Best Modern Romances Of The Year 2017

CHAPTER NINE

NINE MONTHS AFTER Tia’s disappearance, Max finished the last phone call and stared at his desk. The Reverend Mother had promised him she would get in touch if she heard anything from Tia and she had not. Inez Santos had snarled down the phone that she had still not heard from her daughter and had no desire to hear from her. Ronnie had never been in a position to offer him any helpful leads. Tia had not confided in anyone.

The trail, such as it was, was dead. Tia had departed in a taxi with one suitcase and Teddy. The taxi had taken her to the railway station from where she had travelled to London. A couple of weeks later there had been a possible sighting of her on a train heading to Devon. He supposed that he should at least be grateful that she had inherited her grandmother’s money and was presumably making use of it. At least it meant that she was not destitute. But she had not once used the credit cards that he had given her or attempted to access the substantial private income that Andrew had set up for her. No, she had rejected everything Max and Andrew had given her and walked away.

Every line of the letter she had left behind haunted Max. It had been so blunt, so honest. You don’t really want me. That said all that needed to be said in terms of his performance as a husband, didn’t it? He had been married to Tia for over three months and that was the impression she had taken away from the experience. You married me to please Andrew. No, he hadn’t but he needed to find her to tell her that. You don’t want to be a father. Well, she had got that right. You don’t want our baby. She had got that wrong. He had climbed aboard that man train where you acted strong rather than admit fear and ambiguity and he had shot himself in the foot. Tia didn’t understand because he hadn’t told her what she needed to know to understand. And now it was too late.

Max lifted his chin, his formidable bone structure grim. It would never be too late because he would not give up. When something truly mattered to him, he refused to accept defeat. Somehow, sooner or later, he would find some small piece of information that would lead him to his runaway bride and he would then face his biggest challenge—persuading her to come home. Her and Teddy and hopefully their child. Had she had a safe delivery?

But he reckoned bringing his little family home to Redbridge—if all had gone well—would be the toughest challenge he had ever faced. Tia, after all, had never truly wanted to marry him. She hadn’t wanted to be tied down to a husband and if she had made the best of it for a few months he should be grateful for small mercies. She had wanted her freedom and now she had taken it. What nagged at Max most of all was the insidious suspicion that, had he moved more slowly with Tia, she would have wanted to stay married to him.

* * *

Tia tenderly zipped Sancha Mariana Leonelli back into her sleeping bag and tucked her back into her cot where she would sleep while her mother baked.

Motherhood was very different from what Tia had expected. She had not been remotely prepared for the intense joy that flooded her when she initially saw her infant daughter’s little face or for the anxiety that rocked her when Sancha got her first cold. After three months of being a mum, however, she had become a little more laid-back but she could still get emotional. When Sancha opened the dark liquid eyes that she had inherited from her father along with his blue-black hair, Tia’s heart clenched and her eyes sometimes stung because she was learning that time did not heal every pain.

Even nine months away from Max had failed to cure her heartache. Yet during those months of independence she had discovered so many enjoyable things and she had worked hard to make the days go past more quickly. But neither the satisfaction of a walk in sunlit frosted fields nor hard work had made her miss Max one atom less.

She had missed him worst of all when she gave birth to Sancha. Having attended a pre-natal class and made some friends, she had not been entirely alone at the hospital, but the absence of the man she loved had made her feel painfully isolated. Yet she knew that was ironic when Max had wanted neither her nor their child and would, had he but known it, have been very grateful to avoid the hullabaloo of childbirth and the chaotic aftermath of learning how to live with a newborn.

She had made friends when she moved to the picturesque village with the ancient church. In summer the village was busy with tourists. She had bought a little corner terraced house that came with an attached tea room, which she planned to open as a business in the spring. During the winter, she had baked traditional Brazilian cakes to offer at a church sale, and when the requests had come in for birthday cakes and fancy desserts she had fulfilled them and had ended up taking orders and eventually charging for the service. Before she knew where she was she was selling them like proverbial hotcakes and barely able to keep up with the demand.

Tia marvelled that a talent she had not even recognised as a talent was now providing her with a good living. She had learned to bake at Sister Mariana’s side and the fabulous cakes she produced had once provided an evening treat at the convent. Her repertoire ran from coconut cake to passion fruit mousse cake and back to peach pound cake, which could be sliced and toasted for breakfast and served with fruit and cream. She planned to make her cakes the mainstay of her offerings at the tea room when it opened and, that in mind, she had hired a local woman to work with her.

Hilary was an energetic brunette and a terrific baker. Experienced in catering, she had helped Tia deal with suppliers and customers and had helped her work through the stringent health and safety regulations that had to be passed before the reopening of the tea shop could be achieved.

‘Sancha is already sleeping through the night for you,’ Hilary remarked enviously, the mother of a rumbustious boy, who was still disturbing her nights at three years old.

‘And I am transformed,’ Tia responded with a roll of her eyes. ‘I was run pretty ragged the first couple of months. Just getting myself up in the morning was a challenge. I couldn’t have done all this without you.’

‘No, you couldn’t have done it without your incredible cakes,’ Hilary countered with a wry smile. ‘Not many women could have achieved as much as you have in a few short months. Certainly not as a preggers mum-to-be on her own. Do you think your husband will eventually want to come and visit?’

‘I don’t know,’ Tia said awkwardly, wishing that she had found it possible to lie to Hilary and pretend that Sancha was the result of a one-night stand. Instead she had found herself admitting that her marriage had broken down when she had revealed her pregnancy to a man who was less than keen on fatherhood. ‘Tea?’

‘Even if he wasn’t that keen on being a dad, he’s bound to be curious. I think you should consider giving him a chance,’ Hilary reasoned, settling at the table with her tea and some paperwork. ‘But then what do I know? I didn’t do so well with my own marriage.’

Tia stared out of the window while she drank her own tea and brooded over the unsettling thoughts that Hilary had awakened. Sancha was Max’s daughter as well. Had she given Max a fair chance in the parenting stakes? She knew she hadn’t given him a chance at all. Despite his lack of enthusiasm over her pregnancy, wasn’t there at least a possibility that his reservations would have melted away once he saw his baby daughter in the flesh? And just when was she planning to give him that chance?

Why was it that she hadn’t thought about what was fair to Max nine months ago? She had made her deductions and acted on them in the heat of emotion, which was never wise. Everything had happened so fast: her marriage and her pregnancy, Andrew’s death and his will and her unsettling encounter with her mother, when once again she had been forced to recognise that she was the child of a woman who chilled her. Would she still have walked out on Max if she had taken the time to think through events more calmly? Might she not have decided that talking to Max and giving him a fair hearing would be a more reasonable approach? More and more, Tia’s conscience warned her that she had not so much walked out as run away from a situation that had made her feel trapped and powerless.

And whether she liked it or not, Sancha was Max’s baby too. She had ignored his rights, favouring her own. And what about the divorce he probably wanted now? He would want his freedom back and the opportunity to move on with his life, but the vanishing act she had pulled would make that process even more difficult.

Tia was ashamed of the truth that she didn’t want to give Max a divorce and see him move on to another woman. How could she be that selfish? Hadn’t she walked away? He was entitled to his freedom if he wanted it. Not that he so far seemed to have taken much advantage of their separation, she conceded. Max had led quite an active life on the social scene before he met her, for she had checked him out on the Internet and, from what she had been able to establish since then, if Max had returned to his former lifestyle he was being very discreet about it. Of course, she had made that awkward for him too because he was neither single nor even officially separated from her.

And just as Tia had taken charge of her life nine months earlier she recognised that she had to come out of hiding now and face the music. It was time for her to stand up and deal with the challenges she had been avoiding. The very first step of that process, she acknowledged ruefully, would be contacting Max.

While Hilary was enjoying her tea, Tia pulled out her phone and before she could lose her nerve she accessed Max’s phone number on her phone, attached a photo of Sancha to it and texted him her address as well as the name she had been using to avoid detection. For the sake of anonymity, she was known as Tia Ramos locally. Ramos had been her mother’s maiden name.

Max received that text in the middle of a business meeting and his rage knew no bounds as he scrutinised his first blurry picture of his daughter, Sancha. She looked at the camera with big dark eyes, her tiny face astonishingly serious for a baby. Sancha Leonelli, Max was thinking in wonderment, until he read the full text message from his runaway wife and registered on a fresh tide of threatening fury that Tia had cast off the Leonelli name as entirely as she had cast off her husband. A blasted text! Not even a phone call. Was that all he rated after a nine-month silence? Nine months of unceasing worry that would have slaughtered a lesser man? A text... Max gritted his even white teeth, launched upright and strode out without even an apology for his departure. He had a wife to deal with.

Tia was slightly surprised when Max did not respond to her message. Had he changed his number? Moved on from their marriage to the extent that he did not feel her text required an immediate response? Common sense kicked in, reminding her that Max had only just received his first glimpse of his baby daughter. More probably Max was furious with her. Anxiously mulling over those possibilities, Tia kept herself busy once she had put Sancha down for the night. The tea-room kitchen where she did all her baking was linked by a door to her house and, as long as she set up the baby monitor while she worked, she could hear her daughter if she wakened, but during the day she kept Sancha tucked in her travel cot and within easy reach.

She was busy packing an Anthill cake, which was stuffed with chocolate chips, when she heard her house doorbell ring and she sped back next door before the noise could waken Sancha. When she opened the door to Max she was knocked for six because the very last response she had expected from him was an instant unannounced visit.

‘Oh, it’s the kitchen fairy,’ Max derided, running gleaming dark eyes down over her flour-smudged nose to her full ripe mouth and the shapeless chef’s overall she wore. He had checked her out before his arrival and he knew all about the cakes she was baking. It irritated him that, not only had he not known that she could bake, but she had also not once made the effort to bake anything for him.

Tia went red, grateful she had removed her kitchen hat before she answered the door, but her fingers lifted to self-consciously smooth the hair braided neatly round her head. Poised below the porch light, Max looked amazing, blue-black hair glossy, his lean dark angel features smooth over his high cheekbones while a shadow of dark stubble roughened and accentuated the contrast between his angular jaw line and his wide, full modelled mouth. Her mouth ran dry.

‘Or maybe it’s Heidi and you’re about to start yodelling,’ Max breathed between gritted teeth.

‘Heidi?’ Tia frowned, not having come across that book as a child, staring up at him, frantically wishing she were dressed and wearing proper shoes with heels instead of clad for comfort and warmth in jeans, a winter sweater and flatties.

‘It must be the cute little-girl braids,’ Max extended sardonically, moving forward to force her to move back, a waft of cold air eddying into the house with him. ‘Makes you look about ten years old.’

Tia backed several steps and thrust the door shut behind him. ‘You should’ve told me you were coming,’ she protested defensively, feeling menaced by the intimidating size of Max in the confined area of her small hallway.

‘My apologies,’ Max intoned softly. ‘Your nine months of silence killed any manners I ever had stone dead.’

Tia’s colour flared again because there wasn’t much she could say to that in her own defence. She had speculated so many times about what seeing Max again would be like and now she was appreciating that she had got it wrong every time. She was all flustered, every sense on overdrive. She had forgotten his sheer physical impact on her, the heightened heart rate that dampened her skin, the challenge to breathe evenly, the surge of helpless excitement when she collided with his brilliant dark golden eyes. Feeling weak and uneasy with that least allowable sensation, she hastily thrust open the lounge door.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch sooner,’ Tia murmured tautly. ‘I didn’t know what to say. I know that’s no excuse but—’

‘You’re right. It’s not an excuse. If it was I’d have first call on it,’ Max sliced in without warning. ‘I didn’t know what to say when you told me that you were pregnant...and, Dio mio, haven’t you made me pay for that lack of verbal dexterity?’

Wrong-footed once again, Tia clasped her hands together tightly in front of her. ‘I didn’t want my child to have an uncaring father.’

‘On what grounds did you assume that I would be uncaring?’ Max shot back at her. ‘And where is my daughter? I want to see her.’

‘She’s asleep.’ Tia swallowed hard, unaccustomed to being under attack by Max, feeling the novelty of that unexpected experience like a sudden blow, her skin turning clammy and cold.

Max planted himself expectantly back by the door into the hall. ‘I can be very quiet,’ he told her.

‘Max, I—’

‘I’ve waited months. I won’t wait any longer,’ Max informed her impatiently. ‘When was she born?’

Tia gave him the date of their daughter’s birth.

‘Naturally I’ve been worried sick about you all this time,’ Max pointed out curtly. ‘I wondered if you were ill, whether you were in hospital, seeing a doctor regularly for check-ups... I even wondered if you could have lost the baby.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think my silence through,’ Tia countered stiltedly, mounting the narrow stairs and then stepping back from the doorway of Sancha’s little bedroom to let him precede her, if anything grateful for the distraction from the hard questions he was shooting at her and the guilt he had awakened.

Max had believed his rage would ebb once he entered the house but being greeted by his wife as though everything were normal when it was as far from normal as it was possible to be had grated on him. Being forced to ask to see his own daughter didn’t help and the suffocatingly small bedroom sent another biting surge of fury through him. As a child he had had so little. Now that he had a child of his own he wanted his child to have everything, and everything encompassed space and comfort and every material advantage he could provide. Now he stood in a small slot of a room only just big enough for a cot and a chest of drawers. It was clean, adequate but not sufficient to satisfy him.

‘The courts take a very dim view of mothers who deny fathers all right of access to their children,’ he heard himself impart grimly.

The blood chilled in Tia’s veins because what she heard was a threat. ‘I thought I was doing the best thing for all of us when I left. I thought you didn’t want her, didn’t want the responsibility.’

‘But I never said that, did I? Nor did I ever suggest that you terminate the pregnancy or indeed anything of that nature,’ Max reminded her fiercely, finally approaching the cot with somewhat hesitant steps and looking down to see what he could of the sleeping baby. The light from the landing illuminated her little face, the sweet sweep of lashes on her flushed baby cheeks, the fullness of the little rosebud mouth she had definitely inherited from her mother. The sudden tightness in his chest forced Max to drag in a long, deep, steadying breath. Sancha was very small and the short tufts of her tousled dark hair stuck up comically in all directions while her tiny starfish hand lay relaxed against the mattress.

‘She’s...gorgeous.’ Max almost whispered the word, what he had planned to say next flying back out of his head while he drank in his first glimpse of his daughter.

‘She looks just like you,’ Tia framed nervously, still reeling from that reference to the courts and parental rights because she knew what she had done and was bright enough to fear the consequences.

‘What does it say on her birth certificate?’ Max prompted tautly.

‘Sancha Mariana Leonelli. I didn’t know any of your family names so I couldn’t include any,’ Tia told him. ‘And the sisters were the only family I ever knew.’

‘I wouldn’t have wanted my family names included,’ Max admitted in a raw undertone, striding back to the door. ‘There are no good memories there that I would want carried on into the next generation.’

Tia chewed uncertainly at her lower lip and then glanced at him at the top of the stairs, clashing involuntarily with glittering dark eyes of challenge. ‘I kind of suspected that,’ she confided.