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 air-kissed 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.