Taming Her Italian Boss

by Unknown

  The phone on her desk rang. She picked it up, half expecting it to be the travel guy again, and prepared herself to tell him, yes, she could send an autographed photograph to go with the DVDs, he just needed to let her know who her dad should make it out to, but it turned out to be Lucinda, her father’s secretary.

  ‘Mr Lange would like to see you in his office,’ she said, then hung up.

  Ruby stuck her tongue out at the phone. Lucinda always called Dad ‘Mr Lange’ in her presence; it was most weird. She was laced up as tight as the man in question was, so no wonder they’d been working well together for the last ten years.

  Ruby shoved her chair away from her desk and picked up her pad and pencil. She ripped off the top sheet and hid it in her letter tray. Dad didn’t really ‘get’ the doodling. Drawing while she was on the phone always helped her think, but if he saw it he’d only think she’d been slacking off, which she so hadn’t.

  She walked through the open-plan office and knocked on her father’s door.

  ‘Come!’ he shouted.

  Ruby obeyed.

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ she asked, choosing not to sit down. She had rather a lot to do today, what with the trip coming up. One of the crew wasn’t British and needed an extra visa, and the paperwork was a nightmare.

  Her father looked up from his desk. He was approaching sixty, but he was still fit and healthy, if a little weathered round the edges from all his travelling. ‘Have you managed to source that special lens Cameron was after?’ he asked.

  She nodded. Their top cameraman had a brochure sitting on his desk and an appointment at one of the best video equipment suppliers to test it out in a few days’ time.

  ‘And how are we on getting that actress to do some of the voiceovers?’

  Ruby hid a smile. ‘That actress’ was a multi-Oscar winner, who’d gone all fangirly when Ruby had called her people and asked if she’d like to work on the next series of Patrick Lange documentaries. ‘Her office has just confirmed, but she won’t be available for recording during September and October because she’s shooting in Bulgaria.’

  ‘Great.’ Her father steepled his fingers and looked at her. ‘And what about the tea?’

  ‘In the kitchen,’ she answered. Seriously, you’d have thought that finding a tin of his fresh leaf lapsang souchong when it had run out had been a national emergency. Thankfully, there was a little tea shop round the corner in Wardour Street that stocked just what she’d wanted.

  ‘Do you want a cup?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and Ruby turned to go. ‘But in a minute.’

  She turned back again.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  Uh-oh. He wasn’t going to fire her, was he? She thought she’d been doing okay for the two months she’d been working here, and that incident with the delivery guy and the ten-thousand-pound camera really hadn’t been her fault.

  She sidled round the chair sitting opposite his desk and slid into it.

  ‘I think we need to talk about your future here, Ruby.’

  Oh, Lord. Here it came.

  ‘Lucinda has let me know that she’s going to have to take maternity leave in the autumn, and I wondered if you’d be interested in filling in for her.’

  Ruby’s mouth dropped open. Whether it was because her father was offering her what was, in fact, a temporary promotion, or the idea of someone actually knocking frosty old Lucinda up, she didn’t know.

  ‘You’ve made quite an impression since you’ve been here,’ he continued. ‘I think it could be a nice step up for you.’

  Ruby closed her eyes and opened them again. She’d obviously been transported into a parallel universe. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Her father smiled at her, actually smiled! ‘You’ve been doing a great job. Everyone thinks so.’

  Ruby couldn’t help the next words that fell out of her mouth. They just popped out before she had a chance to edit herself. ‘Do you?’

  He gave her a bemused smile, as if what she was asking was confusing or funny in some way. ‘Of course I do. I always knew you could be good at something if you just settled to it.’

  Yes, she was definitely in a parallel universe. It must have happened when she’d crossed the threshold into his office, because before then everyone and everything had been behaving as normal.

  She looked back at him, searching his face. Was he really being serious?

  What she saw shocked her.

  Well, at least her time with Max had given her something more than bittersweet memories of a city she could probably never bear to visit again, because, just as she’d been able to look at Max, see the shell, know of its existence, but still catch glimpses of what was underneath, suddenly she could do the same with her father.

  What she saw was different, of course. A little bit of paternal pride, more than a smidge of affection. Why had she never seen this before?

  To be honest, she didn’t know and she didn’t care.

  ‘What do you think?’ her father said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘I’ve enjoyed the challenge of working here, and I’m not about to quit any time soon, but I’m just not sure it’s...’

  ‘You’re not sure it’s for you,’ he finished for her softly.

  She shook her head, afraid words would make the ‘glimpses’ disappear.

  ‘Neither am I,’ he said, standing up. ‘But I thought I should offer you the opportunity.’

  Ruby stood up, too. On a burst of emotion she ran over to her father and flung her arms around his neck. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  He hugged her back, but muttered something about not making a fuss and nonsense at work.

  Ruby pulled back and grinned at him. ‘Sorry, I forgot. Lucinda would flay me alive if she heard me talking that way. I meant to say, “Thanks, Mr Lange”.’

  Real humour sparkled in his eyes, but he shooed her away. ‘Go and get me that tea,’ he said. ‘And then it’s probably about time you took your lunch break.’

  Ruby looked at the clock. It was quarter to three already. No wonder her stomach was gurgling. She’d just been so busy that she’d forgotten to even think about lunch.

  Ten minutes later she emerged from the Soho offices of One Planet Productions and turned left, her large slouchy patchwork bag tucked under her arm. She hadn’t used it since that day she’d tried to blag a job in Thalia Benson’s office, and she’d made herself bring it out today. One couldn’t spend all one’s life hiding from half the contents of one’s wardrobe because of the memories they conjured up. Sometimes one had to suck it up and keep moving. Onwards and upwards. Her motto was still keeping her strong.

  First stop was her favourite coffee shop for a latte and a wrap, and then she headed for the little park on Golden Square. She sat on her favourite bench on the south-west corner, under a tree, and ate her lunch. Once that was disposed of, she opened her bag and pulled out a large A4 sketchpad. She flipped the cover open and turned to the first blank page and began to draw.

  Not a cheeky crab. She’d given up on those. Instead a grumpy pigeon.

  Her whole sketchbook was filled with Grumpy Pigeon drawings. Pigeon on Nelson’s Column, Pigeon at the palace with the Queen, Pigeon on the Tube...

  Max had been right. This was her passion. She drew when she got up in the mornings now. She drew during her lunch break and she drew when she got home from work. Her flatmate was threatening to use the accumulated stack of papers in their flat to wallpaper the toilet.

  Drawing also had another benefit. While she was throwing herself into it, she didn’t think of Max.

  Well, okay, she did, but the memories got pushed to the back instead of jostling themselves to the front, where they were sharp and painful.

  She hadn’t heard anything from him since her return to Lo
ndon or, presumably, at some point, his. At first she’d hoped it had all been some Venice-induced hysteria, that everything would right itself and he’d come and see her, make contact somehow. She should have remembered that Max wasn’t big on communication.

  But she had other things to concentrate on now. She was finally laying the path for her own future, rather than wandering around in the dark. Not only did she know her next step, she knew where she wanted to be in six months’ time, and five years’ time.

  She had a big picture.

  How sad there was a dark hole in it that should have been filled by someone, but he’d decided it wasn’t his perfect fit.

  She sighed and carried on drawing. She had a meeting with a young, funky greetings-card firm that had offices in Shoreditch. They loved the grumpy little pigeon and she was talking to them about trialling a series of cards. And the owner of the vintage fashion shop she’d worked at wanted her to do some drawings for their new publicity drive—too fabulous to be true fifties divas in sunglasses and headscarves. Then there was a friend of a friend who said he might be able to put her in touch with people who did book jackets. All in all, things were looking promising.

  Oh, she knew she’d have to keep working at One Planet for at least another year or two, maybe more. But she enjoyed it and it was a way to pay the bills. That was what grown-ups did, didn’t they? They dug in and worked hard for what they wanted instead of drifting around and waiting for the universe to drop it into their laps.

  When her hour was up, she packed her stuff away and headed back to the office. When she walked up to her desk, Jax, one of the other production assistants, leaned over the partition between their desks.

  ‘You had a telephone call while you were out,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ Her heart did a little flip. Stop it, she told it. You can’t keep doing this every time the darn thing rings. It’s pointless... Hopeless... Give it up, already.

  ‘Yeah. It was some guy from a travel company.’

  Ruby sank into her chair and laid her head on her desk.

  ‘He wants to know if you can get a set of DVDs for his nan, too.’

  * * *

  Serafina Martin glided into the high-rise offices of Martin & Martin, her sunglasses on and a scarf tied round her neck. Her son resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he watched her from the confines of his glass office. She wafted through the main floor in his direction, bestowing regal smiles on his employees.

  He’d finally gone to his mother at the end of his stay in Venice, had given her the space and time to tell her side of the story. It hadn’t been easy to hear it, but he’d done it. And upon his return to London he’d remembered what she’d said about never having seen his flat, so he’d invited her over.

  Not that she’d consented to actually stay with him, but she’d very kindly let him foot the bill for a room at the Dorchester. It was probably worth it, anyway. If they were under each other’s feet twenty-four-seven, they’d probably drive each other crazy and undo all the progress that they’d made.

  They’d had a long heart-to-heart the night before over dinner. He’d been aware that he’d listened to her side of the story in Venice, but he’d finally managed to release the things he’d needed to say, too. Like how he was sorry that he’d pushed her away for most of his life. He should have been loyal to both parents, not barricaded the doors against her as if she were the enemy. And he’d done it without Ruby there to egg him on, prod him when he was being stubborn. She would have been proud of him.

  He ignored the stab of pain in his chest at the thought of her. That particular wound still hadn’t closed, still dripped and weeped every day.

  Neither he nor his mother were exactly sure what was going to happen from here on, but at least they were willing to try. He’d attempted to explain it to her. In actual words. The best he’d been able to do was tell her he wasn’t sure how to deconstruct a relationship back to where it had been almost twenty years ago and start again, build it up in a different shape, with a different foundation.

  Yes, he’d used a lot of building metaphors. He couldn’t help it. He was new at this talking stuff, and it was the only way the words would come.

  Fina had just leaned across the table and patted his hand. ‘You’re the best architect I know, Massimo. You’ll work it out.’

  His mother finally reached his office door and entered without knocking, then collapsed gracefully into a leather chair and smiled. ‘Shopping is so tiring, don’t you think?’

  Max frowned. If it was that tiring, you’d think she’d do less of it.

  ‘I thought you said you’d be back at two. It’s past four.’

  She waved a hand, as if minutes and seconds were of no consequence. ‘I was otherwise engaged.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  She fidgeted with her handbag. ‘I met Ruby for afternoon tea at the Ritz.’

  It was a warm August day outside, and the sun was glinting off the skyscrapers in the City of London, but Max’s skin chilled and his heart lumbered to a stop.

  ‘She showed me this,’ she said, and handed him a small rectangular card in a cellophane sleeve. He turned it over to discover it was a greetings card. He hadn’t seen the design before—a rather fierce-looking pigeon, who was standing guard at the Tower of London—but he recognised the style instantly.

  She’d done it? She’d really done it?

  His mother took the card back from him and tucked it in her handbag. ‘I told her I thought the pigeon reminded me of someone we both knew, but she said she couldn’t see it.’

  ‘I do not scowl like that.’

  ‘Darling,’ she said sweetly, ‘you’re doing it now.’

  He shook his head and walked back round the other side of his desk. ‘How was she?’ he asked, keeping his tone light, neutral, and messing with some bits of paper on his desk.

  It had been hard knowing he was in the same city as her. He’d have considered moving back to Venice if the institute commission hadn’t been ploughing ahead at full steam. They’d loved his new designs. Had eaten them up, and Vince McDermot had scurried off with his tail between his legs.

  And it was all because of Ruby. He wished he could see her to tell her that.

  Hell, he wished he could see her full stop. He looked up, realising his mother hadn’t answered him.

  ‘Honestly, Massimo,’ she said, giving him that same look she’d used to give him as a boy when he’d been caught stealing the family launch to go racing with his friends. ‘When are you going to give up and admit you’re head over heels for that girl?’

  He stared back at her. Admitting it wasn’t the problem. Forgetting it was.

  And now he’d seen her drawings he knew he’d done the right thing. He’d only have weighed her down, held her back.

  ‘Sometimes it’s better to walk away. I thought you’d understand that better than anyone.’

  His mother threw her hands in the air, indicating she did not know what to do with him. ‘For a very intelligent man, my darling son, you can be incredibly stupid.’

  ‘Thanks, Mamma,’ he said between gritted teeth.

  She stood up and walked over to him, her eyes warm and full of compassion. ‘You are not your father, Massimo.’

  He opened his mouth, but she held up her hand.

  ‘Yes, you are very like him, but you are not a carbon copy.’ She gave him a heartfelt look. ‘You have a chance, darling, to make this right, to be happy. You can be what your father could not. I know it.’

  It was surprising to discover just how much her faith warmed him. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because I gave birth to you, because I know you. Because I’ve seen the way you’ve changed this summer.’

  ‘I don’t know how to tell her.’

  She kissed him on the cheek and patted
his arm. ‘Skills like that are just like muscles. The more you use them, the stronger they get, and you’ve already made a start.’

  Max thought of all the things he’d said to Ruby that last night in Venice. The way he’d seen her crumble in front of him. He wasn’t sure words would ever be enough to repair that damage.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, regaining some of her usual breezy air and heading for the door, ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting downstairs and I need someone to carry my bags.’

  Max raced after her. A taxi? They’d been talking for at least five minutes!

  ‘What bags?’ he said, sounding more like his usual self.

  ‘Oh, I paid a little visit to Harrods before the Ritz.’

  Four large bags were waiting for him in the back of the cab. He climbed in and passed them to his mother. The cabby smiled. He’d seemed quite happy to wait, with the meter ticking over at the speed of light. When the last one had hit the pavement, his mother gave him a gentle shove so he lost his balance and landed on the back seat.

  ‘Go! Go and see Ruby.’

  He looked back at her helplessly. He’d had no time to prepare, no time to think up any building-related images to help him explain. ‘What will I say?’

  ‘Just start, Massimo,’ she said as she shut the door. ‘The rest will come.’

  And then she thumped the taxi on the roof and it sped off into the London traffic.

  * * *

  Ruby was supposed to be working, but she’d drifted off, staring out of the window. It wasn’t something she usually did, but she’d looked up at the sky between the narrow buildings. It was exactly the same colour as the day they’d taken the speedboat out into the lagoon and found the secret beach, and for some reason she’d just ground to a halt.

  She supposed she could call it a coffee break, but she usually filled her breaks with sketching, because when they were filled with sketching it blocked out other things she didn’t want to think about.

  A large, heavy sigh deflated her ribcage.

  She hadn’t let herself look back much, but some of the memories were so lovely, even if it hurt like hell to think about them.