as her father. Her lashes fluttered rapidly as she absorbed that new information, for it did put a different complexion on their situation. Clearly, Max felt he owed Andrew Grayson a debt for his kindness and did not feel that he could afford to rely on the older man to forgive or overlook any mistakes he made. Did Max think that getting entangled with Tia counted as a mistake? Suddenly, she was very much afraid that that was exactly how he viewed their passionate encounter.
‘Everything that I am today I owe to Andrew’s generosity,’ Max confessed harshly. ‘I don’t want to do anything that distresses him. He’s eighty and he’s...’ unusually he hesitated ‘...frail.’
‘Our getting married could distress him,’ Tia suggested.
‘No. Don’t forget that Andrew is from an earlier generation of men. He still sees marriage as the best source of happiness and security for a woman,’ Max told her flatly.
‘So, you’re willing to marry me simply on the off chance that I could conceive,’ Tia recapped. ‘I understand that but I would prefer a husband who wanted to marry me for a more conventional reason like love.’
‘I won’t lie to you,’ Max murmured in a tone of frustration. ‘I can’t offer you love. I was only in love once in my life when I was very young and I hated the effect it had on me. But I can promise to be caring and supportive...and, assuming it’s a normal marriage, faithful.’
Inwardly reeling from that declaration, Tia plonked herself down in a corner armchair and gazed back at him. Her body still ached from his possession and that spur of recollection sent a snaking coil of heat down into her pelvis when she studied his lean, strong face. She respected his honesty even if she didn’t like his embargo on love because she strongly suspected that, given sufficient time, she could fall for Maximiliano Leonelli like a ton of bricks. After all, he was offering her almost everything that she would eventually want...only she hadn’t wanted to find it quite so soon after leaving the convent.
She should have thought of that reality before she’d shared her body with him, she reflected guiltily, should have thought of who he was and who she was and how her grandfather might react to that intimate connection. But she hadn’t thought one sensible thought since Max had exploded into her safe little world, she conceded. He was lean and dark and beautiful and his sophistication and charisma had stolen her wits. She suspected that from the outset she had been behaving rather like an infatuated teenager, all overexcited and encouraging, wildly impulsive while never counting the cost. Or even considering the question of repercussions. What if she were to conceive a child?
Wasn’t that the real bottom line? Wasn’t she being horribly short-sighted and selfish when she thought regretfully of the freedom she had planned to embrace in England? The putative career choices and socialising she had dreamily envisaged? In their own way, weren’t such aspirations rather similar to the single-minded selfishness that had persuaded her own parents to abandon her? A dependent baby hadn’t fitted in with either her father or her mother’s plans. Once their marriage had broken down, Tia had become an unwelcome inconvenience to Paul and Inez Grayson. Was she to take the same attitude to her own baby, were there to be one?
Everything strong and ethical in Tia cried out against that attitude. If there was to be a baby, that baby’s needs should be placed central and first, not sacrificed to her self-interest. She would behave better than her parents had, she told herself urgently. She could make sacrifices if necessary and rearrange her own priorities if she became a mother. But naturally all of that would be easier to do if she had the father of her child by her side to help. Whether she liked to admit it or not, Max’s proposal could be a lifeline and one that she would very much need if she had a baby.
‘Can’t we wait and see if we have anything to worry about first?’ Tia asked, her colour high.
‘I don’t think we should risk your new life in England starting out under a cloud,’ Max admitted truthfully. ‘Your grandfather would be upset if we had to suddenly confess all and get married in a hurry. We could get married here in Rio and return to England as a couple. It would be easier.’
‘But it could also be quite unnecessary. I may not be pregnant,’ Tia pointed out uncomfortably.
‘And if that proves to be the case, we can reconsider our situation at a later date, free of all other concerns,’ Max stated with an almost imperceptible wince, thick lashes dropping down on his eyes to shield them from the strong light, his chiselled jaw line clenching at even the prospect of her conceiving.
Scolding herself for her preoccupation, Tia rose to switch off the lamps, so that the only light entering the bedroom was shared from the reception room next door in a wide triangle that plunged the bed and Max into semi-darkness.
‘Thanks,’ he sighed.
Tia drew in a decisive breath. ‘I’ll marry you if you honestly believe that that’s the best option we have. I don’t want to do anything to upset my grandfather either. After all, without his intervention, I would still be at the convent.’
Relieved by her assent, Max relaxed his wide naked shoulders and rested back on the pillows. ‘Use my room and go to bed now. It’s ridiculous that the doctor told you to sit here and keep me awake all night. Believe me, without my migraine medication I’m in too much discomfort to fall asleep.’
‘I’m not leaving you alone,’ Tia answered stiffly. ‘If I’m going to be your wife, it’s my duty to look after you.’
‘Don’t kill me with enthusiasm,’ Max quipped, cringing behind that humour at the label of ‘wife’ but far more unnerved by the prospect of a pregnancy.
After all, Max had never planned to have a child. Ever. He didn’t want to pass on what he saw as his murky genes. He didn’t want to face the challenge of being a father when his own had been such a monster. All he had ever wanted was a reasonably peaceful, solitary and successful life. But between them Andrew and Tia had tripped him up, thrusting a giant spoke into his structured and controlled existence, throwing up worries and vulnerabilities he had never had to face before. He didn’t want to brood about that misfortune though. Life was always challenging, he reminded himself impatiently. And most men would not consider a very beautiful, very sexy wife a burden...
Why did he have to be different? But he knew the answer, didn’t he? Born of violence, he didn’t want to take the risk of forming a permanent relationship with a woman or having a child of his own because he could never quite trust himself, could he?
As his ever vigilant and distrustful aunt had often reminded him, ‘Who knows what you’ll be like when you grow up? I can only do my best with you but blood can tell in the next generation, and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that your father was a brute and your mother was delusional.’ It had been one of Carina’s favourite speeches and it had ensured that Max never once forgot his sordid start in life.
Unaware of her future husband’s bleak thoughts and falling far short of her duty of care as a potential wife, Tia dozed off, exhausted by the day she had had. When she wakened it was late into the morning and she was no longer in the chair, she was lying on the bed with a cover thrown over her, and Max was nowhere to be seen. Assuming he had returned to his own room, she went for a shower, revelling in the refreshing beat of the water against her skin, so very different from the weak lukewarm trickle that had purported to be a shower at the convent. Reluctant to put on her crumpled clothing again, she made use of the fleecy robe on the back of the door and emerged, stilling when she saw Max, fully dressed and apparently restored to normality, in the bedroom doorway.
‘Can you get dressed quickly? I’ve ordered breakfast for you
