Taming Her Italian Boss

When she’d finished fussing over her granddaughter, Max’s mother lifted her head and looked at him. ‘You’d better come inside.’

She retreated into a large hallway with a diamond-tiled floor and rough brick walls. There were hints of the plaster that had once covered them, and most of the moulded ceilings were intact. However, instead of seeming tumbledown, it just made the palazzo’s ground floor seem grand and ancient. There were a few console tables and antiques, and a rather imposing staircase with swirling wrought iron banisters curved upwards to the first floor.

His mother started making her way up the staircase, but when she turned the corner and realised there was an extra body still following them, and it wasn’t just someone who’d helped them unload from the boat, she stopped and walked back down to where Ruby was on the floor, ballet-slippered foot hovering above the bottom step, and let Sofia slide from her embrace.

‘And who do we have here?’ she asked, looking Ruby up and down with interest. Ruby’s heart thudded inside her ribcage. Not the sort of girl who usually trailed around after her son, probably. Well, almost definitely.

‘This is Sofia’s nanny,’ Max said, this time joining his mother in her native language. ‘I hired her especially for the trip.’

‘Ruby Lange,’ Ruby said and offered her hand, hoping it wasn’t sticky, and then continued in her best Italian, ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’

Max’s mother just turned and stared at her son, tears filling her eyes, and then she set off up the staircase again, this time at speed, her heels clicking against the stone. ‘You have insulted me, Massimo! Of all the things you could have done!’

Max hurried up the stairs after his mother. ‘I’ve done nothing of the sort. You’re making no sense at all.’

He’d reverted to English. Which was a pity, because when he spoke Italian he sounded like a different man. Oh, the depth and tone of the voice were the same, but it had sounded richer, warmer. As if it belonged to a man capable of the same passion and drama as the woman he was chasing up the stairs.

Ruby turned to Sofia, who was looking up the staircase after her uncle and grandmother. Once again, she’d been forgotten. Ruby wanted to pull her up into her arms and hug her hard. She knew what it was like to always be left behind, to always be the complication that stopped the adults in your life from doing what they wanted. ‘What do you say, kiddo? Shall we follow the grown-ups?’

Sofia nodded and they made their way up the stairs. It was slow progress. Sofia had to place both feet on a step before moving to the next one. Her little legs just weren’t capable of anything else. When they got halfway, Ruby gave up and held out her arms. The little girl quickly clambered up her and let her nanny do the hard work.

Well, that was what she was here for. Or she would be if Signora Martin didn’t think she was so much of an insult that she threw Ruby out on her ear. Max hadn’t been wrong when he’d mentioned drama, had he?

When she got to the top of the stairs the decor changed. There was wood panelling on the walls and the ceilings were painted in pastel colours with intricate plasterwork patterns. Every few feet there were wall sconces, dripping with crystals. If this explosion of baroque architecture and cluttered antique furniture was what Max had meant when he’d called Venetian style ‘fussy’, she could see his point.

The ‘discussion’ was still raging, in a room just off the landing. The space must have been huge, because their voices echoed the same way they would in a church or a museum. His mother’s was emotive and loud, Max’s steady and even. Ruby was glad her soft shoes didn’t make much noise and she crept in the direction of the raised voices, Sofia resting on her hip.

‘You’re never going to forgive me, are you?’ his mother finally said softly.

Ruby crept a little closer. The room had double doors, which were still standing where they’d been flung open, and she peeked at the interior through the gap next to the hinges.

Max’s mother closed her eyes and sadness washed over her features. ‘That’s why you brought the nanny, wasn’t it? You think I’m not fit to look after my granddaughter on my own. Was I really such a terrible mother?’

This was getting too personal, Ruby realised. It was time to back away, leave them to it. She’d just have to find somewhere to hide out with Sofia until the whole thing blew over. Surely there must be a kitchen in this place somewhere?

She retreated a couple of steps, but she’d forgotten that she was much less nimble with Sofia increasing her bulk and she knocked into a side table and made the photo frames and lamp on it jangle.

There was silence in the room beyond. Ruby held her breath. A moment later Max appeared in the doorway and motioned for her to come inside. Ruby would rather have drunk a gallon of lagoon water, but she really didn’t have much choice. She hoisted Sofia up into a more comfortable position, tipped her chin up and walked into the room.

It was a grand Venetian salon, with a vast honey-coloured marble fireplace and trompe l’oeil pillars and mouldings painted on the walls in matching tones, with mythic scenes on the walls in between. A row of arched windows leading onto a stone balcony dominated the opposite side of the room, and three large green sofas were arranged in a C-shape, facing them. But the sight that Ruby was most interested in was the stiff figure in the pink suit standing in the middle of the room.

‘Ruby isn’t here to usurp you, Mamma. I hired her partly to help me bring Sofia over here with minimum fuss, but also because I thought she could help you. Why should you have to cancel your social engagements, alter your plans, for the next couple of weeks because of Gia’s work problems?’

The other woman’s features softened a little, and she looked a little ashamed. She turned to face Ruby and held out her hand. Ruby let Sofia down and the little girl ran to the window to look at a speedboat that had just shot down the medium-sized canal beyond.

‘Serafina Martin.’ She smiled warmly and shook Ruby’s hand firmly but very briefly. ‘But everybody calls me Fina. I apologise most sincerely for not welcoming you to Ca’ Damiani when you first arrived, but I do so now.’

Ruby replied in her best Italian. ‘Thank you, Signora Martin, for your welcome and for opening your home to me, if you do decide you could do with my help. I’m afraid this is my first job as a nanny so I’ve been thrown in at the deep end.’ She glanced at Max, who was watching her carefully. ‘You’ll probably have to help me more than I’ll help you.’

A small flicker of approval, and maybe relief, passed across the other woman’s features. Fina tilted her head. ‘Your Italian is very good.’

Ruby kept her smile demure. ‘Thank you.’

Fina’s gaze swept over her dress and then up to her head. ‘But your hair is not. Purple?’

She shrugged. ‘I like it.’

For the longest moment Fina didn’t move, didn’t say anything. She didn’t even blink, but then she smiled. It started in her eyes and moved to just lift the corners of her mouth. ‘Bene. What do I know? I am old and out of touch, probably, and I like a woman who follows her own path.’ And then she turned and swept out of the room. ‘Come, Massimo! We have to decide what you are going to do about this child.’

* * *

Max stared at his mother. ‘What do you mean you want me to stay here, too?’

That hadn’t been the plan at all. The reason he’d brought Sofia here was because now was definitely not the moment to take an impromptu holiday. He couldn’t let everything he and his father had worked for slide.

His mother did that infuriating little wave of her hand, suggesting he was making a mountain out of a molehill. ‘You made a very good point,’ she said airily. ‘I do have plans this week, including earning a living. I can’t take time off at this short notice.’

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.’