Bared by Him (11 page)

Still, he couldn’t forget, couldn’t stop hearing that tiny, quivering voice in his
head.
I have to go. I really have to go.

Something in her voice—something heart-wrenching and as real as the fist that suddenly
curled around his gut—made him feel edgy today.

“How long will you be gone?” he’d asked only an hour ago.

“A week or two … maybe three. I’ll let you know.”

He’d kissed her, feeling a little desperate. “Make it one.”

It was drizzling outside, and as he poured his coffee, the phone rang. He ignored
the rings, but he couldn’t help listening to the message left there when the answering
machine picked up.

Miss Ivy Summers, we did not hear from you Friday, so this is another friendly reminder
of your procedure of a lumpectomy with possible mastectomy to be done by Dr. Jeff
Sabella this morning at ten a.m. at the Prestons Hospital of Chicago …

The drizzle outside was turning into a wild thunderstorm, and Cade stared at his coffee
as he tried not to go back in the past to the time he’d heard his wife was getting
one, too. No. Instead he was at the charity dinner less than a week ago, watching
as dozens of people hugged Ivy and wished her luck and cried on her shoulder. It had
not been because she needed more donations. When she’d said she couldn’t have anything
serious with him, it wasn’t because she was too busy. It was because she was sick.

Ivy.

Was
sick.

Raw pain opened like a rabid monster inside his chest. His hands curled into fists,
as a rush of emotions so deep, so dark, and so painful cut through him, he barely
registered that he’d grabbed his coffee cup in his hand. It went crashing to the floor.
Followed by the nearest lamp. He ground his footing as the vases on the coffee table
exploded on the walls. He wasn’t even conscious of what he did, he only heard glass
shattering, paper tearing, pillows being ripped to shreds, the sounds muffled by furious,
heart-wrenching bellows that tore from his chest.

He’d never thought a human being could make a sound like that; it was torn from his
gut and some newly vacant, hollow piece of himself.

He thought he’d shatter like everything he threw.

He thought he’d die when Laura died.

He’d pulled himself together—and continued on. Out of sheer stubborn will.

Nothing would ever be the same for him. Deep down, Cade had known that life would
forever lose its glitz. Until … Ivy.

Sick, beautiful, lying little Ivy.

*   *   *

Ivy stared at herself in the mirror of the hospital bathroom while the humming sound
of the razor moved across her scalp. She’d been diagnosed over a month ago with stage
2A breast cancer, having found in her regular checkup a 2 cm tumor in her breast,
which had thankfully not yet spread to the axillary lymph nodes.

Still, because of the placement so close to the nodes, a dose of chemotherapy and
radiation were to be done right after the surgery, to ensure no malignant tissue remained.
All her friends said how helpless they’d felt when they’d watched themselves shed
their hair. Every day finding lumps of it everywhere.

Ivy didn’t want to feel helpless. She’d rather go Sinead O’Connor, who’d looked as
beautiful as a princess with her shaven head, and she’d rather take her hair off by
herself.

This was better.

She felt air caress her scalp as it all fell down, and she reminded herself that it
would grow back. It was just hair. Just hair.

She stared blankly into her own eyes as she mechanically went through all of her head,
remembering the way Cade had pulled her to him before she left.
Make it a week.

Oh, God. Her eyes burned as she thought of having to tell him.

She’d never thought she would have to. You did not just meet someone and open with
the sentence, “I have cancer.” And even when she’d let herself enjoy the pleasure
of being with him, she’d never imagined they would get involved beyond a … one-night
stand. Or several.

Cade was angry and strong. He didn’t care about anything. She’d thought that she would
have a fling, because, why not? She’d felt angry and helpless, totally betrayed by
her own body, and when he’d touched her, igniting all those incredible sensations
within her … oh, God, how could anyone withstand that without breaking? He’d made
her feel alive, and in those bleak hours when she wondered whether this disease was
going to be the end of her soon, she’d ached to live whatever she had to the max.

The thought of him made the painful burning in her chest spread up to her throat.
She hadn’t cried when she’d found the lump on her right breast. It was hidden and
very deep inside, but the mammogram had revealed it was a baddie, and it had to come
out as soon as possible.

Ivy had thought of her mother, of all the women who had this, and she had doubled
her efforts to help them. She’d quit her job as a graphic designer and lived off both
her savings and her mother’s inheritance, which was enough to live comfortably for
several years, then she’d plunged wholeheartedly in to helping other women who were
in the same position as Ivy, or worse.

It wasn’t fair to feel helpless and alone. It wasn’t fair to be a woman, the nurturing
force in the world, and not be supported to go on. If this disease took Ivy as fast
as it had taken her mother, then she would now at least look back at herself with
pride, thinking that if she didn’t survive this, then there were many other women
who
would
. They would have enough funds and the support to aid them in their fight for years,
and their stories would inspire many other women to come. She’d wanted to gather the
most money possible before her procedure, in case she had no time to do much more,
and she’d had her heart set on Cade West’s help.

Well, she had
not
erred with him. Not even a little.

Now she swallowed back her tears and set down the razor. It was still her face … with
a small, rounded scalp, her lashes were still big, and her eyes were still honey.
But, the real, honest to God fear in her eyes was a stranger to her.

Her chin trembled. But she wasn’t going to cry,
not
when there was still a chance that she could win this.

She may “come back” in several weeks, with a new growth of short hair, and she could
tell Cade she’d cut it in solidarity with some of her friends. She could tell him
a lot of things … she could tell him everything except that she’d had cancer.

Would it be bad to lie to him, if the cancer went away?

She wanted him too much to risk losing him. And that was exactly what she would not
allow this disease to take from her. She would die before she let this disease take
it from her.

The only chance of love she’d ever had in her life.

Splashing water onto her face and scalp, she toweled dry, then mentally went through
her options as she got prepared for the procedure. In the hospital room, in the bed,
she closed her eyes and waited for them to take her to the appointed surgery location.

The nurses came in and out, in and out, but suddenly footsteps came in, and there
was such silence when they stopped near the end of the bed that Ivy wondered if she’d
suddenly gone deaf. And then she heard him.

“Ivy.”

The word was low, broken. And the impact it had on her was like a cannon blast.

Her eyes opened, and her vision locked in on Cade like a missile target. The expression
on his heartbreakingly familiar face was as harsh and gray as the storm outside. His
legs were braced apart, his stance powerful, but he still looked like he’d just been
told he had three minutes to live.

Or that she did.

He was darker against the whitewashed walls of the hospital. His eyes were red and
livid, and he looked very lonely, and very big, and very capable of protecting her
from everything.

Everything but
this
.

And then she became acutely aware of her position, her body spread on the bed, about
to be cut open, her scalp bare and hairless …

“No,” she gasped. Panic gripped her, and for the first time, she loathed her body,
she loathed her life, she loathed this cancer, she loathed
him
.

“No. No. Look away, Cade.
Look away
.”

He took a step forward even as a nurse came to the door, her eyes wide.

“I don’t want him to see me like this!” she cried to the nurse. “Please get him out
out out, oh, God, please
get him out
!”

She’d been saving her tears. Tears for when they told her she’d lost this battle.
But instead, she found that she couldn’t hold them back, started feeling tiny tears
tracking down her cheeks, followed by a line that wouldn’t stop, and when Cade came
to her and pressed his jaw against her forehead, cupping her face in his hands so
she could feel all his fingers spread over her shaved head, and when she felt his
warm breath as he tried to kiss her lips she wanted to die. To die.

She could barely speak through her sobs. “Please … go … away…” She futilely struggled
against his grip, turning her head away from his hands, his kiss.
Him.

Oh, God! How could Cade
ever
want her now? How could he ever look at her with lust and desire now? When she was
half a woman, half alive, torn in half inside?

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Ivy’s sobs were so uncontrollable, she couldn’t even hug herself, her arms trembled
at her sides, every part of her body trembled
. I’m sorry,
she wanted to say. The words rushed through her mind because she’d been unfair to
him and she never expected him to find this out—and if she did make it she thought
she would just tell him they were not working and she would disappear from his life.
I wanted something before I did this. I never thought to hurt you. You don’t care
about anything, why would you care about me.
Nobody should have to live through this once, much less twice …

And then the nurse came back with something injected into the IV, and Ivy soon didn’t
think anything at all.

*   *   *

Cade paced outside in the waiting room, his guts ripped to shreds. He’d hit a wall
down in the hall, and now his knuckles were bleeding … leaving a trail of blood under
his feet. He didn’t even feel pain. He could cut off a limb and not feel pain … for
his pain was centered deep, so fucking deep inside him, he was already dying a slow
death.

He’d let down his guard with Ivy. Forgotten that he wasn’t a deserving man. Forgotten
how easy it was to wish to be dead. No, he’d seen her and wanted her, wanted to be
better for her. He’d thought he could be healed, he could pretend that, with her,
his life could be normal like the rest of them. Pretend he could be happy with her.

But how could he? He was broken and he couldn’t make her right.

Nothing could make Ivy right.

A cramp gathered in his chest at the thought of the ways he’d taken her, the ways
he had insulted this disease she was quietly fighting without him. The way Ivy had
kept those lovely small breasts concealed from him … and agony and fury unlike any
other toppled him over and sent the nausea up his throat.

Had he been her last fucking fling?

What in the hell had he been to her? A fucking joke? A fucking … manwhore ready to
fuck her at her whim? Did she think because he was angry … he did not
deserve
to know? Did she think he did not fucking care that she … that she … had
it
?

He wanted to be angry. Aneurism-inducing, murderously fucking pissed. But among all
the sensations roiling like a tornado inside him, anger was last on the list. He couldn’t
forget her face. Couldn’t stop remembering Ivy as she’d been right now, in that small
hospital bed, just like Laura. Pale and frail and scared, and feeling very much alone,
and his windpipe shut and his eyes blurred and he wanted to rip his chest out.

Ivy, with her little bald head, crying for him not to see her like this. For him to
go away.

Ivy, who was always helping people. Ivy, who made Cade want to … live. The hurt spread
so deep and so wide, he felt it like a burn spreading up his chest, his throat, to
burst into his eyes. He’d known with Laura, even before the wedding. That she was
sick, and wouldn’t last.

He’d been “prepared” if that was even possible.

He’d tried to be a good husband. He’d tried to grant her all her wishes, even if he
couldn’t ever physically love her the way she’d wanted. He’d punished himself for
that flaw for years. But Ivy was spirited and bursting with passion, and she made
his body come alive …

He remembered her smile when he’d given her those checks, the way her eyes had shined.
Then he remembered how callous and mean he’d been, purposely trying to hurt her, when
he told her he didn’t make love to her, he just fucked her. His chest caved when he
remembered her last night, curled into that small little ball against him, as though
she were trying to disappear inside of him. His heart ached, and he wished he’d had
the chance to kiss her breasts and tell her they were so perfect and so pretty.

And now her breasts were being taken away from her …

She
was being taken away from
him
.

He blinked a rush of emotion back from his eyes and bit his fist as he continued blinking
fast.

Luke Preston once said billionaires didn’t cry.

But for the second time in his life, this one did.

*   *   *

Ivy drifted back to consciousness with his face branded in her mind as he’d been when
he’d seen her earlier. Her eyes stung remembering, and she wanted to cry all over
again, afraid to look down at her chest, afraid to see if they had to take only the
lump out, or one breast with it, or both.

She loathed that Cade knew, right now, this second, what they’d been doing to her.