention. “Are you sure? ’Cause it kinda feels like it might work.”

He lowered his head, giving in to the need to put his lips on her hair, her temple, her ear. He meant to just kiss her, but the words came tumbling out like they had a will of their own. “Why did you disappear?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

Very slowly, she backed away, shaking her head. “You know why I had to leave.”

Like hell he did. “Leave? You
evaporated
. It was like aliens abducted you. Clothes, furniture; there was goddamn food left in your refrigerator—”

“You wanted me to do something I couldn’t, and since you’re the guy who always follows the rules and does the right thing, I really worried that you’d turn us in and—”

“How could you think that? You knew me, Zoe. You…”
Loved me.
Or had she?

“I had to go,” she said softly. “Pasha and I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.”

Love
wasn’t worth the risk.
He
wasn’t worth the risk.

Wasn’t that the lesson he’d learned that dark day, as a child, when he’d trudged up the stairs, climbed into the attic, and learned that love—even
unconditional
love—might not be enough in this life? Especially not for a woman who’d rather quit than fight.

“Listen to me.” He reached for her face, cupping her cheeks, the shape of her jaw so familiar and fine in his hands. “Zoe, that—”

“Dr. Bradbury.”

They both leaped apart at the sight and sound of his receptionist in the doorway. “Excuse me, but Beth’s on the phone and couldn’t come here to tell you, but Mr. Carlson is very distraught.”

“I’ll be right there, Johanna.”

Her gaze flicked at Zoe. “Would you like me to show Miss, um, Tamarin out?”

“I’d like you to leave.”

The receptionist gave him a shocked look, then backed away and closed the door. Oliver turned back to Zoe. “But I don’t want you to leave. We have a lot to talk about.”

“Like my aunt’s treatment.”

Would a promise to talk about that keep her here? With Zoe, who knew?

“Stay here and we’ll talk after I’m finished with this patient.” He stepped away, hoping that was enough. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”

He walked to the door, wishing like hell he could lock it from the outside. But that was the thing about Zoe, the original flight risk. He couldn’t keep her. No one could. He couldn’t let himself forget that.

Zoe damn near fell back on the desk when Oliver left, boneless and spent from being that close for that long to a man she’d really hoped she was
over
.

So not over.

But would he help Pasha or try to ship her off to some other doctor? Sighing, she walked around the desk and folded herself into his big doctor chair, imagining his long, strong body filling it again.

He isn’t married.

The words inflated her heart like a shot of propane fumes, lifting her into hope-filled skies.
Hope-filled skies?

Pathetic. And the only hope she needed was for Pasha. There were no hope-filled skies in a world without her aunt. And there was nothing but thunder and lightning in skies with Oliver. How could she forget that?

He’d shown his true colors, marrying his ex-girlfriend within
weeks
of the day Zoe had left. But then, Adele had no problem getting a marriage license. Whereas Zoe? Hell, Pasha damn near had to sell her soul to buy the fake paperwork to get Zoe into college.

She’d have done anything for Zoe, and that was why Zoe had to get Pasha medical help. Unorthodox and experimental? Perfect. Zoe didn’t know much about medicine, but Pasha was old and frail. She’d never survive chemo and radiation, let alone the stress of going through some kind of health-care hell that didn’t take a patient without
insurance,
let alone no real identity.

Puffing out a breath at the familiar cycle of worry she spent so much time treading along, Zoe let her gaze drift over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf behind her, scanning the medical tomes and landing on a framed photo of a little boy. Was that Oliver?

Shooting forward, she picked up the frame, a weird heaviness in her arm as she brought the picture closer and studied the face of a boy who could only be Oliver’s son.