One Night With the Billionaire (Men of the Zodiac) Read Online Free Page A

her. Her attention fell unwittingly to follow the trail past his waistband. He was probably photogenic as hell. But considering he was young, hotter than the noonday sun, and a self-made billionaire, he was likely the world’s most eligible bachelor. There would be no shortage of paparazzi surrounding him in the real world, and she’d had enough to last a lifetime.
    She cleared her throat. “That was a long time ago.”
    “That could easily be my point. I haven’t forgotten, Zoe. Feels like yesterday I stood there on the wrong side of the tracks wanting all the wrong things.”
    “And now?”
    “Money can’t buy everything, sweetheart.”
    His heated gaze and its lazy appraisal of her suggested sex, but she had little doubt he could get that for free. Just not from her.
    The ache between her thighs protested the unspoken denial, and the involuntary clench she hoped would silence them accomplished the opposite. She summoned all her nopes. All other reservations aside, there was no way she’d fall into bed with him, especially now that he was rich. It didn’t matter how much she’d crushed on him when they were teens…she hadn’t acted then, and acting now made her no better than the interns who had ridden her ex-fiancé reverse-cowgirl-style into infamy.
    She swallowed a dry bundle of nerves and met his aqua stare. “No, it can’t.”
    He looked at her for a long moment before he spoke. “Why are you here, Zoe?”
    “My fiancé made himself an ex in a very public manner.” She blurted the words, surprised when the usual shame didn’t follow. Surprised when Ryder didn’t immediately adopt the same look of pity that had become a permanent mask among her co-workers.
    “So why isn’t he the one in exile?”
    “To be honest, I don’t care enough to know. I just wanted out of the three-ring DC circus that popped up when he…when the scandal broke.”
    Ryder’s brow lifted.
    Great. She should have kept her mouth shut. The list of people who weren’t privy to the details of her ex’s privates was woefully short, and while she doubted Ryder wanted a VIP seat, she could really go for the anonymity. Actually, that was precisely why she had left the city. And while she certainly wouldn’t count him among her allies, it was nice to have a conversation with someone who didn’t look at her with sympathy.
    He looked at her instead with hunger.
    The dark lashes framing those impossibly light eyes only highlighted their intensity. Her body responded even when she knew she couldn’t—at least not in the way she wanted.
    “I don’t think it’s something we should talk about in light of our arrangement.”
    The easy-going smile disappeared. He blinked, clearly taken aback. “By all means. I apologize for the intrusion.”
    He may have sounded coolly detached, but the undercurrent in his tone was an emotional riptide. After the turmoil her life had become, Ryder felt safe. He felt like home. He brought back a time when she’d felt in control—a time before she’d let her big-shot attorney father crow so persistently about the man that became her fiancé so that she, too, began to believe theirs was a sufficient match. Before scandal and tabloids took over and pushed her out of her own life—a life she, ironically, no longer recognized as her own. There was no going back from that kind of thing. She’d accepted as much, and yet here she was, face to face with the road she hadn’t taken. A road that suddenly felt wide open and free.
    And terrifying.
    “It’s just…I came here looking for an escape from scandal and a broken engagement. I don’t think jumping into bed with another man is really the answer. If it’s a problem, perhaps I can seek other arrangements.”
    His eyes darkened, but not in the heated way they had before. “Can the formality, Zoe. If I’m making you uncomfortable, say so.”
    Oh, he was, all right. But not like he must have thought. She wanted him, but admitting it could only lead