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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.’
