by Lynne Graham
In addition, Andrew had mentioned that all-encompassing word, family. Max would become family if he married Tia. The word, the very connotations of the word harboured a mysterious allure for Max that increased his discomfiture. All his life in one way or another Max had been an outsider. He had wanted to belong and he never really had—not within any group—because he was very much a self-made man. His dirt-poor repugnant background, which Max himself could never forget, kept him isolated in many ways. At his exclusive school the other pupils had been from privileged backgrounds and he had naturally kept his childhood miseries a secret for fear of being pitied. His birth family had not been a family in the normal sense of the word and Andrew’s careless reference to Max becoming one of his small family had made much more of an impression on Max than the older man could ever have guessed.
* * *
The rain was torrential and like no rain Max had ever seen in his life. The downpour that had already reduced the road to a dangerous mud bath still bounced in shimmering noisy sheets off the windscreen and bonnet of the heavy-duty four-by-four he had hired to convey him from Belém to the Convent of Santa Josepha.
Through the flickering vehicle lights ahead he saw, not the established mining settlement he had dimly expected to see, but something more akin to a shanty town. On both sides of the road tumbledown buildings, shabby cabins and even tents stretched off in every direction. The view put him strongly in mind of a refugee camp. Meanwhile his driver continued to chatter in voluble streams, possibly explaining why so many people were braving such primitive conditions to live in the back of beyond, but Max understood only one word in ten because although he was fluent in several languages, sadly Portuguese was not one of them.
An ornamental bell tower loomed ahead and he sat forward, noting the dark outline of the extensive buildings rising behind a tall manicured hedge.
‘Estamos aquí... We are here!’ his driver proclaimed with an expansive wave of his hand as he stopped at a gated archway, shouting out of the window until an elderly man appeared and moved very slowly, his narrow shoulders bowed against the wind and rain to open the heavy wooden gates.
Max suppressed a sigh but, while he was weary after the unexpectedly onerous journey and his delayed arrival, he was far from bored. In fact Max’s adrenalin was running at an all-time high and he sincerely hoped that a hot shower and a meal awaited him in the accommodation the Mother Superior had offered him for the night. Above all though he was incredibly impatient to meet Constancia Grayson and discover if Andrew’s last wish was in any way viable.
Unaware of Max’s arrival, Tia was swathed in a plastic rain poncho to deliver food on a battered tin lid to the mournful little dog sitting patiently waiting for her below the shrubs outside the doors of the chapel.
‘Teddy,’ Tia whispered guiltily, hurriedly looking around herself to check that she was unobserved before bending down to pet the little animal as he eagerly gobbled up the food she had brought.
Pets of any kind were forbidden at the convent. When human beings were going hungry, using precious resources to feed an animal that did not itself provide food was unacceptable. Tia told herself that she was using her own food and not taking from anyone else but Teddy’s existence and her encouragement of his attachment to her weighed heavily on her conscience. For Teddy’s sake she had done things that shamed her. She had bribed Bento, the old man who kept the gate, not to close the hole in the fence that Teddy used to enter the convent grounds. She had lied when Teddy had been seen in the playground and she had been questioned, and she was lying every time she smuggled food off her own plate to take outside and feed to him.
But Tia loved Teddy to distraction. Teddy was the only living thing who had ever felt like hers and just a glimpse of his little pointy tri-coloured face lifted her spirits and made her smile. Only what was going to happen to Teddy now that she was supposed to be travelling to England? But would that actually happen? After more than twenty years at the Convent of Santa Josepha, Tia couldn’t imagine ever getting the opportunity to live another life in a different place. That seemed like a silly fantasy.
Why, after all, would her English grandfather suddenly decide he wanted her when he had ignored her existence for so many years? And now, worryingly, Andrew Grayson’s representative had failed to turn up to meet her. Mother Sancha had said the man’s non-arrival was probably due to the bad weather but Tia remained unconvinced. Tia, after all, was very much accustomed to broken promises and dreams that didn’t come true. How many times, after all, had her father visited and suggested that she might eventually be able to leave the convent to work with him? Only it had never happened. And over two years ago he had paid his last visit and had declared that it was time she became independent because he could no longer afford to contribute to her care. Once again he had suggested that she become a nun and when she had asked why she couldn’t live with him and support him in his ministry he had bluntly told her that a young attractive girl would only be a hindrance to his work, and her safety a source of worry.
After her father’s death the solicitor had explained that there was no money for her to inherit. Paul Grayson had gifted her his bible and left his savings to the missionary team he worked with.
Tia hadn’t been the smallest bit surprised to be left out of her father’s will. It had always been obvious to her that her father had no great fondness for her or even interest in her. Indeed, nobody knew better than Tia how it felt to be rejected and abandoned. Her mother had done it first and then her father had done it when he left her at the convent. He had then cut off her options by refusing to help her to pursue the further education that could have enabled her to become properly independent of both him and the convent. So, how could she possibly abandon Teddy?
Teddy depended on her. Her heart clenched at the image of Teddy trustingly continuing to visit long after she had gone only to find that there was no more food for him. How could she have been so selfish as to encourage his devotion? What had she been thinking of? What were the chances that he would miraculously find someone to give him a home? In two long years nobody had cared enough to do that while Tia had slowly transformed Teddy from a living skeleton to a bouncy little dog. Teddy had been abandoned too, probably by one of the miners chasing the gold rush, who had left again in disappointment when he failed to make a notable find and his money ran out. The prospectors regularly left women, children and animals behind them.
Hurrying back to her room in the convent guest quarters, Tia peeled off her poncho and hung it up. Her hair was damp and she undid her braids, brushing out her thick honey-blonde hair to let it dry loose. There was nothing for her to do now but go to bed and listen to the little radio one of the girls at the convent school had given her. Occasionally she came across magazines and books in the bins when she cleaned the school building and that helped her to stay in touch with the outside world. Although she earned a wage for her work, there was nothing much to buy within reach and she had been slowly accumulating savings at one stage, only that hadn’t lasted in the face of women struggling to feed hungry children. She was a soft touch and unashamed of the fact, confident that she knew which women were the decent mothers, whom she could rely on to use her money to buy food rather than alcohol or drugs.
A knock sounded on her door and she opened it to find one of the sisters, there to tell her that Reverend Mother Sancha was waiting for her in her office.
‘Your visitor has arrived,’ Sister Mariana told her with a smile.
Tia hurriedly straightened her hair but there wasn’t time to braid it again. Smoothing down her rumpled clothing, she breathed in deep and headed downstairs into the main convent building. Her grandfather’s representative had arrived, she registered in genuine surprise. Did that mean that she was truly going to travel to England and the grandfather who hadn’t seen her since she was a newborn baby?
‘Tia is a very kind, affectionate and generous girl and she may impress you as being quiet,’ the Mother Supe
rior informed Max levelly. ‘However, she can be stubborn, volatile in her emotions and rebellious. You will need to watch over her carefully. She will break rules that she disagrees with. At the moment she is feeding a dog she has adopted, which is not allowed, and she has no idea that I am aware of her behaviour.’
Max studied the calm, clear-eyed nun and reckoned that very little escaped her notice. ‘She is not a child,’ he asserted in gentle reproach.
‘No, she is not,’ the Reverend Mother agreed. ‘But although she badly wants her independence I’m not sure that she could handle too much of it too soon.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Max fielded, relieved to hear that Tia was imperfect and desired her independence. Somehow Andrew had given him a disturbing image of a pious young girl with high ideals, who would do no wrong, and he found the elderly nun’s opinion of her character reassuring rather than off-putting.
And then the door opened and Max’s mind went momentarily blank as a young woman of quite extraordinary beauty tumbled through the door spilling breathless apologies. A great mass of honey-blonde hair tumbled round a heart-shaped face, distinguished by high cheekbones, cornflower-blue eyes and a perfect pouty little mouth. Her skin was flawless. He breathed in deep and long, disconcerted and temporarily stuck for words, which was a quite unfamiliar experience for Max with a woman.
Tia stopped dead a few feet inside the door. In the lamplight, one glance at Max literally took her breath away. He had one of those almost Renaissance faces she had seen in illuminated manuscripts. Smooth bronze skin encased a sleek, stunning bone structure that framed a straight masculine nose, a wide sensual mouth and eyes as dark and rich as chocolate, fringed by dense black lashes. He. Was. Gorgeous. That reaction thrummed through Tia like a bolt of lightning and suddenly all she was conscious of was what she herself lacked. She had no make-up, no decent clothes. Her hands smoothed down over her skirt in a nervous, awkward gesture.
‘Tia. This is Maximiliano Leonelli, whom your grandfather has sent in his stead,’ Mother Sancha announced.
‘You can call me Max.’ Max relocated his tongue as he sprang upright and extended a lean brown hand in greeting.
‘Tia...’ Tia muttered almost inaudibly, barely touching his fingers and gazing up at him in surprise, for she was quite astonished by his height. He had to be well over six feet tall and she only passed five feet by two inches. The few men she met were usually smaller, much older and of stockier build and few of them were clean. Max in comparison was all lean, muscular power and energy, towering over her in a beautifully cut suit of fine dark grey cloth.
She had her grandfather’s eyes, Max recognised while trying to fathom what she was wearing and what sort of shape was concealed beneath the frumpy long, gathered skirt and the worn peasant blouse with its faded decorative stitching. She was small in stature and either very thin or very tiny in proportion, her breasts barely visible in the loose smocked top, her slender hips no more prominent below the skirt. She wore stained espadrilles on her feet and for an instant Max was incensed by her poverty-stricken appearance, but he didn’t know who to blame. Paul for being a lousy, neglectful father or Andrew for not trying harder to make his son put his daughter’s needs first.
‘You can show Mr Leonelli to his room and ensure he receives the meal I have ordered for him,’ Mother Sancha suggested. ‘You’ll be leaving us tomorrow, Tia.’
Tia whirled back, her blue eyes very wide. ‘Will I?’
‘Yes,’ Max confirmed.
The Compline bell for prayers peeled and Tia tensed.
‘You are excused for this evening,’ Mother Sancha told her. ‘Mr Leonelli is not a practising Catholic.’
‘But what about your soul?’ Tia shot at Max in patent dismay.
‘My soul gets by very well without attending mass,’ Max told her smoothly. ‘You’ll have to accustom yourself to living a secular life.’
Catching the Mother Superior’s warning shake of her head, Tia folded her lips, taken aback by the prospect of a grandfather who never attended mass either. Her father had said his father, her grandfather, lived in a godless world and it seemed on that score, at least, he had spoken the truth.
‘I expect prayers are an inescapable part of life in a convent,’ Max remarked as he accompanied her down the corridor.
‘Yes.’
‘Nobody will prevent you from attending services in England,’ Max assured her thoughtfully. ‘You will be free to make your own choices there.’
Tia nodded, a little breathless about the prospect of having such choices.
‘What exactly does your job here entail?’ Max asked as they mounted the stairs, noting that her golden hair tumbled as low as her waist, or to where he guessed her waist had to be since the tremendous amount of fabric she wore prevented any body definition from showing.
‘Lots of different things. Every day I go where I’m needed. I bake, I clean, I work in the orphanage with the young children. I give English lessons to the girls in the school. Sometimes I go out in the community to work with the sisters.’
‘The community looks like a refugee camp,’ Max commented.
‘There’s been another gold rush. Someone found a tiny bit of gold and because of that miners flooded in from everywhere. Nothing’s been found since, of course, so the fuss will die down and most of the prospectors will give up and move on somewhere more promising. Right now it’s like the Wild West out there,’ she told him with a rueful smile.
Max studied the perfect bow of her upper lip and the soft inviting fullness below, his body stirring, sexual imagery awakening that for the first time ever embarrassed him. He tensed defensively. And then argued with himself. To marry her he had to want her. He could not marry a woman he didn’t find attractive. Why was he trying to stifle a natural physical reaction? Andrew’s granddaughter was a classic, unspoilt, utterly natural beauty. Of course he was reacting.
Tia showed him into the room at the other end of the corridor from hers. ‘There’s only you, me and Sister Mariana up here, so it’ll be quiet enough.’
Max elevated a fine ebony brow. ‘Are nuns noisy?’
Tia cast down her eyes but not before he had seen the brightening leap of amusement in them. ‘That would be telling...’
Max was entranced and he forced himself to study the room instead, unsurprised to see that it was as bare as a cell with an iron bedstead set below a large wooden crucifix and the absolute minimum of furniture, while cracked linoleum snapped beneath the soles of his hand-stitched leather shoes.
‘The bathroom is opposite. Do you want to eat first?’ she prompted, staring up at him, wondering how often he had to shave because black stubble already covered his strong jaw line. Her curiosity about him was intense. In fact dragging her attention from him was proving to be an incredible challenge.
‘Yes...feed me,’ Max teased, black lashes semi-screening his dark golden eyes as he gazed down at her, marvelling at the glow of her skin even below the stark unflattering light shed by the bare bulb above them. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘I’ll take you down to the refectory.’
‘And tell me about the dog,’ Max suggested. ‘I understand there is a dog.’
‘Who told you about Teddy?’ Tia gasped in horror. ‘Oh, my goodness, Mother Sancha knows, doesn’t she?’
‘I would say that very little gets past that woman and of course she mentioned the dog. If you want to bring him back to England with you I will have to make arrangements to allow him to travel,’ Max pointed out levelly.
Her heart-shaped face lit up with instantaneous joy. ‘I can bring Teddy with me?’ she cried in wonder. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course you can bring him, but he will probably have to spend some time in quarantine kennels before you can take him home with you again,’ Max warned, mesmerised by the sheer brimming emotion that had flooded her formally still little face and glittered in her beautiful eyes. ‘I’ll have to check out the rules and regulations and organise it.�
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‘I can’t believe I can just bring him like that,’ Tia confided in amazement. ‘Won’t it cost a lot of money?’
‘Your grandfather is a wealthy man and he wants you to be happy in England.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you...thank you!’ Tia wrapped her arms round Max with enthusiasm and gave him a fierce hug of gratitude without even thinking about what she was doing.
For a split second, Max froze because he wasn’t accustomed to being hugged, in fact could not recall ever being hugged by anybody, and that acknowledgement in the face of her enthusiasm made him feel uncomfortable and think about the kind of stuff he had always thought it best to repress. He very slowly lifted his arms and placed his hands rather stiffly on her slight shoulders. ‘Don’t thank me, thank Andrew when you see him. I’m only acting for him.’
Buoyant with happiness, Tia took Max down to the refectory, chattering away in answer to his questions, her earlier unease forgotten. ‘Do you like dogs?’ she asked.
‘I’ve never had one but I believe your grandfather kept dogs when he was a younger man.’ And an astute little voice was warning Max not to hand all the bouquets to Andrew when he was supposed to be trying to impress Tia.
Unhappily Max had not a clue how to impress a woman because he had never had to try before and a pair of sparkly diamond earrings was highly unlikely to cut the mustard with Tia. But had he but known it, he had done the one thing calculated to open the gates to Tia’s heart and trust.
