he said, smiling, and then he gently plopped the crab back into the canal.
They followed the same routine with the next crab, too, but when they came to the last one, Ruby asked, ‘Can I pick it up?’
Max nodded. He put the bucket down on the cobbles and took hold of Sofia while Ruby took off her watch and stuffed it in her jeans pocket. She inhaled, then dipped her hand into the cold water and aimed her forefinger and thumb for the parts of the shell the way she’d seen Max do it. It wriggled away a couple of times, but then she gripped more firmly and lifted the crab out of the water.
‘I did it!’ she exclaimed. ‘For a moment there I didn’t think I was— Ow!’
A searing pain shot through her finger, making her eyes water. She blinked the moisture away, slightly breathless, to find an angry little crab attached to her hand. She was sure it was scowling at her.
‘Ow, ow, ow...’ she yelped and started shaking her hand backwards and forwards. Anything to make it let go!
Eventually the force of the swinging must have got the crab, either that or it lost its grip on her wet hands, because it shot off, landed on the paving stones a couple of feet away then scuttled to the edge and flung itself into the canal.
‘Ow,’ Ruby said again, just to make her point, even though her attacker probably neither heard nor cared.
She looked down as her finger started to throb. That had definitely not been the original crab with the delicate little pincers that hadn’t punctured Sofia’s finger. This one had been mean and angry, and blood was now seeping from a hole in her skin.
‘Here, let me look,’ Max said and swiftly caught up her hand.
Ruby would have expected his examination to be practical and thorough, and it was, but she hadn’t expected it to be so gentle. She looked at him, head bowed over her hand as he ran his fingers over the area surrounding her war wound, and for some reason the sight of his dark lashes against his cheek made her feel a little breathless.
Sofia hugged her left leg. ‘No cry, Ruby. Fish no want let go.’
Despite the thudding of her pulse in her index finger, Ruby couldn’t help but smile. She looked up to find Max doing the same, but his face was very close. She blinked and sucked in a breath.
‘Kiss better!’ Sofia commanded.
Ruby would have been okay if she hadn’t realised he was holding his breath, too, that he seemed to be stuck looking at her the same way she was looking at him.
‘Go on, Uncle Max! Kiss better.’
Slowly Max raised her hand, not taking his eyes off her until the moment he bent his head and softly pressed his lips to where Ruby’s finger was throbbing. The sensation spread out from that finger, through the rest of her body, until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Max seemed to be similarly affected, because even though he’d lowered her hand again he still held it between his warm fingers.
Sofia tugged Ruby’s trouser leg, seeking a response she hadn’t yet got. ‘Him no want let go.’
Ruby swallowed. ‘I know, sweetheart.’ And as she spoke the words she slid her hand out of Max’s and looked away to where the crab had plopped into the water.
‘I think it’ll be fine,’ he mumbled, then busied himself collecting up the fishing equipment and putting it back in the boat.
MAX SPENT THE REST of the afternoon in the library with the door shut. He tinkered with his plans for the institute until his eyes were gritty and his brain was spinning. It didn’t help that every time he wasn’t 100 per cent immersed in what he was doing he kept having strange flashbacks.
He kept seeing Ruby’s slightly swollen and bleeding finger. Inevitably that led to memories of looking up into her eyes. He hadn’t noticed their colour before. Warm hazel. Not green. Not brown. But a unique pairing of the two that was slightly hypnotic. He hadn’t been able to look away, hadn’t been able to let go. And then he’d gone and kissed her finger. What had all that been about?
Okay, he knew exactly what that had been about. He might not have been in the mood to date since his father’s death, finding himself drawn to his own company, filling his hours with work, but he was no stranger to desire.
He stopped tweaking a design for a staircase he had up on his computer screen and deleted all the last fifteen changes he’d made. It had been better before. Now it was more boring, if that was even possible. He’d seen a hundred different staircases like it in a hundred different buildings.
He pushed back from the desk, stood up, began to pace.
He needed something different. Something unique.
Like those eyes...
No. Not like those eyes. They had nothing to do with it.
For heaven’s sake! It wasn’t even as if Ruby was anything like the kind of women he usually went out with, the kind he’d hardly noticed he’d stopped seeing: cultured, sophisticated, beautiful.
He sighed. And next to Ruby they seemed like clones churned out by a production line.
In comparison, she was strangely easy to be with. There was no game-playing. No second-guessing whether he’d accidentally said the wrong thing because he was being subjected to some secret test. If Ruby thought he’d overstepped the mark, she just told him in no uncertain terms.
There was a knock at the door and he stopped pacing and faced it, grunted his permission to enter. A moment later his travelling nanny popped her head round the door. ‘Your mother wanted me to let you know that dinner is served.’
She looked down and away, as if she was feeling awkward. When she looked up again, a faint blush stained her cheeks.
The air grew instantly thick. Max nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he managed to say. ‘I’ll be along in a minute.’
She smiled hesitantly and shut the door again.
Max ran a hand through his hair and swore softly. Was he imagining it, or had she got prettier since that afternoon?
He went over and sat back down at his desk. He clicked over to his email and read a few messages to distract himself, although what they contained he couldn’t have said. When he felt a little more his usual self, he rose and went to the dining room, lecturing himself en route.
You have no business noticing her eyes, warm hazel or otherwise. She’s your employee. Get a grip and get over it.
Thankfully, he was sitting opposite his mother this evening at dinner, and Ruby was off to one side, so he didn’t catch her gaze while they ate their...whatever it was they ate. He kept his concentration on his plate as his mother once again pounced on their guest as both willing audience and source of conversation.
‘Maybe being a nanny will be your niche after all,’ she told Ruby. ‘You’re a natural with Sofia, and she’s already very fond of you.’
Ruby smiled
