Claimed For The Leonelli Legacy

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 Superior 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.’

‘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.

That Max was willing to arrange for a very ordinary little mongrel to travel to another country simply to please her overwhelmed Tia’s every expectation of him and filled her with appreciation and gratitude. He had to be a kind, sensitive man, she decided happily.

Max and Tia were not left alone at the table in the refectory for long. Visitors to the convent rather than the school or orphanage were rare and various nuns arrived to make his acquaintance. Max withstood the onslaught with admirable cool and the inherent courtesy engrained in him by his education. English was in short supply but Max contrived to speak in French, German and Spanish to facilitate the dialogue and Tia was even more impressed. Sister Mariana managed to extract the fact that Max was single and even the explanation that he had not yet married because he had still to meet ‘the right woman’.

Once the pleasantries were at an end and Max had regretfully declined an invitation to watch a DVD of the Pope’s most recent message in the common room, Tia was spellbound by him, convinced she would never meet a more self-assured and refined, sophisticated male in her lifetime. Not that she had much experience of such men, she was willing to admit. Max smiled at her, dark eyes mesmerising below the thick veil of his lashes, and butterflies danced in her stomach while her heart beat so fast that she felt weirdly dizzy.

Sister Mariana accompanied them back upstairs and showed Max the small seating area on the landing. ‘You must have so much to discuss,’ she said cheerfully before she headed for her own room.

‘Does she think I’m about to jump you or something if you come into my room?’ Max asked, shocking Tia.

Paling at the crack, she looked up at him wide-eyed. ‘No, she meant to be kind,’ she replied stiltedly. ‘She knows I would not go into your bedroom.’

As a deep rose flush flowered to chase Tia’s pallor, Max recognised his mistake but could not even explain to his own satisfaction why he was so on edge. ‘I apologise. I thought the rules were restricting us, which would be a little ridiculous when you are leaving this place tomorrow.’

‘It’s not “this place”,’ Tia murmured a shade drily. ‘It’s been my home.’

‘I do understand that but this...all this.’ Max shifted a brown hand expressively. ‘I’m a complete fish out of water here.’

Tia absorbed the fluid elegance of that physical gesture and marvelled that even his movements could be so graceful. Recognising his discomfiture, she forced a smile. ‘Yes. I can understand that. I can only hope I won’t feel the same way in my grandfather’s home.’

Max gazed down at her, recognising that the laughing, relaxed Tia had gone into retreat as soon as he’d spoken earlier. ‘Not while I’m around,’ he swore instinctively, feeling ridiculously protective for no reason that he could comprehend.

‘Do you live with my grandfather?’ Tia asked hopefully.

Having stumbled again, Max almost swore out loud. ‘No, but I’m a frequent visitor.’

‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Tia told him.

Her sincerity mocked all that Max was concealing from her. His strong jaw line clenched. Rain lashed against the window beside them as they stood there. A sexual tension so strong it almost unnerved him gripped Max, tightening his every muscle into immediate self-disciplined restraint. He connected with translucent cornflower-blue eyes. He lifted his hand and brushed a stray strand of gold hair back from her cheek to tuck it behind a small ear.

That intimate little motion, the brush of his fingers against her ear lobe, seemed to burn a fiery trail across her skin and the breath caught in Tia’s throat, the noise of the rain outside suddenly mirroring the tempest inside her. She could feel a tightness in her breasts and a sudden embarrassing surge of warmth between her legs. Still as a statue she stayed where she was, foolishly wanting him to do it again, wanting him to touch her. As an adult she wasn’t used to being touched except by the younger children. Oh, she had been shown plenty of affection by the nuns while she was still a child but as she’d matured the sisters had naturally become less demonstrative and affectionate and the kind of touching that could remind you that you were not alone in the world was what Tia had missed the most in recent years...only she hadn’t realised that until Max broke the ice and showed her that reality.

Max forced his hand to drop back to his side and breathed in slow and deep. He was incredibly aroused and incredibly frustrated but her sheer innocence overpowered and haltered his lust. ‘I must phone Andrew. He’ll be waiting to hear all about you,’ he explained, the Italian accent that had faded over his years in England fracturing every word.

Tia nodded. ‘I’ll catch Teddy before breakfast so that he can’t wander away and lose his big chance to travel,’ she joked and, turning on her heel without another word, she left, evidently quite unaware that he had wanted to grab her in the most inappropriate way and kiss her.

Still breathing like a man who had climbed a mountain only to discover another mountain awaiting him at the summit, Max went for a shower to cool off. It was the absolute worst and coldest shower he had ever had but Max, who now took luxury and comfort for granted, genuinely didn’t notice, so preoccupied was he with his own thoughts.

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