Free Zoe and the Tormented Tycoon by Kate Hewitt Page B

couldn’t . Yet she’d tracked him down to his office and attempted to gain access—why?
    Max had done his best to forget her and the night they’d had together. It took a surprising amount of concentration not to think about someone—the scent of her hair, the silken feel of her skin, that unexpected, throaty gurgle of laughter.
    And more than that…the way she’d touched him, with such gentle hands, as if she felt something. Loved him, even. He still could feel the touch of her lips on his skin, his scar, and the answering agony of need inside of him.
    No. He needed to forget, not to remember. There was no future, no hope. Besides, he told himself, rising from his chair in one abrupt yet fluid movement, she wasn’t worth his time. She was shallow. Insipid. A vapid, vacuous social butterfly. The only reason she’d been so angry the morning after their night together was because her pride had been hurt. Nothing more.
    She probably preferred to be the one to say goodbye.
    He had to believe that.
    Slowly Max walked to the floor-to-ceiling window to behold a view that was fading all too rapidly. He could see the sun, a golden ball of fire in the sky, glinting off the buildings below, setting the whole world alight.
    Only that morning he’d had his regular appointment at the ophthalmologist, to monitor the rate of retinal degeneration.
    â€˜You seem to be holding steady,’ the doctor had said, as if this were encouragement. Max just shrugged. ‘You’ll have moments of good, even perfect, vision,’ Dr Ayers continued, ‘followed by increasing blind spots, floaters and periods of darkness. As I said before, it’s not a seamless process.’
    â€˜No.’ He had experienced those alarming and exhilarating moments where it seemed as if his vision had cleared—as if he could see —only to have it all fade to blurry grey again. It felt like a taunt.
    Just as knowing Zoe was looking for him felt like a taunt. He wanted to see her again, feel her again, and he couldn’t.
    He couldn’t bear the pain when he failed her, the rejection when she was the one to walk away.
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    The sun had sunk below the horizon of buildings, the Hudson River turning to molten gold with its setting rays, and still Zoe sat on the bench facing the entrance to Max Monroe’s building.
    She was stiff, chilly and ravenously hungry—not to mention in desperate need of the loo—but she hadn’t moved in nearly three hours.
    From the moment she’d realised she was carrying this precious little life, she had been certain of one thing: Max would know he was the father. He would be involved.What shape that might take, how it could possibly happen, Zoe didn’t dare to think about. Still, she burned with determination that her baby would not grow up without the knowledge of who her real father was. Like she had.
    She—or he—would know. Zoe would make sure of it.
    The trouble was, she wasn’t sure Max wanted to know. In fact, she was quite sure he didn’t.
    Just as she was thinking this she saw the man himself. She felt it, a prickle of goose bumps up her arms and along the back of her neck—awareness, alarm, attraction. She watched as he exited the building; he looked stunning and yet grave in his dark suit, a trench coat over one arm. He walked slowly, his steps careful and deliberate in a way that made Zoe’s heart ache. He looked, she thought, like a man weighed down by experience, by life itself. What had happened to make Max so burdened?
    When he was halfway across the concourse, Zoe stood. He stopped, and they both stood there, staring at each other even as people hurried and scurried around them, silent and waiting.
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    Max stilled by instinct. The concourse in front of his building was filled with people rushing here and there, hurrying to home or to a restaurant, to a waiting lover or child. Everyone had somebody.
    And apparently