He nodded. “Well, I suppose that makes one of them. Though I can’t often tell with Mr. Maximilian. He’s usually quiet. In the mornings, he likes to be left alone to read the newspaper or do whatever work he has to do. He doesn’t like to be in the way when he’s not needed, but he doesn’t hesitate or dawdle when there is work to be done. Sometimes I think he doesn’t need me.” Ava smiled, ready to argue that she was sure that wasn’t the case, when he added, “He’ll make a great husband.”
She blinked. Is it just me, or is everyone in the house trying to push me and Aleksander together? “I’m certain he would. For some lucky woman.”
She followed Matthias to the kitchen, where he put away the matches, and glanced around. “The kitchen has been remodeled but still reflects the original character.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Do you cook?”
“Yeah, kind of. I’m mainly just good with desserts, though. Pies and tarts and such. I make a mean raspberry fyrstekake.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a traditional almond tart from Norway, where I’m from.” She looked around, marveling at the double convection ovens, the two industrial-size refrigerators, and the copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling rack. All of these things, she hadn’t noticed the night before. She might have chalked it up to her exhaustion, but if she had to admit the truth, the company had been rather captivating. She shook the thought of him aside and concentrated on the small talk.
“This kitchen looks like one for serious cooking.”
“Mrs. Maximilian liked to bake, but she wasn’t good at it.” He chuckled. “Nearly set the place afire a couple times. Necessitated us getting one of these.”
He reached under the cabinet as she made herself at home on an island stool. When he pulled out a giant fire extinguisher, she laughed. “Oh, my.”
He moved toward the coffeemaker, pulled out a drawer of little Keurig cups, and asked, “What would you like?”
She made her selection, a light roast, just as Sydney bustled inside, wearing a winter coat, cheeks flushed. “Praise the coffee gods. Make mine a double.”
She hopped on the stool next to Ava and pulled off her mittens.
Ava studied her. “What have you been up to? Is Olivia okay?”
“Oh, yes, she’s fine. She’s with Aleksander. She wanted to take Toddy for a walk. So we strolled down to the lake—well, I walked and pushed her wheelchair, while Toddy ran back and forth—and we watched the sunrise.” She smiled as she unwound a chunky scarf from around her neck. “She says she feels much better today. Good enough to do some Christmas decorating.”
“That’s fantastic. It’s the chemo waning out of her system.”
“But I don’t know if I’m up for it,” Sydney said with a yawn, as Matthias planted two steaming mugs of coffee in front of them and heading back toward the living room. “I was up all night, checking on her. And then she woke me up at five.”
Ava rubbed Sydney’s shoulder through her puffy coat. “Well, you should get some rest. I can handle it.”
Sydney raised an eyebrow. “So, you slept well last night?”
Ava nodded stiffly. The truth was far from it. She thought of her conversation with Aleksander, of her dreams of him, and tried to suppress the shiver that traveled the length of her spine. “I’m perfectly fine—rested, I mean,” she said and took a sip of her coffee.
But what she was really trying to do was convince herself.
Matthias returned carrying a bucket of ash from a fireplace and went through the kitchen and out the back door.
A few seconds later, Ava and Sidney heard the metal bucket hit the ground, and a muffled cry of pain. Both women ran to the door, Ava making it out first.
Matthias was sprawled on the ground, straining to lift himself, but wincing and favoring his left leg.
“Matthias!”
Ava ran to his side and waited for Sydney to get to the other side of him, then both women gently lifted the man back to his feet.
“Thank you, ladies. I don’t know what happened.” He looked at the scattered ash and started to approach the stairs. “I’m going to need a broom.”
But his left leg failed him and he started to fall again. This time though, Ava was there and quickly caught him.
“Don’t worry about the mess. We need to have a look at that leg.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sydney said, and ran up the stairs to call Kira and look for a broom and dust pan.
Ava guided Matthias to sit on the bottom step and reached for his pant leg. “May I?”
He added a nod to his grimace.
Ava rolled up his pant leg, revealing a swollen and bruised knee. “Have you fallen before this?”
“Oh, yes. Many times.”
Ava smiled and asked, “I mean recently. This knee is inflamed. You need to see a doctor.”
“It’s just a tricky knee coupled with old age. I’m usually more careful with it. No need to trouble a doctor over this.”
“Well, it just so happens that I am a doctor, and if you won’t see your own, then you’ll see me. Promise me you’ll wait right here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Matthias nodded with pursed lips, embarrassed yet grateful.
Ava passed Sydney as she went in and Sydney headed out, and returned a minute later with her black bag, which in her case was actually a cute vintage olive-green canvas medic bag with a Tyrian purple cross printed on it and funny childish pins all over.
Matthias watched as Kira and Sydney swept the ashes and put everything in order and Ava rubbed analgesic cream into and around his knee, then wrapped an Ace bandage around it. “I’m sorry, doctor…”
“Ava,” she corrected him with a warm smile. “This should do for now, but I will prescribe a SCAN. It could be some easily remediated inflammation or possibly something a bit more serious.”
“It’s really kind of you.”
After reading a book with Olivia and singing Mulan’s I’ll Make a Man out of You until she fell asleep, Aleksander went downstairs, wondering why the house was so silent.
A cold steady breeze flowed from the kitchen, where the back door was ajar.
He quickly walked over to shut it just to stop on the threshold as he saw Ava—or rather, Ava’s backside thrust up in the air as she bent over toward Matthias sitting on the steps.
Even though he felt like a total pig, he couldn’t take his eyes off the sexy profile view of her backside and shapely legs.
His mouth went dry, his palms grew damp, and all he wanted to do was to go outside, pick her up in his arms, and kiss her.
Wildly. Passionately. Ardently.
Unbinding, his feet took him a few steps closer, his eyes getting a better view of her—not only her body, but her beautiful face. It was then, as she lowered herself to the ground, he noticed she was treating Matthias’s knee and that her medical bag was on the ground by her side. And when she looked up from Matthias’s knee to focus on her face, he was mesmerized by the look of caring and compassion he saw in her eyes. It was the same look she had when tending to Olivia.
As he watched her, Aleksander was visited by the strangest feeling, unfurling warm and buttery inside him. It was a sense of privilege and mute wonder, as though he was witnessing one of those small, everyday miracles.
And then he felt a strange compression at the back of his throat—an alien sensation that was becoming too familiar recently—and it caused him to frown in bewilderment.
Then he realized that what he was feeling in his throat was the threat of tears.
And it terrified him.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and it went down like a rock, rasping, cutting and making him bleed inside.
Then he whirled on his heels and went down to his exercise room to take care of his feelings—that weakness he couldn’t allow himself to feel—in a more manly way. Fuck crying. I’ve had more than enough of that for a while.
Besides, he had no right to be admiring A
va.
Damn. He had to bring himself under control. She wasn’t there to be ogled by him.
She was there to make certain that his daughter was comfortable and as healthy as possible—considering the circumstances—for their stay.
Ava climbed to her room and booted up her laptop, hoping to find the results from Olivia’s latest round of testing. For months, every test had been dreaded, for they revealed the continual deterioration of the little girl’s condition. It’s all too heartbreaking.
The tumor was buried deep within her brain stem, already taking in the visual cortex, and hadn’t responded to chemotherapy. Lately, it had been putting on size, and with the rate of growth, it was only a matter of time before it began to affect other parts of her life, like motor coordination, vision, and hearing. At this point, Ava knew the only thing they could do was to make her as comfortable as possible as this deadly thing invaded and ate away at her brain.
But when Ava logged in to her email and found the most recent test results, she leaned forward, studying the latest MRI scan.
She pulled out the previous scan, done two weeks before, and split the screen so she could view them side by side.
Interestingly enough, the tumor hadn’t increased in size.
Ava had heard that Aleksander had left no stone unturned in trying to find a cure for his daughter. He’d gone to well-respected doctors in every country, had spared no expense, had offered everything he had with hopes of finding a cure.
But perhaps he hasn’t done everything. After all, he isn’t a doctor. He may have missed something.
Pulling up an internet browser, she began to research, squashing—for the moment—the flicker of hope burning inside her.
Chapter 12
12:35 p.m.
* * *
When Ava appeared in the living room, she saw Olivia and Aleksander were outside on the elevated outdoor patio, which felt more like an extension of the living room into the forest.
She stepped outside, into the brisk late fall air. Although the sun was out and shining, propane heaters on the deck were already turned on to keep all cold away from the little girl. She was lying on a wicker chaise, wrapped in a huge caramel animal fur blanket, propped up by dozens of pillows.
“We need a new tree,” she was telling her father, scribbling furiously into her journal. “And we need to pull out the lights and decorations.”
“Matthias and Kira will take everything out of storage,” Aleksander agreed, looking up from his notebook on his lap to his daughter, and added, “and we’ll go tree hunting.”
“That’ll be perfect.” Olivia nodded seriously and wrote some more.
“Good morn—er…”—Ava glanced at her watch and instantly amended— “afternoon.”
Olivia looked up and smiled at Ava. “Hi.”
She bent and kissed Olivia’s cheek.
“Good morn-er-afternoon, to you, too,” Aleksander said with a smirk. He pointed at Olivia’s journal. “As you can tell, we’re making plans for world domination.”
“And of course, for the decorating party, we’ll need a lot of hot cocoa. Ava loves hot chocolate. Did you know, Daddy?” And without waiting for him to answer, Olivia continued, “And candy canes. And popcorn to eat and cranberries candles to lit, like the old days.”
Aleksander went right on nodding and nodding along with every idea, yet making a note to himself that Ava was a hot cocoa woman, which, in hindsight, was much more in agreement with her personality than a meek tea.
Ava laughed at the two of them. Olivia probably could’ve said she wanted the entire state of New York to come for the party and he’d have nodded the same.
“So where are we going to get this tree?” the little girl asked, chewing on the cap of her pen. “Can’t be a place where the trees are pre-cut. I know! Let’s go out to the woods and chop one down!”
To Ava, that sounded too exhausting for the little girl: traipsing out through knee-high snow to find a tree in the middle of the forest.
Before she could voice her protest, Aleksander spoke, “I know a place; .at the bottom of the hill. We don’t have to drive too far.”
“Ava can go with us,” said Olivia to her father.
He drew in a breath, and looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time that day, those smoldering blue-green eyes making his insides turn to molten lava—again, and despite the hour he had spent on the treadmill at full speed. “If she wishes, of course.”
“Well, fine,” she said, shaking loose from his gaze and smiling. “I love Christmas tree shopping. And popcorn.” Not that this was true. Christmas, as any other significant date, had a bitter-sweet taste to her. But she would not spoil the little girl’s fun.
Olivia grinned from ear to ear and before she left the room to get her coat and hat, she turned and said, “I like Ava. She’s so nice. Don’t you think so, Daddy?
Ava felt a blush climbing over her cheeks. Before Aleksander could think of an answer, she blurted, “I very much like Olivia. She is such a sweet girl.”
Aleksander gazed at her. It wasn’t even about lust—or sex. He simply wanted to be with her. To watch the expressions flit across those extraordinary eyes. To listen to her voice.
I am pitiful. He looked down at this laptop. “That’s nice of you, but you don’t have to feel obliged to go with us.”
“I said I would.” Ava had decided early on in her career to open her heart and shower the afflicted children with the same warmth she’d have given to her own daughter—no matter what emotional toll it might take on her—because that’s what they needed. “I keep my word, Alek.”
“No, that’s not—”
She cut him off when she closed her fingers around his wrist.
His whole body stilled at the zing of heat which coursed through his spine and he had to look at her then. It was impossible not to.
“It’s a pleasure.” But it was really more than that for her; it was a blessing to her heart and a balm to her soul to help such a lovely child have all the happy moments she could. “Besides, I’d love to look around a little.”
“All right.” He paused long enough to gather his mind back into the moment. Lusting like an idiot after her now would do neither one of them any good, especially if he let her know how he felt. He had two, three more months—hopefully, more—of keeping his hands off her. “You’re being a great sport about all of this, Ava, going out of your way to help me grant all of Olivia’s wishes. I do appreciate it.”
They climbed into the late-model silver Mercedes pickup truck and sped off toward the tree farm. As Aleksander had promised, it wasn’t a trek into the snowy woods but more of a garden of trees; rows and rows of the cutest little pine trees stood in line, right in a lot at the side of the road, though with plenty of snowy ground to make it feel like a true tree hunting.
Slogging up and down the rows of Christmas trees while the attendant walked behind them with a chainsaw at the ready, Ava actually felt festive.
The piney smell was pungent, the air crisp, the sky painfully blue, and families everywhere were milling about, happily singing carols and enjoying the hunt for the perfect tree.
Olivia, dressed in a pink puffer coat and pink wool crocheted cap, took the lead. With her hat on, she looked like any normal child, bouncing around, excited for the holidays. She pointed out which trees looked nice, which ones were too thin, too small, too stout and, Ava noticed, not one of them was too big for the girl.
Olivia’s pink Uggs skidded to a stop in the slushy snow at an impossibly giant blue spruce. She turned to her father and announced, “This. Is. It.”
Ava expected Aleksander to rein her in a little, to say, as most normal parents would, that the tree was far too big. But as he tapped his chin, she remembered just why she was there, and she knew his answer.
“Perfect,” Aleksander said. “What do you think, Ava?”
Ava looked at him in bewilderment. “What about it?”
Aleksander gave he
r a wry glance. “Do you like it?”
Ava couldn’t think why it mattered whether she liked the tree or not, but she nodded. “It’s beautiful.” Not wanting to be a spoil sport, she whispered, “It may be bigger than the one in Rockefeller Center, though. Do they have a truck for it?”
He waved her words of caution away. Anything for Olivia. Anything to make this the most special Christmas ever.
Ava was sure that even if he had to rent a U-Haul, he’d get that tree home.
“We’ll take this one,” Aleksander told the attendant.
They stood back while two men in the plaid woolen coats and blue overalls felled the tree.
By the time the tree had been paid for and The Cottage address was entered in the invoice, Ava was famished.
Aleksander favored her with a sidelong grin as he started the engine. “Hungry?”
“How did you know?” Ava inquired, half surprised and half exasperated. A person can’t have a private thought around this man.
“He’s psychiatric,” Olivia said seriously.
“Psychic,” he corrected gently and added, “of course, the fact that her stomach is rumbling helped me come to the conclusion.”
Ava wanted to vanish in a poof, especially because there was a twinkle of amusement in his grayish-green eyes.
“Daddy, can we go to my favorite place?” Olivia interrupted their silent connection.
“Sure.”
“Yay! This is a great day, Daddy. Thank you. And you too, Ava”
Aleksander smiled as he stepped on the accelerator and made his way onto the road. And he couldn’t have stopped the happy tear that ran down his face, even if he’d tried.
Being a tourist town with plenty of snow sports in the winter, Lake Tahoe was flooded with upwards of a million people. Even before the Christmas holidays had begun, the streets already showed a few tourists with skis on their shoulders heading to the ski lifts, or just wandering around. The streetlights were bedecked with wreaths and garland, and the quaint store windows were ablaze with colorful lights. Ava smiled, watching Olivia rub her hands together with excitement as she pressed her nose against the window.