‘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.’
Teddy slept outside their bedroom door that night because his humans didn’t emerge. The next night he sneaked in and slept under the bed until his snoring alerted Max to his presence and he got thrown out in the early hours. The third night he sat outside the door crying and gained entry by taxing Max’s patience. He was satisfied with that advance in his campaign but his ambition was set on regaining his rightful place back in the bed and he was a very determined little dog.
* * *
Two and a half years later, Tia studied the traditional Brazilian Christmas cake she had baked for Max. It was his favourite and that was saying something because he liked all her cakes. She had started up another branch of Salsa Cakes at Redbridge and it was thriving and providing more employment on the estate. Her cousin, Ronnie, had become her closest friend and, keen to have a job now that her children were all at school, she did the accounts for Salsa Cakes.
Tia was always very busy, but then she liked to be busy if she could take time off when she needed it to be with Max. And now that they had a wonderful nanny, time off was no longer a problem. She had done a part-time course on estate management to help her to run Redbridge but she had taken up other interests as well. She raised funds for the convent orphanage and did community work at various charitable events and, with Max as an advisor, had set up a workshop at the settlement for handicrafts and toiletries made from Amazonian plants. The convent was thriving and she made regular visits back to her former home. As a rule, she and Max ended those trips with a self-indulgent few days relaxing in Rio.
In a few weeks, her mother, Inez, was marrying for the third time and Tia was attending the wedding. She was looking forward to spending some time with her two half-brothers and her half-sister. Inez had finally agreed to tell her children about Tia’s existence and that had considerably enhanced Tia’s attitude to her mother. Since then she had met her mother’s second family on several occasions and they all got on well. As for her mother, well, she knew she was never going to be close to the older woman for they had nothing in common but at least they were now on relaxed and friendly terms.
Of course, Tia already had her own snug little family with Max and Sancha. Sancha was a lively toddler on the brink of starting nursery school and Tia had decided that it was finally time to think of having another child. A baby was now on the way, the well-defined bump of her pregnancy reminding Tia of that fact every time she bent over a table and found her stomach was in the way. The new addition to the family would arrive in the new year. Max was very excited. He said there was more of her to hold and he seemed to like that. In fact, Tia thought cheerfully, Max seemed to relish every change that signified her advancing pregnancy. Where she saw fat, Max saw voluptuousness and he couldn’t keep his hands off her.
Not that that was anything new in their marriage, Tia reflected with a heightening of colour in her cheeks. Sometimes she wondered if it was because they had come so close to losing each other that they never dared to forget how lucky they were to be together. And these days she could think without the smallest resentment that her grandfather had picked a very fine husband for her. Max was a terrific father, a great husband and a real family man, which was a wonderful trait to find in a male who had never enjoyed a proper family of his own.
The past no longer bothered Max. He had moved on from his sense of secret shame, learning that he could be whatever he wanted to be if he worked hard enough at it. He had set up an executive team to help him run Grayson Industries and was no longer so constantly on call. Unlike his mentor, Andrew, who had never spent much time with his two sons and whose relationship with them had suffered accordingly, Max put family first and work second.
It was Christmas Eve and Tia twitched the nativity scene in the hall into place with care. She had incorporated some Brazilian traditions into their Christmases. Now she sat down by the fire to await Max’s return, Teddy at her feet and Sancha pretending to read very importantly from one of her picture books.
Max breezed through the front door festooned with packages. Sancha dived at him, telling him about her day while Teddy bounced at his feet, joining in the excitement but not actually greeting Max. Max smiled at her, his wide charismatic smile that never failed to light her up like a firework inside. Her beautiful Max.
‘You look...amazing,’ Max told her truthfully, because she did and he could never quite believe that she was his, his to hold and keep. In a black stretchy dress that hugged her shapely form, blonde hair bouncing on her slim shoulders, cornflower eyes sparkling, she took his breath away.
There was no end to the advantages of being married to Tia, Max thought complacently. There were the cakes, cakes to die for. There was Sancha and a second child on the way. There was the sheer joy of living with Tia’s sunny, positive nature and her boundless energy. Sometimes he couldn’t credit that one woman could transform his life as much as she had and he was tempted to pinch himself to be certain he hadn’t dreamt his perfect woman up. There was something wonderfully reassuring about the arms Tia wrapped round him while the enthusiasm of her response to his kiss travelled straight to another spot.
Max surfaced abstractedly from that kiss to see their nanny taking Sancha off for her tea and Tia clasped her hand in his and led him up the stairs. ‘I thought we were having Christmas cake,’ he said weakly.
‘After supper,’ his wife told him repressively. ‘We’re on a timetable. We’re going to Midnight Mass later.’
‘And after...?’ Max ran glittering dark golden eyes over her lovely face and exhaled with pleasurable anticipation. ‘I love you, Mrs Leonelli...even when you dictate when I can eat cake.’
‘The rules are for Sancha.