Taming Her Italian Boss (13 page)

Of course! It was perfect.

She rolled over, picked up her phone and began typing in an email with her thumbs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
HE
PLANS
FOR
the institute were almost finished. It was just as well, because, although he had got up at four the last few days to put in the hours needed, the whole time he worked away at his desk there was an internal timer that clicked away within him, counting down the seconds to ten o’clock, when he could rise from his desk, shove the papers away and go and see her.

Every day was a surprise, something new. And he didn’t just mean her wardrobe, although it was an endless source of fascination to him that the handful of clothes she’d stuffed into that rucksack could be combined in so many different ways to create so many different looks.

No, he meant Ruby. Every day she brought him something fresh, something exciting. When he’d first met her, he’d thought she needed to grow up and settle down, but now he realised how fearless, how magnificent she was. He didn’t want her to change a thing about herself.

The timer on his watch beeped at him and he looked up from his desk. Two minutes to ten. It was time. He’d done his duty, done his hours, and now he could spend time with Ruby. He didn’t even mind that Sofia was always thrown into the mix.

To be honest, he was glad to have a reason to take things slowly. Otherwise he wasn’t sure he’d be able to help himself. She wanted new experiences? She wanted romance? He wanted to show her just how amazing Venice could be, just how it could imprint itself on a soul. He wanted to talk about dreams and plans and for ever. And he would have done, if not for one thing: he didn’t want to scare her off. It was only a supreme act of will that prevented him spilling it all out to her and laying it at her feet.

Breathe, Max. Give the girl time. Don’t spook her.

He just needed to get the groundwork in before Gia arrived back to claim Sofia.

He slowed in the corridor that led to the salon, took a moment to inhale and exhale, and then he turned the corner and walked through the door.

As he often found them when he arrived for his morning session with his niece, she and Ruby were drawing. Sofia was colouring-in a princess in a flowing robe, having got over her ‘naughty fish’ obsession, and Ruby was bent over her sketchbook. He crept up behind her while she was absorbed and sneaked a look.

She was working on a drawing of a gondola floating in front of a palazzo. Her style was interesting. She often drew in black pen, but the lines were always fluid and emotive. It should have given a messy look to the sketch, but somehow she managed to get the shape and structures perfectly without making it look staid and formal, something he could never have done. And he could see she was growing, developing. There was a new confidence in her work that hadn’t been there when she’d arrived.

That was the elusive ‘niche’ she’d been looking for, he was sure of it, but he sensed she lacked confidence to pursue it. He wondered what he could do to encourage her. She’d helped him rediscover the real excitement and passion that had been missing from his work for months now, and he’d like to return the favour.

She started, suddenly realising he was close, jumped up and turned round, smiling. ‘Nosey,’ she said.

The air crackled between them, and he bent down and stole a kiss. ‘Guilty as charged.’ He nodded at his niece, who’d almost finished obliterating her princess in a cloud of bright orange crayon so thick one could hardly see the black lines of Ruby’s pen underneath.

Ruby chuckled. ‘She’s nothing if not thorough. I have no idea where she gets that from.’

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Are you ready to go?’

She nodded. ‘We’re off to feed the pigeons in St Mark’s Square, right?’

He didn’t answer. When he’d mentioned pigeons, it wasn’t necessarily feeding them he’d been thinking about, seeing as the city was trying to actively discourage it. Chasing them had been a much preferred boyhood pastime, one he thought Sofia would enjoy with equal relish, and almost verged on the side of civic duty these days, as the birds caused so much damage to the delicate buildings and statues.

When Ruby stood back, he frowned. Something was different. Something was not quite right....

And then he realised what it was. He’d seen that outfit before. It was the plain T-shirt and jeans she’d worn a couple of times before, but today it was unadorned. No loops of beaded necklaces, no vintage waistcoat, no floaty scarves. It was most odd. But since Ruby had always been one to defy expectation where her wardrobe was concerned, he supposed she was following true to form.

It should have only taken ten minutes to walk to St Mark’s from Ca’ Damiani, but it took Max, Ruby and Sofia closer to twenty. Mostly because they didn’t bother with the buggy and had to accommodate Sofia’s tiny little legs. When they were there, Sofia delighted in chasing the pigeons, which flew up in clouds as she cut a path through them, but settled back down nearby only seconds later.

He and Ruby watched on from the sidelines, smiling. He reached over and took her hand, relished the feel of her warm skin in his. She always felt that way, never cold, always soft and inviting.

‘That drawing you were doing this morning was very good,’ he told her. ‘I really think you should do something with it.’ He thought about the overpriced prints and postcards for the tourists, the sickly, sentimental paintings in some of the shops that sold carnival masks by the bucketload. ‘Your drawings of Venice are better than a lot of what’s out there.’

He thought she’d be pleased at some encouraging words, but she pressed her lips together and stared out across the vast square with its arcades and hundreds of pillars. ‘Nah,’ she said, lifting just one shoulder in a little shrug. ‘I think it’s better if I keep it as a hobby for now.’

His brows drew together as he waited for her to carry on, say something more cheery and upbeat, but she just let out a huge sigh. Something really was different, and it wasn’t just the wardrobe.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s walk a bit more.’

She nodded and called for Sofia, who wasn’t that enthralled at the idea of leaving the pigeons alone, but she came without too much grizzling.

It wasn’t just today, was it? This strange behaviour. There had been little things for the past few days. Tiny things he’d hardly noticed when they’d been random, individual occurrences, but now they were building to make something bigger, forming themselves into a pattern. She’d been quieter, more restrained. She’d laughed less. And there was something else, too, about the way she looked that was different. Something other than the lack of accessories. He just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Was this connected to the drawing thing?

She talked about passion, about wanting to find it. It was clear to him that drawing was what she really loved to do. She couldn’t
not
do it. He couldn’t count the number of scraps of paper, backs of receipts, paper napkins he’d seen her sketches on in the last couple of weeks. So why did she resist it? Why did she avoid it when the thing that tugged her heart most was under her nose?

They walked out towards the Doge’s Palace. He’d been going to tell her some interesting facts about it, things linked to conversations they’d had earlier in the week, but now it just felt like the wrong thing to do, so they strolled in silence to the water’s edge and stared over to Isola di San Giorgio. Out on the lagoon, he could see the exact spot he’d cut the motor on their sunset trip, but there was no moonlight now, no gently flickering stars, just bright sun, beating down on them and bleaching all the shadows away.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she said, after they’d been staring at the water for a couple of minutes. ‘It’s really great news.’

She twisted to look at him, but the smile she wore seemed hollow, like the trompe l’oeil in his mother’s salon. It had the appearance of reality, but there was no depth to it.

‘I’ve decided to take the job with my father’s production company.’ She looked at him, waiting for a response.

Max froze as the vague feeling that had plagued him all morning solidified into something hard and nasty, turning his insides cold. This wasn’t her dream, her passion. In fact, it was the very opposite of what she’d said she’d wanted out of life.

He shook his head. ‘Why?’

Her smile disappeared. ‘
Why?
Not “well done, Ruby. Good on you for choosing something you’re going to stick to”?’

His mouth moved. He had
not
seen that coming. ‘I thought it was the last thing you wanted.’

She shrugged and bent to retie Sofia’s shoelace, which had come undone, then stood up again. ‘I thought about what you said about finding the perfect thing by doing the hard stuff. Maybe you’re right. And since my parents were both nuts about television and nature, maybe it’s in my genes. Who knows?’

‘Don’t do it,’ he said, and she turned to face him, shocked.

‘Max, you are making no sense. I thought you’d be overjoyed at this. I thought you’d understand.’

He could tell she was hurt by the way she folded her arms across her middle, by the way she rubbed the toe of her shoe against the flagstones.

‘It’s too late, anyway’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve already formally accepted the offer.’

‘When?’

The toe ground harder into the floor. ‘Two days ago.’

He wanted to grab hold of her, to tell her not to turn her back on her dreams, to run with them and to hell with the consequences. He wanted to tell her to try every damn job in the universe if she liked, not to care what anybody else said, as long as she didn’t give up. This was worse. This was way worse than not finishing something. For some reason he sensed Ruby was waving the white flag of defeat.

He wanted to tell her all of that and more. That he loved her. That he wanted her to brighten his day every day for the rest of his life. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. What if he got too intense too soon and scared her away? He didn’t think he could bear it.

He opened his mouth, got ready to say something. Anything. He had to tell her something of how he felt, even if he only let a fraction of it slip, but then he realised what he’d been trying to put his finger on, what else had changed about her. He closed his mouth again and stared.

As she looked at her feet the sun glinted off her dark hair. It looked beautiful, shiny and thick, but not one hint of purple remained.

* * *

Ruby knocked softly on the library door. It was ten past ten and Max hadn’t turned up for their usual session with Sofia. The day was grey and drizzly, the mist hanging so low over the whole city that the tops of the buildings seemed to melt into the white sky. A castle-building session was much needed.

‘Yes?’ came his reply from behind the door.

Ruby hesitated for a second. He didn’t sound angry exactly, but there was a definite edge to his voice. She pushed the door and leaned in, keeping her feet on the threshold. ‘It’s past ten.’

He didn’t turn round for a moment, just kept making deft, straight lines on a piece of paper with a pencil. When he turned round a faint scowl marred his features. It was just the concentration of working on his plans, right? As far as she was aware she hadn’t done anything wrong in the last few days. In fact, she was doing her level best to do everything right, to prove to Max that she could be the kind of woman he could rely on.

‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to join you today,’ he said, his voice neutral.

‘Oh.’ It took Ruby a moment to adjust to that information. They’d got into such a rhythm that it felt as if they’d missed a step and everything had jarred. And then there was the fact that he hadn’t taken the opportunity to grab her, press her up against the wall and kiss her until she was breathless, a ritual she’d come to look forward to.

‘But you promised your mother—’

‘I promised my mother I’d stick to her terms for a week. I did that—and more. My agreement with her has ended, Ruby.’

She frowned, then nodded. She hadn’t thought about it that way, but she supposed he was right. He hadn’t needed to come out with her and Sofia for the last week. It should have made her happy that he’d possibly done so in order to spend time with her, but the expression on his face stopped that. It was like glass. Hard, solid, reflecting everything back at her.

He also hadn’t softened one iota with his mother. That scared her. And not just for Fina’s sake. Were those walls of his ever going to come fully down?

‘The deadline for getting the final plans into the National Institute of Fine Art is next week,’ he explained calmly. ‘I have to focus on that for a while.’

‘Okay,’ she said slowly. For some reason she felt she was missing something here. Something big. Or was she just being paranoid? ‘We’ll miss you.’

Max just nodded. His body shifted, and she could tell he was itching to get back to his plans. She did her best not to take it personally, not to take it as a rejection.

‘Will we see you at dinner this evening?’

A bit of the familiar, world-weary Max she’d met at the beginning of their trip returned. ‘My mother has insisted I take you out to eat. She told me in no uncertain terms that it’s a travesty that you’ve spent more than a fortnight in a city full of fabulous restaurants and haven’t sampled their food yet.’

‘Oh,’ Ruby said again. ‘That’s lovely.’

Maybe Fina had decided she’d been wrong about what she’d said to her. Ruby had grown more and more suspicious that Fina’s evenings out visiting Renata had quickly become an excuse to give them time alone together. Maybe she thought there was hope for her and Max after all.

Then why wasn’t Ruby happy about that? Why did her stomach feel as heavy as a bowling ball?

Max just gave her a single nod.

Silence filled the space between them.

‘Well...I’ll just go and...’ Ruby gestured in the direction of the salon. ‘I’ll see you this evening.’

‘This evening,’ Max echoed, but he’d already turned and started making swift lines on his plans.

Ruby slid her body from the space between door and frame and closed it softly behind her.