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

Alex sighed. ‘True, but McDermot has been out and about wining and dining key members of the board behind our backs. Either you need to come back to London and start schmoozing this instant or we need to come up with a design that’ll blow that slimy little poser out of the water.’

Max knew this. He also knew he wasn’t good at schmoozing. ‘You’re better at buttering clients up than I am.’

Alex let out a low, gruff laugh. ‘Damn right, but it’s you they want, Max. It’s time to stop playing happy families and get your butt back here.’

Now it was Max’s turn to laugh. Happy families? Yeah, right.

‘I’ve been doing what needs to be done to focus on the work, Al. You know that.’

Alex grunted. ‘All I’m saying is that there’s no point in us burying our heads in the sand about this. Otherwise, the month will be up, we’ll submit new designs and, even if they do have the “wow factor”, the board will be more inclined to go with that flash-in-the-pan pretty boy.’

One of the reasons Max liked Alex, both as a colleague and a friend, was that he didn’t mince his words. Alex had a point, though. Vince McDermot was London’s new architectural wunderkind. Personally, Max thought his designs impractical and crowd-pleasing. They’d never stand the test of time.

‘I’m flying back to London tomorrow afternoon, so that’s that sorted,’ he told Alex. ‘The other stuff? Well, that’s another story, but if we can keep them sweet for the next fortnight, it’ll give us time to come up with what they’re looking for.’

It had to come at some point, didn’t it? He’d been hailed for his ‘ground-breaking minimalist and elegant style’, won awards for it. But that had been before. Now he couldn’t come up with anything fresh and exciting. It was as if his talent had been buried with his father.

Alex made a conciliatory noise. ‘Listen, I should have more of an idea of who exactly he’s been sliming up to in the next fifteen minutes. Do you want me to call back, or are you going to hold?’

Max looked at the clock. It was half past seven.

He hadn’t forgotten what that meant.

He was late. Really late.

‘I’ll hold,’ he said.

His conscience grumbled. He let the relief flooding through him drown it out.

It was better this way. It was getting harder and harder to remember Ruby was his employee. Harder and harder to stop himself relaxing so much in her presence that he kept letting his guard down. He couldn’t afford to do that. Not here. Not with his mother so close.

Better to put a stop to it now.

So Max made himself sit down. He made himself tinker with the designs for the institute’s atrium. He made himself ignore the clawing feeling deep inside that told him he was being a heel, that he was hurting her for no reason.

Unfortunately, he didn’t do a very good job of it. Probably because the lines and angles in front of him on the screen kept going out of focus, and he kept imagining what it would be like to be out in the boat with Ruby, the dark wrapping around them, enclosing them in their own little bubble while the lights of the city danced on the lagoon.

That only made him crosser.

Damn her. It was all her fault, waltzing into his neatly ordered life, turning it upside down.

You asked her. Hell, you practically commanded her to come with you.

Yeah? Well, everybody made mistakes. Even him. Occasionally.

It was only when he stood up to pace around the room again that he realised he’d put the phone down on Alex at some point in the last five minutes and hadn’t even noticed. He said a word that should have made the cherubs on the ceiling put their fingers in their ears.

And all that messing around he’d done on the atrium plans was a load of rubbish! In fact, all the work he’d done on them in the last couple of days had been tired and uninspiring. What had he been thinking?

He shook his head, perfectly aware of what had been filling it. That was why it would be so much better when he was back in London. He’d be able to get his brain round it then, removed from any distractions. Any strawberry-clad, purple-streaked distractions.

Now, where was the earlier atrium design? The one where he’d pared it all back to the basics? He might as well get rid of all these silly changes and start from scratch.

He rummaged through the papers on his mother’s antique desk. He’d had a printout of it. It had to be around here somewhere.

* * *

Ruby sat back on her heels and surveyed her handiwork. Not bad, even if she did say so herself. Maybe Max was right about her having some real artistic flair. Maybe she could do something with it, rather than just ‘messing around’, as her father called it.

There was such beauty and simplicity in Max’s designs, but this one had just needed a little something—a curve here, a twirl there. By the time she’d finished, the arch on Max’s discarded plan was a strange hybrid between twenty-first-century industrial and Venetian Gothic, with a little bit of Ruby thrown in for fun.

Perhaps she should be an architect?

The fact she didn’t burst out laughing then roll on the floor at that thought was all thanks to Max. He’d believed in her ability to draw, seen something no one else saw, and she was starting to think she could even see it herself. She wanted to tell him that when they went out later, to thank him, but she didn’t really know how to put it into words without betraying everything else she was starting to feel.

‘More fish!’ Sofia demanded, grinning at Ruby so appealingly that Ruby didn’t have the heart to make her say please.

‘I think maybe it’s time Grandma tucked you into bed,’ she told Sofia, smiling. Fina rose from where she’d been reading a magazine in an armchair, and held her hand out for her granddaughter. After running and giving Ruby a hug, Sofia allowed herself to be led away and Ruby was once again alone in the salon.

She tried not to look, but the gold clock on the mantelpiece drew her gaze like a magnet.

Eight o’clock.

A quick glance outside confirmed her suspicions. Compared to the brightly lit salon, the sky outside was bottomless and dark. Not helped by the heavy clouds that had started to gather over the city in the last half hour.

Max had stood her up.

She let her eyelids rest gently closed and inhaled. It didn’t matter.

The heaviness in her heart called her a liar.

But it shouldn’t be there. She was a paid employee. He owed her nothing more than her wages.

It was just...

She shook her head and opened her eyes again, then she got off up the floor and started piling the scattered bits of drawing up, putting the crayons back in their tub.

Just nothing.

She’d been fooling herself again, thinking this was something when it wasn’t. Max hadn’t seen inside her, he hadn’t spotted the potential that no one else had. He’d just paid her a compliment or two, that was all. And that kiss? Heat-of-the-moment stuff that produced nothing but regrets. She’d doled out a few of those herself in her time. Nothing to sweat about.

Then why did she feel like going to her room, shutting the door behind her and bawling her eyes out?

She gathered the sheets of paper in various sizes up in her arms and headed towards the door. She wasn’t quite sure where she was going to put these, but she suspected Fina wouldn’t want them scattered around her most formal living space. Maybe they could find a home for one or two of the best ones on the fridge door?

She couldn’t have been looking where she’d been going, because when the salon door burst open and Max came barrelling through she didn’t have time for evasive manoeuvres. She stumbled sideways, the stack of paper went flying into the air and then fluttered noisily down like oversized confetti.

Max just stood in the doorway, looking somewhat stunned.