EIGHT SISTERS, EIGHT SCANDALOUSLY SEDUCTIVE STORIES

THE Balfour LEGACY

Scandal on the night of the world-famous one hundredth Balfour Charity Ball has left the Balfour family in disarray! Proud patriarch Oscar Balfour knows that something must be done. His only option is to cut his daughters off from their lavish lifestyles and send them out into the real world to stand on their own two feet. So he dusts off the Balfour family rules and uses his powerful contacts to place each girl in a situation that will challenge her particular personality. He is determined that each of his daughters should learn that money will not buy happiness – integrity, decorum, strength, trust…and love are everything!

Each month Mills & Boon is delighted to bring you an exciting new instalment from The Balfour Legacy. You won’t want to miss out!

MIA’S SCANDAL – Michelle Reid

KAT’S PRIDE – Sharon Kendrick

EMILY’S INNOCENCE – India Grey

SOPHIE’S SEDUCTION – Kim Lawrence

ZOE’S LESSON – Kate Hewitt

ANNIE’S SECRET – Carole Mortimer

BELLA’S DISGRACE – Sarah Morgan

OLIVIA’S AWAKENING – MargaretWay

The Balfour Legacy
Zoe’s Lesson
Kate Hewitt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

KATE HEWITT discovered her first Mills & Boon® romance on a trip to England when she was thirteen and she’s continued to read them ever since.

She wrote her first story at the age of five, simply because her older brother had written one and she thought she could do it too. That story was one sentence long – fortunately, they’ve become a bit more detailed as she’s grown older.

She has written plays, short stories and magazine serials for many years, but writing romance remains her first love. Besides writing, she enjoys reading, travelling and learning to knit.

After marrying the man of her dreams – her older brother’s childhood friend – she lived in England for six years and now resides in Connecticut with her husband, her three young children and the possibility of one day getting a dog.

Kate loves to hear from readers – you can contact her through her website, www.kate-hewitt.com.

To Maggie, a great New York friend!

Love, K.

Family Tree

Chapter One

MAX MONROE gazed at the cherry blossoms outside the doctor’s office on Park Avenue, the fully opened buds as soft and round as pink puffballs. He blinked; were the blossoms blurring together into one indiscernible rosy mass, or was he imagining it? Fearing it?

He turned back to the doctor who was smiling at him with far too much compassion and steepled his fingers under his chin. When he spoke his voice was bland, deliberately so. ‘So what are we looking at? A year?’ He swallowed. ‘Six months?’

‘It’s difficult to say.’ Dr Ayers glanced down at the clipboard that chronicled Max’s history of sight loss in a few clinical sentences. ‘Stargardt’s disease is not a predictable process. As you know, many are diagnosed in childhood, yet yours was not detected until recently.’ He gave a tiny, apologetic shrug. ‘You could have months of blurred vision, loss of central vision, sudden blackouts…’ He paused, tellingly.

‘Or?’ Max asked, the single word opening up a well of unwelcome possibility.

‘Or it could be faster than that. You might have nearly complete loss of sight within a few weeks.’

‘Weeks.’ Max repeated the word with cold detachment, turning to gaze once more at the blowsy blossoms, now at the height of their glory. Perhaps he wouldn’t see them fall, wouldn’t witness the silky pink petals turn brown and wrinkled, curling up at the corners before they fluttered slowly, disconsolately to the ground.

Weeks.

‘Max—’

Max held up a hand to stop the doctor’s words of sympathy. He didn’t want to hear how sorry the man was, how Max didn’t deserve this. Polite but pointless offerings. ‘Please,’ he said quietly, his throat suddenly—stupidly—tight.

Dr Ayers shook his head, his words lapsing into a sigh. ‘Your case is unique, as the head trauma from your accident might have exacerbated or even accelerated the conditions of the disease. Many people with this disease can live with a managed condition—’

‘While others are legally blind and have nearly complete loss,’ Max finished dispassionately. He’d done his research, back when the first flickers of darkness rippled across his vision, as if the world had gone wavy. Back when he’d been able to read, watch, see. Just three weeks ago, yet a separate lifetime.

The doctor sighed again, then reached for a brochure. ‘Living with sight loss is challenging—’

Max gave a sharp bark of disbelieving laughter. Challenging? He could do challenging. He thrived on challenges. Sight loss was not a challenge. It was a devastation. Darkness, utter darkness, as he’d felt once before, when the fear had consumed him, when he’d heard their cries—He bit off that train of thought, refused to lose himself in the memories. It would be all too easy, and then he would never find his way back.

‘I could refer you to some groups that help you to become accustomed—’

‘No.’ He pushed the proffered brochure away and forced himself to meet the doctor’s compassionate gaze, angling his head so the man’s blurred face was in his peripheral vision, where his eyesight was best. He blinked, as though that would help. As though it would change. Already the world was losing its focus, softening and darkening at the edges like an old photograph. Shapes blurred, and spots and lights drifted across his vision, like stars in a darkening sky. How much he could see at any given time was, as Max was coming to realise, a complete crap shoot.

And when he was sightless, Max wondered, when the curtain of his vision finally drew completely closed, would the present reality—those vibrant cherry blossoms—be like an old photograph to him too? Blurred and distant, hard to remember, fading with time? How would he cope with the unending darkness? He’d felt it once before; he couldn’t bear to face it again, yet there was no choice. No choice at all.

He shook his head, both to block the thought and Dr Ayers’s suggestion. ‘I’m not interested in joining some kind of group,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ll handle this my own way.’

‘I’m not talking about some touchy-feely thing—’ Dr Ayers began. He was, Max knew, a military man, which is why he’d been referred to him. Army, though, not air force. And he hadn’t seen any action.

‘I know.’ He forced his lips to stretch into a meaningless smile. ‘Thank you.’ He rose from his chair, his head aching, his leg throbbing with pain. For a moment he felt dizzy, groundless, and he reached out to steady himself on the corner of the doctor’s desk. He missed, his hand swiping through air, and he cursed aloud.

‘Max—’

‘I’m fine.’ He righted himself, shoulders thrown back in military fashion, his eyes dark and hard, the scar that now bisected his face, running from the inside corner of his right eyebrow along the side of his nose to the curl of his lip, blazing with remembered feeling. Pain. ‘Thank you,’ he said again and, walking with careful, deliberate steps, he left the office.

Outside the window a single, silky petal fluttered lazily to the ground.

Zoe Balfour handed her wrap—nothing more than a bit of spangled silk—to the woman at the coat-check counter and ran a hand through her artfully tousled hair. Throwing back her shoulders, she stood for a moment in the soaring entrance of the Soho loft and waited for heads to turn. She needed heads to turn, shamelessly craved the attention and praise. She needed to feel like she always had, as though her world hadn’t blown apart when the newspapers had splashed the story of her illegitimate birth across their pages just three weeks ago. When the world—her world—had drawn a collective gasp of salacious shock. When she realised she didn’t know who she was any more.

She took a deep breath and entered the art gallery, plucking a glass of champagne from a nearby tray and taking a deep draught. She relished the crisp taste of it on her tongue, the bubbles zinging through her body. And she saw—and felt—the heads turn, but realised now she didn’t know why they were turning. Was it because she was a beautiful woman entering a party, or because they knew who she was—and who she wasn’t?

Zoe took another sip of champagne, as if the alcohol could ward off the despair that stole coldly into her soul despite her intent to have fun, to forget. It frayed the edges of her composure, made her feel as if she were teetering on the precipice of something terrible, an abyss she couldn’t even fathom or name. It was a despair and a fear she’d been fighting since the newspapers had told the story of her shame, and even more so since she arrived in New York three days ago, at the request of her father. No, Zoe mentally corrected, not her father. Oscar Balfour, the man who had raised her.

Her father was here in New York.

Only that afternoon she’d finally summoned her courage to stand outside the gleaming skyscraper on Fifty-Seventh Street, watching and waiting for a glimpse of the man she’d come here to see. She’d paced; she’d drunk three coffees; she’d even bitten her nails. After two hours he still hadn’t appeared and she’d slunk back to the Balfour penthouse on Park Avenue, feeling like an impostor, a fake and a cheat.

Because she wasn’t a Balfour.

For twenty-six years she’d smugly rested in the knowledge that she was one of the Balfour girls, a member of one of the oldest, wealthiest and most powerful families in all of England, if not all of Europe. And then she’d learned—from the front page of a gossip rag, no less—that she had not a drop of Balfour blood in her veins.

She was nobody, nothing. A bastard.

‘Zoe!’ Her friend Karen Buongornimo, the organiser of tonight’s gallery opening, looking sleek and elegant in a little—tiny actually—black number, her hair like a gleaming dark waterfall, pressed a powdered cheek to hers. ‘You look amazing, as I knew you would. Are you ready to sparkle?’

‘Of course.’ Zoe smiled, her voice airy and bright. Perhaps she was the only one to notice its brittle edge. ‘Sparkle is what I do best.’

‘Absolutely.’ Karen gave her shoulder a little squeeze and Zoe tried to inject some feeling into her smile. Her face hurt with the effort. ‘I’m just about to make some terribly insipid remarks—I have to thank our sponsors, including Max Monroe.’ Karen rolled her eyes suggestively, and Zoe raised her eyebrows, trying to act as if the name had meaning for her. ‘He’s apparently the most eligible bachelor in the city, but he’s certainly not winning any points from me tonight.’

‘Oh?’ Zoe took another sip of champagne. Someone else wasn’t having a good time, she thought, even as another part of her brain insisted fiercely that she was having a good time—she was the good-time girl. An accident of birth didn’t need to change that.

Because if it did…

‘No, he’s sulking—or really, glowering—in a corner, looking like he’s got a thundercloud over his head. Not exactly approachable.’ Karen pouted prettily. ‘He’s probably consumed a magnum of champagne on his own.’ She gave a little sigh. ‘Still, he is rather sexy…I think the scar just adds to it, don’t you?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see the man in question,’ Zoe replied, surveying the milling crowd, her curiosity piqued, and Karen shrugged.

‘It won’t be hard to miss him. He’s the one looking like someone’s torturing him. He did have an accident a month or so ago, and he’s not been the same since. Such a nuisance.’ She shrugged again and set her glass on an empty tray, air-kissing Zoe on both cheeks. ‘All right, I must get everyone’s attention somehow.’ She pulled her designer dress down a bit, to reveal another inch of bronzed cleavage, and gave Zoe a salacious wink. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard.’

Smiling faintly, Zoe took another sip of champagne and watched her friend work the crowd. She was usually the one working the crowd, yet she found she couldn’t summon the energy or even the desire to chat and flirt and sparkle. All it seemed she could do was remember.

Illegitimacy Scandal Rocks Balfour Legacy! When Blue Blood Turns Bad!

The newspaper headlines screamed inside her mind ever since a grasping journalist had overheard her sisters’ argument at the Balfour Charity Ball. They’d discovered the truth of Zoe’s birth in her mother’s forgotten journal, and Zoe wished they’d never opened that worn book, wished she could forget the truth that now would never escape her. Bad blood. Her blood.

The shame and pain of it was too much to endure or even consider, and so she hadn’t. She’d accepted every invitation, gone to every party and nightclub, in an attempt to forget the shame of her own birth, her own self. She’d found her wildest friends and acted as if she didn’t care. Yet all the while she’d been frozen, numb. Wonderfully numb.

Oscar had let her be for a fortnight, hardly ever home, arriving at dawn only to sleep the day away.

Then he’d finally forced her out of bed and called her into his study, that sanctum of burnished mahogany and soft leather, the smell of pipe tobacco lingering in the air. She’d always loved that room with its unabashed masculinity and its memories of Sunday afternoons curled into her father’s deep leather armchair, flipping through his old atlases and encyclopedias, reading and dreaming of faraway places, exotic names and plants and animals. She’d never been much of a student at boarding school, but she’d loved to read those fusty old books and then regale her family with odd little facts nobody expected her to know.

Yet that afternoon in her father’s study she hadn’t even glanced at the row of embossed leather encyclopedias. She’d simply stood by the door, listless and blank faced and a bit hungover.

‘Zoe.’ Her father swivelled in his desk chair to survey her with a kind-hearted compassion that made Zoe’s insides shrivel. It looked—and felt—like the compassion of a pitying stranger, not the deserved emotion of a father. ‘This can’t go on.’

She swallowed, her throat tight, and forced her shoulders to give a tiny shrug. Her head ached. ‘I don’t know what—’

‘Zoe.’ He spoke more firmly, giving her a stern stare that reminded her of when she’d been eight years old and had got into her stepmother’s make-up. She’d used most of a lipstick and eyeshadow in one sitting, and somehow managed to make it to school decked out in glittery warpaint without anyone noticing. ‘For the last fortnight you’ve been out all hours, God knows who with, doing what—’

‘I’m twenty-six years old,’ Zoe returned sulkily. ‘I can do as I like—’

‘Not in my house, with my money.’ Although his tone was level, there was a hardness in Oscar’s eyes that made Zoe stare at her feet, more miserable than ever before. ‘I know the story in that rubbishy newspaper upset you,’ he continued more gently, ‘but—’

‘It’s not a story.’

For a second Oscar looked nonplussed. ‘Pardon?’

‘It’s not a story,’ Zoe repeated a bit more loudly. She looked up, staring at her father with the angry challenge of a sulky child—except she wasn’t a child, had never been his child. ‘It’s the truth.’

Oscar was silent for a long moment, too long. ‘Oh, Zoe,’ he finally said, shaking his head, ‘is that what you think? That…that somehow this matters?’

‘Of course it matters,’ she’d replied, her voice torn between a hiss and a whisper. ‘It matters to me.’

‘Well, I can assure you it doesn’t matter to me,’ Oscar replied briskly. ‘If the truth must be told, Zoe, I suspected as much from before you were born—’

‘What?’ Zoe recoiled as if she’d been stung. Hurt. ‘You knew?’

‘I suspected,’ Oscar replied evenly. ‘Your mother and I—well, we hadn’t been happy together in some time—’

‘You knew all this time and you never thought to tell me?’ Zoe shook her head, blinking back angry tears.

‘Zoe,’ Oscar asked gently, ‘why would I tell you such a thing? You are—and always have been—my child in every way that matters.’

Zoe could only shake her head again, unable to voice the clamour of unsettling emotions that raced through her. How could she explain to her father that it wasn’t the same, that it did matter? She wasn’t a Balfour. She didn’t belong.

‘I know,’ Oscar continued quietly, his voice laced with his own sorrow, ‘this is difficult for you. In a matter of months you’ve lost your stepmother, and discovered you have another sister—’

‘But I don’t.’ Zoe met her father’s gaze directly. ‘Mia’s no blood relation to me.’ It hurt to say it. Only in the past few weeks had she—and the rest of her sisters—discovered Oscar’s affair before he married Lillian, and the daughter that had resulted from the one-night liaison. Yet while Mia had discovered she was a Balfour, Zoe had learned she was not. The irony tasted bitter in her mouth.

‘This isn’t about blood,’ Oscar said a bit sharply. ‘I know I’ve made my mistakes over the years, Zoe, but surely you know I’ve loved you and been a father to you.’

Tears pricked her eyes and she averted her face. ‘But I’m not a Balfour.’

Oscar was silent for a long moment, long enough for Zoe to fidget uncomfortably, afraid she’d said something too revealing.

‘I see,’ he finally said, and he sounded almost disappointed. ‘It’s simply about the name. Are you worried how people might see you? Judge you?’

Heat rushed into her face and she turned back to him. ‘So what if I am? You’re not the one whose photograph is being splashed about on the pages of every gossip rag—’

‘Actually, Zoe, I am, along with you and your sisters.’ Oscar sighed. ‘My mistakes are being proclaimed to the world, and I am learning to hold my head high in spite of them. I hope you can hold yours high too, for your last name or even the blood running through your veins doesn’t change who you are.’ Zoe said nothing. She couldn’t reply because in her mind it did.

Growing up she’d always felt different, as if she didn’t belong somehow. She’d thought it was simply because Bella and Olivia were twins; they had a bond that no one else could break or match. Or perhaps it was because she was the only one without any memories of her mother, since Alexandra had died in childbirth. Her birth. Emily had Lillian, whom everyone had loved; Kat, Sophie and Annie had their mother, Tilly, who was beloved by the other girls as well.

Zoe had no one. No mother she could call her own.

And now she knew why she’d felt so separate. It was this. She really didn’t belong. It wasn’t just a feeling; it was the truth.

‘I’d like you to go to New York,’ Oscar said, withdrawing a leather wallet from the drawer. Inside Zoe glimpsed a first-class plane ticket. ‘You can stay in the apartment there as long as you like.’

She took the wallet, her fingers digging into the soft leather. ‘Why do you want me to go?’ she asked, although she heard the question underneath: Why do you want me to leave?

Oscar sighed wearily and rubbed his eyes. ‘I read your mother’s journal myself, Zoe, and from the things she’s written, I have a good idea of who—’ He paused, and when he spoke again his voice sounded sorrowful. ‘Who your biological father might be.’

Zoe stiffened, froze. ‘You know? Who?’

Oscar waved a hand towards the wallet. ‘The details are in there. But he’s in New York, and I think it will help you to know…and perhaps even to find him.’ He paused, his smile gentle and touched with sorrow. ‘You’re stronger than you think, Zoe.’

Yet she hadn’t felt strong then, and she didn’t now. She felt appallingly, pathetically weak, too weak even to look for the man she’d come to find. Too weak and afraid to even talk to anyone at this party; every outing frayed her composure, her sense of self, a bit more, until she was left clutching the ragged edges, feeling as if she had nothing, was nothing.

Who was she? Who could she be now?

Another sip of champagne, Dutch courage. God knew, she didn’t have any of the real kind.

Max surveyed the milling crowd in the art gallery, a mass of bright, blurred shapes. Had his vision worsened in the few hours since his doctor’s appointment, or was it simply psychological? His mind, bent with fear, making him think he really was seeing less? Although if vision were simply a matter of will, surely he would see perfectly by now. He wanted nothing more.

He took a sip of champagne, one shoulder propped against the metal pillar of the soaring loft space, its walls decked with nouveau art that fortunately really were just blobs of colour.

He hadn’t wanted to come tonight; the only reason he had was because his company, Monroe Consulting, had donated an embarrassingly large amount towards this exhibition. Glancing at the walls, Max wasn’t sure why he’d allowed a quarter million dollars to fund what looked like really appallingly bad art, but he supposed it hardly mattered. Someone on his board had made the decision months ago, and he’d signed off on it because he hadn’t much cared. He’d been too busy with his life, with managing his company, flying his plane and finding the next beautiful woman to grace his arm. All those pursuits, he acknowledged grimly, would soon be denied to him, one way or another. Some, like flying, were already. For the rest it was simply a matter of time.

‘Max.’ A woman pressed his hand with both of hers, and he inhaled her cloyingly floral scent. She dropped her voice to a breathy whisper. ‘So good of you to come. Considering…’ She trailed off delicately, but Max wasn’t in a mood to let her off the hook. He couldn’t quite make out her features but the nauseating perfume and the deliberate whisper told him all he needed to know. This was Letitia Stephens, one of New York’s most prominent aging socialites, and a notoriously vicious gossip.

He arched an eyebrow and offered his most urbane smile. ‘Considering what, Letitia?’

A tiny pause, and she withdrew her hands from his, shifting her weight in a slightly discomfited manner. ‘Oh, Max.’ This was said almost reproachfully, and Max just smiled and waited. ‘Everyone has been so worried for you…since the accident…’

Suddenly Max’s moment of good humour—or something close to it—evaporated. He’d walked right into that one, but he still didn’t want to be reminded of his accident…the smoke, the sudden darkness. The spiralling into nothingness, the agonising understanding of just what had happened. The pain and the memory. No, he didn’t want to remember.

He straightened, his body stiffening, shoulders back, a position he wore like armour, remembered not only from his years in the military, but from childhood.

Stand up straight. Take it like a man.

‘Thank you for your concern.’ He said it as a dismissal, and Letitia Stephens was—for once—wise enough to accept it as such. Max was glad he couldn’t see well enough to catch the murderous glare she was undoubtedly favouring him with, the poisonously saccharin smile. He turned away, not wanting to invite another conversation.

Alone, he tossed back the last of his champagne and debated leaving. It wasn’t even nine o’clock, and the organiser of tonight’s party, a glamorous socialite named Karen Buongornimo—all he’d seen was a flash of dark hair and the gleam of an artificially whitened smile—had yet to speak. He would be publicly thanked; he needed to stay. This would, he determined, be the last such event he attended. It wasn’t simply difficult to navigate the sea of blurred faces and bodies; it was dangerous and humiliating. He did not intend to endure it another time. Grimacing, he held out his glass for a refill.

Zoe skirted the edge of the crowd, clutching her champagne, avoiding conversations. She watched as Karen called for everyone’s attention, and half listened as she gave a flowery speech about the importance of supporting emerging artists and how Monroe Consulting had been so fabulously generous. Monroe Consulting…that must be Max Monroe’s firm. The man with the thundercloud. Zoe felt another little dart of curiosity. She tossed back the rest of her champagne. Tonight was not a night for thinking. Or remembering.

Tonight she was going to have fun. She was good at that; she’d always been good at that. And now it helped her to forget.

‘And I’m sure Max Monroe would like to say a few words…’ Zoe didn’t so much as hear Karen’s introduction as the deafeningly awkward silence after it. Heads turned, bodies swivelling, waiting for the man in question to speak.

He didn’t.

Zoe craned her neck, standing on tiptoes in her already stiletto heels, but there were too many people—not to mention a large concrete pillar—for her to see the dreaded Max.

Finally, when the silence had gone on long enough for Karen to look both annoyed and embarrassed, and several people had cleared their throats in a telling manner, he spoke.

‘I have one word.’ His voice was low, his tone dry, almost, Zoe thought with a pang of recognition, bitter. ‘Cheers.’

Another silence, and then someone called out, ‘Hear, hear!’ and a peal of laughter like staccato gunfire burst out, the tension easing. No one wanted the party to be ruined, it seemed.

‘Cheers,’ Zoe said aloud, and reached for another glass of champagne.

She might not be a Balfour any more, but she could still act like one.

She surveyed the crowd; she recognised most people, knew only a few. Good. It was better that way. Tonight she wanted to laugh and forget the burden of her birth. She wanted to have fun.

‘Drowning your sorrows, darling?’

Zoe froze. She knew that voice, hated that voice. She turned slowly, hardly able to believe who she was seeing…Holly Mabberly, her nemesis from boarding school and the it-crowd in London. They weren’t enemies, precisely. Nothing so uncivilised. In fact, most people probably thought they were friends. They airkissed and chatted in public, laughed in perfect trills and fetched each other drinks. During one winter evening Holly had even borrowed her new pashmina when they’d decided to walk to another party. Zoe wasn’t sure she’d ever returned it.

Yet she would never call Holly her friend. She remembered in year four at Westfields, when a scholarship girl had been caught filching lipsticks from the chemist’s in the village, and had been expelled. Holly had smiled a terribly cold smile and said, ‘Well, that’s a relief.’

Zoe didn’t know why that seemingly insignificant moment had stuck with her, why that smile had chilled her to the bone, the offhand, callous remark cutting deep. Yet it had. For in Holly’s arctic gaze she sensed a predatory anticipation, an eagerness to see the high brought low.

And this was surely the moment she’d been waiting for, for Zoe had been brought very low indeed.

Zoe hesitated a split second before taking a final sip of her drink, draining its dregs. Then she lifted her head, tilting her chin as she deposited her glass on a nearby tray. ‘What sorrows, Holly?’ she asked sweetly. ‘I’m having the time of my life.’

Holly’s mouth turned delicately down at the corners in a perfected expression of false compassion. She reached out to clasp Zoe’s bare arm with her hand, her fingernails digging into the tender skin. ‘You don’t need to pretend with me, Zoe. I know—well, actually I can’t know, as I’m not…you know—but I can only imagine how you feel absolutely—’ she paused, searching for the word before latching onto it with relish ‘—destroyed.’ She squeezed her fingers again as she added sadly, ‘Completely lost.’

Zoe blinked, surprised by Holly’s inadvertent perception, for that was exactly how she felt. Lost, spinning in a great void of unknowing, the ground she’d thought so solid under her feet not simply shifted but gone. She blinked again, refocusing on Holly, her blue eyes narrowed to assessing slits, her mouth still curved in a smile that didn’t even bother masquerading as anything but malice.

‘Lost?’ she repeated with a little laugh. She choked on the sound; it wasn’t her perfect trill. More like a wobble. ‘Good gracious, Holly, you’re sounding awfully melodramatic. Why should I feel lost? I think the only time I felt that way was when we tried to walk back from the Oxford-Cambridge boat race—do you remember?’ She laughed again, and this time the sound rang true—or rather false—a perfect crystalline peal. ‘It took us four hours to make it from Putney Bridge to Mayfair. Too many drinks, I suppose.’

‘Darling.’ Holly squeezed her arm, her nails digging in deeper. Zoe bit the inside of her cheek to keep from wincing. ‘I told you, you don’t need to pretend with me.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper that still managed to carry to seemingly every corner of the room. ‘Is it just too, too awful? Is that why you came to New York? To get away from all the gossip, the whispers and stares?’ Holly made a moue, the expression of sympathy so patently false it made Zoe’s skin crawl.

‘I’m fine, Holly,’ she managed to say, but her voice sounded wooden. It had been three weeks since the Charity Ball, but this was the first person who had dared to openly confront her about the tabloid’s story in all that time, the first person whose scorn and relish she had to face, and of course it had to be Holly Mabberly. Yet it hardly mattered; there were dozens of Holly Mabberlys in the world, in her life, people who would act just the same as she was, disguising scorn with sympathy. She shook Holly’s arm off, giving her an icy smile. ‘So sorry to disappoint you, as I’m sure you’d prefer me in floods of tears, but really, I’m fine.’

Holly just shook her head. ‘Oh, darling, you don’t need to take it out on me.’ This was said with the perfect combination of reproach and pity that had Zoe swallowing a molten lump of fury. Holly patted her cheek. ‘I can only imagine how utterly difficult it must be. You can hardly hold your head up in England any more, can you? Not amongst anyone who matters anyway.’ Holly clucked her tongue, and this time her voice carried all too well. ‘It’s too, too sad. I suppose blood will out, though, won’t it?’

To her horror Zoe found her eyes suddenly filling with tears. Stupid. Holly’s remarks were childish and aimed to wound; how could she let them? And how could she cry here? She wanted to hold her head high and proud, as Oscar had said. She did. She just wasn’t sure she could. She wasn’t strong, no matter what he thought.

She could not, would not, cry now, not in front of Holly Mabberly, who would gloat and tell every soul and socialite from here to Paris, not in a room full of strangers who suddenly seemed no more than a gang of nosy eavesdroppers. Not here. Please, not here. She hadn’t cried since she’d learned the news; she’d kept it together, her composure all too fragile but still intact. Why on earth would she break down in the middle of a party?

She’d been having fun, for heaven’s sake.

‘Oh, Zoe…’ Holly murmured, reaching out again, but Zoe avoided her grasping claw and took a stumbling step backwards.

‘Leave me alone, Holly. Just leave me alone.’ The last came out in a strangled sob that made Zoe close her eyes in an agony of humiliation. She spun away from Holly, reaching wildly for another glass of champagne—anything to forget that wretched moment, her whole wretched, false life…

Half hiding behind a pillar, a few deep breaths—and sips—later, the threat of tears had mercifully receded and Zoe felt more like herself, although, she acknowledged, she hardly knew who that person was any more.

She surveyed the crowd, conscious of a new crop of speculative looks, a sly ripple of curious murmurs. Was everyone looking at her, or was she just imagining it in a fit of humiliated paranoia? If she left now, would it be so obvious that she was running away…again?

Her gaze fastened on a man in a corner of the room, his shoulder propped against a pillar, a glass of champagne in his hand. He was incredibly good-looking, with dark, cropped hair, olive skin and a towering physique that did more than justice to the expensive navy suit he wore. Yet it was the look on his face that appealed to Zoe; he looked beyond bored, totally uninterested in the party or anyone there, and the thought filled her with a strange, dizzy relief.

Here was a man who wasn’t going to slip sly innuendoes into the conversation; he looked as if he didn’t want to talk at all. He certainly didn’t want to be noticed, and he hadn’t noticed her. Yet.

She ran a hand through her tousled hair, took a deep breath and straightened the silky jade-green halter top she wore. Smile now firmly in place, she sauntered over to the one man in the room she was quite sure had no interest in Zoe Balfour.

Perhaps, she thought, he would be interested in just Zoe.

Chapter Two

HE DIDN’T see her coming; he felt it. A sudden charge in the atmosphere, a ripple in the air, like an electric current wired straight to his heart. The jolt reverberated through him and the little hairs on the nape of his neck prickled with awareness as his fingers instinctively clenched around his drink.

Please, no more pity.

‘Hello, there.’ Her voice was pleasantly low, pitched to an inviting huskiness. Max thought he detected an English accent, which became more pronounced when she spoke again. ‘I had to come over here to see if you are as bored as you look.’

‘Even more so,’ he returned a bit flatly. He turned his head to look at her, at least as much as he could. He saw a sweep of golden hair, the smooth, pale curve of a cheek and the glitter of green—her eyes as well as her top. She smelled faintly of rose water. His gut clenched with an unexpected spasm of desire.

‘Oh, dear. That is bad,’ she returned with a little laugh that sounded like the tinkling of crystal bells. ‘Will another drink cure it, do you think?’

‘I’ve had too many already.’ His voice came out brusque again; he couldn’t help it. What was the point in encouraging this little flirtation? If she knew…

‘Well, I haven’t.’ He saw her raise her arm, slender and pale, and soon a waiter hurried over. She plucked a glass from the tray and, turning back to him, took a sip. ‘If you’re so monumentally bored, why did you come this evening?’

‘Because my company donated a quarter of a million dollars to fund these monstrosities on the walls.’

She paused for a tiny second, and then gave an abrupt and unpractised laugh; it was a wonderfully throaty gurgle, so different from her earlier calculated peal. His gut clenched again, and he found himself wondering if her hair was as soft as it smelled, if a smell could even be considered soft. His other senses, he realised, were heightened by his lack of sight. Was the faint smell of roses a perfume or soap? He inhaled it every time she moved, faint and yet so temptingly evocative.

‘Oh, of course,’ she said, her voice still filled with laughter. ‘You’re Max Monroe. The one with the thundercloud.’

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard that,’ he replied drily. For the first time in weeks he was enjoying himself, or close enough. He was actually not remembering.

‘Well, you haven’t exactly been the life and soul of the party, have you?’ she said, and he felt her shrug, felt the slippery feel of her silk top against her silken skin. How he could feel it, he didn’t know; he certainly couldn’t see it. Yet even though his eyes saw little more than blurred shapes, a bit sharper at the edges, his body felt something else. Every part of him prickled with awareness, with longing.

He wanted her.

He hadn’t been with a woman since his accident, hadn’t felt another’s touch except for the cool, clinical hands of a doctor, and now suddenly he craved it. Needed to be close to someone, to breathe her scent and feel her skin. And more than that. To move with her, inside her. To ease the emptiness, to not be alone.

Even if it couldn’t go anywhere, even if only for a night. Even if it was with one of society’s shallow darlings, as she surely must be.

‘I don’t suppose I need to be the life and soul of this party,’ he finally said, ‘with guests like you to give it some energy.’ He knew her type, knew what kind of beautiful, confident woman walked over to a strange—and sulking—man and asked him for a drink. It was the kind of woman he pursued, the kind of woman he’d always wanted.

And he wanted her now. She didn’t need to know he was almost blind; she wouldn’t even stay the night. He’d make sure of that.

He felt her tense for a tiny moment, felt it like a shiver in the air. Then she shrugged and took another sip of champagne. ‘I can’t deny I like to have fun,’ she said lightly.

He shifted his weight; his leg, still recovering from the accident, was starting to hurt. ‘Are you having fun tonight?’

She gave another practised laugh. ‘No, I think I’m as bored as you are. I’m just better at not showing it.’

‘Right, I’m the one with the thundercloud.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘My friend Karen organised this event,’ she explained, her tone breezy. ‘She was rather put out at how unhelpful you’ve been, you know. She said I’d recognise you by the thundercloud over your head. And of course—’ She stopped suddenly and, even though he couldn’t really see her, Max’s eyes narrowed.

‘And?’ he asked softly.

She paused. ‘The scar,’ she said quietly. She lifted her hand and for a moment Max thought she was going to touch him. He didn’t move. Her hand—he could tell it was pale and slender, at least—hovered in the air for a moment before she dropped it back to her side. He felt as if everything had suddenly changed, the light, flirtatious banter turning dark and intimate and far too intense. He didn’t want her pity, yet he craved her touch. ‘I suppose it’s a bit like the elephant in the room,’ she said, her voice quiet, rueful and perhaps a little sad. ‘No one ever talks about it. Were you in a car accident or something?’

‘Something.’ Although he spoke tersely, Max felt a reluctant flicker of admiration for her candour. So few people he knew actually told him the truth, unvarnished and unpalatable. He was surrounded by sycophants and social climbers who only told him what they thought he wanted to hear.

And doctors. Doctors at least told him the truth.

‘I’m sorry anyway,’ she said quietly, and he could tell she meant it. She surprised him, and he didn’t want to be surprised. It was easier when she was shallow, when he could believe she was shallow. He wanted a bed partner, not a soulmate. It was too late for that, too late for him.

They were both silent for a moment, and Max wondered if she would walk away. He should walk away; he would, except he was afraid he might bump into a pillar or a waiter or God knew what else. He hadn’t expected that unguarded moment, hadn’t wanted it. Had he? She was a shallow, beautiful socialite; she’d said as much, and he wanted to take her at face value.

To take her, and then leave her, for surely he had no other choice.

‘So,’ he said, and pitched his voice to a low, sensual hum that had her leaning closer to hear him. He breathed in the rose-water scent again. ‘Are you really as bored by this party as I am?’ There could be no mistaking his innuendo or his intent.

She was silent for a long moment, and he turned so their faces were close, so he could look directly at her, or as directly as he could, in the periphery of his vision. And for a moment, despite the floaters and spots and blurs, he felt he saw perfectly. Her eyes were vivid green, her mouth a perfect pink curve. She was smiling.

‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘I think I am.’

Resolve fired through him. ‘Good,’ he said, placing his empty glass on a tray. ‘Then why don’t we both get out of here?’

Zoe watched as Max started stiffly from his corner; he walked with careful, deliberate steps that made her wonder if he’d hurt himself in whatever ‘something’ had caused that scar. He was clearly expecting her to follow him, and after a second’s hesitation she did.

She didn’t usually leave parties with perfect strangers. Despite her party-girl reputation, she wasn’t quite the wild child her older sister Bella was. She didn’t do one-night stands. She preferred to dance and laugh and flirt—and then go home alone.

Yet hadn’t the rules changed? Hadn’t she changed? She wasn’t Zoe Balfour any more. She could do whatever she wanted. And she’d sensed in Max Monroe something she felt in herself, a darkness, a despair. Like called to like, she supposed, and she wanted to follow him.

She wanted to be with him.

Of course, there was no denying he was an attractive man. Her belly clenched, a coil of desire unfurling and spreading out through her limbs with sleepy warmth as she stared at his broad back and trim hips, his long, powerful legs still taking their careful strides as he weaved his way through the party’s crowd, and Zoe followed. She wasn’t, she realised belatedly as they made it to the foyer, even conscious of the stares.

She handed her ticket to the woman at the coat check and took her filmy wrap. Max, she saw, had uttered a few terse instructions into his mobile. He slid it back into his jacket pocket and turned to her.

‘My car will be here in a moment.’

‘Brilliant,’ Zoe answered, for lack of anything else to say. She was realising how little she knew this man, how tense and even angry he seemed.

Was this—could this possibly be—a good idea?

‘You don’t have to come,’ he said abruptly. Zoe started in surprise. ‘You seem nervous.’

She gave a little shrug. ‘No matter what you may think, this isn’t my usual behaviour.’

‘Oh?’ He arched one eyebrow, his expression one of slightly smug curiosity. He had her all figured out, Zoe supposed. Or thought he did. Well, she’d thought she had herself figured out too. She was only now realising she didn’t. ‘So what is your normal behaviour?’ He paused. ‘Who are you?’

The question startled her, for it was the question she had not been wanting to ask herself for these past three weeks. She stared at him in astonished silence until he clarified impatiently, ‘I just want your name.’

‘Zoe.’

He arched his eyebrow a little higher. ‘Just Zoe?’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘Just Zoe.’

A limo pulled sleekly to the curb outside the gallery, and with one arm Max ushered her outside.

The air was balmy, the darkness soft around them. Zoe glanced around, realising she was on a tiny side street in Soho with no idea where or how to find a cab if she even wanted one. The street was empty, the sidewalks deserted, and somewhere in the distance a car alarm set to a mournful wailing.

A man in a chauffeur’s uniform jumped out of the driver’s seat and opened the limo’s door, gesturing for Zoe to enter.

‘Having second thoughts?’ Max murmured in her ear. His breath, cool and scented with mint and champagne, tickled her cheek.

‘More like third thoughts,’ Zoe quipped, and a tiny smile flickered across Max’s face, easing the tension and lightening his features.

‘You’re a beautiful woman, Zoe,’ he said. His face was half averted to her, yet still he slowly, carefully reached out to brush a tendril of hair away from her bare shoulder, his cool fingers barely skimming her skin. She quivered under the tiny caress. ‘I’m sure any man in there would want to be in my position right now.’

‘Most assuredly,’ she agreed lightly. Her heart had started to hammer and she felt suddenly, unreasonably, dizzy with longing. No single touch had ever affected her so much. Made her want so much.

Made her forget…if only for a moment, for a night.

He reached out again, this time letting his fingers caress her collarbone, barely brushing her skin, yet still making her quiver and ache deep inside with an unexpected and fierce longing. ‘It’s up to you, of course.’

Slowly Zoe nodded. When Max Monroe touched her, every thought—every memory, every fear—went clean out of her head. That was what she wanted.

Not just passion, but oblivion.

Slowly, silently, she climbed into the car.

Max climbed in after her, and the chauffeur closed the door. Within seconds they were speeding through the night, the darkness relieved only by the passing lights of an occasional taxi.

Zoe sat back against the plush leather seat, surveying the well-stocked minibar and contemplated downing most of its contents. Had she really just climbed into a car with a total stranger? An angry, bitter, sardonic stranger at that? Well, she thought, swallowing a bubble of nervous laughter, at least it was a limo.

‘Nice ride,’ she said, and forced herself to relax—or at least seem relaxed—stretching her arms along the back of the seat, letting her head fall back as if she were utterly comfortable, completely in her element. ‘So where are we going?’

Although Max sat next to her, he suddenly seemed oceans away, his face averted from hers as he stared out the window at the darkness.

‘My apartment is in Tribeca. Unless you’d rather go somewhere else?’ He turned to her, his smile—although it didn’t quite feel like a smile—gleaming in the darkness.

‘And miss seeing your place? I’m sure it’s something fabulous.’ She gave him a breezy smile and shook her hair back over her shoulders.

‘And I’m sure you’re quite used to fabulous,’ he murmured, and she laughed, the sound husky.

‘Absolutely.’

They didn’t speak again, lapsing into a silence that was tense with unspoken thoughts. Expectations.

Zoe smoothed her silky black trousers, nervously pleating the fabric between her fingers before she forced herself to stop, and affected an air of unconcerned insouciance once more.

The limo came to a stop, and Zoe slipped out after Max. They were on a patch of old cobbled pavement—murder for her heels—in front of what looked like an abandoned warehouse near the waterfront. Zoe’s heart lurched against her ribs. Oh, Lord, what had she got herself into? She turned around; the limo had disappeared and there wasn’t a soul in sight…except Max.

He stood on the uneven cobbles, looking almost frozen, as if he didn’t know where he was going, or was actually afraid to move.

The look of uncertainty on his face visible in the sickly yellow glare of a street lamp banished Zoe’s own fears and compelled her to ask gently, ‘Max…?’

‘This way.’ He spoke brusquely, shaking off that strange, uncertain look, the way a dog shakes off water, before striding across the sidewalk with long, deliberate steps to the warehouse.

Of course, Zoe saw as they approached the building, it wasn’t an abandoned warehouse at all. Perhaps it once had been, but as they came closer signs of its upscale refurbishment were clearly visible. Instead of what had first looked like broken or blank windows, Zoe saw they were merely tinted. The front doors were made of the same thick, tinted glass, with polished chrome handles. A doorman leapt to attention as they approached and swung the doors open. Max stalked through them, in an almost military march, with Zoe hurrying behind in her heels.

This wasn’t, she thought a bit resentfully, the most auspicious beginning to the evening. Yet even so, she wasn’t tempted to turn away. Max Monroe fascinated her, and more than that, he somehow managed to reach a place inside of her she hadn’t known existed, even now wasn’t sure was real. When he’d touched her she felt something stir to life that she hadn’t realised was asleep—or perhaps even dead. Something—someone—that had nothing to do with Zoe Balfour, and all to do with just Zoe.

And that was why she followed him through the building’s foyer with its polished floor of slick black marble, to the bank of gleaming, high-speed lifts. Max stepped inside, his finger trailing along the buttons until he reached the top one, and pushed PH. The penthouse. Of course.

The Balfour apartment on Park Avenue was a penthouse as well, with its dignified drawing rooms and separate servants’ quarters. It was a beautiful, well-preserved relic from another age, a different century, and Zoe knew instinctively Max Monroe’s penthouse was going to be something else entirely.

And it was. The lift doors opened straight into the apartment, and Zoe felt as if she were stepping into the sky. The apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows on every side, and the Hudson River gleamed only a block away, the lights of one of Manhattan’s many bridges twinkling in the distance.

She turned, and from the other side saw the Empire State Building’s needle point heavenward, a sea of skyscrapers behind it, filling the horizon.

She turned slowly in a full circle, savouring the view from every direction, until she finally chuckled a bit in admiration and turned to Max, who had shrugged out of his jacket and was even now loosening his tie. He didn’t look at the view at all.

‘Impressive,’ she murmured. ‘Do you ever grow tired of the view?’

‘No.’ He spoke so flatly Zoe wondered if she’d said something wrong.

Max moved around the apartment, flicking on a few lamps, bathing the room in a warm glow. Zoe glanced at the austere furnishings: all high-end bachelor pad with sleek leather sofas and uncomfortable-looking chairs made out of chrome, a designer glass coffee table she thought she’d seen featured in a decorating magazine, and a glimpse of a spotlessly clean stainless-steel kitchen that looked to have every gadget and appliance and was clearly never used.

Her heels clicked against the Brazilian cherrywood floor as she came to stand by a window. Actually, Zoe saw, it was a door, made so seamlessly it looked like a window except for a discreet metal handle that led out to a wide terrace.

She heard Max cross the floor, felt him stand behind her. It amazed her how attuned she was to his movements, so that even before he reached out she knew he was going to touch her, was waiting for him to touch her.

He lifted his arm slowly—so slowly—and Zoe tensed, ready for his touch. Yet when it came it still shocked her, the heaviness of his hand on her bare shoulder sending ripples of awareness along her arm and through her body, deep into her belly. Neither of them spoke.

His hand slid along her shoulder, down her arm, as if he were slowly, languorously learning the landscape of her body. His fingers twined with hers as he pulled her around so she was facing him, his eyes dark and fathomless, his face seeming harsh in the yellow light cast from the buildings behind her, a sea of sightless skyscrapers. He moved so her back pressed against the glass and she could feel his heat, the hardness of his chest and thighs.

Her heart hammered with slow, deliberate thuds and her knees actually felt weak. She’d never had such a reaction to a man—to anyone, anything—before. And he hadn’t even kissed her.

Yet he was going to, Zoe knew that, felt it. She wanted him to, and yet she could hardly believe this was happening, that she’d come here, found him. Her nerves leapt to life and she opened her mouth to say—what? Something, preferably something light or clever, to diffuse the intensity of the moment, of him, but before she uttered a word—and she wasn’t even sure she could—she was prevented by his mouth coming down on hers.

His lips were hard, the kiss urgent and even a little angry, as if this moment was all either of them might ever have. His fingers slipped from hers, his hands sliding under her top to cup her breasts, and Zoe gasped at the sudden, intimate touch.

Her senses reeled; her body jerked into an instinctive and powerful response, and she found herself answering him kiss for kiss, the sorrow and despair of the past few weeks overflowing from her soul into this one caress. The intensity of Max’s kiss, as well as her own response, surprised her—this wasn’t even like her. She wasn’t used to feeling this much, had been keeping it at bay these past weeks, maybe forever, and yet—

Yet she couldn’t stop herself from responding, from her hands travelling up Max’s hard, muscled shoulders to his hair—surprisingly soft—pulling him closer, as if she could take him right into her skin, fuse their bodies and melt into one.

It frightened her, this feeling so much. Wanting so much. From somewhere she summoned the strength to pull away—or try to, for she was trapped against the wall of glass. She arched her head back, her hair cascading down her back, so she could look at his face. Colour stained his cheekbones; his eyes were closed, his breathing ragged.

‘In a hurry, are we?’ she finally managed, but if she’d meant to sound light and unaffected, she failed. Her voice came out in little more than a gasp, and her body shook with the aftershocks of emotion.

He drew in a breath, and slid his hands from her breasts up to her shoulders, threading his fingers through her hair, his thumbs massaging her scalp. ‘Why waste time?’ he murmured.

‘I’m sure you get plenty of women with that approach.’ With the last of her willpower Zoe slipped under his arms, away from the cage of his body, and walked across the floor on legs that were far too wobbly.

Max propped one shoulder against the window, one hand in his trouser pocket. He looked remarkably recovered. Zoe felt as weak as a newborn kitten, a motherless lamb.

‘You want to talk?’ he asked with the slightest sneer, but it was still—considering what had just happened—enough to wound. Zoe sank into one of the chrome chairs—more comfortable than she’d expected—and arched an eyebrow.

‘Silly me,’ she said, and her voice finally sounded light and droll. ‘I thought you might have mastered the art of conversation.’

‘Only when necessary.’ He walked slowly along the outside of the room, one hand trailing along the glass wall, so Zoe felt as if she were a powerless prey being circled by a hungry predator. He stopped in front of a chrome-and-glass drinks table; a bottle of whisky and a tumbler were already neatly laid out. He poured himself a finger’s worth, his movements deliberate and precise. ‘So,’ he finally said, sipping his drink and swivelling to face her, ‘you’re from England.’

‘Yes.’

‘Just visiting, or do you live here?’

Zoe hesitated. ‘Visiting,’ she said finally. ‘For now.’

‘No firm plans?’ Again, that slight sneer that still hurt. More than it should.

She smiled with a breezy confidence she was far from feeling. Seemingly innocent questions, yet each one possessed its own little sting. ‘No. Never. I’m not that kind of girl.’

‘Ah.’

‘And what about you?’

He took another sip of his drink. ‘What about me?’

‘You’re a businessman.’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you do, exactly?’

‘Business.’

Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘How enlightening.’

‘I manage investments. I buy companies. I take risks.’ He shrugged, the movement one of powerful, eloquent dismissal. ‘I make money.’

‘Money is good.’

His mouth quirked up in something that looked like a smile but didn’t feel like one. ‘Isn’t it just.’

‘How did you get that scar?’ The question popped out inadvertently; she hadn’t meant to ask it. She suspected he was sensitive about it, perhaps self-conscious. And how could he not be? It was noticeable, impossible to ignore, a livid line of whitened flesh from his eyebrow to his chin, snaking along the side of his nose, a vivid reminder of—what? Something, he’d said. Something terrible.

‘An accident.’ He spoke flatly, unemotionally, yet Zoe sensed the darkness—the sorrow and despair and even the fury—pulsing underneath. He said the word accident the way she said illegitimate.

‘It must have been some accident.’

‘It was.’

‘Were you alone?’

‘Yes.’ He paused, his throat working before he elaborated in that same flat tone. ‘I was flying my plane.’

‘You’re a pilot?’

‘I was.’ He paused. ‘Recreationally.’

His voice was flat, his face expressionless as he took a sip of his drink.

‘So.’ Zoe tried to keep her voice light, as if her tone could stave off the darkness emanating from Max, swirling around her soul. ‘What happened?’

‘I crashed.’ He smiled, the curve of his mouth terribly cold. ‘It happens.’

‘I suppose so.’ Zoe crossed and recrossed her legs, searching for something to say. ‘You’re lucky you escaped with your life,’ she finally said, and at that moment it felt like a terribly inane sentiment.

‘Oh, yes,’ Max agreed, and there was a darker note in his voice now, the pulsing emotion underneath bubbling to the fore, as hot and dangerous—and fascinating—as a latent volcano. He walked towards her with slow, deliberate strides. ‘I’m very lucky.’

Zoe resisted the urge to press back against the chair. She didn’t like the dark look in Max’s eyes, the sudden, cruel twist of the mouth she’d just kissed.

‘How long have you been flying?’ she asked in a desperate attempt to restore a sense of normality to the moment. It didn’t work; Max just kept walking. He stopped only when he was a hand span away, and then, to her surprise, he dropped to his knees in front of her so they were level, his eyes gazing darkly, intently, intensely, into hers.

They stared at each other for a moment, neither speaking, the only sound the harsh tear of their breathing. Zoe felt trapped, transfixed, and yet with a strange, new need inside her. What was happening here?

Max didn’t move, didn’t tear his gaze from hers—it was as if he were waiting, needing something…needing her…

Then, out of instinct and even her own need, Zoe reached out—with the same careful deliberation he had touched her moments ago—and with the tip of one finger traced the jagged path of the scar along his face. The damaged flesh was surprisingly smooth, almost silky, and faintly puckered.

Zoe didn’t know why she did it, didn’t know how Max would react. She didn’t really know what was happening here, what this feeling was between them—so much feeling. Pain and sorrow and even a jagged little shard of hope.

Max stilled, tensing under her touch, and then she felt him relax, the resistance trickling from his body, leaving him loose and pliant under her hand. He closed his eyes. Her finger rested on the edge of the scar by his chin; she could feel his stubble. Then, still acting out of instinct and an even deeper desire, Zoe leant forward and kissed that wounded place, her lips lingering on his skin as she breathed in his scent, mint and musk.

Max shuddered.

Zoe drew back, strangely shaken, and her gaze flew to Max’s face. He’d opened his eyes and was staring at her with a blatant hunger that both thrilled and alarmed her. He reached forward and cupped her face in his hands, his fingers sliding along her cheekbones, and he drew her to him so their lips barely touched.

He brushed his lips against hers once, and then again, and then kissed her with a gentleness that was so different from that first angry encounter. It made Zoe’s insides sweetly melt, until a deeper, rawer urgency made her deepen that little kiss, and her hands came up to grip Max’s shoulders.

She didn’t know how long they remained that way, only knew the glorious sweetness of a kiss so deep and unending it felt as if they were exploring each other’s souls. Then Max scooped her up in his arms; she felt as tiny and treasured as a doll, nestled against his chest, curling into him with a surprising naturalness. He carried her with the careful, deliberate strides she was becoming accustomed to into the bedroom.

Like the living room, the bedroom was all windows, and light from the buildings outside filtered through the venetian blinds, bathing the room in luminescence. Max set her down on a huge bed, the navy satin sheets slippery under her. She looked up at him; his expression was shuttered and yet grave. She waited.

Slowly Max brushed a tendril of hair away from her face, his fingers skimming her cheek, her eyebrow, the ridge of her nose. Then he dropped his hand and began to unbutton his shirt.

Zoe watched, unable to keep her gaze from the expanse of broad, muscled chest revealed by the gap in his shirt; she reached out and helped him shrug the garment off, letting her fingers trail his skin as his had hers, enjoying the feel of hard muscle, crisp hair.

Still, neither of them spoke, and Zoe wondered if it was because they had no need of words, or because they were afraid words might break this moment, shatter the precious, fragile bond that had silently sprung and stretched between them.

The only sound was the whisper and slither of clothes as they undressed each other, the slide of silk to the floor as Zoe shrugged out of her halter top and trousers. Then they lay naked on the satin sheets, staring at each other for a long moment. Zoe wanted to speak, to say something, and the words clogged in her throat, too many words. She wanted to tell Max she might not have a scar on her face, but there was one on her soul. She wanted to explain that, like him, she’d had an accident—an accident of birth. And, she suspected, like him, it had left her wrecked and wondering how to rebuild a life that had been virtually destroyed, if there even was a life to rebuild.

Yet she said none of it, despite the pressure building inside her, in her chest and behind her eyes. She blinked away the sting of tears she hadn’t expected and when Max kissed her again, his hands skimming her body, learning all of its curves and dips and secret places, she gave herself up to the sweet oblivion and let the words—and the thoughts, the fears—trickle away…at least for now.

Afterwards Max lay on his back, Zoe resting in the curve of his arm, her slender body curled towards the shelter of his. A tendril of her hair tickled his nose, and he breathed in that now-familiar scent of rose water. Shampoo, he surmised, and smiled.

He wasn’t used to smiling, not a real smile anyway, and he wasn’t accustomed to feeling this good. His body hummed with sleepy satiation, his limbs languid and heavy, and he felt, for the moment, utterly replete.

How strange.

For weeks—since that moment on the plane when his world had gone totally, terrifyingly black—he’d felt as if he were missing something. Losing something, bit by bit, so his body and his soul and his tormented mind all hungered for it, cried out for it.

Yet now, amazingly, he felt as if he’d been given something. He felt full. Blessed, even.

Ridiculous.

He heard Zoe give a little sigh and knew she was asleep; her head was heavy on his arm. He had no intention of sleeping himself, no desire to surrender to the weakness of dreams, or have Zoe see him in such a humiliatingly vulnerable state.

Carefully he extracted himself and rolled to a sitting position, his feet flat on the floor. The clothes were scattered haphazardly, and it took a moment for him to find his boxers. He pulled them on and then oriented himself by the foot of the bed; it was six steps to the door to the terrace.

Outside, the air had turned chilly and damp, and a breeze blew over him, cooling his heated skin. Ten steps to the railing; in the darkness he could make out very little, and he made a note to have all the terrace furniture removed. He’d hardly need it, as he doubted he’d spend much time out here.

Do you ever grow tired of the view?

No, he never had. He’d lost it before he had the chance.

Max closed his eyes. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. He didn’t know if the voice inside his head was his own or his father’s. No point in whining, regretting. Just get on with it. Get on with living.

Yet this didn’t feel like living. This, he acknowledged starkly, felt like slowly dying. Yet even as this realization dawned, another followed closely on its heels.

What had happened in there, with Zoe—just Zoe—hadn’t felt like dying. That had been life in its purest, most elemental form. He’d never experienced a night like that with a woman before, and he’d had plenty of nights. Plenty of women. Yet never had he felt so attuned with another person before, moving truly as one flesh.

Or was he just romanticising a tawdry encounter, imbuing it with more meaning that it actually had because he knew he would not have another night like it? He couldn’t hide his encroaching blindness forever, couldn’t keep the darkness at bay. The doctor had given him months, perhaps only weeks. Perhaps, Max thought as he struggled to identify the Chrysler Tower amidst the blurred shapes of the Manhattan skyline, only days.

And then what? What could his future possibly look like, what shape could it take?

He had no idea, couldn’t imagine the suffocating darkness all the time, endlessly blindfolded. Just the thought of it made his chest hurt as he fought back the encroaching panic. At least now he had some visibility, some light. Some sanity.

He turned away from the view he couldn’t really see. He would allow Zoe to sleep until morning, and then she would have to go. There was no point in her staying. Not that she would even want to stay; it had been clear to both of them what this night was…simply that, a night.

He took ten steps to the door, another six to the bed. From the light outside he could see the golden halo of her hair spread on the pillow, the pale, bare shoulder above the ink-coloured sheet.

She was a shallow, spoiled socialite. Every indication proved that assessment true. No matter what she had said, nights like these were simply par for the course. So why did the thought of her walking away in the morning feel like a punch straight to the gut?

To the heart?

Gently, so gently she didn’t even stir, he slid his hand along her shoulder, across her cheek, feeling—seeing—her for the last time. His hand stilled as his thumb brushed moisture clinging to her lashes.

A tear?

Why would a woman like her—a spoiled socialite—be crying?

Regret and guilt bit at him. He knew he was dismissing her; he knew he needed to.

To believe she was more, could be more to him, was both dangerous and pointless.

They had no future together.

They couldn’t.

Max let his hand fall away and stretched out next to her, making sure not to brush against the inviting warmth of her body. He lay there, staring sightlessly ahead, waiting for sleep to come. He both hated and craved sleep, for while it granted oblivion, it also meant darkness and dreams.

More darkness.

Chapter Three

ZOE woke slowly to sunlight, felt it stream over her sheet-covered body and warm her face. She kept her eyes closed, enjoying the warmth as she stretched slowly, languorously, the satin sheet cool against her bare skin.

She was naked.

In an instant the memories rushed back, tumbling through her mind, making her smile. Her body still hummed with satisfaction; her heart felt full.

Last night…Last night had been wonderful.

She opened her eyes; sunlight streamed in from the wall of windows, bathing the room in cheerful morning light, slanting golden shafts across the empty bed.

Max was gone.

Zoe was surprised it had taken her this long to realise it; his absence was enormous, as if there was a great jagged hole next to her instead of an empty expanse of navy satin. Slowly she pulled the sheet around her, tucking it firmly across her breasts. Still, it trailed across the floor, and as she stepped over her scattered garments from last night she almost considered pulling them on, but then couldn’t bear to do such a thing, for somehow—unreasonably perhaps—it relegated last night to something tawdry and temporary, and she didn’t think it was.

Hoped it wasn’t.

Was she simply being naive?

Last night she’d wanted to forget who she was, what she was, in Max’s arms. She had, and amazingly, she’d woken feeling new. Different.

In Max’s arms she’d felt whole. Healed.

Loved.

Now she realised she was being ridiculous. She barely knew the man; he certainly didn’t know her, just Zoe. Could one night—one amazing night—really change that?

Zoe slipped into the living room, the morning light making the room seem all the more sparely chic and austere. And empty. Max wasn’t there. She looked in the kitchen, peeked in two other bedrooms, a study, a library and a dining room with a table that looked able to seat twenty—but probably never sat a soul—and couldn’t find him anywhere.

Had he actually left?

She stood in the middle of the library with its walls lined with leather-bound books, a huge mahogany desk in one corner. A scent of leather and pipe tobacco hung faintly in the air, and for a moment Zoe was reminded with painful force of home, of her father.

Oscar.

Uncertainty—and fear—gnawed at her.

She gazed around, the sheet slipping slightly, pooling in inky satin around her feet, and then she saw him.

Of course, he was outside. She’d glanced out at the terrace when she’d first entered the living room and hadn’t seen him, but now she saw it wrapped around the entire apartment, and he was on the other side, through the dining room.

She crossed the two rooms, the sheet trailing behind her in a dark river, and opened the doors that led out to the terrace.

‘There you are.’ She spoke lightly, but still she heard—and felt—the uncertain wobble in her tone. Felt the flutter of fear in her heart. Max was seated at a wrought-iron table, a thick ceramic mug of coffee cradled between his palms. He looked lost in thought, and he glanced up only as she came to stand near him, feeling a bit ridiculous wrapped in a sheet.

Why on earth hadn’t she put her clothes on?

‘Here I am,’ he agreed, and Zoe couldn’t tell a thing from his tone.

‘Did you make coffee?’ she asked, making sure to keep her voice light. ‘I didn’t smell any in the kitchen, but I’m gasping for a—’

‘I made it hours ago. It’s cold.’ Now she was able to recognise his tone, and it was frighteningly flat.

‘Oh.’ She paused, hitching the sheet more firmly around her. ‘Well, perhaps I could make another pot. And maybe borrow one of your shirts?’ She raised her eyebrows, tossing her hair over her shoulders, determined to seem far more insouciant and confident than she felt. What man could resist a woman wrapped in a sheet after all?

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

Apparently Max could. Zoe’s hand clenched on the sheet, and the satin slipped under her fingers. Max regarded her with a remote coolness that made her throat dry and her eyes sting.

No. No, please, no. Not this. Not this utter rejection, the look in his eyes one of…annoyance? Zoe feared that was the humiliating emotion she saw there. She was no more than an irritation to be dealt with before he got on with his day.

Or was she overreacting? Battle scarred from all the trashy tabloid talk, the stares and whispers?

‘Why?’ she finally asked, and forced herself to smile. ‘Are you out of coffee?’

‘No, I’m not,’ Max replied. ‘But I don’t think you should stay long enough to warrant coffee or clothes.’

Zoe blinked. She felt as if she’d been slapped. She opened her mouth but for once any witty retort or rejoinder deserted her. Her mind was blank, numb, and she looked away, blinking hard.

‘I can’t say much for your hospitality,’ she finally managed. Her voice sounded scratchy, and her throat felt sore.

‘No,’ Max agreed. His mouth was set in a hard line, the expression in his eyes chilly and so terribly resolute.

‘Did last night not mean anything to you?’ Zoe asked, wincing even as the words came out of her mouth. What a stupid question to ask. Obviously it didn’t; he really couldn’t make it any plainer. Was she a glutton for punishment, demanding the torture of him explaining himself even more?

‘No,’ Max said again, and Zoe bit her lip. ‘And I don’t think it meant much to you either.’

How could he say that, Zoe wondered, when she’d felt so different, so new? How could he believe it? Pride forced herself to smile coolly and toss her hair over her shoulders. ‘Well, even so, a parting cup of coffee would be a courtesy, at least.’

‘Sorry.’ He didn’t sound sorry at all.

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