Zoe's Lesson. Кейт Хьюит

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      ‘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 СКАЧАТЬ