Tia calmed down. ‘I’d like to make a substantial donation to the convent to help the sisters with their work.’
Max nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘You can do whatever you like with your inheritance, bella mia. While you are with me, however, you will never need to use it,’ Max told her smoothly.
‘So, what’s mine is yours doesn’t cut both ways?’ Tia gathered stiffly.
‘I have a visceral need to keep my own wife. Call it the caveman in me,’ Max advised.
Tia breathed in deep and slow. They were not going to argue about money. He didn’t want what he saw as hers...fine! Seemingly he was well enough off to consider her inheritance as a cosy little nest egg barely worthy of excitement. ‘And what about when I find a job?’
Max looked at her in astonishment and an eyebrow elevated. ‘A job?’
‘Yes. I haven’t decided what I want to do yet but I do want to work. I’m not sure I want to do any more studying though,’ she admitted ruefully.
‘Take your time and think it over. Andrew supports several charities. Volunteer work could be a practical option for you to begin with,’ he suggested.
That night Tia came awake with a start when Max made a sound and she switched on the bedside light, only then registering that he was still asleep and clearly dreaming. The bedding was in a tangle round his long, powerful body, perspiration gleaming on his bronzed skin as he cried out again in Italian and in obvious distress. In dismay she shook his shoulder and voiced his name to waken him.
‘You were having a bad dream.’
Max threw himself back against the pillow, breathing rapidly and raking his fingers through his tousled black hair. ‘I don’t get bad dreams,’ he countered defensively.
‘You could talk to me about it,’ Tia told him ruefully, not believing that he didn’t get bad dreams for even a second. ‘I wouldn’t tell anyone else. You can trust me.’
‘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