Zoe and the Tormented Tycoon by Kate Hewitt Page A

night…
    Last night had been different. Max had been different.
    Or so she’d thought. She winced, remembering that feeling of glorious optimism she’d felt when she’d woken in a pool of sunshine in Max’s bed. She’d felt as if it was the beginning; she thought she’d finally found herself.
    Hardly.
    Nothing had changed; she hadn’t changed. Max Monroe was a self-serving ass and she was just what she’d been before, and what she’d called him—a bastard.
    The apartment was dark and quiet when Zoe entered, flinging her keys on the marble table in the grand entrance foyer. Oscar Balfour hired a full-time housekeeper to maintain the apartment, but she had weekends off and Zoe was glad. She wanted to be alone. She needed to be alone; she didn’t think she could handle a conversation of any kind at this point.
    She stripped off her clothes, kicking them into a corner, vowing never to wear them again. Then she strode into the marble en-suite bathroom and ran a full, foaming tub, hot enough to almost hurt, sinking into the bubbles in blessed relief.
    She stayed in the water until her fingers and toes looked like prunes, and it had gone from steaming to tepid to cold. Only then did she reluctantly rouse herself from the blank state of lethargy she’d snuggled into like a cocoon, blocking out the world and its harsh judgements and memories. She put on the pair of pyjamas no one ever saw her in—an old pair of grey track bottoms and a worn-to-softness hoody—and curled up in bed, her knees to her chest.
    All around her the apartment was quiet, dark. Empty. Curled on the huge bed, she’d never felt more alone. More lonely. Spinning in a great, empty void of uncertainty and uselessness.
    And then before she could stop herself, the tears she’d been holding back for not just hours but weeks came rushing down her face, scalding her cheeks, emptying her soul.
    She didn’t know how long she cried, the sobs racking her body as for once she didn’t hold anything back, didn’t pretend even to herself that she was all right, that she was strong as her father had told her she was.
    She wasn’t. She wasn’t, Zoe thought as she wiped her cheeks, anything at all. The loss of the Balfour name had been the loss of her identity. It was humiliating to realise that, to feel as though she had nothing to call her own, nothing to be .
    And had she actually thought—if only for a few hours—that Max Monroe could give that to her? That with him she’d know who she was?
    â€˜I know who I am,’ Zoe said aloud. Her voice sounded small and forlorn, pathetic. Yet still hugging her knees to her chest, she reminded herself of just what kind of woman she was. What she could do best.
    Sparkle.
    And so she would.
    She sparkled and partied and kept herself busy, all of her energy and emotion poured into the trivial matters of shopping sample sales and deciding what the best entertainment for an evening was. She came back to the apartment only to deposit her shopping bags and to sleep, and she determinedly ignored the housekeeper Lila’s silent censure.
    She refused to think about Max. She didn’t think about anything, anyone, not even herself. Yet with each party shefelt herself becoming more fragile, more frantic, clinging to a way of life that was surely slipping out of her grasp. Perhaps it had been for years, and it took the outing of her birth to make her realise she couldn’t be an it-girl forever. Eventually you had to grow up. You had to do something.
    You had to be strong.
    Except she had no idea how to be strong, or even who she was, or how to go about finding out.
    Three weeks after her night with Max, Oscar called her. Zoe wouldn’t have even answered—she didn’t want to talk to her so-called father—but she’d been asleep and she reached for her mobile in a half-stupor.
    â€˜Zoe?’ Oscar’s sharp tone had her