by Lynne Graham
That Max was willing to arrange for a very ordinary little mongrel to travel to another country simply to please her overwhelmed Tia’s every expectation of him and filled her with appreciation and gratitude. He had to be a kind, sensitive man, she decided happily.
Max and Tia were not left alone at the table in the refectory for long. Visitors to the convent rather than the school or orphanage were rare and various nuns arrived to make his acquaintance. Max withstood the onslaught with admirable cool and the inherent courtesy engrained in him by his education. English was in short supply but Max contrived to speak in French, German and Spanish to facilitate the dialogue and Tia was even more impressed. Sister Mariana managed to extract the fact that Max was single and even the explanation that he had not yet married because he had still to meet ‘the right woman’.
Once the pleasantries were at an end and Max had regretfully declined an invitation to watch a DVD of the Pope’s most recent message in the common room, Tia was spellbound by him, convinced she would never meet a more self-assured and refined, sophisticated male in her lifetime. Not that she had much experience of such men, she was willing to admit. Max smiled at her, dark eyes mesmerising below the thick veil of his lashes, and butterflies danced in her stomach while her heart beat so fast that she felt weirdly dizzy.
Sister Mariana accompanied them back upstairs and showed Max the small seating area on the landing. ‘You must have so much to discuss,’ she said cheerfully before she headed for her own room.
‘Does she think I’m about to jump you or something if you come into my room?’ Max asked, shocking Tia.
Paling at the crack, she looked up at him wide-eyed. ‘No, she meant to be kind,’ she replied stiltedly. ‘She knows I would not go into your bedroom.’
As a deep rose flush flowered to chase Tia’s pallor, Max recognised his mistake but could not even explain to his own satisfaction why he was so on edge. ‘I apologise. I thought the rules were restricting us, which would be a little ridiculous when you are leaving this place tomorrow.’
‘It’s not “this place”,’ Tia murmured a shade drily. ‘It’s been my home.’
‘I do understand that but this...all this.’ Max shifted a brown hand expressively. ‘I’m a complete fish out of water here.’
Tia absorbed the fluid elegance of that physical gesture and marvelled that even his movements could be so graceful. Recognising his discomfiture, she forced a smile. ‘Yes. I can understand that. I can only hope I won’t feel the same way in my grandfather’s home.’
Max gazed down at her, recognising that the laughing, relaxed Tia had gone into retreat as soon as he’d spoken earlier. ‘Not while I’m around,’ he swore instinctively, feeling ridiculously protective for no reason that he could comprehend.
‘Do you live with my grandfather?’ Tia asked hopefully.
Having stumbled again, Max almost swore out loud. ‘No, but I’m a frequent visitor.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Tia told him.
Her sincerity mocked all that Max was concealing from her. His strong jaw line clenched. Rain lashed against the window beside them as they stood there. A sexual tension so strong it almost unnerved him gripped Max, tightening his every muscle into immediate self-disciplined restraint. He connected with translucent cornflower-blue eyes. He lifted his hand and brushed a stray strand of gold hair back from her cheek to tuck it behind a small ear.
That intimate little motion, the brush of his fingers against her ear lobe, seemed to burn a fiery trail across her skin and the breath caught in Tia’s throat, the noise of the rain outside suddenly mirroring the tempest inside her. She could feel a tightness in her breasts and a sudden embarrassing surge of warmth between her legs. Still as a statue she stayed where she was, foolishly wanting him to do it again, wanting him to touch her. As an adult she wasn’t used to being touched except by the younger children. Oh, she had been shown plenty of affection by the nuns while she was still a child but as she’d matured the sisters had naturally become less demonstrative and affectionate and the kind of touching that could remind you that you were not alone in the world was what Tia had missed the most in recent years...only she hadn’t realised that until Max broke the ice and showed her that reality.
Max forced his hand to drop back to his side and breathed in slow and deep. He was incredibly aroused and incredibly frustrated but her sheer innocence overpowered and haltered his lust. ‘I must phone Andrew. He’ll be waiting to hear all about you,’ he explained, the Italian accent that had faded over his years in England fracturing every word.
Tia nodded. ‘I’ll catch Teddy before breakfast so that he can’t wander away and lose his big chance to travel,’ she joked and, turning on her heel without another word, she left, evidently quite unaware that he had wanted to grab her in the most inappropriate way and kiss her.
Still breathing like a man who had climbed a mountain only to discover another mountain awaiting him at the summit, Max went for a shower to cool off. It was the absolute worst and coldest shower he had ever had but Max, who now took luxury and comfort for granted, genuinely didn’t notice, so preoccupied was he with his own thoughts.
CHAPTER TWO
MORNING DAWNED—but not before Max, who had slept fitfully on his lumpy mattress on a frame that creaked with every slight movement of his body.
He had risen early, craved his usual black coffee and had had to start his day without it. He had immediately contacted his PA to plan for the dog and organise various other bookings.
‘Take her to Rio and kit her out,’ Andrew had urged effusively on the phone the night before. ‘She’s a woman. Never met one that didn’t like clothes.’
Max’s eloquent sensual mouth hardened. He doubted that Andrew would have been quite so chirpy on the subject had he seen for himself how very poorly his grandchild was dressed. Yet her father had visited his daughter and must not have cared. Max marvelled at the hypocrisy of a man who had apparently done much genuine good in the world and yet had utterly neglected his own child. That was at an end though, he reminded himself grimly. Tia’s new chapter was only beginning, and a few months down the road she would in all likelihood cringe at what she remembered of her current lifestyle and it would no longer be mentioned because it would become a source of embarrassment to her.
Max was disconcerted at the faint stab of regret he experienced at the prospect of Tia changing radically and losing that innocent openness. She had not learnt guile or the feminine skill to tease and flirt yet.
And that was what had probably knocked him for six the night before, Max judged with a strong sense of relief at that explanation. How did he relate to a woman so different from any he had ever met before? Or slept with? Max’s experience lay solely in the field of highly sexualised flirtations that led straight to the bedroom in which there was no before and after to be considered and very little adult conversation.
He had tried to tell Andrew that his plan wasn’t going to work because Tia was far too ‘nice’ for him and he didn’t have anything in common with nice girls. Virgins were not his style. He had few inhibitions but, coming awake several times during the night, he had acknowledged that seducing a virgin would never feature on any bucket list of his.
Of course, there was a slight chance that she might not be quite that naïve, he reasoned, and then he discarded the suspicion, recalling that moment on the landing when she had looked up at him with a complete lack of any awareness.
Other men would target her and bed her without a thought, Max acknowledged grimly, anger filling him at the realisation. What the hell was the matter with him? Why was he so conflicted about this situation? He was usually very decisive. Dio mio! He could marry her or he could stand back and watch her get her heart stamped on and kicked by some bastard who only wanted her for her inheritance. He could not have it both ways. It would either be him or someone else.
He walked out of the bedroom and was surprised to see Tia seated on the landing with something o
n her lap. It was the dog. As he moved towards her the dog began to growl. It bared its teeth and would have leapt off her lap into attack had she not restrained the animal.
‘Good morning,’ Tia said with the most radiant smile that lit up her whole face. ‘I’ve never been able to pet Teddy properly before because I didn’t dare smuggle him in here and I fed him secretly...well, not secretly enough it seems.’
Teddy began to bark and she scolded him but Teddy had neither discipline nor manners and he strained forward, snarling at Max as he approached. He had not the slightest doubt that he would be bitten could Teddy have only got free of the piece of twine lead and the makeshift collar he now wore.
‘He’s not a friendly dog,’ Max remarked tactfully.
‘He was probably abused. He only trusts me. It’s sad,’ Tia reflected, still sunny.
‘Have you packed?’ Max prompted.
‘I didn’t have much to pack,’ she admitted. ‘But one of the sisters gave me a bag last night and I used it. I went back downstairs to say my goodbyes then to everyone...’
As her voice thickened and trailed away, tears glistening in her eyes, Max hunkered down at a safe distance from Teddy’s snappy jaws. For a tiny dog, he was ridiculously aggressive. ‘It’s all right to be upset at leaving. As you said, this has been your home for a long time,’ he murmured soothingly.
The dark rich tenor of his voice shimmied up and down Tia’s spine like a caress and she scolded herself, for she had lain awake more than she had slept the night before. She was attracted to him, of course she was, because he was young and gorgeous and kind. But she had sworn she would not make a fool of herself over him by staring and acting foolishly as she had often seen some of the teenage schoolgirls doing over a handsome young gardener who had worked at the convent for several months. Tia told herself that she was old enough and mature enough to know better.
But meeting Max’s glorious black-lashed dark eyes only a couple of feet away convulsed her throat and unleashed the butterflies in her tummy again. She could feel the colour and the heat of a blush building in her cheeks, and as his gaze lowered to her mouth even her lips seemed to tingle with responsiveness. Never had Tia felt so out of her depth as she did at that moment or more aware of her own deficiencies. The teenagers she had once felt superior to had known much more about how to talk and behave with a man than she did. When Max got close and she looked at him, she felt almost choked by shyness and awkwardness and every feeling, every sensation she felt was magnified to quite absurd proportions.
For a very experienced man, Max was strangely exhilarated by that blush and he studied her with a weird sense of achievement. She was not indifferent, not unaware of him. And she was doing what women had done decades before equality transformed the dating scene and waiting for him to make the moves. Flowers, Max thought for the first time in his life in a woman’s radius. She would like flowers, being old-fashioned and all that, he decided vaguely.
‘We’re being picked up in an hour.’
‘Mother Sancha has asked us to join her for coffee before we leave but I’ll get you breakfast first.’
Max gritted his teeth as Teddy glowered at him over Tia’s shoulder and bared his own in a silent snarl of warning. Hate at first sight, Max conceded with sardonic amusement. ‘If you could have one special thing, Tia...anything, what would it be? There must be things you want—’
‘A mobile phone,’ Tia told him with a haste that embarrassed her, worried that she sounded greedy.
‘You don’t have one?’ Max queried in disbelief.
‘Mother Sancha banned them. She won’t allow the girls in the school to have them here. I should explain...’ Tia hesitated. ‘When I was at school here it was a normal boarding school but that changed as the number of boarders went down. The girls who stay here now are more transient and don’t stay for as long. Their parents send them here because they’re...troubled,’ she selected uncomfortably. ‘The sisters have a good record for straightening out troubled teenagers.’
His mouth quirked at that information. ‘Yes, I imagine being sent out here to the back end of nowhere and being deprived of even a phone would have a sobering effect on most adolescents.’
‘The school fees keep the orphanage going and fund the community work the sisters do!’ Tia exclaimed repressively.
‘I wasn’t mocking the system. I was merely making an observation,’ Max challenged.
‘You sounded sarcastic,’ Tia countered.
‘I often am,’ Max admitted equably. ‘You’ll have to get used to nuances like that with people. People don’t all think and speak and act the same.’
Tia rounded on him at the foot of the stairs, her ready temper roused at being patronised as if she were still a young girl when she was a grown woman and proud of the fact. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ she questioned fierily, an angry tightness marking her small face.
‘I think you live in an institution where being different is frowned on and probably have little experience of what life is really like beyond the convent gate.’
‘Well, then you’d be wrong because I have often seen the consequences of alcoholism and addiction, domestic abuse and prostitution. There can be few evils that I have not some knowledge of,’ Tia argued furiously, hotly dismissing his apparent conviction that she was some naïve little flower. ‘Maybe you thought you’d find me on a hill somewhere singing among the wild flowers? Yes, I am acquainted with sarcasm, Max!’
Max was taken aback by the display: she had gone from zero to ninety in seconds and lost her temper. ‘Does that also mean you need to start shouting at me?’ he shot back at her.
Recalled to her wits but still trembling with annoyance, Tia stilled and sucked in a steadying breath, appalled at the rude way she had attacked him. ‘I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that rant. I suppose I’m worrying about how I will appear to you and to my grandfather and that I won’t suit.’
‘You needn’t worry about that. If you had horns and a tail, Andrew would welcome you. You’re his only relative,’ he responded wryly.
‘I have a terrible temper. I’m supposed to go for a walk and practise breathing exercises when I get mad, so that I don’t lash out at people,’ Tia confided guiltily.
‘I’m pretty tough, Tia. I can take hard words,’ Max countered.
Shame engulfed Tia because this was the person trusted by her grandfather to take her to England, the man who had already ensured Teddy’s continuing health. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again gruffly.
Max closed a hand on her arm to prevent her from walking away. ‘It’s OK,’ he breathed more forcefully. ‘You’re right in the middle of a huge upheaval in your life.’
Tia blinked back the tears that had been gathering in hot, prickly discomfort behind her eyes. ‘Don’t make excuses for me. I was horribly rude.’
‘You have fire. I like that, bella mia,’ Max admitted huskily, his dark deep intonation somehow rousing a curl of heat low in her pelvis. ‘I was being patronising and you were right to call me on it.’
‘You’re very...understanding,’ Tia breathed soft and low, locked into his stunning dark eyes as he bent towards her, Teddy’s feisty warning growls at her feet ignored by both of them.
And for a split second she actually thought he was going to kiss her and she craved that kiss as she craved water on a hot day, needing somehow to know if that soft, full lower lip of his would be hard or gentle on hers. Hard, she decided, lost in a sensual daydream for the first time in her life.
‘I have Mr Leonelli’s breakfast waiting,’ Sister Mariana called down the corridor, and Max jerked back, releasing her wrist, lifting his head again, a telling gleam of feverish colour accentuating his high cheekbones.
Nearly forgot yourself in a convent, Max derided for his own benefit, fighting his arousal with all his might while wondering how she would react if she noticed. He was discovering that when Tia looked at him as though he could walk on water, he liked it, and that astonished h
im.
Tia was in a daze over breakfast. She knew all the facts about sex and had always thought the actual mechanics of the act sounded fairly disgusting: what the man did, what the woman had to allow. But Max had walked into her life the night before and even her outlook on that had changed because she was now putting Max into that couple equation and found that she was madly curious and shockingly excited by the concept. What startled her the most was the deep current of desire rippling through her whenever she looked at him, whenever she even thought about him. In his radius her body no longer felt like her own and was certainly no longer fully under her control.
‘So, where do we fly from?’ she asked as she settled into the four-wheel drive. Teddy was not impressed to be confined in the pet carrier inside it and whined in complaint but his new official owner didn’t want him biting Max and she was rather afraid that he might if given even the smallest chance. The little dog she had quietly adored for so long was revealing unexpected traits now that he was being forced to mix with other people.
As for Tia, her eyes still damp from parting from Mother Sancha who featured in her earliest childhood memories, she felt like someone at the start of an adventure and was working hard at concealing that less than cool reality.
‘Rio,’ Max told her, lifting his darkly handsome head from the tablet he had been using. ‘Sorry I’m distracted but I have work email to answer.’
‘We’re going to Rio? I thought we were going to Belém.’
‘We are, but we are flying to Rio before we head for the UK.’
‘I love Belém. It’s so big and busy,’ Tia chattered and told him about the annual boat trip the sisters took along the River Guama to see the Círio of Nazaré procession, which was the biggest and most important religious event in Brazil.
She talked a lot, Max reflected, and culture shock was likely to hit her when she saw the size of Rio de Janeiro because the city of Belém was tiny in comparison. He also wondered what he would do with her in Rio because he had work to do. It was all very well for Andrew to send him halfway across the world for Tia, but Grayson Industries did not run itself and fast decisions had to be made every day to keep Andrew’s companies running smoothly. In addition, Max worked very long hours to convince himself and anyone else who cared to quibble that he was fully capable of being CEO of Grayson Industries despite his comparative youth.