a woman who had turned fickle and inconsistent into an art form.
They had grown apart as teenagers, living in different countries, with totally different goals, values and personalities, but he was trying to make up for it now they were more a part of each other’s lives.
Gia always accused him of butting his nose in where it wasn’t wanted and trying to run her life for her, but she always said it with a smile and she was annoyingly difficult to argue with. Perhaps that was why, when she’d turned up at his office that morning with Sofia and had begged him to help her, her eyes full of hope and longing, he hadn’t been able to say no.
‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Why do you need a job in such a hurry?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘It was either this, or my father was threatening to make me work for him.’
‘You don’t want to work for the family firm?’
She pulled a face. ‘I’d rather jump off the top of The Shard! Wouldn’t you?’
Max stiffened. ‘I now head up the business my father built from nothing.’
An unexpected stab of pain hit him in his ribcage, and then came the roll of dark emotion that always followed. Life had been much simpler when he’d been able to bury it all so deep it had been as if it hadn’t existed. ‘There’s something to be said for family loyalty,’ he added gruffly. ‘For loyalty full stop, actually.’
She looked a little uncomfortable, but waltzed her way out of the awkward moment with a quip. ‘Well, I’m quite prepared to be loyal to your family. Just as long as you don’t ask me to get entangled with mine. Parents are fine and all that, but I’d rather keep them at a safe distance.’
Max couldn’t help but think of his mother, and he decided not to quiz Ruby any further on her motives. It wasn’t going to alter whether he hired her or not for a couple of weeks. If this had been for a more permanent fixture in his life, it might have been a different matter.
‘So, why do you need a travelling nanny?’ Her face lit up. ‘Are we going to Hollywood?’
She sounded just like Gia. Max resisted the urge to close his eyes and wish this were all a bad dream, that he’d wake up in bed, his nice, ordered life back.
‘I’m taking Sofia to stay with her grandmother,’ he said. It was the only possible solution. All he had to do now was convince his mother of that. ‘I can’t possibly babysit a toddler for the next fortnight, even if I knew how to. I have three weeks to turn around an important work situation and I can’t take any time off.’
The shock of realising he’d have to cope with Sofia on his own while Gia was away had been bad enough, but then his biggest client had phoned, slinging a spanner in the works. Now he couldn’t afford even an hour off work, let alone a fortnight. He needed time to think. Space. Peace and quiet. And Sofia brought none of those things with her in her tiny, howling package.
Hopefully he’d get Sofia installed at his mother’s, then he’d be able to fly back and be at his desk first thing Monday, only half a day lost. It had been Gia’s idea, and, while he didn’t relish having to take time out to deliver Sofia, at least his sister’s moment of destiny had come on a Friday morning. He’d stay overnight to make sure they all settled in and leave the nanny with his mother. He’d thought of everything.
The girl gave him a sideways look. ‘So work is important to you? More than family?’ She didn’t look impressed.
Max gave her one of his patented you-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about looks. Of course family was important! That was why he had to seal this deal. He was determined to carry on and finish what he and his father had started together, to ensure that his dad’s dream was fulfilled.
‘I’m a thirty-something bachelor with a riverside apartment that has split-level floors with no railings, stairs with no banisters and no outside space except a balcony with a hundred-foot drop to the Thames. Do you think it would be the responsible thing to allow a child to live there?’
He could see her wrestling with herself, but finally she shook her head.
‘Taking her to her grandmother’s is the most sensible and practical thing to do—for everybody.’
He looked up. They’d crossed the river now and could only be minutes from her home. If she said no he’d just drop her off and they’d never see each other again. And he’d have to wrestle a screaming Sofia all the way to her grandmother’s on his own.
‘So, Miss Lange with an e, will you take the job?’
She inhaled and held the breath for a few seconds before glancing up at her building, then she let the air out again. ‘I have one last question.’
‘Which is?’
The corners of her mouth curled up, as if she couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t mentioned this himself. ‘You really are a big-picture kind of guy, aren’t you?’
Yes, he was. ‘How did you know?’
‘There’s another detail you’ve forgotten, a rather important one. If I’m going to be your travelling nanny, I kind of need to know where we’ll be travelling to.’
Ah, yes. Another good point. He cleared his throat. ‘Italy,’ he said. ‘We’re going to Venice.’
Ruby’s hand shot out, her long slender fingers stretched towards him. ‘Done.’ He half expected her to spit in her palm, but she just looked steadily at him.
He encased her smaller hand in his own, feeling the warmth of her palm, the softness of her skin. Something tiny but powerful tingled all the way up his arm. He shook her hand. ‘It’s a deal,’ he said, his voice rumbling in his own ears. ‘You’re hired.’
But as he pulled his hand away he started to wonder if he knew exactly what he’d got himself into.
CHAPTER THREE
RUBY SHOULD HAVE realised when the limo driver gingerly put her hastily packed canvas rucksack into the boot that this journey was going to be different. She was used to travelling, used to crowded terminals in international airports teeming with the whole spectrum of human life. She was used to queuing just to buy a bottle of water and browsing the endless shops filled with travel gadgets in order to fill the time. She was used to playing ‘hunt the chair’ in the departure hall, and dozing on it with her jacket for a pillow when she found one.
She was not used to hushed and elegant lounges in small city airports, free food, drink and entertainment. Even though her father could easily afford to fly business class everywhere, he refused to, preferring what he called ‘real’ travel. If he wasn’t squished into Economy or standing at a three-mile queue at Immigration it wasn’t a real trip. Of course, the public loved him for it. Privately, Ruby had always wondered why dust and the ubiquitous Jeep with dodgy suspension were more ‘authentic’ than air-conditioned coaches these days, but she wasn’t daft enough to argue with him. He was disappointed in her enough already.
She sighed. It had been better when Mum had been alive. Even though she’d done exactly the same job, travelled along with him and presented the programmes alongside him, she’d always been good at hugs and sending postcards and presents to boarding school to let Ruby know that just because she was out of sight, it didn’t mean she was out of mind. Her father was no good at that stuff. And after she’d died he’d channelled his grief into his work, meaning he lost himself in it more than he ever had done before.
Ruby found herself a spot on the edge of a designer sofa in the lounge and reached for the bowl of macadamia nuts on the table in front of her, only scooping two or three out with her fingers and popping them quickly into her mouth, then she returned to doodling on a paper napkin with a pen she’d pulled out of her bag.
It was supposed to have been easier once the journey got under way. She’d thought that at least the ‘travelling’ part of being a travelling