‘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.