anything, that was more worrying than all the bluff and fluster had been. Ruby felt herself start to shake. She knew she’d gone too far, that she shouldn’t have said that. But, as the sensible side of her brain tried to tell her that, the impulsive, emotional side blocked its ears and sang la la la.
‘I should fire you for this,’ he said, and his voice was as cold as the marble floor beneath their feet.
‘Don’t bother,’ she shot back, making enough heat and anger for both of them. ‘I quit. I’m not cut out for this and I don’t want to be.’ And she dumped the pile of paper she’d been holding onto Max’s pile and stomped off towards the door. Thank goodness she only had that one rucksack to pack. She could be out of here within the hour.
‘That’s right,’ Max said, his voice low and infuriatingly even as she reached the door. ‘Run out on another job.’
She spun round to face him. ‘You know nothing about me. So don’t you dare judge me.’
He stared her down. The fire from a few moments earlier was gone, doused by a healthy dollop of concrete, if his expression was anything to go by.
‘I know that you bail when the going gets tough, that you’ve never seen a single job through to the end.’
‘So? That’s my business, not yours. You’ve made that abundantly clear.’
He stepped forward. ‘I’m afraid it is my business when you’re leaving before the end of your contract.’
That was when Ruby smiled. She really shouldn’t, but it started somewhere deep down inside and bubbled up until it reached her lips. ‘And there’s your problem, Mr Hot Shot. I don’t have a contract, remember?’
And, leaving him to chew on that, she stalked down the corridor. Pity she was wearing ballet slippers, because it would have been so much more effective in heels.
‘We had a verbal agreement!’ he yelled after her.
Ruby’s response was to keep walking but use some non-verbal communication she was pretty sure was offensive in just about any language you cared to mention.
An angry shudder ripped through her as she headed for her room, already mentally packing her rucksack. And she’d thought she was attracted to this man? She really was insane. The sooner she got out of Venice, the better.
MAX WAS SO FURIOUS he couldn’t speak, could hardly even breathe. How dare she act as if he were in the wrong? And how dare she bail on him after only one week? What was he going to do now? Knowing his mother, she’d make an impulsive decision and say she couldn’t possibly keep Sofia here on her own, and then he’d be stuck here, right when it was more urgent than ever that he leave this tangled family mess behind and concentrate even harder on his work.
He wanted to march after Ruby, to give her a piece of his mind, but he suspected she was in no mood to listen. She was stubborn as hell, that woman, and bound to dig her heels in if he went in with all guns blazing.
He’d give her half an hour. Then he’d go and find her, make her see sense.
He looked down at the stack of papers in his hands. His scribbled-on plans were on top. Just the sight of them made his temperature rise a couple of notches. He turned and headed for the library. At least he’d be able to distract himself for a short while trying to see if anything was salvageable. Once he was there, he dropped the stack of papers on the desk and sank into the chair.
It had to have been her fault. She must have come and got more paper from his makeshift office at some point, despite what she’d said, because how else could his pristine plans have ended up on Sofia’s drawing-paper pile? They hadn’t been outside the library all week.
A cold feeling washed through him from head to toe.
Except...
Last night, when he’d taken some papers into the salon as a cure for insomnia, and the plans had been amongst them. It had worked, too. After an hour and a half of poring over them, going over every detail, he’d woken himself up, his head lolling against his chest, and then he’d stumbled back to bed.
Oh, hell.
And he had no idea if he’d stumbled back into the library first and replaced the plans.
He stared at the clean, narrow printed-out lines of his plans, with Ruby’s thicker doodlings over the top. It was his fault, wasn’t it? Not hers. While he hadn’t exactly put them on Sofia’s paper stack by leaving them lying around in the salon he’d opened up the way for them to get muddled into it during the course of the day.
Max exhaled heavily and let his forehead drop so it rested on the pile of papers.
Damn.
And he’d lost his temper. Something he never did. He’d always hated losing control like that. Not just because when his really long fuse went, it tended to verge on apocalyptic, but because of how he was feeling right now. Raw. Open. Weak.
If it had been Sofia that had done the drawing he knew he wouldn’t have reacted the same way. Oh, he’d have been cross, but he wouldn’t have exploded like that, and not just because she was only two and he would have scared the living daylights out of her.
There was something about Ruby that just got under his skin.
He sat up, ran his hand through his hair and stared at the dark green wallpaper.
He should let her leave, shouldn’t he?
She wanted to. It would certainly be better for him.
But he needed her.
He shook his head. No. He didn’t need anyone. Especially not a woman who ran at the first sniff of trouble, which was exactly what Ruby had done, proving his point very nicely for him.
He needed a nanny. That was all.
The choice was up to her. If she still wanted to go he wouldn’t stop her, but there was one thing he needed to do first—apologise.
In a bit, though. Ruby was probably still spitting fire, and if he tried to knock on her door now, he’d probably get a few more of those wonderfully eloquent hand gestures.
A smile crept across his face, even though he knew it wasn’t really funny at all.
She was a pill, that one.
He sighed and turned his attention back to the plans in front of him, unfolding the paper and having a good look. It was interesting what she’d drawn. She’d taken his plain, square arch and added some traditional Venetian style to it. She really had been paying attention to the shapes and patterns of the buildings, hadn’t she? Here was an ogee arch, and here a lobed one. She’d reproduced them perfectly, even when she’d only been doodling.
That was when something smacked him straight between the eyebrows.
The shapes.
Ruby had been talking about the geometric shapes, the
