Fiona Harper - Italian Bachelors - Ruthless Propositions - Taming Her Italian Boss / The Uncompromising Italian / Secrets of the Playboy's Bride

‘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.

‘My family were successful merchants here in Venice for five hundred years,’ his mother told Ruby as they tucked into their main course. ‘But now I live more simply and rent the other parts of the house out.’

Max saw Ruby’s eyes widen at the word ‘simply’. As always, his mother had no grip on reality, and no awareness of how other people carried on their lives. He tuned the conversation out. His mother was busy regaling Ruby with stories from the annals of their family history, both triumphant and tragic. He’d heard them a thousand times, anyway, and with each telling the details drifted further and further from the truth.

Then his mother ran out of steam and turned her attention to their guest. Well, not guest...employee. But it was hard to think of Ruby that way as she listened to his mother with rapt attention, eyes bright, laughter ready.

‘So, tell me, Ruby, why did you decide to become a nanny?’

Ruby shot a look in his direction before answering. ‘Your son offered me a job and I took it.’

Fina absorbed that information for a moment. ‘You didn’t want to be a nanny before that?’