Best Modern Romances Of The Year 2017. Maisey Yates

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СКАЧАТЬ to stow him in his basket. ‘He can be very pushy. He’ll just wait until we’re asleep and sneak back in,’ she warned him.

      Max slid back into the bed while she watched dry-mouthed, as impressionable as a teenager with a first crush. His biceps flexed as he tossed the duvet back out of her way and looked expectantly at her. One glance and he froze. Honey-blonde swathes of hair foamed round her heart-shaped face, framing her mesmerising blue eyes and soft, full mouth. She shed the robe to reveal a vest top and shorts with a cutesy dog print. He breathed in slow and deep to restrain himself but he still wanted to grab her and fall on her like a hungry, sex-starved wolf.

      ‘Why did you pack an overnight bag?’ Tia murmured. ‘How did you know you’d be staying?’

      ‘I knew I couldn’t risk leaving you once I actually found you. It would be too easy for you to disappear again,’ Max breathed curtly.

      Tia looked at him in astonishment. ‘But I bought this place. I couldn’t just pull up sticks and walk out of here on a whim.’

      ‘You did before and you have the resources to stage a vanishing act any time you want,’ he reminded her. ‘I won’t risk losing you and my daughter again.’

      Shame gripped Tia as she scrambled below the duvet. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you again.’

      Blonde hair brushed his arm and she turned over to look at him, cornflower-blue eyes full of regret. ‘I promise I won’t leave like that ever again.’

      Max’s gaze dropped to her soft, full mouth and he tensed, dense black lashes lifting on burning golden eyes, fierce sexual energy leaping through him in a stormy surge. The chemistry got in the way of his brain, he finally acknowledged. That intense pull had clouded his judgement from the first moment he saw her. He was determined not to let it happen again.

      Tia lifted a hand that felt detached from her control and stroked her forefinger very gently along the sensual curve of his lower lip and she shivered, hips squirming, the heat at the heart of her making her press her thighs together for relief. Max stared down at her and the silence throbbed and pulsed, the atmosphere so tense it screamed at her.

      And then he took the bait that she had only dimly recognised was bait and his mouth came down so hard on hers she couldn’t breathe. His lips pushed hers apart and his tongue delved and her spine arched and all of a sudden she couldn’t speak because her body was doing the talking for her, lifting up into the hard, muscular strength of his, legs splaying, breasts peaking. A powerful hunger was unleashed in both of them and it swept them away. He came down on her, flattening her to the bed, crushing her breasts, and he kissed her until her mouth was swollen and reddened.

      ‘You want this...?’ he husked, giving her that choice at the last possible moment.

      ‘Want...you,’ Tia protested, her back bowing and her legs rising and locking round his lean hips as he pushed into her yielding flesh with a hungry groan of need.

      And it was wild and rough and passionate and exactly what they both needed, a release from the shocking tension that had built throughout the evening. Afterwards, Tia lay slumped in Max’s arms, utterly drained but happy.

      Max was already wondering if he had got it wrong again, feeling like a man who had a very delicate glass ornament in his hand and who had accidentally damaged it. He never knew what to do with Tia; he never knew what to say to her. What he did say when he was striving to be honest tended to come out wrong, so he knew that his silence was a necessary precaution. Even so, the knowledge that he would wake up with her in the morning brought a flashing smile of relief to his lips. She had both arms wrapped around him and he decided he liked it. Teddy regarded him balefully from his basket but nothing could dull Max’s mood.

      Max knew nothing about love. He hadn’t grown up with that example to follow, Tia was musing, and the one time he had surrendered to that attachment he had been deceived and hurt. But she knew as sure as God made little apples that the look in Max’s eyes when he’d first held Sancha had been the onset of love. If he could love their daughter, he could learn how to love Tia. Baby steps, she told herself soothingly, baby steps.

      Max woke up in the morning with his wife and a terrier. Said terrier had sneaked into the bed during the night and, far from settling in the location of a foot-warmer, had instead imposed himself between Max and Tia like a doggy chastity belt. Max’s phone was buzzing like an angry bee and his daughter was crying and he eased out of bed, leaving Tia soundly asleep.

      He was thrilled with his achievement when he contrived to make up a bottle for Sancha by following the very precise instructions. He gave Teddy a large slice of cake, which hugely boosted his standing in the dog’s eyes, and Teddy stationed himself protectively at his feet while he fed his daughter. That done, he carried the little girl back upstairs to find clean clothes for her. Changing her and dressing her was the biggest challenge he had ever met because she wouldn’t stay still and her legs and arms got lost in the all-in-one garment he finally got her dressed in. But she was clean and warm and that was all that mattered, he told himself while he made arrangements on his phone to have Tia’s possessions moved to Redbridge Hall.

      Tia came racing downstairs in a panic when she found Sancha missing from her cot, and Max looked forgivably smug when she stared in surprise at her daughter slumbering peacefully in her travel cot, utterly lost in an outfit at least two sizes too large for her.

      ‘You should’ve wakened me,’ she told him in discomfiture.

      ‘No. I want to be involved whenever I can be.’ Gleaming dark golden eyes locked to her, Max slid upright and stretched indolently, long sleek muscles flexing below his shirt as he reached for his jacket. ‘You need to see that we can do this better together and that I can be as committed to Sancha as you are. I don’t plan to work eighteen-hour days any more, not now I have both of you back in my life. That is a fair assumption, isn’t it?’ he pressed tautly. ‘You are...back?’

      ‘Yes, I’m back,’ Tia murmured, torn up inside by the sudden flash of insecurity she read in his strained gaze. He wasn’t sure of her yet, didn’t quite trust that she would go the distance, and she didn’t think she could blame him for that.

      It was two days before they got away from her house, two days of frantic packing and planning with Hilary, who would manage Salsa Cakes and in due course open the tea room with Tia’s financial backing. Max made himself very useful thrashing out the business details.

      Late season snow was falling softly as they drew up outside Redbridge Hall. The trees were frosted white and the air was icy cold. When Tia walked into the spacious hall where a fire was burning merrily in the grate, she felt as if she was coming home for the first time.

      ‘It’s our first wedding anniversary,’ Max reminded her with satisfaction.

      ‘My goodness, is it?’ Tia exclaimed, mortified that she had forgotten.

      ‘I’m afraid that because I didn’t know you would be here I haven’t made any special preparations.’

      ‘That’s OK. Just us being here together is enough,’ Tia whispered as they went upstairs with Janette, the housekeeper, to see the room that had been prepared for their daughter.

      ‘It’ll need decorating,’ Max grumbled.

      ‘It’s perfect,’ Tia insisted, able to see how much work the staff had put in trying to make an adult bedroom look suitable for a baby. A very large and handsome antique cot had been refurbished with a new mattress and, laid on it, Sancha looked little bigger СКАЧАТЬ