Italian Bachelors: Ruthless Propositions. Fiona Harper

      For the first time since he’d set eyes on her, she looked surprised.

      ‘Can we get there in under half an hour?’

      She frowned. ‘Pimlico. So, yes... But why—?’

      ‘Can you pack a bag in under ten minutes?’

      She raised her eyebrows.

      ‘In my experience, most women can’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t actually understand why, though.’ It seemed a simple enough task, after all. ‘I believe it may have something to do with shoes.’

      ‘My parents dragged me round the globe—twice—in my formative years,’ she replied crisply. ‘I can pack a bag in under five if I have to.’

      Max smiled. And not just the distant but polite variety he rolled out at business meetings. This was the real deal. The nanny stopped looking quite so confrontational and her eyes widened. Max leaned forward and instructed the driver to head for Pimlico.

      He felt a tapping on his shoulder, a neatly trimmed fingernail made its presence known through the fabric of his suit sleeve. He sat back in his seat and found her looking at him. ‘I haven’t agreed to take the job yet.’

      She wasn’t one to beat about the bush, was she? But, then again, neither was he.

      ‘Will you?’

      She folded her arms. ‘I need to ask you a few questions first.’

      For some reason Max found himself smiling again. It felt odd, he realised. Not stiff or forced, just unfamiliar. As if he’d forgotten how and had suddenly remembered. But he hadn’t had a lot to smile about this year, had he?

      ‘Fire away,’ he said.

      Was that a flicker of a smile he saw behind those eyes? If it was, it was swiftly contradicted by a stubborn lift of her chin. ‘Well, Mr Martin, you seem to have skipped over some of the details.’

      ‘Such as?’

      ‘Such as: how long will you be requiring my services?’

      Oh, those kinds of details. ‘A week, hopefully. Possibly two.’

      She made a funny little you-win-some-you-lose-some kind of expression.

      A nasty cold feeling shot through him. She wasn’t going to back out already, was she? ‘Too long?’

      She shook her head. ‘I’d have been happy for it to be longer, but it’ll do.’

      They looked at each other for a couple of seconds. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she delivered her next question. ‘So why do you need a nanny for your daughter in such a hurry? I think I’d like to know why the previous one left.’

      Max sat bolt upright in his seat. ‘My daughter? Sofia’s not my daughter!’

      The nanny—or almost nanny, he reminded himself—gave him a wry look. ‘See? This is what I’m talking about...details.’

      Max ignored the comment. He was great with details. But nowadays he paid other people to concentrate on the trivial nit-picky things so he could do the important stuff. It worked—most of the time—because he had assistants and deputies to spring into action whenever he required them to, but when it came to his personal life he had no such army of willing helpers. Probably because he didn’t have much of a personal life. It irritated him that this mismatched young woman had highlighted a failing he hadn’t realised he had. Still, he could manage details, sketchy or otherwise, if he tried.

      ‘Sofia is my niece.’

      ‘Oh...’

      Max usually found the vagaries of the female mind something of a mystery. He was always managing to put his foot in it with the women in his life—when he had time for any—but he found this one unusually easy to read. The expression that accompanied her breathy sigh of realisation clearly said, Well, that explains a lot.

      ‘Let’s just say that I had not planned to be child-minding today.’

      She pressed her lips together, as if to stop herself from laughing. ‘You mean you were left holding the baby.... Literally.’

      He nodded. ‘My sister is an...actress.’

      At least, she’d been trying to be the last five years.

      ‘Oh! Has she been in anything I’ve heard of?’

      Max let out a sigh. ‘Probably not. But she got a call from her agent this morning about an audition for a “smallish part in a biggish film”. Something with...’ what was the name? ‘...Jared Fisher in it.’

      The nanny’s eyes widened. ‘Wow! He’s really h—’ She shut her mouth abruptly and nibbled her top lip with her teeth. ‘What I meant to say was, what a fabulous opportunity for her.’

      ‘Apparently so. She got the job, but they wanted her in L.A. right away. The actress who was supposed to be playing the part came down with appendicitis and it was now or never.’

      Secretly he wondered if it would have been better if his little sister had sloped despondently into his office later that afternoon, collected her daughter and had gone home. She’d always had a bit of a bohemian lifestyle, and they’d lost touch while she’d travelled the world, working her way from one restaurant to another as she waited for her ‘big break’. But then Sofia had come along and she’d settled down in London. He really didn’t know if this was a good idea.

      Maybe things might have been different if they’d grown up in the same house after their parents had split, but, while he’d benefited from the steadying influence of their English father, Gia had stayed with their mother, a woman who had turned fickle and inconsistent into an art form.

      They had grown apart as teenagers, living in different countries, with totally different goals, values and personalities, but he was trying to make up for it now they were more a part of each other’s lives.

      Gia always accused him of butting his nose in where it wasn’t wanted and trying to run her life for her, but she always said it with a smile and she was annoyingly difficult to argue with. Perhaps that was why, when she’d turned up at his office that morning with Sofia and had begged him to help her, her eyes full of hope and longing, he hadn’t been able to say no.

      ‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Why do you need a job in such a hurry?’

      She rolled her eyes. ‘It was either this, or my father was threatening to make me work for him.’

      ‘You don’t want to work for the family firm?’

      She pulled a face. ‘I’d rather jump off the top of The Shard! Wouldn’t you?’

      Max stiffened. ‘I now head up the business my father built from nothing.’

      An unexpected stab of pain hit him in his ribcage, and then came the roll of dark emotion that always followed. Life had been much simpler when he’d been able to bury it all so deep it had been as if it hadn’t existed. ‘There’s something to be said for family loyalty,’ he added gruffly. ‘For loyalty full stop, actually.’

      She looked a little uncomfortable, but waltzed her way out of the awkward moment with a quip. ‘Well, I’m quite prepared to be loyal to your family. Just as long as you don’t ask me to get entangled with mine. Parents are fine and all that, but I’d rather keep them at a safe distance.’

      Max couldn’t help but think of his mother, and he decided not to quiz Ruby any further on her motives. It wasn’t going to alter whether he hired her or not for a couple of weeks. If this had been for a more permanent fixture in his life, it might have been a different matter.

      ‘So, why do you need a travelling nanny?’ Her face lit up. ‘Are we going to Hollywood?’

      She sounded just like Gia. Max resisted the urge to close his eyes and wish this were all a bad dream, that he’d wake up in bed, his nice, ordered