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Prologue

SHE’D ALWAYS KNOWN BABIES were tiny little creatures, of course. But it wasn’t until Tia Stallone held Kate and Roman’s newborn, swaddled up in the pink and yellow hospital blanket, that she really understood what tiny meant. Their daughter was perfect. A sweet little softly breathing, downy-skinned person, eyelashes kissing her cheeks as though trying to blot out the lights of the hospital room.

“She’s perfect,” Tia said, surprised to hear a wobble in her voice.

“We think so,” Roman agreed, coming to stand beside her, using one finger to lower the blanket a little, to reveal more of her round face. When Tia tore her eyes away from the baby and glanced up, it was to see a look of wonderment on Roman’s face that she’d started getting used to. Ever since he’d met Kate and had his world turned on its head by the unlikely reality of having discovered, quite by chance, his perfect other half.

And now they’d split their halves and hearts and made a divine little creature.

“What’s her name?” Tia asked softly, voice wobbling once more.

Roman cleared his throat and when Tia chanced a look at his face again, his eyes were suspiciously moist.

“Grace,” Kate said, gently, almost as though asking for permission. Tia’s gaze flew to Roman’s wife—a woman Tia had come to think of as a trusted friend over the past two years. A woman who understood that losing Grace—Roman’s sister, and Tia’s best friend—had shaped them both in permanent, forever kinds of ways, and was gentle enough to let them walk alongside that grief. Even as Roman had finally let himself be happy, too. Happy in a way Tia knew wasn’t for her.

Not just because of losing Grace, but because of the way she’d been brought up, the things she’d put up with, the desperation of it all.

“Is that okay?” Kate asked, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

Tia looked down at the baby, a tear sliding down her cheek as she nodded quickly. “It’s perfect. Grace would be so happy.” She lifted the baby to hold her closer, and breathed in the sweet scent, and kissed the little forehead, her heart clutching for a moment. Clutching not just with love, but also with longing. The most intense, fierce burst of it she’d ever known. So intense she sucked in a breath, her brain spinning to make sense of it.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” she said, relinquishing her grip on baby Grace to hand her to Roman.

“You don’t have to go,” Kate murmured.

“You must be exhausted,” Tia brushed aside her demurral. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Text me what you want from Angelo’s,” she added, invoking their absolute favourite patisserie with a wink.

“Deal.”

She kissed Kate’s cheek, then Roman’s, and risked one last kiss of Grace’s forehead, and felt it again.

Longing. Need. A fierce, undeniable urge to grab their baby and run. She never would, of course—it wasn’t about kidnapping. It was about a biological need she hadn’t known she possessed to hold a little human and know she didn’t have to hand them back.

For the first time in her life, Tia realised she’d been ignoring a part of herself that would no longer be denied. She didn’t want a relationship. She didn’t want mess, hurt, heartbreak. But she did want a baby, all her own, a family—just the two of them, against the world.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, as she left the hospital room. But she was already pulling her phone from her bag and googling information on IVF. Because Tia Stallone had dragged herself out of abject poverty, had gone from trailer park to trailer park to running one of the world’s most exclusive real estate agencies, and that was a reflection of her biggest personality trait: when she wanted something, she went after it with both hands. And now, she’d decided, she wanted a baby.

Chapter One

Three months later

TIA’S LOUBOUTINS MADE A pleasing clickety-clack sound as she crossed the marble-tiled foyer of the luxurious Upper East Side building, the glorious early evening light flooding in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and giving almost the appearance of gold to the room. Good. Golden hour was an excellent time to show apartments, especially ones like this. Less apartment, more sky-home, it was three stories of sheer luxurious bliss.

The current owner—a sheikh with business interests all over the world—was selling only because his wife wanted something for a family, and Tia had found them the perfect mansion in the Hamptons.

This, she knew, would be a relatively easy sell.

Despite there being only a small percentage of people in the world with the financial means to purchase a place of this calibre, Tia’s agency was exclusive and highly regarded. Part of applying to become one of her clients meant providing enough information for Tia to know she wasn’t having her time wasted. Or worse, being taken advantage of by a nosy journalist. It was a serious concern, given the clients she dealt with. From politicians to royalty to rockstars and actresses, to the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, discretion was at the heart of everything she did.

However, owing to her assistant’s vetting, she knew that the client she was meeting today was not only successful in his own right, but he also came from ‘old money’. The phrase filled her mouth with a taste of acid, an instant, unavoidable dislike curling her lips before she could wipe the disdain away.

She dealt with it all the time now.

People who had been born to a certain milieu, who expected doors to simply open to them, and for whom the most difficult question, growing up, had been whether they wanted ‘to summer’ in St Barts or the Med, or to ski in Italy or France. Personally, Tia hated the entire concept of extreme wealth, and had privately signed up to the 80% pledge after crossing over into her first one hundred million dollars. What the hell did anyone need with that kind of money?

And yet, having grown up as she had, literally starving sometimes for lack of food, cold, and somehow dark even on the warmest of days, she knew she’d never give away all her wealth. She needed the security of knowing she would always be able to buy what she needed, to stave off hunger and poverty.

Emotions rolled through her as flashes of her childhood pushed at the periphery of her brain, and she ground her teeth, perfectly aware that the hormones were a necessary part of the whole process but hating how her self-possession had pretty much completely deserted her since starting IVF.