Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy

by Lynne Graham

  And she recognised that stubborn strength and resolution in him and it cut her and made her bleed where it didn’t show, made her bleed for what she couldn’t have and what she would have given anything to possess. Had he loved her she would have forgiven him anything but he didn’t love her. He desired her. Yes, she understood that perfectly, for she had desired him with equal fervour when they had first met. But desire had steadily transformed into love where she was concerned, only it hadn’t happened that way for Max. She understood that he would do only right by her; that she could rely on him and that he had not married her only for the riches that that marriage would bring him.

  But, that didn’t change the reality that she was married to Max now because Andrew had wanted Max to be with her, giving her the protection that Andrew had known he would not be around for long to give. Their sexual chemistry had persuaded Max that such a marriage could work but without the pressure of her grandfather’s emotional blackmail would it have ever occurred to Max to marry her?

  Tia thought not. Furthermore, there was a huge unacknowledged elephant in the room—the baby Max had yet to mention in any shape or form. He had had three days to brood. Surely that was time enough for a man to deal with an unexpected and unwelcome development? And as Tia rested troubled eyes on Max, her heart was sinking because she knew they did not have a future together. He didn’t want their child. He would do what he had to do, say what he had to say but without the spur of love and genuine interest he would be a poor parent. Much as her own father had been, Tia decided wretchedly, bad memories pulling at her. She had spent a lifetime trying to please a man who could not be pleased. She had struggled endlessly to win his love and approval, writing him weekly letters to which he never responded and passing every exam that came her way. And her efforts had only been a thankless and heartbreaking learning experience and she would never impose that burden on her baby. Sometimes, she thought sadly, no father could be better than an uncaring, indifferent one.

  ‘Now isn’t the time for this,’ she breathed, rising with sudden decisiveness. ‘We have a house full of visitors.’

  And Max thought, so much for the much-vaunted tactic of telling the truth and baring your heart. It hadn’t got him anywhere. Tia’s face was shuttered, eyes on lockdown, her lush mouth closed. Madonna diavolo! He wasn’t going to lose her—no way was he prepared to let her go! Particularly not now when she was carrying his child. His child, he reminded himself doggedly, striving valiantly to accustom himself to that astonishing idea. Some time soon when her grief was not so fresh he would tell her the whole story of his childhood and then she would understand his apprehension, wouldn’t she?

  Right now he didn’t want to weigh her down with any more stress and worry. She looked fragile as a bird in her elegant black dress and he knew she was eating little more than a sparrow’s ration at mealtimes. The tension of anxiety settled into Max’s bones. So far he was dismayed by what pregnancy appeared to be doing to his wife. He knew that a pregnancy wasn’t an illness but Tia looked wan, thin and drained and her once buoyant spirits were at basement level.

  Tia quickly discovered that gossiping tongues had been busy in the drawing room because her mother wasted no time in tracking her down to draw her into a quiet corner and say angrily, ‘We’ll take Andrew’s will to court. It’s a disgrace. Your inheritance has been stolen by your husband. He’s a fortune hunter! No wonder he doesn’t want me around!’

  ‘I’m not taking anyone to court, Inez,’ Tia countered in a firm undertone.

  ‘Can’t you call me Mamae like my other children?’ the blonde woman asked plaintively.

  Tia breathed in deep. ‘I don’t want to be unkind but you were never my mother in the way you were a mother to them...and it’s too late now. We’re strangers. I needed a mother when I was a little girl. I’ve got used to not having one now.’

  ‘But it could be different...if I stayed here, if I lived with you,’ Inez argued vehemently, ‘then we could get to know each other.’

  ‘Lived with me? Why would you want to live with me when your home and your husband are in Brazil?’ Tia queried in genuine astonishment.

  ‘Francisco has replaced me with a younger woman,’ Inez admitted with a dismissive toss of her head and a shrug. ‘We’re currently going through a divorce and my children have elected to stay with their father and their future stepmother.’

  Tia had a scornful urge to ask her mother what it felt like to be abandoned and was immediately deeply ashamed of that spiteful prompting. ‘I’m sorry. It must be very hard for you right now.’

  ‘But if I could move in with you, everything would be much easier,’ Inez confessed. ‘I would have no financial worries and I could live in comfort.’

  And comprehension set in then with Tia. Her mother had only come to the funeral because she had decided that Tia might finally be useful to her, and of course she wanted Tia to take Max to court and fight Andrew’s will because the wealthier Tia was, the more useful she could be to her mother. Bitterness threatened to claim Tia. For an instant, she recalled the loneliness of convent life for a little girl who never got to go home to a family during the holidays like her classmates. Inez’s self-interest was not a surprise but what did surprise Tia was that her mother’s selfishness could still hurt and disappoint her.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Tia responded deflatingly.

  ‘But this is your house now,’ Inez protested, making it clear that she had received that confidential information from someone present at the reading of the will. ‘You can have whoever you like to stay and who better than your mother?’

  ‘Her husband,’ another voice interposed and Tia glanced up in dismay to find Max towering over them, his lean, strong face formidable in its hard resolve. ‘Tia has me and right now she doesn’t need anyone else.’

  Inez’s mouth took on a venomous twist but before she could say anything more, Tia stepped away. ‘It was good to see you today, Inez,’ she said politely as she walked away.

  ‘I feel awful,’ she whispered to Max. ‘I don’t feel anything for her. Well, actually, that’s another lie. At one point I felt angry, bitter and nasty and I hate feeling like that.’

  Max shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘She made it that way when she walked out on you and never came back, bella mia. Don’t blame yourself for being human.’

  And instantly, Tia felt soothed, gazing up into lustrous dark golden eyes, her tummy flipping a somersault in sudden excitement as that sliding sensation thrummed between her legs and she ached down deep inside. Every response seemed heightened by the rawness of her turbulent emotions. For a heady split second she craved his mouth with every fibre of her being, hunger threatening to roar up inside her like a raging fire. She sucked in a shuddering breath to calm her fevered body, wondering where she would focus that passion when she no longer had Max. On her baby? On some other interest?

  Max swallowed with difficulty, his hand clenching into a fist and digging into his pocket. It was neither the time nor the place and her fine-boned face was etched with strain and fatigue. He didn’t want her to have to play hostess any longer; he wanted to scoop her up in his arms and lay her down to rest somewhere quiet and peaceful. Knowing she would do her duty, however, he stayed by her side, handling the more difficult conversations that roused her grief and brought tears to her eyes. He urged her to sit down whenever possible and was barely able to conceal his relief when people began leaving.

  ‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ Tia told him over a dinner in which she merely rearranged her food on her plate.

  ‘Good idea. It’s been a very long day.’

  ‘I miss him,’ Tia confessed gruffly.

  ‘I’ve never been in this house before when he wasn’t here. It feels strange.’

  Tia lay in the bath, composing herself while she made plans for her future. Max didn’t want their child and he didn’t want her except in the most basic sexual way. She deserved better and she wasn’t about to settle for l
ess, she told herself urgently. She had to be strong and decisive. She would leave and use her grandmother’s inheritance to build a new independent life, possibly the life she would have enjoyed had she not met Max. What else could she do?

  Max had married her primarily to please Andrew and Andrew was no longer alive to be hurt and disappointed by her decision to abandon her hasty marriage. Max wouldn’t miss her. He would be far too busy with Grayson Industries. He didn’t want their child, couldn’t even bring himself to talk about the baby she carried. No, the best he could seem to do was ignore the subject in its entirety. Leaving was her only option.

  Max would not feel he had lost out when he had no contact with the child he had accidentally fathered. Their child would lose out on having a father but if Max wasn’t keen on being a father, wouldn’t his absence be less damaging in the long run? Perhaps years from now Max would succumb to curiosity as her own mother once had and he would find that he could communicate more easily with their child when he or she was more mature. Tia knew she could not expect to stay hidden for ever.

  Tears dampened her cheeks in the hothouse temperature of the opulent bathroom. How could she walk away from the man she loved? Even if it was the best thing for them both? Eventually they would have to get a divorce, which would leave them free to seek another relationship. Just then Tia didn’t think she would ever again be attracted to anyone and the thought of Max with anyone else absolutely destroyed her. Indeed, all she could think of at that instant was Max, his hair-roughened bronzed skin hot and a mixture of rough and smooth against her, the intoxicating taste of him, the burning need he excited...

  Irritated with herself, Tia clambered out of the bath, her body tingling and pulsing, and wrapped herself in a towel. In the bedroom, she hovered. One last night, she thought crazily, one last night with Max...why not? Why the heck not? She loved him, she wanted him. Afterwards she would write him a letter explaining how she felt but she wouldn’t tell him everything. If she told him she loved him he would feel guilty that he had hurt her. No, she would tell him that she needed her freedom; that life was too short to waste, that setting out to make her own life and live alone was what she had always dreamt of...and it would be the truth with just a few salient facts withheld.

  Swathed in a towelling robe, she walked out into the corridor and down to the bedroom that she knew Max was using. She didn’t knock on the door because she felt that would be silly. No, she walked straight in and caught Max lying in his boxers on the bed watching the business news. Against the backdrop of the white linen sheets, he was a breathtaking vision of masculine perfection.

  ‘I don’t want to be alone tonight,’ she told him honestly.

  Max was very much taken aback. He sat up, brilliant dark eyes widening as Tia untied the sash of the robe and let the robe tumble in a heap to the floor. He couldn’t believe what he was witnessing because Tia was usually endearingly modest and now here she was naked under the lights. Yet light was a good friend to that porcelain skin with its pearlised glow, that honey-blonde hair as glossy as polished silk and the full, pouting, pink-tipped breasts that shifted with her every movement. Max had never liked surprises but just then he felt as if he had died and gone to heaven and the television went silent as soon as he had made a successful fumbling attempt to locate the remote.

  ‘I’m all yours, bella mia,’ he breathed thickly, the pulse at his groin responding with alarming rapidity to his appreciation of her.

  Tia got on the bed and slid over him like a siren, leaning down, pink-tipped breasts brushing his chest as she planted her succulent pink lips against his. Max put his hands up and dragged her down to him, his urgency thrilling her. Bossy as always, he rearranged her to his satisfaction on the bed and worked his sensual passage down over her squirming body from her delicate collarbone to her straining nipples and then all the way down to the tender flesh between her thighs.

  ‘I wanted to torture you,’ she complained. ‘This was supposed to be my show.’

  ‘Some other time,’ Max growled, fighting to stay in control as he teased her damp receptive core and she made little gasping sounds that went straight to his groin and made him as rigid and hard as steel.

  ‘When’s it going to be my turn?’ she complained, running a desperate hand down over his strong muscular shoulders and clawing her fingers through his hair because those were the only parts of him she could reach.

  ‘I’m in no condition to argue right now.’

  He turned her firmly over onto her knees and plunged with erotic force into her. She cried out because he felt so impossibly good and she was only just realising in sudden dismay that if everything went to plan she would never experience such intimacy with Max again. That conviction panicked her and his next surge only intensified her body’s reaction. She arched as the tingling waves of excitement threatened to consume her, her whole body hot and liquid with uncontrollable craving.

  ‘Don’t you dare stop!’ she moaned, barely knowing what she was saying, unable to think and too frightened by what she had thought to even want to think.

  And Max didn’t. The long dreadful day of sadness faded with every voluptuously satisfying penetration of her receptive body. Tia’s need for him had startled him because her muted response to his earlier explanation about how he felt about her had disappointed him. Their all-consuming passion sparked and flamed into a frantic blaze of hunger neither of them could restrain. As release claimed them both into the trembling, perspiring aftermath, Max groaned out something ragged in Italian.

  When Tia rolled away, Max stretched out an arm and brought her back to him, knowing she needed that closeness, fighting his own awkwardness to give her what she deserved. He had not enjoyed sleeping apart from her, but it had been a necessary sacrifice when Andrew’s death had brought her so low, when he couldn’t trust himself to share a bed with her and not reach for her in the night.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘That was amazing.’

  ‘You don’t ever need to thank me for something that gives me so much pleasure.’

  ‘You thanked me once,’ she reminded him.

  Max didn’t remember. ‘Did I?’

  ‘You did,’ she whispered, quietly pulling free to slip out of the bed, knowing she had that letter to write and plans to make.

  ‘I got it wrong,’ Max husked softly. ‘Sometimes I’m going to get it wrong without meaning to.’

  Tia’s eyes prickled with tears because there was just no room for getting it wrong with a baby. It had gone wrong for her and she suspected it had gone wrong for Max as well, because why else would he be so reluctant to talk about his childhood? But she was determined not to let it go wrong for her child even if that entailed walking out on the man she loved. Her child was not going to pay either now or in the future because she had foolishly picked the wrong man to love and marry. That was her mistake and she would not allow her little boy or girl to pay the price of that mistake because it was a mistake that would reverberate down through the childhood years and leave a scar that wouldn’t heal.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NINE MONTHS AFTER Tia’s disappearance, Max finished the last phone call and stared at his desk. The Reverend Mother had promised him she would get in touch if she heard anything from Tia and she had not. Inez Santos had snarled down the phone that she had still not heard from her daughter and had no desire to hear from her. Ronnie had never been in a position to offer him any helpful leads. Tia had not confided in anyone.

  The trail, such as it was, was dead. Tia had departed in a taxi with one suitcase and Teddy. The taxi had taken her to the railway station from where she had travelled to London. A couple of weeks later there had been a possible sighting of her on a train heading to Devon. He supposed that he should at least be grateful that she had inherited her grandmother’s money and was presumably making use of it. At least it meant that she was not destitute. But she had not once used the credit cards that he had given her or attempted to access the substantial
private income that Andrew had set up for her. No, she had rejected everything Max and Andrew had given her and walked away.

  Every line of the letter she had left behind haunted Max. It had been so blunt, so honest. You don’t really want me. That said all that needed to be said in terms of his performance as a husband, didn’t it? He had been married to Tia for over three months and that was the impression she had taken away from the experience. You married me to please Andrew. No, he hadn’t but he needed to find her to tell her that. You don’t want to be a father. Well, she had got that right. You don’t want our baby. She had got that wrong. He had climbed aboard that man train where you acted strong rather than admit fear and ambiguity and he had shot himself in the foot. Tia didn’t understand because he hadn’t told her what she needed to know to understand. And now it was too late.

  Max lifted his chin, his formidable bone structure grim. It would never be too late because he would not give up. When something truly mattered to him, he refused to accept defeat. Somehow, sooner or later, he would find some small piece of information that would lead him to his runaway bride and he would then face his biggest challenge—persuading her to come home. Her and Teddy and hopefully their child. Had she had a safe delivery?

  But he reckoned bringing his little family home to Redbridge—if all had gone well—would be the toughest challenge he had ever faced. Tia, after all, had never truly wanted to marry him. She hadn’t wanted to be tied down to a husband and if she had made the best of it for a few months he should be grateful for small mercies. She had wanted her freedom and now she had taken it. What nagged at Max most of all was the insidious suspicion that, had he moved more slowly with Tia, she would have wanted to stay married to him.