Forevermore

  “Surprising?” she asked, her heart in her throat. She could just imagine going back to Aleksander and breaking the bad news. He’d been crashing over the past two days, and she felt like he didn’t have much farther to fall. “What do you mean?”

  “How is the little girl?” he asked.

  “Stable, now,” she spoke quickly. “She had an episode two nights ago, which is why I ordered another scan, but—”

  “The test shows the tumor’s growth has slowed. In fact, it didn’t grow at all.”

  “I thought so.” Ava breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  “What kind of episode did she have?”

  “Well, she had a bleeding nose—nothing serious—was vomiting and had a fever. But it could very well be a virus due to her immunity being down.”

  “However, if the tumor truly has responded to the chemo, I’d call that good news,” he observed. “We’ll know from the next scan.”

  “Sir,” she said, allowing her thoughts to spiral. “If it has responded, do you think she might be a candidate for a surgery—”

  “Possibly. We’d have to have a surgeon evaluate her case when the time comes,” he said. “If the time comes, Ava. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  Ava agreed, that one thing she could not afford to do, as a doctor, was to get high hopes.

  When she hung up, she took a breath. Then another. Then, checking to make sure the room was empty, allowed herself to dance one small, very short-lived, celebratory jig.

  Aleksander found it strange that after the scan was over, Ava made some excuse about having to catch up with her studies.

  Perhaps she didn’t want to be with him, but she had a pensive air to her and a dreamy, small smile on her lips, which confused him all the more.

  So he put Ava in a cab and decided to take Olivia to Vikingsholm, the large Scandinavian house on Emerald Bay.

  He wanted to spend time with Olivia now. He needed to fill this time with as many memories with his daughter as possible, and he didn’t need Ava to get in the way.

  That did nothing but make him feel guilty.

  Not that he had anything to feel guilty about.

  Still, he was plagued by this nagging sense of guilt every time he thought of her—which pretty much meant all day—and even though his gut twisted every time he saw her stricken face in his mind from when she had told him about her daughter—which pretty much meant he spent hours with an upset and empty stomach—so he had avoided her.

  Or so he had thought because she was present during the whole time of the scan, but he’d willed himself not to talk to her, interact with her, touch her; although that male part of his being wanted to. Desperately.

  He couldn’t. He couldn’t believe in forever.

  “It’s beautiful, Daddy,” Olivia said as they sat on a balcony. “Do you think this is like where Ava lived? I think she would like it.”

  He nodded as the girl chattered on.

  “Why couldn’t she be here? Are you guys fighting?” Her eyes widened with worry.

  “No, Pumpkin,” he said, wrapping an arm around her pink puffer coat. “Besides, what does that matter to you?”

  She sighed. “It does matter to me. It means everything to me.” She reached into her pink bag and pulled out her journal, hugging it to her chest. “I like her, Daddy. Don’t you?”

  “She’s a good doctor,” he admitted.

  “She’s more than that,” Olivia countered. “Don’t you think so?”

  Reluctantly, he nodded. “Yes, I like her.” Maybe even more. More than I want to.

  “Daddy,” she leaned against him and poking his chest with her finger, she said, “Don’t screw this one up.”

  When Ava returned home, she busied herself not with studies, but in re-reading the German surgeon’s cases and their outcomes. She imagined each possible outcome as though Olivia were the patient.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. She opened it to see Sydney standing there in fleece and sneakers. “Want to go for a run?”

  Ava stuck out her tongue. “Ugh. No. Yoga’s my thing.”

  “Come on,” Sydney coaxed. “It’ll be good for you.”

  Ava looked back at her computer and then nodded. Right now, until she got an answer from Dr. Goldenstein, all the research she was doing was just premature. “All right.”

  Once she’d changed into her running gear, she met Sydney at the front door. They ran down the hill, taking in the exhilarating mountain air as they went, silent for at least the first minute.

  Then Sydney said, “See? It’s far better to work out your frustrations in a healthy way, then what you were doing.”

  Ava stared at her, perplexed. “And what was I doing?”

  “You know. You and Mr. Maximilian have been circling each other like sharks for the past week. I was wondering who was going to take the first bite.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. We get along fine, despite the fact that he can be a bit of a moody tyrant sometimes.”

  She smiled. “It’s annoying, watching each of you do your best imitation of shark bait. Just jump each other, already.”

  Ava’s mouth dropped. “What?”

  “You have the hots for each other and… hmm…you have already tested the waters. Am I wrong?”

  No, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. It might reflect badly on her character, but Ava couldn’t help relishing the thought of gorgeous Aleksander Maximilian sick with desire for her. She sucked in a breath and stiffened her backbone as she summoned all her courage. Perhaps it was time to dare. Her voice emerged with unexpected steadiness. “I want him, all right.”

  Sydney’s smile was broad and approving. “In that case, do something about it. Put him—and me—out of our misery.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. I’m getting sick and tired of watching you two walking on eggshells around each other, refusing to acknowledge the elephant in the room.”

  “But ethically—”

  “Oh, forget Follett. It’s none of his damn business if you are screwing like bunnies—”

  “We are not!” Ava exclaimed horrified.

  “Then you should get on it,” said Sydney. Temper and exercise pinkened Sydney’s face. Her voice, breathless with both, was angered. “Mr. Maximilian’s wife’s been dead for over a year, and it’s Olivia who is your patient, not him.”

  When they turned at the halfway point to jog back, she realized she was glad she’d come out.

  A good way to think, to shove away a bad mood, to get some perspective.

  She’d missed running during the cold grip of winter, missed the sound of her own feet slapping against the sand while she gulped in the Norwegian sea air.

  Will he still be here when the air begins to warm and the trees turn green? Will I? She wasn’t one to wish time away, not even a minute, but she could, deeply, long for spring and the summer that followed. Will Olivia still be alive? Will the spring’s balmy breezes blow away the shadows that dogged them?

  Those shadows needed a little help on their way out the door.

  Maybe she wasn’t quite so helpless as she’d thought. Maybe there was something she could do about it now. When they arrived back at the house, she decided to call Dr. Goldenstein.

  Tuesday, November 17, 2015

  11:50 p.m.

  * * *

  Ava sat at her desk, trying to read an article in the latest pediatric oncology newsletter but the article wasn’t enough to hold her interest. Not tonight.

  With a huff, she tossed it on her desk, unable to read anymore.

  It was more theory fluff than out-and-out science. Not that she’d be able to read it even if it was the most compelling scientific article on the planet.

  Easing back in her chair, she glanced out the window toward the lake.

  It had been snowing since the night before, not heavy but insistent enough to keep Olivia inside and it had been difficult to avoid Aleksander, but Ava did her best, spendin
g time with Olivia when he wasn’t near.

  The Blackthorn couple, Markus and Hannah, along with Victoria, Markus’s daughter, had stopped by for only a couple hours before heading to their own house on Lake Tahoe and assured Olivia they would be back for her Thanksgiving dinner.

  She scrubbed her hands over her face and tried to calm her frazzled nerves. She was sitting on pins and needles waiting for word from Dr. Walter Goldenstein, wondering what Aleksander would think—and do—if Dr. Goldenstein’s answer was positive.

  Her pounding head signaled a need for sleep.

  She rose to get ready for bed when a knock on the door, interrupted her and Sydney walked in. “Olivia?”

  “She’s sleeping like the angel on the pillow you gave her,” Sydney said. And rubbed her hands in an anxious gesture. “News?”

  Oh, Kristus. “No, not yet.” She shrugged. “I have emailed him the last exams as he asked but…nothing yet. Still waiting.”

  “Damn,” Sydney swore. “The clock is ticking.”

  “Sydney…” Ava bit her lip. “I might need you to do something for me…”

  Chapter 28

  Thursday, November 19, 2015

  8:55 p.m.

  * * *

  Aleksander opened his computer. He wasn’t sure why he bothered to try working. It was difficult to get anything done when he could only think of Ava.

  He stared out the window to where the boughs of an old sycamore spread, dripping with snow and ice with his mind in the gutter.

  He was hard just thinking about her.

  He wanted to feel the closeness, the syncing of their beating hearts.

  He didn’t even feel like calling Dr. Medley. He didn’t want to share his dreams, fantasies, and longings; unearth his ambitions and passions, and spill his deepest, darkest secrets, while she listened intently, captivated, hanging on his every word and told him he was doing good.

  Because he was not.

  Ava had become increasingly distant. There had been no more passionate interludes under the moonlight, no more shared secrets. The flirtation that started with kisses and confidences and ended in a bout of love-making became less intimate each day since she had told him about losing her daughter and he had turned his back on her.

  He had almost convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong. Almost, but not quite.

  Several times, he’d tried to broach her defenses, but she proved adept at keeping him out, all the while letting Olivia in more and more.

  The irony was that while the post-Rachel women had sought to build emotional closeness, he’d maintained his detachment. Now he was the one to want more than a woman was prepared to give.

  His groin knotted as he recalled how it was to bury himself in Ava’s depths, to feel her hands moving on his back and the soft insides of her thighs against his hips. She’d lain beneath him like a temptress, her eyes smoldering, her body rising to meet his, stroke for stroke, her hands gripping his shoulders.

  Christ. He was so hard, he ached all over. I need a hard work-out. And a good right hand. Preferably the later before the former. And perhaps, a cold shower after those won’t hurt.

  He shook his head at himself and turned his computer on and went to the Mail program. He deleted the spams and scanned the rest. There wasn’t much else, and nothing he felt obliged right then to read and reply. Instead, he composed a message to his parents and another to Lydia with nearly the same text: Lake Tahoe looks great in the winter, Olivia is doing well, and we are having a great time.

  Nothing about bleeding episodes, or him having sex with the sexy doctor who talked him into therapeutic reading.

  Then he composed another to his brother, just to delete it. With a sigh, he pressed his brother’s Skype contact button.

  “Hey,” Thaddeus said, as soon as he appeared on the screen.

  As Thaddeus moved, Aleksander could glimpse a woman on the screen. “Is this a bad time?”

  “Never for you, little brother,” Thaddeus said, before flashing a smile over his shoulder to the woman in a half-state of undress sprawled on the sofa of his apartment, whom he couldn’t quite recall the name, and raising a finger motioning that it would take only a minute. “How’s Olivia?”

  “She’s fine,” he answered, almost dismissively, not wanting to scare his brother. “We went to the the Heavenly Gondola yesterday and to the Viking House on Monday. You know, the one on Emerald Bay?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “It was nice.” Aleksander answered absentmindedly. And she talked the whole time about Ava.

  There was a beat of silence. “Okay, Alek. You never call me, so I thought it was about Olivia. I’m sure you didn’t call me to discuss the beauty of the fucking Viking House. What gives?”

  He groaned. His brother was always able to call his bluff. “Ava.”

  “Ah,” he said. “The hot doctor, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you thinking about her?” he asked. “So much so that you needed to call your brother at almost midnight on a Thursday evening in New York?”

  He let out a tortured laugh. “I don’t know if it matters what I think. It doesn’t seem to be the mind that’s calling the shots around here.”

  “Interesting. And I’m assuming you’ve…sealed the deal with her?”

  “Yeah. Would I be calling you, otherwise?”

  “I guess the question is, then, what is calling the shots?” Thaddeus looked away from the screen to the woman on the sofa almost envious of his brother’s dilemma. “The heart or the body?”

  Aleksander sighed and said nothing for a while.

  “Couldn’t it be both? It feels like both,” he confessed after all.

  “Then, no problem. The heart wants what the heart wants. Just listen to it,” his brother said with an easy air just to turn serious. “Unless you’re worried about…I guess there are boundaries, you know?”

  “Yeah,” he said with another sigh. “Seems all I know lately is about boundaries. She’s Olivia’s doctor.”

  “And?”

  “I wanted her—badly. I wanted to fuck all my depression away. In fact, I did fuck her already. But I want more. I wanted to get lost in the moment with her. When she and I were together, I didn’t think about anything else. And even when I think of Olivia, it doesn’t hurt so much. Doesn’t that make me an asshole?”

  “I think that makes you a man.” Thaddeus laughed. “So let me ask you, since you’re calling me in the middle of the night, man, it’s obvious you have it bad. Are you in love with her?”

  He opened his mouth to say no, that he couldn’t, that it wasn’t possible. He looked away from the screen. But then he thought of her again and he felt desire coursing through his veins.

  Imagination can be a powerful aphrodisiac. Aleksander’s eyes turned back to his computer screen.

  “I don’t know,” he raked a hand through his hair, teetering between exasperation and despair.

  “Then hang up and go discover.” His brother shook his head at him. “No one more than you deserves to be happy, Alek.”

  “I…it’s complicated,” he let out a harsh breath.

  They talked for a few minutes more and said their goodbyes with Thaddeus telling him, “I will be there on Thanksgiving. You’d better have this woman wrapped around your finger by then.”

  His attraction to her was anything but simple. It was the most complicated situation he’d ever found himself in with a woman. He preferred that she not be sexy, and not even suggest sexuality to him. All the things she didn’t know she did.

  Despite their erotic connection, sex wasn’t the first thing that came to his mind when he thought of Ava. It was her smile. Warm, open, brilliant.

  A smile full of life. When I am so full of death.

  Aleksander left his bedroom, eager to get some cool air into his lungs, to think his way out of this mess.

  He saw Toddy lying on the carpet in front of Olivia’s door. “Hey, boy! Want to go for a walk?”

/>   Toddy scrambled to his feet, a gleaming joy in his eyes.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  Toddy trotted alongside him down the stairs and into the kitchen, gave another wiggle when he picked up a ball, then added a happy bark when they stepped into the library.

  Aleksander almost told himself he had gone there just to turn off the lights but he would not fool himself. It was Ava he was looking for and there she was, her blonde hair falling around her, hunched over Olivia’s newest exam results, her notepad, and her computer.

  “Hey.”

  She closed her laptop with a dry thud.

  She’s going to make this difficult. He took a quiet breath, the frustration obvious.

  But Ava looked up with a smile—and, he noticed, a wary expression in her eyes. “Hey, you.”

  “I was going to take a walk. Since Olivia is sleeping, I asked him if he wanted to come.” He motioned to the toy in his hand and hesitated for a moment, then blurted it out, “Do you want to come?”

  He could see she was debating her answer. Then she motioned to her notebook and several sheets of paper scattered before her.

  “I’d love to, but I’m working.”

  “Your boss says you can take a break,” he insisted.

  “I’m my own boss—you just pay me,” she said dryly, rubbing the back of her neck. But she put her pencil between the pages of her notebook, arranged the sheets inside, closed it, and got up, stretching her arms toward the ceiling.

  He was transfixed: by the lamplit swell of her breasts thrust upward, the outline of the beautiful curves of her slim, tall body, by her golden hair falling almost to her waist when she cracked her head back.

  His voice was deep and rough when he said, “Perhaps, a quick walk would be good. De-stressing.”

  She lowered her arms, straightened, and looked at him—into him—as if trying to divine his intentions. “Yeah, perhaps it will.”

  When they left the house behind, the moon provided enough light for them to see their way around, making the night seem magical.