Barefoot in the Sun (Barefoot Bay)

by Roxanne St Claire

“Oh, Zoe.” Tessa reached for her with another of her mother-bear hugs. “Baby, you’re a mess.”

  She gave in to the tears and the hug and the delicious overdose of nurturing, letting Tessa stroke her hair. Lovely as that was, it wasn’t what she needed. It wasn’t who she needed.

  For the second time that day, Zoe wanted to run. But not away. She wanted to run to someone.

  “What are you going to do?” Tessa asked.

  Zoe turned a little to look up at her friend. “I’m going to talk to Oliver.”

  “Talk?” Tessa looked dubious.

  “Talk after.”

  “After another simultaneous orgasm?”

  “That or maybe after tomorrow,” Zoe said. “We got the other oncologists’ opinions today and everything’s a go for the transfusion and gene therapy in the morning. I think I should wait and do some more research. Maybe…talk to the sheriff.”

  Tessa gave her another hug. “If you need me to go with you, I will.”

  “What I need is…”

  “Tell me, Zoe.”

  “Oliver.” She mouthed his name.

  “See? That wasn’t so hard.” Tessa gave her a peck on the cheek. “Have fun and stay with him.”

  Zoe’s eyes popped. “Forever?”

  Tessa laughed. “I meant tonight, but hey, who knows?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Oliver’s front door opened before Zoe even knocked, leaving her to wonder what was sexier: the sight of him bare-chested in soft blue doctor’s scrubs or the utter lack of surprise on his face when he saw her.

  “You were expecting me, weren’t you?”

  “A guy can hope,” he said softly.

  “So you’re standing sentry at the door?”

  He smiled. “I was upstairs checking on Evan and I saw you walking down the path. Usually when you come over you take shortcuts and climb fences.”

  She smiled. “I had a cocktail with Tessa, so I didn’t trust myself to climb.” She glanced behind him. “Evan asleep?”

  He nodded, reaching for her, touching her face with his gentle but capable fingers. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said vaguely, the need to tell him everything she’d just learned plaguing her. Of course he’d demand info, want to see the stories, and—worst of all—maybe he’d believe Pasha was guilty.

  How would that affect the delicate gene-therapy procedure he was supervising the next day to save the woman’s life?

  He drew her closer. “You coming in?”

  She hesitated, looking at him, inhaling the mix of salty humid air and the soapy smell of a man who’d just showered. “I guess,” she said.

  “You guess?” he laughed softly, sliding his hands to her wrist.

  “I didn’t just come over for sex,” she said, not sure why it was important that he know that.

  Still smiling, he eased her into the villa. “That’s fine. We’re a full-service operation. What will it be? Food, drink, pool, shower, or a cuddle on the couch where you can unload whatever it is that has your pulse so erratic?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come to a doctor for comfort and you get diagnosed.”

  His face softened as he closed the door and walked her to the overstuffed sofa. “Is it comfort you want, Zoe?”

  An unexpected lump formed in her throat. “Yeah,” she admitted. “That’s what I want. No-questions-asked consolation and tenderness.” She looked up at him with a hopeful smile. “Can I buy some of that here?”

  “Better yet, we give that away at no charge.” He eased her down on the sofa cushions and laid her back on the armrest. He sat at the other end, lifting her feet to his lap, sliding off her flip-flops and letting them drop to the floor. “Somehow I keep getting sent back to your feet.”

  She smiled, closing her eyes as he gave her a gentle foot rub, lost in the power of his hands.

  “Are you worried about tomorrow?” he asked. “Is Pasha on your mind?”

  She most certainly was. “Of course. I can hardly think about anything else.”

  He gave her foot a squeeze. “She’s in great hands. Our team is amazing and prepared. I’m now one-hundred-percent convinced this is the right way to go.”

  His confidence was as reassuring as his touch. “How long until we know if it worked?”

  “In hours we’ll know if it didn’t work—that’s actually a better way to look at it. If there is toxicity or inflammation from the bad cells we’re injecting, we will know within hours. Certain symptoms will alert us.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Stop and reverse the therapy, but…” He stilled his fingers and waited until she opened her eyes to finish. “That might be too late.”

  “I’m aware of that risk, and so is Pasha.”

  “Good. But remember, this process could save her life and many more.” His voice grew tight and his grip even tighter.

  “That’s why it’s so important, huh?” she asked.

  “No, Zoe. It’s important because your aunt, whom you love, has trusted us with her life.”

  She swallowed some guilt. Yes, she loved Pasha. Nothing could ever change that. But should Oliver know what Zoe knew now? Would it matter? Would it be right or wrong to tell him on the eve of this important event? The indecision squeezed at her chest.

  “But,” he continued, “I won’t lie and tell you this isn’t major, potentially career-changing, and without a doubt the very reason I walked away from my position at Mount Mercy and opened a practice in Naples to work with Raj.”

  The passion in his words hung in the room, as attractive and powerful as any language of love. She studied him from under her lashes, her heart swelling so much that the observant doctor could probably feel the physiological responses just by holding her feet.

  “You love what you do,” she said, unable to keep the raw admiration—and maybe a little envy—out of her voice.

  “I do,” he agreed. “Saving lives, hands-on medicine, especially the kind that has potential for huge and important change, is the reason I became a doctor and definitely the reason I went into oncology.”

  A story about his grandmother drifted up from her memory banks. “I thought you chose oncology because of losing your grandmother to breast cancer when you were in college.”

  He nodded slowly, his expression a little distant. “I did.”

  She inched up a little. “It sounds like there’s more.”

  “There’s…always more.” He inhaled deeply, and, on the exhale, he let go of her feet and climbed up the sofa, covering her body with his as he lay down next to her.

  “Done with the comforting foot rub?”

  “I want to do a comforting full-body rub.” He tucked her into his chest, wrapping a leg around hers to hold her securely on the sofa.

  “Shouldn’t we do this behind closed doors? You’ve got an eight-year-old upstairs.”

  “We will.” He brushed her hair back and angled her face so they were looking right at each other. “I want to tell you something. It’s serious and important and I don’t want to get sidelined by…by what happens when we get near a bed.”

  She tensed a little, waiting for him to finish.

  “Zoe, I don’t want to have any secrets or anything that could change how you feel—or not—about me.”

  Guilt churned her stomach—she was the one holding in a secret on this sofa—and that pain mixed with a burn of curiosity. “Something about your marriage?” she guessed.

  He shook his head. “Long before.”

  “Before that, there was…me.”

  “Before that.”

  She tried to sit up, but he held her right where he wanted her, heart to heart, face to face. “I want to tell you about the very first woman who hurt me.”

  She blinked at him. They’d talked about former lovers when they’d dated; she knew all about Adele Townshend and even a few girls from college. “Your first love?” She had deluded herself in thinking she’d been his first love.

  “Every boy’s firs
t love, I guess.”

  “Your mother?”

  He nodded and she dug back into those memory banks for information. All she knew was that his mother had died young, his father and grandmother had raised him, and…that was it.

  “Did she die of cancer, too, Oliver?” Maybe that was the death that really put him on the track to this life, a boy who wanted to save lives because he’d lost the one that mattered most.

  But why wouldn’t he have told her that?

  And why did his face register nothing but agony right now?

  He stroked her cheek, brushing an imaginary hair, his gaze beyond her as he visibly gathered his thoughts. “When I was a little older than Evan and nowhere near as smart, I might add, my mother died.”

  Sympathy swelled. “That must have been so hard. What happened?”

  “She…” He closed his eyes. “I came home from school and the house was so quiet.”

  It was his turn for his heart to race and his body to tighten. She caressed his bare arm the same way Tessa had stroked her earlier. Calming, soothing, and comforting.

  “It was never quiet,” he said. “My mother didn’t work outside the home. She was a housewife supporting my dad’s engineering career. When I came home from school, there was always music. Early-eighties rock and roll, mostly, but really anything. She would be dancing around in some kind of crazy outfit, putting together a play for the neighborhood kids, or organizing a garage sale, or planning a party. She was the original good-time girl.”

  “I like her already,” Zoe said with a sly smile.

  His eyes narrowed. “You would have…” He shook his head. “You’re very much like her, Zoe.”

  Something told her that wasn’t a compliment.

  “She was the center of attention, always making jokes, never taking anything seriously, filling her life and our house with…”

  “Joy?”

  He shifted his gaze to focus on her. “Fake joy.”

  For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then she asked, “What is that?”

  “That’s when…” He curled a strand of her hair around his finger, winding it like a spring. “You convince the world you are so happy and always laughing and joking and singing but inside you are very, very…damaged.”

  The word was like a quick stab to the heart. Damaged sounded familiar.

  “What happened to her, Oliver? Just tell me.”

  “I went upstairs.” He paused, getting composure. “She wasn’t in her room or anywhere else. Then I went up to the third floor. We lived in an old Georgian-style house outside of Wilmington. It needed a lot of work and, in fact, that was what my mother was supposed to be doing—hiring contractors or carpenters because my dad was working fifty, sixty, even more hours at DuPont.” He took a moment for a breath, and Zoe realized their hearts were beating in unison—way too fast.

  “She wasn’t on the third floor, either, so I had to go up to the cupola. The very top of this old house, which I’m sure could have been restored to greatness, but my mother was too…distracted.”

  “What happened, Oliver?” She could barely whisper the words, like a child listening to a scary story and knowing the very bad thing was right around the corner.

  “I found her.” He closed his eyes and bit his lip. “She’d hung herself.”

  Zoe sucked in a deep breath, the shock of that hitting her brain. A happy, joyful, music-loving, easily distracted, party girl had killed herself.

  And her nine-year-old son had found her.

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “We never knew. No note, no issues, no hidden secrets, no journal, no safe deposit box, no friends came forward, no history of instability, nothing. But it was suicide and she was clearly a troubled, depressed woman who hid behind a façade of happiness. There had to be a reason, but it defied logic. She defied logic.”

  Zoe stared at him, chugging all that in, and, man, it tasted bleak.

  “Wow, I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you,” she said, placing her hand on his face and forcing him to look at her.

  “It was horrible,” he agreed. “It changed me, forever.”

  “How?”

  “I guess I’ve studied enough psychology to know it’s why I have a need to fix broken things.” He gave a quick smile. “I spent the next five or more years wondering if I could have fixed my mother.”

  “Not if you didn’t know anything was wrong with her,” she said. “Not if no one knew the way she was feeling.”

  He didn’t answer, still playing with one of her curls, his eyes unfocused as he no doubt relived the memory and its aftershocks.

  “You think I’m like her, don’t you?” she asked in a soft whisper.

  Now his eyes focused, and he looked right into her eyes. “In some ways, yes. In others, no.”

  Some ways. “You think my tendency to run is just another way of escaping life when it gets tough.”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

  Oliver’s chest felt lighter than it had in years. Even though they’d rolled to a more comfortable position on the couch and Zoe was more or less draped over him, squeezing the breath from him, he felt nothing but buoyant inside.

  It was as if the confession had freed him.

  But not Zoe. She had a million questions, which he did his best to answer, reserving judgment on his mother’s decision, convincing her that with no note and no indication that she’d been unhappy at all, the family had learned to live with a scar they’d never understood.

  “But you’re not living with it,” Zoe said. “It’s still haunting you. I bet that’s the reason you’re scared of heights.”

  “That might be a stretch, but okay,” he agreed. “I know it’s why I hate to come home to an empty house. None of that means I’m letting the incident define me.”

  “You said it had a lasting impact.”

  “But not one that defines me. I won’t let it.” He pulled her into him, as close as he could get her, but there was nothing sexual about the move. He wanted her to understand how important his next words were. “I’m not letting it define us.”

  She shuddered out a breath. “There is no us, Oliver.”

  “There could be. You know how I feel. I love—”

  She inched up, warning flashing dark green in her eyes. “Don’t say it, Oliver.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t say it back.”

  “You never could,” he said on a dry laugh. “Remember, even when I tried to teach you.” He sat up next to her and held her face in his hands. “I…” He nibbled on her lower lip. “Love…” He sucked that lip into his mouth, wanting to rush and get the last word out, but really wanting to taste her. “You.”

  Amazingly, she didn’t stop him or jerk away. Instead, she kissed him, her mouth open, her tongue sweet and slippery, her hands closing around his neck.

  “Zoe?” he asked when they finally broke the kiss.

  “I can’t, Oliver.”

  She never could. She never had. And now he knew why. She was afraid of having the rug pulled out from under her the minute she took a chance standing on it. She needed time. “Will you spend the night with me?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and he could practically feel her rooting around for excuses.

  “We’ll do nothing but sleep, I swear.”

  “I don’t have any clothes for tomorrow and I need to shower and…”

  He stood, pulling her up with him. “Listen, go into my room, take a hot shower, and climb into bed. I’m going to run over to your bungalow, get you clean clothes and whatever you need. We’ll wake up early, before Evan’s even up, and he’ll think you arrived in the morning.”

  She searched his face, then nodded with one last sigh of resignation. “You win.”

  “It’s not a battle, honey.” He stroked her cheek. “I’m going to hold you all night and when you wake up and look at me, you’re going to say the first words that pop into your brain and those wi
ll be the unvarnished truth.”

  She smiled. “You sound like Pasha and her signs and wonders.”

  “Go.” He nudged her toward the master bedroom. “Give me your key and tell me what you need.”

  “Key’s under the front mat. Something clean that looks like I’d wear it. Don’t forget underwear. And my toothbrush.”

  He kissed her on the forehead. “Be right back.”

  She eased back, unsure. “Aren’t you worried that you’ll come back and I’ll be gone?”

  “Not in the least.”

  She gave him a playful punch. “Well, look at that. Big breakthrough for Doctor B.”

  “Now it’s your turn. Go and shower and stay here. All night. Can you do that, Zoe? For me?”

  “I can.” She leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “I can do that for you, doc. Trust me.”

  He watched her walk to the bedroom door and, as she opened it, she turned, a heartbreaking smile tipping her lips. “I kind of…do. You know? I do. I always have.”

  Now that right there was a breakthrough. Zoe style. He smiled right back. “I know.”

  He waited until she disappeared into his bedroom and then he left, jogging down the Casa Blanca beach path, cutting through the gardens to make his way to the little cul-de-sac of bungalows where Zoe was staying. He rounded her Jeep parked in front, found the key with little problem, and let himself into the darkened living area. Turning on a lamp, he glanced around while his eyes adjusted and headed toward the hall, turning that light on, too.

  There were doors on either side, both leading to tiny bedrooms. The one on the right was smaller, with a single bed and a nearly empty dresser. That would be Pasha’s room. As he was turning to the other room, something on the dresser caught his eye. White, square, familiar black lettering.

  His whole being froze as an icy splash of disbelief shot through his veins.

  Very slowly, he turned, the blood pounding in his head so hard he could literally hear his heart rate rise with each passing second. As if he couldn’t bear to put his eyes on it, he looked downward, at a fallen vase with a few dead flowers, any water long evaporated.

  But he knew what he’d seen. He knew it.

  He lifted his gaze up the side of the dresser and let it finally land on a time-yellowed envelope with familiar black writing.