Pursued by the Playboy (6 page)

She gestured vaguely with the keys still clutched in her hand.  “Running.” 
She cleared her throat.  “Aren’t you supposed to be at the hospital by now?”

He smiled, moving slowly toward her.  “My first case got cancelled.  I’m not due in until nine, though I still need to get sign-out and round on a few patients before scrubbing in.”

He stopped right in front of her, mere inches from her suddenly tense body.  He smelled of citrus shampoo and mint toothpaste—hers, she realized, though she couldn’t recall ever feeling aroused by the scents before.  She had to stifle the urge to lean into him and bury her nose against his damp skin.  

Heat radiated from him in waves.  Her eyes snagged on a drop
let
of water that slid down his chest and disappeared in the curls just above a flat male nipple.  She swallowed, feeling the sweat bead above her upper lip.  

The air between them stirred as he leaned in.  She opened her mouth to say something—what, she had no idea—but the breath caught in her throat and no sound escaped.  His mouth captured hers.  A rumble of pleasure vibrated in his chest, and she felt it echoing through her, setting off smaller tremors through her abdomen and pelvis.  Her eyelids drifted shut.  Her limbs felt weighted down.  All will to move drained out of her. 

And then he was easing back, hands steadying her until she was able to breathe again.  “Much as I’d like to continue this,” he said, “I need to get going.  You wouldn’t happen to have a spare set of scrubs lying around?” 

She managed to shake her head no.

“No worries.  I’ll grab a pair at the hospital.”  He turned, striding toward her bedroom. 

She stared at his retreating back in bemusement.  Her lips tingled, and her chin stung slightly where his stubble had abraded her skin.  She was still standing in the same spot when he emerged a few minutes later, dressed in yesterday’s clothing.  

As if sensing her disquiet, he ran a light finger down her cheek. 
“I’m on call tonight, but how about lunch tomorrow?”

She stepped back.  “I have to check my appointment book.”

“You do that.”  He grinned, kissed her hard, and nudged her out of the path of the door.  “I’ll call you.”

And before she could even respond, he was gone.

Kate tried to broach the subject
of boundaries
over lunch the following day, but somehow got distracted.  The same thing happened over an intimate post-theater dinner.  And again in the course of a lazy Saturday morning amble through Reading Terminal Market, where she watched in fascination as Marc picked over fresh produce with all the fussiness of a French housewife shopping at the local farmer’s stand. 

Together, they lugged their purchases to his house, where he proceeded to dazzle her with his culinary skills.  An impromptu lesson on how to julienne peppers segued into a decadent but highly satisfying afternoon in bed, interrupted only for a half-naked picnic of fruit, cheese, and crusty bread.  It was evening before he finally got around to stir-frying the vegetables they’d started on earlier, and dark out by the time Kate recalled herself sufficiently to say she needed to get home.

They were in his living room, lounging on one of the buttery soft sofas.  Kate sat in one corner, feet propped up on a nearby coffee table, Marc lying full-length beside her with his head in her lap.  Soft music played from hidden speakers; she’d discovered that when it came to the love of high-tech gadgets he wasn’t much different from the typical male of his generation, only a bit more subtle.  They were reading—a medical journal in his case, a
manuscript submitted for peer review
in hers.  Other than the mournful wail of a tenor saxophone in the background, and the occasional turning of a page, it was quiet, peaceful.  Far from the frenetic environment she’d expected in the company of a man of Marc DiStefano’s reputation.  Absently, she stroked his hair, letting the dark strands sift through her fingers. 

“It’s getting late,” she finally said, setting aside the paper she’d lost interest in several pages ago.  “I should get going.”

He captured her hand, brought it to his lips for a quick kiss.  “What’s your rush?  Stay the night.”

Her silence made him sigh and sit up, swinging around to face her.  “If you insist on leaving, I’ll drive you and spend the night at your place.”

That scared her more than staying where she was. 

His slow smile and the gentle fingers he ran along her jaw before leaning in to tease her lips with his stilled any further protest.  Later, she told herself. 

###

The following day, they showered together and he lent her some of his sister Isabelle’s clothes. 

“She won’t mind,” Marc assured her, as she pulled on the white cotton panties, sports bra and biking shorts.  “You’re almost the same size, and she doesn’t need it unless she’s on call through the weekend.  She crashes here if L&D isn’t busy enough for her to stay in-house.”

Struck again by this evidence of his close relationship with his family, Kate almost missed his next words.  “Though if you’d stop being so skittish and actually put some of this extra closet space to good use, you wouldn’t have to borrow Izzy’s stuff.”

Kate opened her mouth, but nothing came out.  Her throat constricted, as if it were closing up on her. 
Breathe,
she told herself. 
He doesn’t mean anything by it.
  She brushed past him, out of the confines of the mirrored dressing room, through his adjoining bedroom, and out through the sliding glass doors that led to a small terrace overlooking
Rittenhouse
Square
Park
. 

Moments later, he followed.  She could feel his quietly assessing gaze, but refused to look up.  “You’ll be cold,” he finally said, in a carefully modulated voice.  He extended a light cotton t-shirt emblazoned with a faded
Bryn
Mawr
College
logo.  “The breeze off the water along
Kelly Drive
can get pretty brisk, even in summer.”

They’d planned to go biking on the four-mile stretch along the Schuylkill River, but as she finished dressing she wondered if perhaps it would be safer to retreat back to her apartment and spend the day catching up on all the routine tasks that had fallen by the wayside in the last few weeks.

Marc seemed oblivious to her vacillating mood.  As he hitched his light-weight carbon frame road bike and Izzy’s old hybrid to the rack behind his BMW, he kept up a running commentary on groomed trails that crisscrossed the city and surrounding suburbs.  His love for the outdoors came as no surprise.  After all, she was now intimately acquainted with his athlete’s body, the sleek muscles and lean contours, the rock-solid strength and confident grace of movement.   Her cheeks flamed as she recalled the hours of pleasure that body had given her.

“See if this fits,” he said, extending a bike helmet.  He helped her tighten the straps, and nodded his satisfaction.  “We’re set, then.” He dumped his helmet beside hers, secured their remaining gear, and ushered her into the car. 

By the time they parked behind the art museum and emerged onto the paved trail that hugged the
Schuylkill
, Kate convinced herself she’d completely overreacted.  A throw-away remark about convenience was a far cry from an offer of cohabitation.  Besides, it was too beautiful a day to waste fretting about hypotheticals. 

World restored to rights, she pedaled to catch up to Marc.  

Later that afternoon, windblown and lightly sunburned despite the sunscreen Marc insisted she slather on, Kate leaned back and sighed.  Remains of their al fresco lunch littered the blanket.  Other couples and families lounged on the grass nearby.   Geese wandered tamely about, honking and seeking out abandoned scraps of food. 

“Emma’s twins are turning one,” Marc said.  “Dad and Sophia are hosting a barbe
cue next Sunday to celebrate.”

Kate brushed the crumbs off her lap.  “That’s nice.”

“Come with me?”

She was already shaking her head.  “Thanks, but I can’t.”

“I haven’t even told you the time.”

“Right.  Sorry.” She started gathering up empty containers and disposable dishes.  “What I meant was I have a grant deadline coming up.  Lots of writing still to do.”

“It’s only a few hours.  You need to eat, and I can guarantee you the food will be excellent.”  He smiled, leaned closer.  “Come on, you’ll like them.  And they can’t help but like you.”

Kate stopped abruptly, a plastic fork still clutched in one hand.   “I don’t do families.”

The silence that greeted her pronouncement seemed to stretch indefinitely.  A light breeze ruffled Kate’s hair, bringing with it the sound children’s laughter and the rhythmic splash of oars on water.  Marc studied her as if she were some exotic new species of wildlife.  “I see,” he finally said, relieving her of the fork.  He swiftly disposed of their remaining trash in a nearby bin. 

She scrambled up, unsure what to make of his reaction. 

He shook out the picnic blanket and folded it, each movement controlled, precise.   “Eventually you’re going to say yes,” he told her.  “Maybe n
ot this time, but eventually.”

The first appointment of the morning was precisely the kind of consultation Marc dreaded.  Most of his patients were older women, thanks to the demographics of the cancers he treated.  But genetics were sometimes cruel and inescapable.  His own mother had died of ovarian cancer just two months shy of her thirty-fifth birthday. 

This woman was Marc’s age, thirty-six years old, in the prime of her life.  She should have been enjoying herself, having candle-lit dinners with her husband, running barefoot in the backyard after a passel of kids.  Instead, she and her husband were sitting white-knuckled inside the office of a gynecologic oncologist, waiting for him to sound the death knell. 

Marc rested his elbows on the desk, hands crossed over her chart.  He had reviewed it earlier that morning, along with the ultrasound images that showed a five centimeter solid ovarian mass.   Given her sky-high blood levels of the tumor marker CA-125, and her family history of two first-degree relatives with premenopausal breast cancer, the most likely diagnosis was ovarian cancer.  

“But couldn’t it be something else?” she pleaded.  “A cyst or endometriosis or something?”

Marc nudged a box of tissues closer to her.  “Maybe, Mrs. Feldman.  But we won’t know for sure until we remove the ovary and get the pathology back.”

“How long will that take?” her husband asked.

“We can get a preliminary answer during surgery by doing a frozen section.  The pathologist lets us know right then whether it’s benign or malignant, and whether the margins are clear.  That way, if we need to, we can still sample some of the nearby lymph nodes and do washings of the pelvic area to make sure that if it is malignant, the cancer cells haven’t spread.”

“And if they have?”

“Then we’ll deal with the situation as it comes, Mr. Feldman.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He took a deep breath, trying to suppress his own frustration and anger at the fact that despite two decades of medical progress since his mother’s diagnosis, there was still so little he could offer a woman like Mrs. Feldman.  Sure, he could remove the cancer—cleanly, neatly, and in some cases permanently.  Unless it had already metastasized, as it had with his mother.  Chemotherapy was the second line of defense then, but it was a clumsy weapon at best, killing healthy cells along with malignant ones, leaving many women vulnerable to infection,
and further weakened
by side effects like intractable nausea and fatigue. 

The key was early diagnosis.  He thought of the work Kate and researchers like her were doing, searching for a single protein or particular combination of markers that would unlock the secret to early detection.  He admired her dedication and patience in pursuing something so elusive, something she might never find.  

But in the meantime, he was here in the trenches, using what weapons he had on hand to fight the battle one case, one woman, at a time. 

“What about kids?”  Mrs. Feldman balled up a tissue in her fist.  “Will I still be able to get pregnant after this?”

Marc hesitated, trying to couch his response as gently as possible.  His primary goal was to preserve his patient’s life, then her fertility.  “First of all, we need to figure out what’s going on.  If this is cancer, and it hasn’t spread beyond the one ovary, then we can leave your other ovary intact and have you
see
a reproductive endocrinologist to discuss your options.” 

She shook her head.  “I can’t believe this is happening.  We put off starting a family because we thought we had all the time in the world.  I had my business to get off the ground.  Larry was working crazy hours to make partner.  We never imagined we’d have to deal with something like this.”  She swallowed and clutched her husband’s hand.  “Am I going to die?”