LITMIR.BIZ

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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 that higher level, she sometimes thought ruefully. In any case, Max kept his own emotions in check as if he feared them and she could hardly credit that he had decided love was not for him based on a distraught teenage girl’s betrayal. Didn’t he realise that everyone got hurt at some stage when it came to love?

      Tia had loved her father long and undeservedly despite his cutting criticisms and lack of interest in her. She loved Max because he made her feel as though everything he did was for her benefit, whether it was asking Andrew’s cook to surprise her with a Brazilian meal or coming home with random little gifts for her that he just so happened to have stumbled on. A handbag the same colour as her eyes? A book he thought she might enjoy? A pendant with ninety-odd sparkling diamonds denoting the number of days they had been married? Max did nothing by halves and he took being a husband seriously. How could she fairly ask for more than that? How could she reasonably expect more from a man who had only proposed to her in the first place because there was a risk he could have got her pregnant?

      And yet, unreasonable or not, Tia recognised that she had a very strong need to be loved. And for a husband whom she could confide anything in at any time. But Max’s very unwillingness to commit himself to that level of frankness had put barriers up between them and made Tia less open to sharing her own private insecurities and worries. Her parents’ lack of love had left her vulnerable and she suspected that Max had had a similar experience with his parents. Unfortunately, that same lack had left Tia craving love to feel secure while it had left Max denying his need for it and shutting the possibility out as being too risky.

      Tia knew that she should not allow Max’s lack of enthusiasm for having a child to influence her thinking. But that was impossible, she thought unhappily. She knew she would prefer to have a family while she was still young but still wondered if being older would make her a better parent. Reminding herself that she could not do worse than her own parents had done with her, Tia swallowed hard. What sort of a mother would she be? Hopefully a better one than her own had been. But what if Inez’s inability to love Tia enough to keep her had been passed on to Tia? She shivered at that fear and prayed that she would be able to love her child like any normal mother.

      But most daunting of all, what was she going to do if the man she loved genuinely didn’t want their baby? Fearful of that pessimistic worry taking control of her before she even had the chance to break that news to Max, Tia thrust it to the back of her mind and suppressed it hard.

      She was hopelessly excited about the baby she carried, she conceded ruefully, daring to hope that, once Max got over the shock of her condition, he would feel the same. But starting a family was a life-altering event, she conceded afresh, and anxiety gripped her. She was only just learning how to live in the modern world and soon she would be responsible for guiding an innocent child through the same process. But she would have Max with her, she told herself urgently. Max had been everywhere, done everything. Max was her failsafe go-to whenever she needed help. But that made her dependent on him and she hated that reality because she didn’t think it was healthy for her to be forced to continually look to him for advice. It made her feel more like a child than an adult and she badly wanted to stand on her own feet. And sadly, she appreciated, a pregnancy was only going to make independence even more of an impossible challenge.

      * * *

      ‘You look stunning,’ her grandfather told her warmly that evening as she climbed out of the limousine, hovering in spite of his objections while he was assisted from the vehicle at the side entrance to the big hotel.

      Max had opted to stay in the city and change at his apartment before meeting them. He emerged to greet them, wonderfully tall, sleek and sophisticated in a dinner jacket and narrow black trousers that provided the ultimate presentation for his wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped, long-legged frame. Her breath snarled in her throat, familiar damp heat licking at the heart of her, as always her body and her senses clamouring on every level for Max’s attention. Sometimes she suspected that she was a shamelessly sexual woman and her colour rose as her eyes met the dark allure of his, her spine tingling as though he had touched her.

      And then the moment was gone as one of the paparazzi who had been waiting in a clump at the front entrance came running to snatch a photo and, with Andrew’s nurse taking charge of the wheelchair, they hurried into the hotel.

      ‘That dress is sensational on you,’ Max husked, gazing down at her with hot dark eyes, the pulse at his groin a deeply unwelcome reminder of his susceptibility to his bride.

      He needed to pull back from Tia; he knew that. He knew that he needed to pull back and give her space. In a few months’ time without Andrew around Tia might decide she wanted her freedom and there would be little point him craving then what he could no longer have. Was that why he had to have her every night? Why going one night without her felt like deprivation of the worst kind? Her hunger matched his though, he reminded himself stubbornly. The need was mutual. And being hooked on sex wasn’t that dangerous a weakness, was it?

      Tia caught at his sleeve. ‘I have something to tell you,’ she whispered, needing to share, wanting him to demonstrate the same joy that had been growing in her since she’d first learned that she was carrying their first child.

      She had wasted so much energy tormenting herself with doubts and insecurities while all the time her deep abiding pleasure at the prospect of becoming a mother was quietly building on another level. She was going to have Max’s baby and she was happy about that development and, now that the opportunity had come, she suddenly couldn’t wait to share her news.

      ‘We’ve got official photos first,’ Max warned her.

      So, they posed and smiled with Andrew to mark the occasion and then, Andrew safely stowed in the company of old friends, Max began to introduce her to what felt like hundreds of people. She set her champagne glass down and quietly asked the waiter for a soft drink while she waited for her moment to tell Max about their child.

      The moment came during a lull in the music when everybody was standing around chatting and, for the first time, they were miraculously alone. ‘Remember I said I had something to tell you?’ Tia whispered.

      Lashes as dark and lustrous as black lace lifted on level dark golden eyes and he lifted his chin in casual acknowledgment. ‘I’m listening.’

      ‘I’m pregnant,’ Tia told him baldly.

      And beneath her gaze Max turned paper pale below his bronzed skin, his facial muscles jerking taut to throw his hard bone structure into shocking prominence. ‘Are you serious?’ he pressed in disbelief. ‘How can you be? You were clear—’

      ‘No. We thought I was and we were wrong.’

      Max was shattered and struggling to hide the fact. She had conceived? Although his brain knew better, he had always subconsciously supposed that a pregnancy was unlikely after a single sexual encounter. He had simply assumed it wasn’t going to happen, had been convinced by the evidence that they were safe from that threat and he had relaxed. And now that she was cheerfully assuring him that it had happened he had no prepared strategy of how to behave to fall back on in his hour of need. And it was his hour of need, Max registered sickly as an image of his thuggish father’s face swam before his eyes and momentarily bereft him of breath. Like a punch in the gut, he had once seen his father’s hated image every time he closed his eyes to go to sleep, his father, his bogeyman, the memory of brutality that had haunted him since the dreadful night his mother had died.

      ‘But you can’t be sure yet,’ Max assumed, grasping hopefully at straws. ‘Surely it’s too soon to be sure? You’ll have to see a doctor.’

      ‘I saw a doctor this morning.

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