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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