groaned. “Don’t cry, darling. Please don’t cry. If you forgive me,” he urged, reaching over the table and grabbing her hands, “it won’t ever happen again. I promise.”
A sudden and overwhelming wave of bitterness had Zoe yanking her hands away from his. “And what happens the next time you’re at a conference, and some sexy-looking blonde with big boobs throws herself at you?”
“I’ll know what I’m risking if I go with her, so I won’t.”
Zoe stared at him with pained confusion in her eyes. “But you’d still want to?”
He groaned again. “For pity’s sake, Zoe. I’m only thirty years old. I’m a normal red-blooded male in his sexual prime. Loving you doesn’t mean I won’t ever be physically attracted to another woman ever again. That’s unrealistic and unnatural. But I give you my word, I will never act on any such attraction ever again.”
Zoe stared at him. She wanted to believe him. She really did.
But then she thought of that blonde and what she had said in parting.
Poor you.
“I think,” she said tautly, “that I’ll skip lunch and go for a walk. I need some fresh air. And time to think.”
“Please don’t do that, Zoe. Stay and talk to me.”
Zoe shook her head then bent to pick up her handbag. Staying and talking to Drake was the last thing she should do. He was too good a talker. Too good a salesman. Perhaps too good a liar.
“We can work this out, Zoe,” he insisted. “Truly we can. I don’t want to lose you, darling. I love you. And I know you love me.”
She glared at him. “Yes, but your idea of love and my idea of love are poles apart. I know I would never have done what you did. Never, no matter what the circumstances.”
“Isn’t there anything I can say to make you understand?”
“Not right now.”
“What about later?”
“Leave it for today, Drake.”
“I can’t. I’ll call ‘round tonight after you get home from work.”
“If you must.”
“I must. I won’t let you go, Zoe. I mean it.”
“I know you do,” she said. Which was another reason why she needed to get away from him. Because she feared Drake would talk her into forgiving him without her ever understanding what had happened, and why? Love was a very weakening emotion. In a woman, anyway.
She stood up just as the waiter arrived with their meals. For a split second, Zoe was tempted to stay and shovel every morsel of the delicious-looking food down her throat.
Misery always made her hungry.
But being overweight had made her even more miserable, so she knew there would be no comfort for her there. No comfort in Drake’s presence, either. She wanted to strangle him for doing this to her, for spoiling everything, for being a typical male.
She’d thought he was different. Deeper.
But he wasn’t.
“I have to go,” she said raggedly, and fled.
2
ZOE DIDN’T GO for a walk. When she felt more tears threatening, she headed straight back for the office, making it to the downstairs lobby of the multi-storyed building in six minutes flat. She kept a tight grip on herself in the ride up in the elevator, since she wasn’t alone, but could feel her control slipping by the time the doors whooshed back on the twelfth floor.
Unfortunately, the rooms which housed Phillips & Cox, Attorneys at Law, were right down the end of a corridor along which more people were coming and going. It was lunchtime, after all.
Crying was not an option ‘til she had total privacy.
Clenching her jaw to keep her chin from quivering, Zoe launched herself down the gray-carpeted hallway, delivering a plastic smile whenever she passed an acquaintance.
Finally, she made it, only to find that June, their receptionist, was eating lunch at her desk, instead of in the café downstairs, as she usually did.
“What are you doing back so early?” June probed when Zoe walked back in. “Weren’t you supposed to be having lunch with the boyfriend down at the Rockery?”
Zoe’s teeth clenched even harder in her jaw.
“He was called back to work early,” she managed with feigned nonchalance, “so I thought I’d come back and have my coffee here.”
“Silly you. I’d have stayed down there. The coffee here is just instant muck. You could have had the real McCoy at the Rockery.”
“Oh, well…” Zoe shrugged, smiled an indifferent smile, then sped down to the tearoom, hoping it would be blessedly deserted and she could have a good quiet cry. But as luck would have it, her boss was there, making coffee and muttering away to herself. ‘Til she saw Zoe.
“What on earth are you doing back so early?” Fran asked. “I thought you were having lunch with Drake?”
It was too much for Zoe.
Fran literally gaped when Zoe burst into tears. In the six months Zoe had worked for her, the girl had never cried once. Or even seemed flustered. She was so cool and competent that sometimes Fran forgot she was only twenty-five.
Fran was not by nature a soft or sympathetic person, but she’d had considerable experience in handling weeping females. Considerable experience in the cause of such weeping as well. Her part of the practice specialized in divorce cases.
Fran didn’t have to be told that a man was behind Zoe’s tears. And there was only one man in Zoe’s life. The very charming and successful Drake Carson.
Plucking a handful of tissues from the box sitting on the counter, Fran pressed them into her assistant’s hands, then led the weeping girl back to her office. Fortunately, this didn’t require going past June, who was the office gossip.
“Sit,” she ordered, pushing Zoe down into one of the large comfy chairs facing her desk before returning to her own black office chair. There, she waited patiently ‘til the worst of the weeping was over.
Zoe’s sobbing eventually subsided to a sniffle.
“Can I get you something?” Fran asked at that point, her tone matter-of-fact. “Coffee? Brandy? A hit man?”
Zoe’s head jerked up and she laughed a rueful laugh.
“Want to tell me about it?” Fran said.
Zoe looked at her boss and suddenly saw, not just the smart-as-a-whip lawyer, but the woman. Thirty-eight and still very attractive, with jet-black hair—cut into a short chic bob—piercing gray eyes, a pale unlined skin
