Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy

‘No regrets there,’ Max breathed. ‘Not now I’ve got you back again.’

‘You honestly don’t regret marrying me?’

‘How could I regret it? There is some stuff I regret,’ Max admitted reluctantly, his lean, darkly handsome face grave. ‘Mainly that I had to rush you into marriage, but I hate that I missed out on you being pregnant and that I wasn’t by your side when you had Sancha.’

‘I thought you’d be very uncomfortable with all that,’ she confided.

‘Why would I be when you were carrying our child?’ Max asked simply. ‘Maybe some day you’ll consider having another baby and we’ll share everything then right from the start.’

‘Maybe in a year or so... I think I would find it all a lot less scary with you by my side,’ Tia admitted, touched by the source of his regret and his evident hope that they would have another child. ‘You know, it may not seem like it but... I love you very much, Max.’

&n

bsp; ‘You already know how I feel about you and it didn’t keep you with me, amata mia,’ Max murmured in a roughened undertone.

‘What do you mean, I already know?’ Tia asked in bewilderment.

‘I told you the day of the funeral that there would never be another woman for me, that you were “it” for me, as it were,’ he completed very awkwardly.

‘You said I was the icing and the cake,’ Tia recalled abstractedly, totally thrown by what he was saying. ‘Did you mean that you had fallen in love with me?’

‘What else would I mean by that?’ Max demanded, as if she were the one with faulty understanding. ‘Dio mio, I admitted that I couldn’t stand the thought of losing you, that I didn’t want any other man to have even a chance to take you from me. What else would I have meant?’

Tia gave him a tearful appraisal. ‘I didn’t get it...don’t you understand? If I’d known you loved me, I would never have left. I thought you were talking about sex.’

‘The sex is spectacular but nothing is as spectacular as just having you in my life, having you to come home to and having you smile at me. Are you sincerely saying that you wouldn’t have left if I’d used the word “love”? I gave you a pendant with a diamond for every day we’d been married. Didn’t that say it for me? Surely it was obvious how I felt?’ Max was studying her with rampant incredulity. ‘I could feel you slipping away from me that week. I was panicking and then the will was read and Andrew had stabbed me in the back and made everything impossible.’

A sob convulsed Tia’s throat. ‘Oh, Max, I don’t care about the money. I never cared about the money. I don’t even know what to do with it or how to take care of Grayson Industries. All I ever wanted was you and I’ve spent months breaking my heart for you and trying to have a life without you...and I hated my life without you! But I wouldn’t admit that even to myself.’

‘Tia... Tia...’ Max framed her distressed face with trembling hands. ‘It was love at first sight for me. I had no control over my feelings. I wanted you at any cost but I felt like a bastard for taking you to bed so quickly and then pushing you into a marriage you weren’t really ready for. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to make you happy and persuade you to stay with me. I need you.’

‘I need you too,’ Tia said chokily and flung herself into his arms. ‘Love at first sight and you never even mentioned it!’

‘I don’t talk about stuff like that. You’d have thought I was mentally unstable if I’d told you at the time because we hardly knew each other,’ Max argued vehemently.

‘Then I was mentally unstable too!’ Tia told him, covering his disconcerted face with kisses. ‘I felt the same. Max... Max, I love you to the moon and back.’

‘Loved you through all nine miserable months of your absence,’ Max confessed grittily. ‘Thought...just my luck to fall for a bolter.’

‘I swear that I will never leave you again!’ Tia told him passionately as he settled her down on the bed while Teddy scratched unavailingly at the door.

‘You love me...and yet you still left me,’ Max marvelled in bewilderment. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I wanted our baby to have a loving father and I didn’t think you wanted to be one. I also thought that possibly you felt trapped, getting married at Andrew’s instigation and then me falling pregnant immediately.’

‘I wouldn’t have married you if I hadn’t fallen for you like a ton of bricks. I knew what Andrew wanted but I’m my own man and I make my own decisions...and then I met this incredible Brazilian angel...well, angel-like,’ Max adjusted as she wrestled him out of his jacket. ‘And the writing was on the wall from that moment. One look and you owned me body and soul. One look and I knew I’d never want another woman again.’

‘But you didn’t show it and you didn’t say it either,’ Tia lamented. ‘You’ve got to say the words for a woman to hear.’

Max said it in Italian because she startled him by ripping his shirt open.

‘No, I don’t know Italian. Say it in English,’ she urged.

‘You’ve come over all bossy,’ Max commented warily.

‘Please say it...’ Tia urged, stroking a long muscular thigh encouragingly.

‘I love you.’ Max kept on saying it because the reward was Tia’s full attention and her desire to incessantly touch him where he was very keen to be touched. ‘But I didn’t recognise that what I felt was love until it was too late.’