Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy

‘Leave it, Tia,’ Max urged, thinking she would be booking him onto a psychiatric couch if he wasn’t careful. ‘There will always be stuff in my life that I don’t want to discuss.’

Cornflower-blue eyes rested on him with unnerving directness. ‘I don’t like secrets,’ she said simply. ‘I want to know everything about you.’

‘Good luck with that because I’m not a talker,’ Max derided, punching the pillow back into shape and lying back down, making it clear that the conversation was at an end.

Tia lay awake almost until dawn, wondering if she could settle for a husband with secrets. She didn’t think she could. She hadn’t been joking or exaggerating when she had admitted to wanting to know all that there was to know about him. On her terms, that kind of fearless honesty was the backbone of a strong relationship, but Max didn’t seem to crave that kind of closeness and it worried her.

* * *

‘And this is what you’re wearing tonight?’ Ronnie gasped in admiration as Tia brought the long ice-blue gown out to show her friend. The fabric shimmered as if it were sprinkled with diamonds. ‘Tia...it’s gorgeous!’

Grayson Industries had started out fifty years earlier and a half-century party was being staged in a luxury London hotel as a celebration. Tia was accompanying Andrew and Max and finally stepping out in public as a Grayson.

‘And it’s blue because Max likes me in blue,’ Tia muttered shamefacedly as Teddy capered round her feet, getting in the way.

The little terrier had been much quieter since he’d emerged from quarantine and was no longer so aggressive. He behaved like Tia’s shadow now though, as if he was afraid that she might disappear again.

Ronnie shook her dark head. ‘You are such a newly-wed. And Max isn’t missing the single life, is he? There he is with an apartment in London and he still flies back here every night to be with you.’

Tia was more inclined to put Max’s frequent flying down to his fondness for her grandfather. Unfortunately, she was still feeling very guilty about the discreet visit she had made to the doctor first thing that morning, because she hadn’t been able to bring herself to admit that she believed she needed a pregnancy test to Max or to anyone else. Somehow that little worry had become her secret. And now that little worry had grown into a massive worry...

But, she didn’t have to share everything with Max, did she? It nagged at her conscience that only a few months ago she had thought less of Max for his unwillingness to share everything and now here she was doing the exact same thing. But then, no doubt like Max, she had her reasons.

And now that she knew that she

was pregnant she felt stupid for having been so blind because she had always assumed that a woman ought to somehow know such a thing even if the signs beforehand were misleading. They had been married for three months and she had twice had what she believed to be periods. Admittedly both had been unusually irregular and brief, but when she’d told Max that she was out of commission he had smiled and laughed, pointing out that they now had the proof that she wasn’t pregnant. And fool that she was, she had believed that Max must know the symptoms of pregnancy better than she did. When her appetite had failed, when her breasts had become swollen and she had suffered strange moments of dizziness, she had ignored those sensations until she became worried enough to consult a doctor.

Consequently, Tia had been shattered when the doctor had told her that there was nothing actually wrong with her and she was merely suffering the common side effects of early pregnancy. Apparently her experience of partial periods was not quite as unusual as she had assumed, nor was it a sign that her pregnancy was unstable. But how was she supposed to tell Max that she was pregnant now when he was totally unprepared for that reality? His relief at the seeming proof that she was not pregnant some weeks after their wedding loomed large in her memory. Max had been relieved that she had not conceived and had felt free to reveal that reality.

Was it any wonder that she had not even told him that she’d intended to visit a doctor? Unsure of how he would react to her secret fear, she had refused to admit her apprehension. In truth, things had been so good between them that she hadn’t wanted to risk tipping the scales by sharing a worry that had seemed groundless.

Yet in spite of her concern, being married to Max did make her incredibly happy. Oh, nothing was perfect, Tia conceded. He worked too many hours and he could be so preoccupied with business matters that he didn’t always hear what she said. He commuted daily by helicopter between the London headquarters of Grayson Industries and Redbridge Hall. Max hadn’t dared say it but she knew that he didn’t want her to find a job and for the moment she had put that ambition on hold because learning that her grandfather was living on borrowed time had changed her outlook.

Andrew had only months, not years, ahead of him and she was keen to make the most of what time he had left. She had been devastated when he’d finally confessed that he was terminally ill and initially angry with Max for not telling her sooner, but she had gradually come to understand that Andrew had wanted her homecoming to be a joyous occasion unclouded by anything distressing.

Tia also understood that it was the very strength of her feelings for Max that had enabled her to adapt to the awareness that her grandfather would not be in her life for much longer. Without Max’s support she would have been far more devastated at the prospect of that coming loss. In truth, she didn’t know when she had fallen for Max because he had been so very important to her from the first moment she had laid eyes on him. His first look, his first smile, his first kiss? It was as if he had cast a spell on her and bound her to him bone and sinew.

At the same time, Tia was painfully aware that Max didn’t love her back. Maybe she wasn’t the sort of woman who appealed to him on that higher level, she sometimes thought ruefully. In any case, Max kept his own emotions in check as if he feared them and she could hardly credit that he had decided love was not for him based on a distraught teenage girl’s betrayal. Didn’t he realise that everyone got hurt at some stage when it came to love?

Tia had loved her father long and undeservedly despite his cutting criticisms and lack of interest in her. She loved Max because he made her feel as though everything he did was for her benefit, whether it was asking Andrew’s cook to surprise her with a Brazilian meal or coming home with random little gifts for her that he just so happened to have stumbled on. A handbag the same colour as her eyes? A book he thought she might enjoy? A pendant with ninety-odd sparkling diamonds denoting the number of days they had been married? Max did nothing by halves and he took being a husband seriously. How could she fairly ask for more than that? How could she reasonably expect more from a man who had only proposed to her in the first place because there was a risk he could have got her pregnant?

And yet, unreasonable or not, Tia recognised that she had a very strong need to be loved. And for a husband whom she could confide anything in at any time. But Max’s very unwillingness to commit himself to that level of frankness had put barriers up between them and made Tia less open to sharing her own private insecurities and worries. Her parents’ lack of love had left her vulnerable and she suspected that Max had had a similar experience with his parents. Unfortunately, that same lack had left Tia craving love to feel secure while it had left Max denying his need for it and shutting the possibility out as being too risky.

Tia knew that she should not allow Max’s lack of enthusiasm for having a child to influence her thinking. But that was impossible, she thought unhappily. She knew she would prefer to have a family while she was still young but still wondered if being older would make her a better parent. Reminding herself that she could not do worse than her own parents had done with her, Tia swallowed hard. What sort of a mother would she be? Hopefully a better one than her own had been. But what if Inez’s inability to love Tia enough to keep her had been passed on to Tia? She shivered at that fear and prayed that she would be able to love her child like any normal mother.

But most daunting of all, what was she going to do if the man she loved genuinely didn’t want their baby? Fearful of that pessimistic worry taking control of her before she even had the chance to break that news to Max, Tia thrust it to the back of her mind and suppressed it hard.

She was hopelessly excited about the baby she carried, she conceded ruefully, daring to hope that, once Max got over the shock of her condition, he would feel the same. But starting a family was a life-altering event, she conceded afresh, and anxiety gripped her. She was only just learning how to live in the modern world and soon she would be responsible for guiding an innocent child through the same process. But she would have Max with her, she told herself urgently. Max had been everywhere, done everything. Max was her failsafe go-to whenever she needed help. But that made her dependent on him and she hated that reality because she didn’t think it was healthy for her to be forced to continually look to him for advice. It made her feel more like a child than an adult and she badly wanted to stand on her own feet. And sadly, she appreciated, a pregnancy was only going to make independence even more of an impossible challenge.

* * *

‘You look stunning,’ her grandfather told her warmly that evening as she climbed out of the limousine, hovering in spite of his objections while he was assisted from the vehicle at the side entrance to the big hotel.

Max had opted to stay in the city and change at his apartment before meeting them. He emerged to greet them, wonderfully tall, sleek and sophisticated in a dinner jacket and narrow black trousers that provided the ultimate presentation for his wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped, long-legged frame. Her breath snarled in her throat, familiar damp heat licking at the heart of her, as always her body and her senses clamouring on every level for Max’s attention. Sometimes she suspected that she was a shamelessly sexual woman and her colour rose as her eyes met the dark allure of his, her spine tingling as though he had touched her.

And then the moment was gone as one of the paparazzi who had been waiting in a clump at the front entrance came running to snatch a photo and, with Andrew’s nurse taking charge of the wheelchair, they hurried into the hotel.

‘That dress is sensational on you,’ Max husked, gazing down at her with hot dark eyes, the pulse at his groin a deeply unwelcome reminder of his susceptibility to his bride.