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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 , 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.

Aleksander looked wonderful. When doesn’t he? The beaver hat was angled precisely right on his head and his dark mud-green coat fit him to perfection and deepened the color of those beautiful eyes.

This seemed a space of time, carved out only for her and him. Maybe it was all a pretense: he wanted her the way all men wanted a pretty woman. But what does it matter?

She’d had enough taken from her to realize that happiness came as flashes in time that one had to savor. It did not last. If she let it go, those flashes would fade away and no photographs, no memories, would be left for recollection.

Inside, Ava felt a fierce desire and an almost tremulous defiance: she wanted those memories and if they remained just memories, she would have something to think about on her lonely nights when she was back in her empty apartment.

She had already crossed the line—she should make that little defiance worth the price she would have to pay.

They walked side by side, each one tangled in their thoughts, neither knowing how to break the silence. Only the night creatures and Toddy running to and fro to grab the ball Aleksander kept throwing provided the sounds.

When they arrived at the clearing, she turned to him and said, “I’ve been a total jerk, ignoring you.”

She makes it too easy. He nodded with a smile.

She laughed. “So you agree?”

“I agree, but I understand why. I was a total jerk first.”

“You have a lot going on. A lot of emotions to work through.”

“Yeah.” He stepped toward her, his hand lifted and his fingers caressed her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered as if she wanted to close them. “But it’s no reason for being inconsiderate to you. And I wanted to say that I’m so sorry, about what you went through.”

The amused light in her eyes faltered, waned, and she turned, beginning the walk back to the house.

“You could have told me. From the beginning,” he said, catching up with her. “You could have told me that everything I was going through, you’ve been through, too.”

“It’s hard for me to think about, much less speak about it,” she said softly. “As I imagine it is for you, too. I concentrate on the present, the day by day. Not the past, not the future.”

“You don’t think about the future?” He was appalled by her words, by the sadness he hated showing in her eyes.

“Not until it’s very near. Things can change so much, there is no use worrying until that time comes.”

Shaking his head, he bent and picked up the ball Toddy brought back and threw it again. “But what if it’s something positive? Don’t you like to have something to look forward to?”

She shrugged. “No. Because plans fall through, don’t they? I don’t like to speculate about things.” To have expectations, to hope.

“Ah. But you do, Dr. Larsen,” he contradicted her but didn’t elaborate as he opened the door to the house for her. He took off his coat and hung it in the closet along with hers.

She followed him to the laundry room and watched as he washed and towel-dried Toddy’s paws and filled his water bowl.

Not wanting the evening to end, he asked, “Do you want a hot chocolate?”

Yes. It wasn’t just the open desire in his eyes that excited her. It was the intimacy of what they had done. They had talked about almost every hurt she kept secret in her heart and he understood, made her feel whole. She put her hands in her pockets. “Maybe later, thanks. I’d better check on Olivia, then I’ll be back for more reading.”

Back they went into the living room and Aleksander paused at the stairs, sighed, and walked to the Christmas tree to turn off its lights before joining her again.

As they started climbing, he surprised her by saying, “The Christmas after Rachel died, Olivia asked me to write a letter to Santa Claus for her. She wanted him to bring her mother back.”

Kristus. “What did you do?”

“My first impulse was to get drunk and stay that way until spring.” He stopped when they reached the landing and looked at her. “I didn’t, of course. With some help from Lydia, I explained to Olivia that even Santa couldn’t pull off anything that big. It was tough, but we all got through it.”

“Do you miss her?” Ava dared to ask, her voice barely more than a breath as she walked up the corridor. “Rachel, I mean?”

“Yes,” Aleksander replied, gaze locked on hers, before opening Olivia’s bedroom door.

The girl was sleeping peacefully and didn’t wake when Toddy jumped on the bed and snuggled on her legs.

Going through the motions of the medical procedure, without looking up at him, Ava finally asked, “Are you still in love with Rachel?”

Aleksander considered her words solemnly and for a long time.

“Not in the way you mean,” he finally said, his eyes caressing Ava’s face as he watched her reactions. “But I’ll always care about her. It’s just that I feel a different kind of love for her now. Sort of mellow and quiet and nostalgic.”

“Know what?” she asked softly, as she rearranged Olivia’s arm back under the coverlet. “Avoiding enjoying the holiday spirit isn’t going to change what happened.”

That was a connection they shared. Neither one of them spoke plainly of it, but it hung around them as they exited Olivia’s bedroom. Loss was something that couldn’t be escaped. It followed around like a magnet to steel.

“What?” she asked as he closed the door but didn’t move.

“Nothing,” he shook his head.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Aleksander half smiled. “Because you’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence—any pleasures.”

“I have a confession to make,” she whispered, leaning against the wall.

He smirked at her and whispered back, “Should I phone for a priest?”

“Don’t mock me.”

“All right, I apologize.” He forced a solemn look. “You can voice your shameless confession now.”

She let out a little laugh—part in humor, part in nervousness. “I was kind of waiting for you, that night. I was…willing.” As you told me I would be.

He raised an eyebrow as heat coursed through him. “You were?”

She nodded. “I admit it. Isn’t that enough?”

“What do you mean?”

“You aren’t going to say,”—she made quotes in the air—“I told you so?”

“Is that what you want?”

She smiled at him. An expression both shy and brazen, a smile as old as woman herself. “No.”

“You should always be like this,” he said huskily, stepping toward her until they were separated by mere inches.

Her pulse quickening as it always did when she had one hundred percent of his attention, his scent and his aura wrapping around her and pulling her in. She raised her head to gaze in his grayish-green eyes. Knowing that once he touched her, she’d be lost, she whispered, “Forward?”

He cupped her face in his palm. “Sure of yourself.”

And then his mouth met her parted lips and he was kissing her, hard. Her lips were welcoming and her body fit his, cradling his erection. He felt her hands in his hair, the rub of the fabric, harsh friction against his manhood as she arched toward him for more.

He tasted of wine and need and passion—all these things she had tasted before. But now she tasted something new, something triggered by their talk, or, perhaps, by her brazen admission.

An aching fury that moved his kiss beyond mere passion to something dark and dangerous and all-consuming.

He wanted to raise her against the wall and take her then and there. Since the middle of the corridor was not the appropriate place, almost savagely, he twirled her around and pulled her to his room.

He didn’t waste time and took off his turtleneck shirt, throwing it carelessly to the floor.

Before he took her in his arms again, she put a palm on his chest and breathed, “What does it mean?”

He didn’t answer.

Instead, there was a tug at her waist followed by a loosening, and then her cache-coeur blouse opened. She felt the kiss of air against her skin, heard the hiss of breath through his teeth as he gazed down at the ribbon of lace lingerie and exposed flesh, and felt the searing heat of his eyes like the brand of a torch.

“It means I want you,” he said, reaching out the fingers of one hand to scoop back the blouse away on one side, tracing a path down from her shoulder to her breast and circling the sensitive peak of her nipple over the lacy bra. “You have no idea how damn much I want you, Ava.”

She wanted him to look at her like that forever.

But then something flashed across his eyes, and she sensed the torment he was feeling, and panic shimmied up her spine for a moment. I’m a vessel, a vehicle for release from the demons plaguing him.

But even if there was only this, she would take it—take him—and gorge herself on it. She would also use him to release her own demons. She decided she wanted to live fully, damn the consequences. No more slow-downs or tip-toeing around.

“I think I do.” She didn’t need to take her eyes from his to smooth her hand over the rock-hard angles of his chest up to his large shoulders.

She boldly bent her head and took his nipple in her mouth.

A wave of heat washed over him, his head fell back, a grunt leaving his mouth.

She rose her head, and in a whisper, she repeated, “I think I do.”

He growled, before sliding a hand around her neck and pulling her to him. His lips captured hers, punishing and demanding, in a kiss in which it was impossible not to feel the turmoil that held him hostage.

And meanwhile his hungry hands grappled with her pants, shoving them down her hips, forcefully tearing her panties off, and pulling her naked body against him.

She went willingly, melting into him because she had no real choice, her senses overloaded with the taste and scent of him, the mouth sucking and nipping at her mouth, the brush of his chest hair against her nipples, denim against her legs, the feel of his hot skin melting her bones.

So many sensations, building one upon the other, a frenzy of feeling that threatened to consume her whole. And then the sound of his zipper coming undone, him lifting her, urging her legs around his waist, only to lower her slowly down until she felt his rock-hard length nudge at her core, and it was her turn to consume him.

He made a sound as he filled her, harsh like the cry of a wounded animal, as if it had been torn from his soul, and she clung to him, afraid for him.

Afraid for herself.

And then he was pumping into her, so fast and furious that sensation exploded inside her like a fireball.

She was falling then, his arms still locked around her, and he lifted himself, easing out of her until he sat poised there, at the very brink.

Though her eyes blurred with passion she looked up at him, looked into his wild eyes and saw the agony that marked his beautiful face and read the words inscribed on his soul—it was already too late—when with a roar he thrust into her, burying himself to the hilt again and again in a final turbulent release that sent her shuddering into a glorious abyss once more.