Zoe and the Tormented Tycoon (7 page)

‘Oh, sorry,' Zoe mumbled. ‘No, I'm not.' She half stumbled out of the bathroom, her mind buzzing.

Such a scare…three days late…thank God I wasn't…

Pregnant.

Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.

The word beat a restless tattoo in her brain. Even in her numb state she could do the math. Her period had been due—what? More than three days ago. Almost five. And she was annoyingly regular, as predictable as clockwork, but—

Max had used a condom. It had just been the one time.

She felt like a teenager, stupid and careless, demanding that this couldn't happen to her, it didn't work that way.

She couldn't be pregnant.

She wasn't, she assured herself. She was stressed, she was unhappy; those things made a difference.

Still, she could hardly stay at the club without the question answered, and without even making her excuses to Karen or any of her friends, she left the pulsing music and flashing strobe lights for the rain-slicked street. She
hailed a cab and headed uptown, stopping only at a twenty-four-hour chemist's to pick up the necessary item.

A pregnancy test.

Twenty minutes later, back in the apartment, she stared at two pink lines, and then the leaflet explaining the results. She stared at the lines one more time, and then read the leaflet again. There was no escaping it, no denying it.

She was pregnant. With Max Monroe's baby.

Just the thought of Max made her stomach clench. He'd sent her packing after one night; what on earth would he do when—if—he discovered he was the father of her child?

Yet even as this question formed in Zoe's mind, she realised there was no
if
about it. The life inside of her was tiny, fledgling, but it was there. It was part of her, part of Max, and with a sense of something—her whole self—settling into place, she knew
this
was where she belonged.

And Max needed to know.

 

It took Zoe three days to work up the courage to face Max. First she had to find him. She couldn't have found her way back to his apartment building if she tried, and she wasn't even sure she wanted to confront Max in the place that was his own domain, where they'd made love. If what they'd done had anything to do with love, which she now knew it hadn't.

Still, it had resulted in a child, a life, and for that alone Zoe knew she had to tell Max. A quick Internet search gave her the address of Monroe Consulting, an office building near Wall Street, right on the water, and Zoe made her way there.

She felt a sickening sense of déjà vu as she crossed the threshold. A row of security desks faced her, guarding the entrance to the elevators which led to the exclusive offices upstairs.

A bored security snapped his gum as he looked up. ‘Who are you here to see?'

‘Max Monroe.'

The guard nodded and reached for the phone. Zoe watched, her heart thudding as it had before, hardly able to believe that she was in the same awkward, uncomfortable, excruciating position she'd been only three days ago. Once again she was about to confront a hostile man and give him the unwelcome news that he was a father.

And this time it mattered even more.

‘Name?' the guard asked, cradling the receiver to his ear, and Zoe swallowed nervously.

‘Zoe.' He waited, and she added rather grimly, ‘Just Zoe. He'll know who I am.'

The guard shrugged and spoke into the receiver; Zoe couldn't hear what he said. After only a few seconds he replaced the telephone in its cradle. The look of boredom had been replaced by one of prurient interest. Zoe flushed. ‘He says he's not expecting you, miss.'

‘I didn't ring beforehand,' Zoe confirmed with what she hoped passed as a gracious smile. ‘I hope Mr Monroe isn't averse to surprises.'

The guard shrugged. ‘He sounds like he might be. He doesn't want to see you anyway.' He paused before he turned back to the newspaper he'd been reading. ‘Sorry.'

Zoe stared at the man in disbelief, her flush intensifying, spreading through her entire body in hot, prickly colour. Max Monroe wasn't going to even let her come to his office. He wasn't going to see her at all.

She drew in a shaky breath even as her vision swam and nausea rose in her throat. ‘I see,' she managed. ‘Thank you.'

On legs that very nearly tottered she made her way out
of the building. She stood in the middle of the concrete concourse in front of the building, the breeze from the Hudson River blowing her hair into tangles around her face. She took two, then three, deep lungfuls of air, trying to steady her nerves, her shaking body. Even now, after one spectacular dismissal, she could hardly believe she'd been given a second. Max Monroe wasn't going to give her the opportunity to tell him about his child.

And she, Zoe determined, was not going to give him the opportunity to escape.

 

Max sat back in his chair, discomfort prickling along his body, through his thoughts. Why had Zoe—
just
Zoe—come to see him? He'd made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of pursuing a relationship or even setting eyes on her again. He
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.

‘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.'

‘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.

 

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.

 

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 so did he, at least for this moment, for even though he couldn't see her, he could sense her. Zoe was here, waiting for him. He stilled, and it came to him, the faint scent of rose water. Or was he imagining it? Surely he was, for there was no way he could smell so faint a scent with dozens of people between them.

Where was she?

He walked forward slowly, avoiding the blurred
shapes of people rushing past, letting instinct—and need—guide him.

And then he felt her in front of him, saw for a moment the soft fall of golden hair, the glint of a green eye, the lovely, lovely sound of her voice.

‘Max.'

‘You're stubborn, aren't you?' He meant to sound cutting but he couldn't quite keep the hint of a smile from his voice.

‘I prefer the word
determined
.'

‘As you like.' He took a breath, forcing back the words he felt almost desperate to say.
You came back. You smell like spring. Touch me.
‘We have nothing to say to each other, Zoe.' He began to move past her; he could see the dark shape of the waiting limo, his driver at the ready.

‘Actually, we do.' She moved quickly—too quickly—in front of him, and he nearly stumbled. Irritation bit at him, making him sound colder than ever.

‘Then perhaps I should amend that—
I
have nothing to say to
you
.'

She gave a harsh bark of laughter, a sound like nothing he'd heard before. It was full of bitterness and cynicism, and the realization stabbed him with sorrow. ‘Perhaps you will, when you hear what I have to say—'

‘I don't—'

‘I'm pregnant.'

The two words caused Max to go completely still. They reverberated through his body, his empty soul.

Pregnant. A child.
His
child.

Or not.

His voice was cold and dismissive as he moved past her. ‘As I said before, I have nothing to say to you.'

 

Zoe watched Max walk away from her in shocked disbelief. Then the fury came, rushing through her in a scalding river, disbelief giving way to determination.

‘You're just going to walk away? You're not even going to discuss it?'

He swivelled slowly, stiffly, to address her. ‘If you could do simple maths, Zoe, you'd realise not enough time has passed for your pregnancy claim to be credible.' He inclined his head in what she supposed was a gesture of dismissal and started to walk away again.

‘I never was very good at maths,' she called to his broad, indifferent back, ‘but it's been a few weeks. These days you can take a pregnancy test after just ten days. Plenty of time, Max.'

He stilled again, his back to her. At least thirty seconds ticked by in taut silence. ‘Get in the car.'

Zoe saw the limo waiting at the curb, and without a word to Max she stalked to it and threw herself inside.

Max followed, moving with a careful precision that Zoe decided meant he was either very angry or in great pain. Perhaps both.

When the driver had closed the door and began moving through the city's traffic, he spoke.

‘You wouldn't have any symptoms yet, and I wore a condom. What on earth made you think to take a pregnancy test?' He turned to her, his grey eyes gleaming in the dim interior of the limo. ‘You did take one, I presume?'

‘Yes. I overheard some women talking, and I realised I was late, so I—I put two and two together—'

‘And came up with an unsavoury three.'

Zoe pressed her hand to her middle. So. The idea of a pregnancy—a child—was
unsavoury
to him. An inconve
nience, an irritation. Bitterness spiked her words. ‘You've made your feelings clear.'

‘Am I supposed to
want
this baby?' he asked in disbelief, and she shook her head.

‘No, I suppose that would be too much to ask.' She stared blindly out the window, wondering just why she had come. When she'd learned she was pregnant, it had seemed essential that she tell Max. She wanted her baby to have a father, yet she should have realised Max was hardly going to jump into the role of daddy with eager ease. They barely knew each other.

And the last thing she wanted was for her baby to have a father who rejected her…like she had been rejected.

‘What do you want to do?' Max asked eventually, his voice terribly neutral. ‘Somehow I don't think you need money, but if that's what you're after—'

Zoe twisted in her seat to glare at him. ‘I'm not
after
anything,' she ground out. ‘Silly me, I thought it might
concern
you, the fact you've fathered a child.'

Max turned to the window so she couldn't see his expression. ‘Are you telling me you intend to keep it?'

Zoe recoiled. ‘Would you prefer I didn't?'

He shrugged, not speaking, and revulsion crawled through her. When he finally spoke, it was no more than a whisper, and she couldn't be sure she'd heard him at all. ‘No.'