Taming Her Italian Boss (15 page)

This time he didn’t move at all. Now the air in the whole courtyard throbbed.

She was running out of things to say, things she thought might wound him, provoke some kind of a reaction. He might seem to be made of stone, but her blood was rushing round her veins, her cheeks heating. Feigned anger was quickly becoming the real deal.

He had to feel something for her—he had to. She drew in a deep breath, then gave it her best shot. ‘Your father dug his own grave, you know. He finally imploded with the effort of keeping himself under lock and key, and you’re going to end up the same way. He didn’t deserve your mother, who’s more patient and loving and forgiving than you will ever realise, and you’re going to turn out just the same if you’re not careful.’

She was on a roll now, couldn’t stop herself if she wanted to. Hot tears began to stream down her face and her throat grew tight, making her voice scratchy. ‘And you know what? Maybe it is better if I go, if I get as far away from you as I can, because I don’t think I could stand being with a man like you anyway. I need someone who actually knows how to live and breathe, who knows how to love and be loved. Who, when he feels something for a woman, comes out and says so—not just stands there like a lump of stone doing nothing!’

And he was like stone. Still.

She had no volume left now, only a hoarse whisper that only just made it past her lips. She started walking backwards towards the door. ‘Well, you’ve got your wish. I’m leaving. And not because you’re telling me to, but because I want to. I know you feel something for me!’ She thumped her chest with her closed fist. ‘I know it! But you can’t—or won’t—bring yourself to show it. And that means you don’t deserve me, Max Martin, and you never will.’

* * *

Max stood in the courtyard long after Ruby had left him. It had taken all his effort to take what she’d thrown at him, every last ounce of his strength, and he had none left to open the door and follow. He’d wanted to kiss her fiercely, deeply, as if his very life depended on it—which it well might—and tell her just how much he cared, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

He wondered if he was actually dripping blood, because that was what it felt like. Her words had stabbed him in the heart. This was what he’d always tried to avoid, what he’d always protected himself against. Did she think he didn’t know that he didn’t deserve her, that
he
wasn’t what
she
needed? That was why he hadn’t answered her question, had just let her assume the worst. He was letting her go, setting her free.

It felt as if he hadn’t taken a breath in minutes, and he dragged one in now, the cool night air burning his lungs. He could see the lights on in the
piano nobile
of Ca’ Damiani, could imagine her shoving clothes into her scruffy little rucksack, calling him every name under the sun.

A foolish part of him hoped that this wasn’t it. That one day they’d meet again, and it would be the right time, that they’d both be ready, but he knew it was probably impossible. He didn’t think she’d ever forgive him. And she had every reason not to.

But he’d had to do it this way. Otherwise she wouldn’t have left, she’d have just kept trying, killing herself off piece by piece in the process. Damn her resilience.

He closed his eyes and swore out loud. In Italian. And then he walked through the ground floor of the palazzo, the space that used to be the merchants’ warehouse when the Damiani family had been part of the city’s elite, and out of the boat door.

He needed to get out of this place, out of this glittering city that promised with one hand then took away with another.

He knew of somewhere much more appropriate. There were a number of deserted islands scattered across the lagoon that had once been quarantine islands, places where those with the plague had been imprisoned to stop them infecting the city, places where forgotten souls were still supposed to howl on a moonless night like this.

As the mist descended across the lagoon he started up the launch and headed away from the deceptive lights of the city, fully intending to join the dead in their howling.

* * *

Ruby flung all her belongings in her rucksack, but it took her considerably longer than three minutes. More like twenty. Maybe because she had to keep stopping to either wipe her eyes so she could see what she was doing or shout at the painting of the old man in a large black hat on the wall about what a pig-headed idiot his descendant was being.

When she was finally finished she crept next door to Sofia’s room and watched the little girl sleeping, legs and arms flung carelessly over the covers. She pressed the gentlest of kisses to her temple, then quickly left, before she dripped tears on her and woke her up.

She met Fina in the hallway. ‘You’re back early!’ she said, smiling, and then she stopped smiling. ‘What has that fool of a son of mine done now?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘He fired me.’

Fina went pale.
‘What?’

‘Maybe “fired” is a little dramatic.’ She sighed. ‘It’s the end of my contract. I knew it was only going to be a couple of weeks, but—’ The tears clogging her throat prevented her from saying more.

Fina just walked forward and drew her into a hug. The kind of hug Ruby’s mother used to give her when she was small and she hadn’t realised she’d missed quite so badly. Ruby’s torso shuddered and she clung on to Fina for a few long minutes before pulling away, putting the pieces of herself back together.

‘You must come again,’ Fina said, her eyes shining and her voice husky.

Ruby looked at her helplessly. She didn’t know if she could return to this place. Somehow it had burrowed under her skin and she feared she’d always be reminded of what she’d almost had, of what it had snatched away from her on a fickle whim.

Fina must have understood that look, because she smiled softly. ‘Well, when I come to London, then... You must take me out for tea and scones.’

A watery giggle escaped Ruby’s lips. ‘It’s a deal.’ She could just imagine Fina at the Ritz tea room, holding court and charming all the waiters, while the pianist played and the china clinked.

She checked her watch. ‘I’ve ordered a taxi, so I really should go and get my things.’

‘So soon?’ Fina asked, looking a little forlorn.

Ruby nodded, and then Fina did, too. She was a woman who understood that when the time came a swift exit was the cleanest, if not the least painful, method of departure. Ruby was grateful for that.

She went and fetched her rucksack, hugged Fina once more, then descended the stone staircase for the last time and pushed the boat door open to walk onto the dock. The water taxi arrived only a few minutes later and Ruby climbed inside and looked steadfastly at the buildings on the other side of the canal as it turned around and pulled away.

She kept staring like that, stiff and unseeing, all the way to the train station. She didn’t want to see any more of Venice. Not the details, anyway. Not the shapes of the arches or the patterns in the lace-like gothic façades. She was happier if it all just blurred into one big pool of light before her eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘N
O
, I’
M
AFRAID
the four o’clock flight won’t do. The crew need to catch another connection out of Paris to Antananarivo at five. We need them on the two forty-five.’

The travel agent on the other end of Ruby’s phone huffed.

She lowered her voice, made it softer. ‘Mr Lange would be ever so grateful if you could swing it. I’d even arrange to have a box set of his last series sent round as a thank-you.’

She could tell he’d just opened his mouth to give her an excuse, but he paused. ‘My mum really does love his programmes. Have you got the one with the penguins in it?’

‘The Ice World of Antarctica?’
Ruby asked, drawing a little black-and-white penguin with a bobble hat on in the corner of her office pad. Now, they’d make a great subject for a series of drawings. What was not to like? They were cute and walked funny.

‘That’s the one,’ the man said, then chortled most unappealingly. ‘And I’d have one less Christmas present to buy come December.’

Ruby pulled a face at the phone. Cheapskate. ‘So can you help me?’ she asked, almost purring down the line.

‘Leave it with me,’ he said, sounding a bit chirpier than when she’d first started talking to him. ‘What did you say your name was again?’

‘Ruby,’ she said with a sigh in her voice. ‘Ruby Lange.’

‘Wow! You related?’

She resisted the urge to say
I’m his grandmother
.

‘Yep. He’s my dad.’

Ruby wilted a little further towards her desk. Just about every conversation she had these days ended up like this one. And she made hundreds of calls a week.

‘It must be really cool to be Patrick Lange’s daughter!’ he said. ‘What’s it like working for him?’

Okay,
now
he wanted to be friendly and chatty, after making the last twenty minutes trying to get the flights for the next filming trip booked like squeezing blood from a stone.

‘It’s a blast,’ she said as she drew a jagged crevice that her cartoon penguin was about to fall into. Still, she said her thank-yous and goodbyes politely and sweetly. No point zinging him until after the flights were booked.

The phone on her desk rang. She picked it up, half expecting it to be the travel guy again, and prepared herself to tell him, yes, she could send an autographed photograph to go with the DVDs, he just needed to let her know who her dad should make it out to, but it turned out to be Lucinda, her father’s secretary.

‘Mr Lange would like to see you in his office,’ she said, then hung up.

Ruby stuck her tongue out at the phone. Lucinda always called Dad ‘Mr Lange’ in her presence; it was most weird. She was laced up as tight as the man in question was, so no wonder they’d been working well together for the last ten years.

Ruby shoved her chair away from her desk and picked up her pad and pencil. She ripped off the top sheet and hid it in her letter tray. Dad didn’t really ‘get’ the doodling. Drawing while she was on the phone always helped her think, but if he saw it he’d only think she’d been slacking off, which she so hadn’t.

She walked through the open-plan office and knocked on her father’s door.

‘Come!’ he shouted.

Ruby obeyed.

‘You wanted to see me?’ she asked, choosing not to sit down. She had rather a lot to do today, what with the trip coming up. One of the crew wasn’t British and needed an extra visa, and the paperwork was a nightmare.

Her father looked up from his desk. He was approaching sixty, but he was still fit and healthy, if a little weathered round the edges from all his travelling. ‘Have you managed to source that special lens Cameron was after?’ he asked.

She nodded. Their top cameraman had a brochure sitting on his desk and an appointment at one of the best video equipment suppliers to test it out in a few days’ time.

‘And how are we on getting that actress to do some of the voiceovers?’

Ruby hid a smile. ‘That actress’ was a multi-Oscar winner, who’d gone all fangirly when Ruby had called her people and asked if she’d like to work on the next series of Patrick Lange documentaries. ‘Her office has just confirmed, but she won’t be available for recording during September and October because she’s shooting in Bulgaria.’

‘Great.’ Her father steepled his fingers and looked at her. ‘And what about the tea?’

‘In the kitchen,’ she answered. Seriously, you’d have thought that finding a tin of his fresh leaf lapsang souchong when it had run out had been a national emergency. Thankfully, there was a little tea shop round the corner in Wardour Street that stocked just what she’d wanted.

‘Do you want a cup?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and Ruby turned to go. ‘But in a minute.’

She turned back again.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’

Uh-oh. He wasn’t going to fire her, was he? She thought she’d been doing okay for the two months she’d been working here, and that incident with the delivery guy and the ten-thousand-pound camera really hadn’t been her fault.

She sidled round the chair sitting opposite his desk and slid into it.

‘I think we need to talk about your future here, Ruby.’

Oh, Lord. Here it came.

‘Lucinda has let me know that she’s going to have to take maternity leave in the autumn, and I wondered if you’d be interested in filling in for her.’

Ruby’s mouth dropped open. Whether it was because her father was offering her what was, in fact, a temporary promotion, or the idea of someone actually knocking frosty old Lucinda up, she didn’t know.

‘You’ve made quite an impression since you’ve been here,’ he continued. ‘I think it could be a nice step up for you.’

Ruby closed her eyes and opened them again. She’d obviously been transported into a parallel universe. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Her father smiled at her, actually smiled! ‘You’ve been doing a great job. Everyone thinks so.’

Ruby couldn’t help the next words that fell out of her mouth. They just popped out before she had a chance to edit herself. ‘Do
you
?’

He gave her a bemused smile, as if what she was asking was confusing or funny in some way. ‘Of course I do. I always knew you could be good at something if you just settled to it.’

Yes, she was definitely in a parallel universe. It must have happened when she’d crossed the threshold into his office, because before then everyone and everything had been behaving as normal.

She looked back at him, searching his face. Was he really being serious?

What she saw shocked her.

Well, at least her time with Max had given her something more than bittersweet memories of a city she could probably never bear to visit again, because, just as she’d been able to look at Max, see the shell, know of its existence, but still catch glimpses of what was underneath, suddenly she could do the same with her father.

What she saw was different, of course. A little bit of paternal pride, more than a smidge of affection. Why had she never seen this before?

To be honest, she didn’t know and she didn’t care.

‘What do you think?’ her father said.

‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘I’ve enjoyed the challenge of working here, and I’m not about to quit any time soon, but I’m just not sure it’s...’

‘You’re not sure it’s for you,’ he finished for her softly.

She shook her head, afraid words would make the ‘glimpses’ disappear.

‘Neither am I,’ he said, standing up. ‘But I thought I should offer you the opportunity.’

Ruby stood up, too. On a burst of emotion she ran over to her father and flung her arms around his neck. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

He hugged her back, but muttered something about not making a fuss and nonsense at work.

Ruby pulled back and grinned at him. ‘Sorry, I forgot. Lucinda would flay me alive if she heard me talking that way. I meant to say, “Thanks, Mr Lange”.’

Real humour sparkled in his eyes, but he shooed her away. ‘Go and get me that tea,’ he said. ‘And then it’s probably about time you took your lunch break.’

Ruby looked at the clock. It was quarter to three already. No wonder her stomach was gurgling. She’d just been so busy that she’d forgotten to even think about lunch.

Ten minutes later she emerged from the Soho offices of One Planet Productions and turned left, her large slouchy patchwork bag tucked under her arm. She hadn’t used it since that day she’d tried to blag a job in Thalia Benson’s office, and she’d made herself bring it out today. One couldn’t spend all one’s life hiding from half the contents of one’s wardrobe because of the memories they conjured up. Sometimes one had to suck it up and keep moving. Onwards and upwards. Her motto was still keeping her strong.

First stop was her favourite coffee shop for a latte and a wrap, and then she headed for the little park on Golden Square. She sat on her favourite bench on the south-west corner, under a tree, and ate her lunch. Once that was disposed of, she opened her bag and pulled out a large A4 sketchpad. She flipped the cover open and turned to the first blank page and began to draw.

Not a cheeky crab. She’d given up on those. Instead a grumpy pigeon.

Her whole sketchbook was filled with Grumpy Pigeon drawings. Pigeon on Nelson’s Column, Pigeon at the palace with the Queen, Pigeon on the Tube...

Max had been right. This was her passion. She drew when she got up in the mornings now. She drew during her lunch break and she drew when she got home from work. Her flatmate was threatening to use the accumulated stack of papers in their flat to wallpaper the toilet.

Drawing also had another benefit. While she was throwing herself into it, she didn’t think of Max.

Well, okay, she did, but the memories got pushed to the back instead of jostling themselves to the front, where they were sharp and painful.

She hadn’t heard anything from him since her return to London or, presumably, at some point, his. At first she’d hoped it had all been some Venice-induced hysteria, that everything would right itself and he’d come and see her, make contact somehow. She should have remembered that Max wasn’t big on communication.

But she had other things to concentrate on now. She was finally laying the path for her own future, rather than wandering around in the dark. Not only did she know her next step, she knew where she wanted to be in six months’ time, and five years’ time.

She had a big picture.

How sad there was a dark hole in it that should have been filled by someone, but he’d decided it wasn’t his perfect fit.

She sighed and carried on drawing. She had a meeting with a young, funky greetings-card firm that had offices in Shoreditch. They loved the grumpy little pigeon and she was talking to them about trialling a series of cards. And the owner of the vintage fashion shop she’d worked at wanted her to do some drawings for their new publicity drive—too fabulous to be true fifties divas in sunglasses and headscarves. Then there was a friend of a friend who said he might be able to put her in touch with people who did book jackets. All in all, things were looking promising.

Oh, she knew she’d have to keep working at One Planet for at least another year or two, maybe more. But she enjoyed it and it was a way to pay the bills. That was what grown-ups did, didn’t they? They dug in and worked hard for what they wanted instead of drifting around and waiting for the universe to drop it into their laps.

When her hour was up, she packed her stuff away and headed back to the office. When she walked up to her desk, Jax, one of the other production assistants, leaned over the partition between their desks.

‘You had a telephone call while you were out,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ Her heart did a little flip.
Stop it
, she told it.
You can’t keep doing this every time the darn thing rings. It’s pointless... Hopeless... Give it up, already.

‘Yeah. It was some guy from a travel company.’

Ruby sank into her chair and laid her head on her desk.

‘He wants to know if you can get a set of DVDs for his nan, too.’

* * *

Serafina Martin glided into the high-rise offices of Martin & Martin, her sunglasses on and a scarf tied round her neck. Her son resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he watched her from the confines of his glass office. She wafted through the main floor in his direction, bestowing regal smiles on his employees.

He’d finally gone to his mother at the end of his stay in Venice, had given her the space and time to tell her side of the story. It hadn’t been easy to hear it, but he’d done it. And upon his return to London he’d remembered what she’d said about never having seen his flat, so he’d invited her over.

Not that she’d consented to actually stay with him, but she’d very kindly let him foot the bill for a room at the Dorchester. It was probably worth it, anyway. If they were under each other’s feet twenty-four-seven, they’d probably drive each other crazy and undo all the progress that they’d made.

They’d had a long heart-to-heart the night before over dinner. He’d been aware that he’d listened to her side of the story in Venice, but he’d finally managed to release the things he’d needed to say, too. Like how he was sorry that he’d pushed her away for most of his life. He should have been loyal to both parents, not barricaded the doors against her as if she were the enemy. And he’d done it without Ruby there to egg him on, prod him when he was being stubborn. She would have been proud of him.

He ignored the stab of pain in his chest at the thought of her. That particular wound still hadn’t closed, still dripped and weeped every day.

Neither he nor his mother were exactly sure what was going to happen from here on, but at least they were willing to try. He’d attempted to explain it to her. In actual words. The best he’d been able to do was tell her he wasn’t sure how to deconstruct a relationship back to where it had been almost twenty years ago and start again, build it up in a different shape, with a different foundation.

Yes, he’d used a lot of building metaphors. He couldn’t help it. He was new at this talking stuff, and it was the only way the words would come.