Taming Her Italian Boss (5 page)

Max’s jaw dropped. ‘You have a
job
?’

She turned her head to look at him. ‘Why is that so hard to believe? Yes, I have a job. I work for a real estate company in the mornings, helping them dress and present their luxury properties.’

He shook his head, hardly able to believe it.

‘You are straying from the point, Massimo. It is not important where I work, but how we are going to do the best for Sofia.’

He frowned. ‘I know that, Mamma. That’s why I came to you in the first place. It just isn’t possible to keep her in London with me. There’s a work issue that’s at a very crucial point and I can’t give her the time and attention she deserves.’

‘You know I adore having Sofia with me, but do you think I keep this place running because money falls from the sky? I also have urgent work to do.’

He shot a glance across at his travelling nanny. She was kneeling on the carpet, helping Sofia build a house out of colourful blocks. Max didn’t know where they’d come from. His mother must have had them stashed away somewhere. ‘But that’s why I brought Ruby.’ He’d thought of everything, made it simple and easy. Why was his mother turning this into a problem when there was none?

‘The poor child is upset and away from her mother. When I’m not here, she needs to be with someone she knows.’

She looked the picture of innocence, perched on the edge of a green damask sofa. The high windows let in the soft light of the May morning, basking her in an almost saintly glow.

‘But she doesn’t know me, either.’

His mother frowned. ‘I thought Gia had said that you were in regular contact now.’

‘We text, mainly,’ he mumbled. ‘And she comes into the city to have lunch every couple of months, but she doesn’t usually bring Sofia with her.’

He rather suspected she deliberately chose the days Sofia was at nursery, so she could come up to town and have a few hours to herself. She very kindly always picked the best places, and always let her brother pay.

‘Texting is not communicating! It is not the same as a smile or a hug or a warm word. One cannot build relationships through one’s phone.’

He shrugged and his mother did another one of her famous hand gestures. Not the little elegant hand-flap, this one. Both arms flew above her head and she stood up and walked over to stare out of the windows onto the canal below. ‘Then this is the perfect opportunity for you to get to know her. You really should. She is your only niece, after all.’

If that wasn’t an example of his mother’s own brand of circular logic, he didn’t know what was.

‘But she cries every time I look at her,’ he said, more than a little exasperated. ‘I try to talk nicely to her but it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I’d stay if it were different, but it’s hardly the best thing for Sofia to leave her with me on my own if that’s the case.’

‘But you won’t be on your own,’ his mother said, far too silkily for his liking. ‘You’ll have Ruby.’

They both transferred their gazes to the travelling nanny. Ruby, who must have sensed two pairs of eyes on her, stopped what she was doing and looked up at them from under her fringe. Max had a lightning stab of revelation. Ruby had already proved very useful when it had come to Sofia, perhaps she could be more useful still. Perhaps he could enlist her as an ally. He sent her a silent message with his eyes.

Ruby’s lips twitched. ‘It’s true,’ she said, looking at his mother. ‘She does cry most of the time when she’s near him. They don’t know each other at all. He’s not even sure how old she is.’

His mother reached across and slapped his leg. Quite hard, actually. ‘Massimo! Honestly!’

She turned to look at Ruby, and Max had the feeling he was being pointedly ignored for the moment. ‘She’ll be three in a month,’ his mother said in Italian, and then she and Ruby had a brief exchange about when Sofia’s birthday was and what sort of things she liked to do. He was quite surprised at how good the nanny’s Italian was, to be honest. He hadn’t even known she spoke it. Just went to show his instincts about her had been right, even if she did make each day look as if she’d raided a different fancy dress shop.

However, when Ruby and his mother started getting into what time was bedtime and favourite snacks, he decided that enough was enough. He stood up and walked closer to them. ‘Can we just get back to the matter in hand?’ he said, maybe a little abruptly.

Both women stopped talking and looked at him. They wore identical expressions. Max had the horrible sinking feeling that maybe he’d been right about Ruby being a good ally. He just wasn’t sure she was his.

‘I need to know this kind of stuff, actually,’ she told him. ‘And you weren’t much help.’

Details.

He could almost hear Ruby’s mental whisper that followed.

That was enough to set his mother throwing her hands in the air again. When she’d calmed herself down by walking over to the fireplace and back again, she fixed him with a determined expression. Max knew that look. It meant she’d made up her mind about something, and budging her from that viewpoint was going to be about as easy as asking the whole of Venice to pick up her skirts and move a little further out into the lagoon.

‘I have made a decision,’ she announced. ‘I would like nothing more than to have my lovely granddaughter here for a visit.’

He let out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. ‘Thank you, Mamma.’

His mother drew herself up and put on her most regal air. ‘But I will allow it on one condition.’

What?

‘I won’t take Sofia unless you stay, too,’ his mother told him, folding her arms across her chest. ‘You cannot live your life cloistered away in that stuffy office of yours, communicating to those you love through bits of technology. It’s high time you lived up to your family responsibilities, Massimo.’

Max almost choked.
His
family responsibilities? That was rich!

He opened his mouth to argue, but didn’t get very far. He became aware of a small but insistent tugging on the left leg of his trousers and looked down to find his niece standing there. She was trying to pull him in the direction of the pile of blocks on the rug near the fireplace.

His mother just smiled at him. ‘She’s not crying now, my darling son, and you said you’d stay if she stopped.’ She looked over at her granddaughter. Warmth and joy flared in her eyes. ‘It seems I am not the only one who has made my mind up about this—Sofia has, too.’

CHAPTER FIVE

M
AX
AND
HIS
MOTHER
had had a long conversation out on the balcony, ironing out the details of her ultimatum. When they returned, Fina knelt down on the carpet beside Ruby and Sofia and joined in their game of piling up bricks into tall towers for Sofia to knock down again.

Fina smiled and laughed, totally absorbed in her granddaughter, while her son stood, towering and silent on the fringes of the room. Ruby shot him a sideways look and found him staring back at her. She swallowed. She felt a little guilty that she’d ended up unwittingly providing Fina with leverage to use against him, but not guilty enough to regret she’d done it.

Despite Fina’s superior manner and haughty words, Ruby had seen the way she’d looked at Max. That was a mother hungry for her son’s company and, just like a child who’d settle for negative attention when they couldn’t get praise, in desperation she’d taken whatever she could get.

Funnily, Ruby warmed to Fina for that. She wished her own father looked at her that way sometimes, but she’d never once got the impression from him that he was hungry for more of her company. No, he’d seemed perfectly content to push her out of the nest at an early age.

‘I’d better go and check out of the hotel and get our bags,’ Max finally growled.

Ruby stood up and brushed her skirt down. ‘I’ll help you.’ That was the least she could do.

He scowled at her, indicating she’d done enough already. She ignored it and followed him as he headed out of the door. She had to trot to keep up with him as he marched down the corridor and down the sweeping staircase.

‘So, what’s going on?’ she finally asked. ‘I presume we’re staying, for a short while, at least.’

Max sighed. ‘My mother and I have come to an...arrangement.’ He shuddered slightly, as if the idea of compromise was an abhorrent concept.

He was doing it again: failing to fill her in on the important stuff. ‘Which is?’

Max stopped on the stairs and turned, hands still in pockets. ‘My mother has agreed she will care for Sofia when she’s free, with your help, of course, but only if I stay for a minimum of seven days. Otherwise she’s happy to escort us all to the airport where we can catch the next plane back to London.’

Ruby’s face crumpled into a bemused smile. ‘She’d really do that?’

He grunted and set off again. ‘You have no idea how stubborn my mother can be when she puts her mind to it.’

Ruby didn’t reply to that. The only response that came to mind was that maybe he was more like his mother than he realised, and she’d got herself into enough trouble already with him this morning.

She studied the back of his head carefully as she followed him down the stairs. Did he really not get that this ultimatum had nothing to do with his sister’s childcare issues and everything to do with Fina wanting to repair the gaping breach in her family? Ruby had also gone to extreme lengths to get just a crumb of her father’s attention in her teenage years, and she understood completely why Fina had done it.

‘And what about the Institute of Fine Art? The plans?’

He turned as he reached the ground floor, looking surprised.

‘Couldn’t help overhearing you on the phone last night. And then there are the drawings littered all over the suite...’

Max ran a hand through his hair as they emerged from the palazzo onto the dock and wearily took in the grand and crumbling buildings around them. ‘I’m in Venice...’ he said, and she sensed he was quoting his mother verbatim. ‘The most beautiful city in the world. What better inspiration could I have?’

* * *

Thankfully, Max discovered his mother hadn’t disposed of the little motor launch that had once been his grandfather’s. By the looks of it, she’d kept it in immaculate condition. The varnish wasn’t peeling and the navy paint on the sides was fresh and thick. He jumped in, stood behind the small windscreen and slid the key into the ignition to start it up. Ruby, unmissable in that damn strawberry dress, clambered in hesitantly then plopped down on the seat at the back. He put the boat in gear and set off through some of the narrower canals.

He’d spent every summer here as a boy, even before his parents’ divorce, and it amazed him that, even though he hadn’t driven a boat here in more than two decades, the old routes and back-doubles came to him easily. His passenger didn’t say much. She spent most of the journey to the Lagoon Palace looking up at the tall buildings, her mouth slightly open, eyes wide. It was only when they moored the boat a short distance from the hotel’s private jetty, where only the dedicated shuttles from the bus and train stations were allowed to dock, that Ruby began to talk again.

‘So, what are the finer points of your agreement with your mother? You can’t have spent that long arguing about it without going into details.’

He sighed as he led her up a narrow cobbled
calle
between buildings and out onto a wider one that led to the foot entrance of the hotel. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to win his mother over to his plan from the moment he’d stepped out onto the balcony with her. He had, however, managed to broker a deal that meant his stay here would be on his terms.

‘I have conceded to spend a couple of hours each morning with Sofia while my mother is at work and to attend a family dinner each evening.’ He couldn’t help the slight tone of disgust in his voice at the word ‘family’.

She kept up pace, slightly behind him. ‘And what did she concede?’

‘That I should have the rest of the time to work on my design and do my business.’

‘Will that do?’

He stared straight ahead and looked grim. ‘It will have to.’ As they entered the hotel through the street entrance he sighed. ‘What’s the alternative? At least this way I’m only tied up for seven days, instead of two weeks or more in a totally unsuitable apartment. Aside from the fact you’d be trying to stop Sofia breaking her neck every moment of the day, I’ve only got one bedroom.’

Ruby swallowed and her face grew just a little closer to the shade of her dress. ‘No, I can see that would be a...’ she swallowed again ‘...problem.’

‘I don’t know why she does these things. For some reason my mother isn’t happy unless she’s creating havoc in everyone else’s lives as well as her own.’ He shook his head.

They’d arrived at the suite now, and the next quarter of an hour was spent packing up their belongings. And then they checked out and headed back to the boat. Max carried his bag, his laptop case and his document tube, and she took care of her own rucksack and Sofia’s bag.

He decided to take a less direct, but maybe more scenic, route back. If she’d liked the little crumbling buildings of the back canals, she’d love some of the palazzos on the Grand Canal. He pointed a few of them out to her, telling her a few of the famous stories connected with them, many of which he guessed had been embellished over time with a healthy drop of the Venetian love for drama and spectacle. She chatted back, asking him questions and laughing at the more ridiculous tales, so it kind of took him by surprise when she suddenly said, ‘I don’t think she’s done this to cause trouble, you know. I think she just wants to spend time with you and, yes, she’s gone about it a back to front kind of way, but she’s not asking anything terrible, is she?’

He didn’t say anything. Just stared straight ahead. Suddenly he didn’t feel like playing tour guide any more.

He should have remembered this one was different, that she wasn’t like his employees at the firm, that she liked to say things she shouldn’t and be inquisitive. None of them had ever dared to comment on his personal life. But then he’d never given any of them a personal tour of Venice, either.

He thought about what she’d said and let out a low growl of a laugh.

‘What?’ she asked, never one to miss an opportunity to stick her nose in.

‘Now, maybe, my mother seems like that,’ he said gruffly, ‘but she’s a hypocrite.’

Despite the bustle and noise of the city—the purr of outboard motors, the noise of the seagulls and pigeons and the ever steady hum of a million tourists’ exclamations—the air around them went very still. He’d shocked her into silence, had he? Well, good.

‘She deserted my father and left him broken-hearted. He never got over it. So don’t talk to me about family loyalty.’

He turned to look over his shoulder, wanting some grim satisfaction in seeing her squirm, but instead he found her looking at him, her eyes large and warm. He looked away again.

‘How old were you when she left?’ she asked softly, almost whispering.

He forgot to ask how she’d guessed, too caught up in a sideswipe of memories that left him gripping the steering wheel so hard it burnt his fingers. ‘Fourteen,’ he answered hoarsely. ‘She said she didn’t want to disrupt my education, so she took Gia and left me in London.’

There was a hint of uncertainty in her voice this time. ‘That was thoughtful, wasn’t it?’

He made that same almost animalistic sound that could pass as a laugh again. ‘It was an excuse. I’m too like my father, you see. Or I was. He died five months ago.’

There was a shuffling noise behind him. He couldn’t resist a quick glance. Now he’d got what he’d wanted. Her cheeks were flushed red and she was looking down at her flat little black ballet pumps.

‘Don’t get sucked in,’ he warned her. ‘She’s not what she seems. Nothing is what it seems in this city.’

* * *

Nothing is what it seems in this city.

Ruby heard the words inside her head as she stood outside the library door.

It was pure Venice, wasn’t it? To have a proper room designated as a library in your palazzo, not just a flat-pack bookcase stuffed under the eaves in your poky little attic flat. Max had decided to use it as his office while he was here, and he was inside now. She could hear him tapping away on his laptop keyboard, along with the odd rustle of paper.

Not even you, Max Martin,
she thought, as she knocked softly on the door. Or should that be
Massimo
?

All she got in response was a grunt. She took it as an invitation.

Max didn’t look up straight away when she pushed the door open and slid inside to stand with her back pressed against the wall, hands tucked behind her. The library was small compared to some of the other rooms in the apartment, but it shared the same high ceilings and leaded windows. Two of the four walls were filled with bookshelves, and Max sat at a desk placed up against the dark green silky wallpaper of one of the other walls.

It had been a whole twenty-four hours since she’d seen him doing exactly the same thing in the hotel suite, but somehow she felt as if she were looking at a completely different man.

She’d thought him a robot, a machine, but she’d seen the bleakness in his eyes when he’d talked about his family that morning. There was a lot more inside there than met the eye. Maybe even a man with true Italian blood coursing through his veins, a man capable of revenge and passion and utter, utter devotion. The fact that the wounds of his childhood still cut deep, that he could neither forgive nor forget, showed he was capable of more than this grey, concrete existence. But like some of the crumbling buildings of this city, all that emotion was all carefully hidden behind a perfectly built façade.

He pressed the enter key with a sense of finality and turned to face her.

‘I’ve just put Sofia to bed, and I wondered if you’d like to go and say goodnight? She’s asking for you.’

His chair scraped and he moved to get up. Ruby pushed away from the wall and clasped her hands in front of her. She cleared her throat. ‘I have something to say before you go.’

He stopped moving and looked at her.

She inhaled and let it out again. ‘I’d like to apologise for what I said earlier. I didn’t mean to butt in.’

She’d expected his face to remain expressionless, but she saw a subtle shift in his features, a softening. ‘Thank you.’

He made to go forward and her mouth started off again before she could ask herself if it was a good idea or not. ‘I know what it’s like, you know. My relationship with my father has always been difficult. But I pretend I don’t care, that it doesn’t get to me. That it shouldn’t matter after all these years...but it does.’

She was rambling, she knew she was. But she couldn’t seem to shut up.

‘So I just wanted to say that I won’t comment on your family any more and that I’ll try and be a little bit more professional in the future.’

He’d been right. She should keep her nose out. Not in the least because this silent, dedicated man was starting to tug at her heartstrings, but also because she was just the nanny, and getting sucked in definitely wasn’t part of her job description.

He nodded and glanced towards the door. ‘I’d better go and see Sofia before she falls asleep.’ And then he walked down the wide corridor without looking back.

Ruby sagged back against the library wall and looked up. She hadn’t noticed before, but painted cherubs were dancing on the ceiling, blowing flutes and twanging harps. For some reason, she got the feeling they were mocking her.

* * *

If there was one room Max hated more than any other in his mother’s house, it was the dining room. Most people were left speechless when they walked inside for the first time, at least for a few moments, then the exclaiming would begin.

Apparently, his great-grandfather had had a fondness for whimsy, and had commissioned an artist to paint the whole room so it resembled a ruined castle in a shady forest glade. Creepers and vines twined round the doorway and round the fireplace. Low down there were painted stone blocks, making the tumbledown walls, and above, tree trunks and leaves, giving glimpses of rolling fields beyond. It even carried on up onto the ceiling, where larks peered down and a pale sun shone directly above the dining table. It was all just one big lie.

The table only filled a fraction of the vast space, even though it seated twelve. Max sat down at one of the three places laid at one end and scowled as his mother sat at the head and Ruby sat opposite him. He hadn’t liked being manoeuvred into this whole arrangement and he wasn’t going to pretend he liked it any more than he was going to pretend they were sitting in a real forest glade enjoying the dappled sunshine. He was just going to eat and get out of here. The plans he’d left on the desk only a few minutes ago were already calling to him.