Best Modern Romances Of The Year 2017. Maisey Yates

an off-colour joke or call a halt to any overfamiliarity before someone got the wrong idea. ‘He’s a married man with five children and this is their third birthday party in as many months, so I’ve got to know him well.’

      ‘How many other men have you got to know well?’ Max enquired with lethal cool.

      Tia glanced at him in open shock.

      ‘Obviously I’m going to ask. I’d prefer honesty,’ he admitted stonily.

      Tia went pink. ‘There hasn’t been anyone...anything,’ she breathed tightly. ‘I’m very aware that I’m still married.’

      ‘Ditto,’ Max traded flatly. ‘We’ve both been living in limbo since you walked out. If you wanted your freedom, Tia, you only had to say so. We could have separated with a lot less drama and stress.’

      Tia lost colour. ‘Is that what you want? A separation?’

      Max settled glittering dark eyes on her. ‘I’m still so angry with you that I don’t know what I want.’

      ‘Angry?’ she queried uncertainly.

      ‘Very angry,’ Max qualified without hesitation. ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten that last night... I haven’t.’

      Tia’s face flamed. In fact she felt as though her whole body were burning with mortification below her clothes.

      ‘The last thing I was expecting the following morning was that letter. Why the goodbye sex?’

      ‘I don’t want to discuss that.’

      Max planted himself in the doorway to prevent her from leaving the room. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to talk about a lot of stuff you don’t want to talk about before I leave you alone. I deserve the truth, Tia. I have always tried to be straight with you.’

      Tia spun away from him, embarrassment claiming her, for she had often squirmed when she looked back to the way she had wantonly thrown herself at him that night after the funeral. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, I wanted you... OK?’ she exclaimed.

      ‘The wanting was more than OK but the walking out on our marriage afterwards wasn’t,’ Max delivered icily. ‘Not giving me the opportunity to answer your concerns was very unfair as well. There are no polite words to cover what I went through over the following months worrying about you. The press speculated that you’d left me because I screwed you over with your inheritance and they had a field day with your convent upbringing in comparison to my freewheeling days of sexual freedom.’

      ‘I had no idea!’ Tia exclaimed in dismay. ‘I don’t read many newspapers but I’ve kept a very low profile here. There was only that one photo of me that appeared in the papers, the one taken the night of the Grayson party and nobody would associate that designer-clad young woman with the woman I am now. I don’t try to draw attention to myself here with my clothes or hair or anything.’

      Max didn’t know whether he should tell her that nothing could detract from the pure symmetry of her delicate features, the clarity of her skin or the slender suppleness of her body. ‘But that simply means that you’re living a lie here with Sancha,’ he condemned.

      Tia bridled, eyes widening, head flipping back. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

      ‘That no matter what you do, you’re a very wealthy heiress and my wife. You can’t escape what you are, short of returning to Brazil and joining the good sisters again. This is your life and mine.’

      An irritable burst of barking from outside made Tia unfreeze. ‘Oh, I forgot about Teddy! I let him out into the garden while I was packing those cakes.’

      Brushing past him, Tia sped out and seconds later Teddy surged into the room, freezing with a growl the instant he settled his eyes on the unexpected visitor and then moving closer to sniff at Max’s trouser legs.

      ‘You’ve met up with worse than me since we last were together?’ Max conjectured, daring to reach down and pat Teddy’s head. The terrier made no attempt to growl or bite.

      ‘He’s got much more used to other people, living here. I take him for regular walks.’ Tia paced restlessly round the room, her full attention welded to Max’s lean, powerful figure. ‘Where do we go from here, Max?’

      ‘You want an upfront list of demands?’ Max queried. ‘I want you to come home so that I can get to know my daughter.’

      ‘Redbridge Hall is not my home,’ Tia parried in disbelief.

      ‘I may have been paying your staff for you for the past nine months but, legally and every other way, Redbridge is yours until you either sell it or dispose of it in some other way. And the will probably restricts what you can do because Andrew wanted the property kept in the family,’ Max reminded her.

      ‘You’ve been paying the staff?’ Tia gasped.

      ‘Well, someone had to take responsibility for them,’ Max pointed out very drily. ‘Your grandfather employed a lot of people and several businesses operate on the estate. I think eventually you will decide to scale down the household staff to a more appropriate level.’

      Tia had lost all her natural colour. ‘I didn’t think.’

      ‘No, of course you didn’t. You’ve never had staff before but now that you do, you do have to take care of them. And there are decisions waiting that I was unable to deal with because I am not the legal owner of the estate,’ he pointed out.

      Tia reddened. ‘I’m so sorry, Max. I should’ve thought of all that.’

      ‘On the good news front, Grayson Industries is flourishing as never before and the profits will be astronomical this year because I’ve had little else but work to occupy me,’ he proclaimed with sardonic bite.

      Tia sank weakly down on an armchair. Of course, he wanted her back at Redbridge to release him from the added burden of what had never been his responsibility in the first place. She was ashamed that it had not even occurred to her that in her absence life had had to continue at Redbridge. Wages had to be paid, maintenance decisions made and probably requests had had to be answered because the estate land was often used for local events.

      ‘I don’t care about the profits,’ she declared woodenly.

      Max crouched down in front of her to study her with scorchingly furious dark golden eyes. ‘Well, I and thousands of other people employed by Grayson’s do care,’ he countered with lethal derision. ‘And it’s all yours. I may be in charge, I may be the figurehead but at the end of the day all those profits are yours, not mine.’

      Taken aback by his vehemence, Tia flinched back a few inches. ‘But that’s not what Andrew intended.’

      Max swore long and low in Italian, literal sparks dancing in his stunning dark eyes. ‘I don’t care what Andrew intended. I will only take the salary and the bonus package that was agreed when I first took over. I will not live off my wife’s wealth, or my ex-wife’s...or whatever you are planning to become.’

      Tia was more shaken still by that aggressive statement. Max vaulted upright again, long, lean muscles flexing in his thighs, the fabric of his trousers pulling taut. She recognised that he had run out of patience and that he wanted decisions now. But she was taken aback by his attitude to the Grayson wealth. He didn’t want what he saw as her money.

      ‘What do you want now, Max?’ she murmured tautly. ‘You haven’t told me that yet.’

      Max froze. The anger she had sent soaring through him ebbed and he thought about what he wanted. He looked at her and what he wanted was very, very basic. ‘I want you to untangle your hair from those ties and strip. I want sex. It’s been nine months and I’ve never gone through a dry spell this long since I grew up.’

      Shock rocked Tia where she sat, transfixed like a deer in headlights. Slow colour rose in a tide below her fair skin, heat curling at the heart of her, touching and warming places she had stopped thinking about