‘No. I want to be involved whenever I can be.’ Gleaming dark golden eyes locked to her, Max slid upright and stretched indolently, long sleek muscles flexing below his shirt as he reached for his jacket. ‘You need to see that we can do this better together and that I can be as committed to Sancha as you are. I don’t plan to work eighteen-hour days any more, not now I have both of you back in my life. That is a fair assumption, isn’t it?’ he pressed tautly. ‘You are...back?’
‘Yes, I’m back,’ Tia murmured, torn up inside by the sudden flash of insecurity she read in his strained gaze. He wasn’t sure of her yet, didn’t quite trust that she would go the distance, and she didn’t think she could blame him for that.
It was two days before they got away from her house, two days of frantic packing and planning with Hilary, who would manage Salsa Cakes and in due course open the tea room with Tia’s financial backing. Max made himself very useful thrashing out the business details.
Late season snow was falling softly as they drew up outside Redbridge Hall. The trees were frosted white and the air was icy cold. When Tia walked into the spacious hall where a fire was burning merrily in the grate, she felt as if she was coming home for the first time.
‘It’s our first wedding anniversary,’ Max reminded her with satisfaction.
‘My goodness, is it?’ Tia exclaimed, mortified that she had forgotten.
‘I’m afraid that because I didn’t know you would be here I haven’t made any special preparations.’
‘That’s OK. Just us being here together is enough,’ Tia whispered as they went upstairs with Janette, the housekeeper, to see the room that had been prepared for their daughter.
‘It’ll need decorating,’ Max grumbled.
‘It’s perfect,’ Tia insisted, able to see how much work the staff had put in trying to make an adult bedroom look suitable for a baby. A very large and handsome antique cot had been refurbished with a new mattress and, laid on it, Sancha looked little bigger than a doll. Tia rummaged through her bags of baby essentials until she had located everything she needed to make her daughter feel comfortable.
‘We should hire a nanny to help out,’ Max suggested. ‘We stayed home every evening while Andrew was ill because we didn’t want to leave him alone but I’d like to get back to having a social life and sometimes you’ll be staying in my London apartment. We need that extra flexibility.’
Tia nodded thoughtfully. While she couldn’t imagine having a nanny, she did want to spend as much time as possible with Max. The life they had led during the first months of their marriage had been limited by her grandfather’s infirmity and they had rarely gone out.
Max dropped a hand to her spine and walked her into their bedroom. ‘I had this room updated. It was dark and dreary before.’
‘But very grand,’ she conceded, scanning the lighter colour scheme with approval. ‘This is an improvement.’
‘I do have one gift for you,’ Max murmured, indicating the wrapped package on the bed.
Tia smiled and began to rip the fancy paper off to expose an exceptionally pretty framed picture.
‘It’s the Grayson family tree,’ Max murmured. ‘I thought you would enjoy seeing exactly where you come from and who your forebears were.’
The names had been done in exquisite calligraphy, and hand-painted flowers decorated the borders. It was a thoughtful, meaningful gift and her heart turned over inside her because the information on her own family tree was exactly the kind of information she had been denied all her life when her father had insisted that her curiosity was foolish because she would never even travel to England.
‘It’s really beautiful, Max. Thank you,’ she whispered sincerely. ‘This means a lot to me. I like what you’ve had done to this room as well.’
‘I haven’t used it since you left. I came back here every weekend. It gave the staff a reason for being here.’
Tia studied his lean, strong face. ‘I haven’t thanked you for that yet...for looking after things for me.’
‘That’s my job. That’s what I do. All my working life I have taken care of stuff for other people...their money, their businesses. But when it’s for you, it’s a little bit more special and it doesn’t feel like work,’ Max volunteered.
‘Why is that...do you think?’ Tia prompted hopefully.
Max glanced at her in surprise. ‘You’re my wife and this is your home.’
‘This is your home too,’ Tia reminded him. ‘When we got married I had nothing and you’re not the housekeeper’s nephew any more. You’re the man Andrew chose to run Grayson Industries and the man he asked to marry me.’
‘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.’
‘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