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her.

      ‘Maddie was joking, for goodness’ sake,’ Tia declared, wishing that that were true of her former best friend but no longer quite sure because she felt as if she was learning the hard way that four years could change a friend into someone she barely recognised.

      ‘No, she wasn’t,’ Afonso insisted, still unwilling to accept that no meant no in Tia’s case as he pulled her against him with a possessive and determined hand.

      He was drenched in cologne and she could hardly breathe that close to him. She gave him a dispassionate glance, hating the swimming sensation in her head from the alcohol she had already told Madalena she didn’t want to drink. Not because she was stuffy and prim, as Maddie had insisted she was. She had refused more alcohol as soon as she’d felt her body overreacting to that second large drink. No, indeed: the very last thing Tia wanted to risk was getting drunk at a wild party full of strangers, none of whom she felt she could rely on.

      It was ironic that she wasn’t having anything like the fun she had once assumed such social events delivered when she was younger. Fun, she rather thought now, depended on the company you were in and she knew she was in the wrong company. Losing her virginity with some stranger on a night out had no appeal for her. Maddie, however, had decided it was a terrific idea, pointing out that the first time was always ‘rubbish’ for a woman. Tia had said nothing because that conversation had taken place in a group setting and she had been embarrassed at having her sexual ignorance talked about in public as if it were solely a subject for amusement.

      Nothing with Maddie had gone as Tia had planned and hoped. When she had phoned Maddie that afternoon, the brunette had invited her over that very evening and Tia had naively pictured a chatty session of catching up. When she’d arrived, though, Maddie had already been entertaining a bunch of friends and the first thing she had done was insist that Tia borrow some of her party clothes to go out with them. Stripped of her jeans and tee, Tia had found herself being crammed into tight satin shorts and a backless top, both garments exposing far more of her body than she was comfortable with. But the other women had been wearing similar outfits and she had wanted so desperately to try to fit in and not be the party pooper Maddie had suggested she was that she had kept her reservations to herself.

      Maddie was engaged to a handsome young businessman. Unhappily the couple had vanished within minutes of arriving at the party, lumbering Tia with Afonso and his sidekicks, whose only topic of conversation appeared to be dirty, rather infantile jokes. Before Maddie had finally abandoned her, however, Tia had seen a scattering of powder below her school friend’s nose and had suspected that she was using drugs, which probably explained her unfamiliar highly extroverted and bad-tempered behaviour.

      ‘So where exactly are we here?’ Tia asked again.

      ‘Why do you keep on asking me that? I don’t know the address. It belongs to Domingos Paredes. We’re in Jardim Botânico. It’s an exclusive residential area.’ Afonso trailed a suggestive hand down her bare back, making her shudder. ‘Play your cards right and you could end up swanning around a house like this. I bet there’s nothing you want more than to be a wife and a mother. Some guys go for that. Come on...stop being such a prude.’

      ‘I’m not a prude,’ Tia argued as Afonso backed her up against the wall. ‘I don’t feel that way about you.’

      ‘But you haven’t even given me a try,’ Afonso protested, hands roving all over her and trying to go in for a kiss but stymied by the manner in which Tia hastily jerked her head away.

      ‘Let go of me!’ she told him with sudden loud, angry emphasis. ‘I don’t have to put up with this if I don’t want to!’

      Afonso backed away a step and swore viciously at her. ‘You’re a freak,’ he told her nastily. ‘Nothing but a damned freak!’

      As the young Brazilian stalked back into the crowded main room of the party in a rage of wounded vanity, Tia was trembling and tears were burning the backs of her eyes, making them throb. She walked towards the back of the big house, stepping over prone bodies and entwined couples to escape the worst of the noise. On the terrace she dug out her new mobile phone with a shaking hand and rang Max, who had programmed his number in.

      ‘I want to come back to the hotel,’ she told him chokily.

      ‘What’s the address?’ Max queried. ‘Has something happened?’

      ‘I’m at a party and someone called me a freak. It’s probably the truth,’ she told him in a shaky rush. ‘I don’t know the address but I know who the house belongs to and the area. I can’t get a taxi because I have no money.’

      ‘I’ll find out where you are and pick you up as soon as I can.’

      ‘I’ll wait outside.’

      ‘No, stay indoors where it’s safe,’ Max instructed. ‘And calm down.’

      Ashamed of the tears blurring her vision and what felt like her general uselessness as the strong independent woman she was determined to be, Tia approached a female in the bathroom queue and finally asked for the address, which she duly passed on to Max.

      ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Maddie demanded of her in the hall. ‘And what did you do to poor Afonso? When I last saw him, he was really into you.’

      ‘I wasn’t into him.’

      ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re all moving on now to this great club.’

      ‘I’m going back to the hotel, but thanks for bringing me out,’ Tia said very politely.

      ‘Mother Sancha did a real number on you, didn’t she? You really don’t know how to enjoy yourself at all,’ Maddie declared pityingly. ‘If I’m honest I always thought you’d join the flock.’

      ‘I never had a vocation,’ Tia admitted, wondering how long it would take for Max to arrive and sitting down on a chair by the wall because she was light-headed. ‘But I’ll admit that I don’t know how to enjoy myself the way you do. I’ll return these clothes back to you tomorrow.’

      ‘Oh, don’t be silly. I won’t wear them again after you’ve worn them,’ Maddie confessed with a little moue of distaste at the idea. ‘I’d only be dumping them.’

      Tia reddened and nodded, more uncomfortable than ever. In the convent, they had utilised and recycled everything possible. ‘I’ll collect my jeans,’ she said stubbornly. ‘They’re my very first pair.’

      ‘And that says it all really, doesn’t it?’ Maddie said almost sadly as she walked on by.

      Her colour fluctuating, Tia thought about Max and admitted that what she had felt in his arms had also told her all she needed to know. After all, once he had kissed her she had immediately known that she didn’t want anyone else kissing her. But what if on his terms it had merely been a casual kiss? Of the same sort that Afonso had offered? How did she tell the difference? How did she know?

      All that she knew was that Max’s mouth on hers had been the most glorious and exhilarating feeling she had ever experienced and she literally couldn’t wait for him to do it again. But would he want to do it again? And how did a woman encourage a man to make that kind of advance without being brazen about it? She was mortified to acknowledge that she would have gone into a bedroom with Max without a word of protest. What did that mean about her? That the convent teaching of purity before marriage had hit stony ground when it came to her? Or that while she was aware of that moral ideal, it was only an ideal and she was equally well aware that many people experimented with sex before marriage?

      Max was in the back of a limousine speeding through the Jardim Botânico area and he felt like the biggest bastard in the world. He was supposed to be taking care of Tia but he had no experience of looking after anyone and, clearly, he’d fallen at the first hurdle. Instead of accompanying her to her friend’s house, he had let her go alone and he had not even ensured that she had money with her. Admittedly he had first established that Madalena Perez was the daughter of a respected diplomat and seemed a safe companion. Although it hadn’t

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