Italian Bachelors: Ruthless Propositions. Fiona Harper

meal.

      Fina nodded, even though her son wasn’t watching, and hung her head over her plate.

      Ruby glared at him. She wanted to fish that little crab they’d met the other day out of the canal and attach it to his nose! He was being so stubborn.

      Didn’t he know what a gift this was? Maybe Fina hadn’t been the perfect mother, but she was trying to make up for it now. Surely that had to mean something? And there had to be good reasons why a woman as warm and caring as Fina had walked away from her marriage. She might try and act blasé, but Ruby couldn’t believe she’d done it on a whim, whatever Max might think.

      Fina rose from her seat. ‘I promised Renata upstairs that I would look in on her. She’s not been feeling very well,’ she said, and walked stiffly from the room.

      Max pushed his plate away. Ruby glared at him. ‘Couldn’t you just even give her a chance?’

      He lifted his head and looked at her. His eyes were empty, blank like the statues topping so many of the palazzos nearby. ‘It’s not your business, Ruby. What happens in my family is my concern.’

      She stared back at him, words flying round her head. But she released none of them, knowing he was speaking the truth and hating him for it. So much for the bond she’d thought they’d forged over the last few days.

      She rose and followed Fina out of the room. ‘Thank you,’ she said as she reached the doorway, ‘for putting me firmly in my place.’

      * * *

      At least an hour passed before Max emerged from the library. The apartment was totally quiet. Sofia must be fast asleep and he hadn’t heard his mother return from visiting her neighbour.

      Everything was dark—well, almost. A few of the wall sconces were lit at the far end of the corridor near the salon. His footsteps seemed loud as he walked down it and entered the large room. In here it was dark, too, with just one lamp turned on near the sofas, making the cavernous space seem smaller and more intimate. He looked for Ruby’s dark head against the cushions, for a hint of a purple streak, but there was no one there.

      He was about to turn and leave the room, but then he heard a shuffling noise and noticed the doors to the balcony were open. He could just make out her petite form, leaning on the stone ledge, staring out across the water. Taking in a deep breath, he walked over to the open door and stood in the threshold.

      ‘I can hear voices,’ she said, her tone bland, ‘and I think it must be someone close by, but there are no windows open upstairs and no boats going by.’

      ‘It’s just another quirk of this city,’ he said. ‘Sounds seem oddly hushed at some times and magnified at others. Even a whisper can travel round corners.’

      She nodded. Whoever had been talking had stopped now and silence grew around them.

      What a pity it wasn’t silent inside Max’s head. He could hear another whispering voice now, one telling him to apologise. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that voice, but he usually managed to outrun it when it prompted him to do anything as dangerous as letting down his guard, admitting he was wrong, but Venice was amplifying this sound, too, making it impossible to ignore.

      Or maybe it was Ruby who did that to him.

      Sometimes she looked at him and he felt as if all the things he’d held together for so long were slowly being unlaced.

      He should go, retreat back to the library, to the safety of his plans and emails. That was where he’d built the fortress of his life, after all—in his work. Just like his father before him.

      Ruby didn’t ask anything of him. Didn’t demand as his mother would have done. Instead she kept staring out into the night, a faint breeze lifting her feathery fringe.

      Max stepped forward. ‘I was rude earlier on,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

      She kept her elbows resting on the stone balustrade and turned just her head, studied him. ‘I accept your apology, but you spoke the truth.’

      She was right, he realised. That was something they always did with each other, whether they wanted to or not. ‘Even if it was, I shouldn’t have said it the way I did.’

      Ruby’s cheeks softened and her smile grew. ‘Thank you.’ She straightened and looked back inside. ‘Sofia’s appetite for things to colour in is insatiable. I was going to get some outlines done to give me a head start in the morning, but I couldn’t resist slipping out here for a moment.’

      She moved to go back inside, and his arm shot out across the doorway, blocking her. He didn’t know why he’d done that. He should have let her go. Ruby tipped her head and frowned at him, her delicate features full of puzzlement, her eyes asking a question. A question he didn’t know the answer to.

      But other words found his lips, words he hadn’t even realised were his. ‘I find it hard to be here... This is the first time I’ve seen her since my father died.’

      She looked back at him, understanding brimming in her eyes.

      ‘She broke him, you know, when she left. Everyone always said he was the same old Geoffrey, hard as steel, never letting anything get to him, but they didn’t know him the way I did.’

      She moved a little closer, placed a hand on the arm that wasn’t blocking her exit, the one that was braced against the rough stone of the balustrade. ‘You’re angry with her,’ she said in a low voice. It wasn’t a question.

      He nodded. He’d been angry with her for years. It had started as a raging fire that only the indignation and passion of a teenage boy knew how to fan, and had solidified into something darker and deeper. ‘Since the day of his funeral I haven’t been able to ignore it any longer. I want to but I can’t.’

      He broke away from her and walked a few steps down the balcony, away from the doors. Ruby, of course, followed him. He heard the soft pad of her ballet pumps on the stone. ‘You have to know that it’s illogical, that his death wasn’t her fault. They’ve been separated for years.’

      He twisted to face her abruptly, his face contorting. ‘But that’s just it. It is her fault. You should have heard some of the things she used to scream at him.’ He shook his head. ‘And he never once lost his temper. It was the effort of living with her, then living without her, that brought on his high blood pressure.’

      Ruby stepped closer. ‘Is that how he died?’

      He nodded. ‘He had a stroke—a little one at first, but while he was in the hospital a bigger one struck, finishing him off.’

      He felt the rage boiling inside him now. It was all so perilously close to the surface that he was scared he would punch straight through the five-hundred-year-old wall into the salon.

      ‘She’s hurting, too,’ Ruby said.

      He forced himself to focus on her. For a moment the red haze behind his eyes had blurred his vision.

      ‘Can’t you forgive her?’

      He shook his head, unable to articulate his answer. No, he didn’t think he could. He didn’t even know if he’d be able to contain it again, let alone quench it.

      She must have seen the tension in his expression, because she stepped even closer, this time so he could smell that maddening elusive perfume. ‘You’ve got to let it go, Max. You can’t bury it all inside.’ Her eyes pleaded with him. ‘If you do it might damage you the same way it damaged him.’

      He knew she was right. He just didn’t know if he knew how. Or even wanted to.

      There was the tiniest noise in the back of his head, something snapping. But instead of releasing his anger he’d unleashed something else. It was also something he couldn’t keep buried any longer, and it had nothing at all to do with his mother and everything to do with the firecracker of a woman standing in front of him.

      Slowly he leaned forward, and