Fiona Harper - Taming Her Italian Boss

The top button of his shirt was undone and his tie was nowhere to be seen.

It was odd. All day so far he’d seemed like a force of nature—albeit in a pristine suit—and now that just even the tiniest part of that armour had been discarded she was suddenly confronted by the fact that he was a man. And a rather attractive one at that.

His dark hair was short, but not severe, and now she knew he had Italian blood in him she could see it in the set of his eyes and his long, straight nose. The mouth, however, was totally British—tightly drawn in, jaw tense as he grimaced at some unwelcome news and hung up on the caller without saying goodbye. He brought the phone down from his ear and stared at it so hard that Ruby thought it might burst into flames.

That was when he looked up and spotted her, sitting where she’d been for the last ten minutes, and it took him by total surprise. She allowed her lips to curve into the barest of smiles and held his gaze. For some reason she liked the fact her presence sometimes ruffled him.

Taming Her Italian Boss

Fiona Harper

www.millsandboon.co.uk

As a child, FIONA HARPERwas constantly teased for either having her nose in a book or living in a dream world. Things haven’t changed much since then, but at least in writing she’s found a use for her runaway imagination. After studying dance at university, Fiona worked as a dancer, teacher and choreographer, before trading in that career for video-editing and production. When she became a mother she cut back on her working hours to spend time with her children, and when her littlest one started pre-school she found a few spare moments to rediscover an old but not forgotten love—writing.

Fiona lives in London, but her other favourite places to be are the Highlands of Scotland and the Kent countryside on a summer’s afternoon. She loves cooking good food and anything cinnamon-flavoured. Of course she still can’t keep away from a good book or a good movie—especially romances—but only if she’s stocked up with tissues, because she knows she will need them by the end, be it happy or sad. Her favourite things in the world are her wonderful husband, who has learned to decipher her incoherent ramblings, and her two daughters.

For my readers,

from those who have been with me

since the beginning to those who are

picking one of my books for the first time.

I’m grateful to every one of you.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

‘YOU WANT ME to give you a job?’

The woman staring across the desk at Ruby didn’t look convinced. The London traffic rumbled outside the first-floor office as the woman looked her up and down. Her gaze swept down over Ruby’s patchwork corduroy jacket, miniskirt with brightly coloured leggings peeking out from underneath, and ended at the canvas shoes that were almost the right shade of purple to match the streaks in her short hair.

Ruby nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Humph,’ the woman said.

Ruby couldn’t help noticing her flawlessly cut black suit and equally flawlessly cut hair. She’d bet that the famous Thalia Benson of the Benson Agency hadn’t come about her latest style after she’d got fed up with the long stringy bits dangling in her breakfast cereal and convinced her flatmate to take scissors to it.

‘And Layla Babbington recommended you try here?’

Ruby nodded again. Layla had been one of her best friends at boarding school. When she’d heard that Ruby was looking for a job—and one that preferably took her out of the country ASAP—she’d suggested the top-class nannying agency. ‘Don’t let old Benson fool you for a moment,’ she’d told Ruby. ‘Thalia’s a pussycat underneath, and she likes someone with a bit of gumption. The two of you will get along famously.’

Now that she was sitting on the far side of Thalia Benson’s desk, under scrutiny as if she were a rogue germ on a high-chair tray, Ruby wasn’t so sure.

‘Such a pity she had to go and marry that baronet she was working for,’ Benson muttered. ‘Lost one of my best girls and a plum contract.’

She looked up quickly at Ruby, as if she’d realised she’d said that out loud. Ruby looked back at her, expression open and calm. She didn’t care what the nanny provider to the rich and famous thought about her clients. She just wanted a job that got her out of London. Fast.

‘So...’ Ms Benson said in one long drawn-out syllable while she shuffled a few papers on her desk. ‘What qualifications do you have?’

‘For nannying?’ Ruby asked, resisting the urge to fidget.

Benson didn’t answer, but her eyebrows lifted in a what-do-you-think? kind of gesture.

Ruby took a deep breath. ‘Well...I’ve always been very good with kids, and I’m practical and creative and hard-working—’

The other woman cut her off by holding up a hand. She was looking wearier by the second. ‘I mean professional qualifications. Diploma in Childcare and Education, BTEC...Montessori training?’

Ruby let the rest of that big breath out. She’d been preparing to keep talking for as long as possible, and she’d only used up a third of her lung capacity before Benson had interrupted her. Not a good start. She took another, smaller breath, giving herself a chance to compose a different reply.

‘Not exactly.’

No one had said it was going to be a great reply.

Thalia Benson gave her a frosty look. ‘Either one has qualifications or one hasn’t. It tends to be a black-or-white kind of thing.’

Ruby swallowed. ‘I know I haven’t got any traditional childcare qualifications, but I was hoping I could enlist with your new travelling nanny service. Short-term placements. What I lack in letters after my name I make up for in organisation, flexibility and common sense.’

Benson’s ears pricked up at the mention of common sense. She obviously liked those words. Ruby decided to press home her main advantage. ‘And I’ve travelled all over the world since I was a small child. There aren’t many places I haven’t been to. I also speak four languages—French, Spanish, Italian and a bit of Malagasy.’

Ms Benson tipped her head slightly. ‘You’ve spent time in Madagascar?’ The look of disbelief on her face suggested she thought Ruby had gone a bit too far in padding out her CV.

‘My parents and I lived there for three years when I was a child.’

Benson’s eyes narrowed. ‘Inona voavoa?’ she suddenly said, surprising Ruby.

The reply came back automatically. How was she? ‘Tsara be.’

Benson’s eyes widened, and for the first time since Ruby had walked through the office door and sat down she looked interested. She picked up the blank form sitting in front of her and started writing. ‘Ruby Long, wasn’t it?’

‘Lange,’ Ruby replied. ‘With an e.’

Benson looked up. ‘Like Patrick Lange?’

Ruby nodded. ‘Exactly like that.’ She didn’t normally like mentioning her connection to the globetrotting TV presenter whose nature documentaries were the jewel in the crown of British television, but she could see more than a glimmer of interest in Thalia Benson’s eyes, and she really, really wanted to be out of the country when good old Dad got back from The Cook Islands in two days’ time. ‘He’s my father,’ she added.

The other woman stopped messing around with the form, put it squarely down on the desk and folded her hands on top of it. ‘Well, Ms Lange, I don’t usually hire nannies without qualifications, not even for short-term positions, but maybe there’s something you could do round the office over the summer. Our intern has just disappeared off to go backpacking.’

Ruby blinked. Once again, someone had heard the name ‘Lange’ and the real person opposite them had become invisible. Once again, mentioning her father had opened a door only for it to be slammed shut again. When would she ever learn?

‘That’s very generous, Ms Benson, but I wasn’t really looking for a clerical position.’

Thalia nodded, but Ruby knew she hadn’t taken her seriously at all. From the smile on the other woman’s face, she could tell Thalia was wondering how much cachet it would bring her business if she could wheel Ruby out at the annual garden party to impress her clientele, maybe even get national treasure Patrick Lange to show up.

That wasn’t Ruby’s style at all. She’d been offered plenty of jobs where she could cash in on her father’s status by doing something vastly overpaid for not a lot of effort, and she’d turned every one of them down. All she wanted was for someone to see her potential for once, to need her for herself, not just what her family connections could bring. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask. Unfortunately, Ruby suspected Ms Thalia Benson wasn’t that rare individual. She rose from her side of the desk, opened the office door and indicated Ruby should return to the waiting area. ‘Why don’t you take a seat outside, and I’ll see what I can do?’

Ruby smiled back and nodded, rising from her chair. She’d give Thalia Benson fifteen minutes, and if she hadn’t come up with something solid by then, she was out of here. Life was too short to hang around when something wasn’t working. Onwards and upwards, that was her motto.

Everything in the waiting area was shades of stone and heather and aubergine. The furniture screamed understated—and overpriced—elegance. The only clue that the Benson Agency had anything to do with children was a pot of crayons and some drawing paper on the low coffee table between two sectional sofas. When Thalia’s office door closed, Ruby shrugged then sat down. She’d always loved drawing. She picked up a bright red crayon and started doodling on a blank sheet. Maybe she’d go for fire engine–red streaks in her hair next time they needed touching up....

She spent the next five minutes doing a pretty passable cartoon of Thalia Benson while she waited. In the picture, Thalia dripped sophistication and charm, but she was dressed up like the Child Catcher from the famous movie, locking a scared boy in a cage.

As the minutes ticked by Ruby became more and more sure this was a waste of her time. The only thing she needed to decide before she left was whether to fold the drawing up and discreetly stick it in her pocket, or if she should prop it on the console table against the far wall so it was the first thing prospective clients saw when they walked in the door.

She was holding the paper in her hands, dithering about whether to crease it in half or smooth it out flat, when the door crashed open and a tall and rather determined-looking man strode in. Ruby only noticed the small, dark-haired girl he had in tow when he was halfway to Thalia Benson’s office. The child was wailing loudly, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth wide open, and the only reason she didn’t bump into any of the furniture was because she was being propelled along at speed in her father’s wake, protected by his bulk.

The receptionist bobbed around him, trying to tell him he needed to make an appointment, but he didn’t alter his trajectory in the slightest. Ruby put her cartoon down on the table and watched with interest.

‘I need to see the person in charge and I need to see them now,’ he told the receptionist, entirely unmoved by her expression of complete horror or her rapid arm gestures.