by Heidi Rice
‘No tea,’ he murmured. ‘But thanks for the getaway plan.’ His gratitude seemed grudging at best, but Ruby decided to take it at face value.
‘They mean well. They’re just a bit—’
He raised an eyebrow as if daring her to state the obvious.
‘Overawed by your resemblance to Falcone,’ she finished.
The awkward silence which followed made her wonder if she had made another major faux pas by commenting on the likeness.
‘Yeah, I got that,’ he said. But then he raked his fingers through his hair. And let out a weary breath.
His gaze flicked up to the oversized poster, then flicked away again. And she noticed the tint on his cheeks.
I wonder what Falcone was like as a father?
The thought popped into her head unbidden. She shoved it straight back out again. Just because she’d spent years wondering about what her own dad – aka the invisible deadbeat – might be like. And may even have fantasised on occasion about having Falcone as her father, it did not give her a connection with this man.
But weirdly, the thought calmed her down a little, regardless.
‘What did you think of the film this time around?’ she forced herself to ask, when his gaze met hers. ‘Still freaked out by the flying monkeys?’ she added, trying to push past her anxiety and smile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It was a cute movie.’
Cute? Hadn’t he been moved at all?
‘But what did you think of the message behind the movie?’ she asked.
‘Cute, too. I guess. What do you think happened to the yappy dog, because I’m guessing the bitchy neighbour was still gonna get it destroyed?’
Huh? That was his takeaway? That Toto was doomed? ‘I’m sure Toto would have been fine,’ she said.
He didn’t look convinced.
‘Auntie Em and Uncle Henry would have been so pleased to have Dorothy back, I’m sure they would have done everything they could to save Toto second time around,’ she said. At least if they were discussing the movie there was still hope to—
‘Maybe,’ he said and shrugged. ‘Have you checked out the financial report?’ he asked, cutting straight to the chase.
She swallowed the rest of her argument in defence of Toto’s continued well-being.
‘Umm, no, not yet.’ Ryker’s email with the report from the accountants attached had only arrived in her in-box yesterday and she’d been too busy with preparations for tonight. ‘Is it bad?’ she asked, her heart shrinking to the size of a ball bearing at the look he was sending her. More pitying than patronising could not be good.
‘It’s not good,’ he said.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
The ball bearing sunk into her abdomen and began to ping about as if it were stuck in a pinball machine.
‘You’re running at a loss,’ he added.
‘How much of a loss?’
‘Enough of a loss to require my uncle to borrow heavily to keep this place open over the last ten years at least,’ he said.
Oh, Matty. Why didn’t you tell me?
‘How much did he borrow?’ she asked, the guilt constricting around her tonsils.
‘A lot.’
‘Perhaps, if we got the theatre’s operating costs back into the black,’ she said, hopefully, ‘we could start paying off the loans?’
‘Doubtful,’ he said. ‘The bulk of the repayments – totalling close to two million pounds sterling – become due in three months.’
Two million pounds?
Shock reverberated through her. How on earth had Matty managed to borrow that much?
‘Perhaps we could find an investor,’ she said, hinting desperately. Like maybe a millionaire property magnate from Manhattan who now owns half the theatre.
They still had options, surely. If she could just get him to—
‘Maybe, but I’m out,’ he said, slicing through the last of her happy thoughts, right down to the bone.
‘What do you mean you’re out?’ she said, but she already knew, she could see it on his face.
‘I get that this place means a lot to you,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But if your lover figured I was going to bailout a failing business on his behalf, he got that wrong. My best advice is to sell.’ He let his eyes skim over the shabby room, while Ruby tried to stop herself from hyperventilating. ‘With the money you’ll make from the sale of the property you can pay off the debts, start a new business and still give all the people working downstairs a very generous severance package.’
Severance package? Sale? What the actual fuck?
The terrifying words pinged about in her head with the pinball, rattling her brains and her equilibrium. But only one word of his devastating speech hit the jackpot.
‘Matty wasn’t my—’ She stopped. Breathed. There were so many things she wanted to say in that moment – all the things she had loved about Matty, all the many things she was going to miss, even the things she hadn’t loved so much – but she’d need an Oscar-winning scriptwriter, a dose of Xanax and the wonderful wonderful Wizard of Oz’s gift of the gab to deliver it coherently. So she said the one thing that seemed the most important for him to know. ‘Matty was my boss, and my friend, and my soul mate and my kindred spirit … and I loved him to bits. But we were never lovers.’
‘If you say so,’ Devlin said, the cynical edge in his tone digging into her stomach.
Then the grief grew like a clump of nuclear waste, pushing out through her lungs, seeping from her pores, and the inky blackness exploded.
‘He was gay, you stupid—’ She cut off the expletive, the inky blackness flattened by a dark tide of sadness. ‘He was gay.’
But that wasn’t who Matty was. He was so much more than just his sexuality. And this man knew none of it. Not one thing about him. Even though they were blood relations and he now owned half of Matty’s dream. A dream he didn’t even want.
‘He meant everything to me,’ she murmured in the most reasonable and non-hysterical voice she could muster while her heart was shattering into tiny shards of agony. ‘And you didn’t even know him. So if you don’t mind, I’d really appreciate it if you would make an effort to at least fake regret while telling me you think I should destroy his legacy.’
***
Luke stared, the hairs on the back of his neck doing the mamba as he watched Dorothy – or rather, Ruby Graham – hang on to the flood of grief-stricken tears with a dignity he had not expected.
Next time perhaps try sugar-coating the bad news, you dumbass.
Another solitary tear escaped, melting the ball of rouge highlighting her cheekbone, before she swiped it away.
‘Hey.’ He held his palms up, in the universal sign of surrender.
Please don’t cry.
But to be fair she didn’t look like she was going to just cry, she looked a whole lot more devastated than that.
For the first time in a long time, it occurred to him he’d misjudged his approach. Then again, he hadn’t planned to come into the theatre all guns blazing. He knew how to close a deal, for chrissakes.
But having his father staring down at him from a poster the size of a Times Square billboard had only exacerbated the fallout from the unwanted blitz when he’d arrived. His palms had been clammy, his heartbeat struggling to slow down from warp speed, and his stomach had twisted itself into a giant pretzel in the lobby before the show.
The onset of physical reactions, which he thought he’d conquered years ago after a ton of therapy, had been a devastating reminder of the similar incidents he’d had to endure as a kid when his mom had happily paraded him about as Falcone’s Mini-Me.
He hadn’t had an anxiety attack since he was eighteen, not even close, because he hadn’t associated with people in the movie business for almost that long whom he wasn’t related to. And the construction business was not generally packed with people who gave a crap about some has-been movie actor who had killed himself sixteen years ago.
But it had spooked him
to know those symptoms were still there, ready to tackle him to the ground again at a moment’s notice if he wasn’t careful. The therapist had told him as much, why hadn’t he listened?
Perhaps it was that knowledge though, that hunted feeling, that gave him a weird sort of empathy with Ruby Graham’s battle to contain her distress.
‘Don’t cry,’ he said, aware of the tortured breathing making her breasts look even more impressive against the gingham bodice of her Dorothy costume.
Look away from the rack.
He raised his gaze and connected with her luminous-green eyes, awash with tears. But then to his shock, she did as he told her. Biting into her lip, she broke eye contact to stare at the poster of his old man he’d been busy ignoring.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she whispered. ‘I bloody swore I wouldn’t do this and now I’ve done it anyway.’
‘Done what?’ he asked, although he wasn’t sure she was talking to him.
She scrubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘Gone the full drama queen.’ Flags of colour lit the sprinkle of freckles visible on her cheeks under the smudged make-up.
‘If you think that’s going the full drama queen,’ he said. ‘You don’t know enough drama queens.’
She huffed out a hoarse laugh. ‘Believe me, I know one of the very best.’ She swallowed convulsively, then dropped her chin to stare at her hands, which were clenched into fists in her lap. ‘Or rather, I knew one of the best.’ She gave her cheeks another swipe, even though no more tears had appeared. ‘Why do you have to talk about dead people in the past tense?’
Unease gave the pretzel in his stomach an extra twist. Sharing was not his strong suit – especially with strangers.
‘I don’t want to talk about Matty in the past,’ she said fiercely, saving him the headache of thinking up a sympathetic reply. ‘As if we lost touch somehow, or he isn’t my best mate anymore. It feels weird and wrong and callous.’
Somehow he doubted she had a callous bone in her body.
She dragged in a tortured breath and let out a jagged sigh. ‘Death really bloody sucks, doesn’t it?’
Her grief felt so raw and real, he found himself actually struggling to find an answer for her, even though she didn’t seem that aware of his presence anymore.
‘I’m sorry I never got to meet him,’ he managed at last, surprised by the words.
Matty Devlin, however colourful, sounded way too much like his mother – and one Oscar-worthy drama queen in his life had been more than enough. But he was here to crush Ruby’s dreams, as much as his dead uncle’s, toughing out that unvarnished truth seemed like enough for her to handle today.
She lifted her gaze and studied him, and he had the unprecedented urge to squirm.
‘No, you’re not,’ she said at last, but then her wide lips tilted on one side in an almost smile. His heartbeat stumbled – which was strange, because he didn’t appreciate being figured out so easily. ‘But thanks for lying,’ she added, not sounding offended by his inability to lie convincingly. ‘I’m sure Matty would have loved to have met you, so he’s probably doing a snoopy dance right now if his spirit is still hanging about …’ She ran her open palms down her dress. ‘Which I certainly hope it is.’ She glanced around the room. ‘You hear that, Matty? I’m expecting a full on haunting worthy of Hill House or I’m going to be really disappointed in you.’
Her gaze glided back to meet his as she flicked one thick braid over her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said, the sheepish smile endearing. ‘You probably think you’ve landed in Oz.’
You haven’t seen my mom hit peak Helena Devlin.
He swallowed the too revealing retort.
‘Not really,’ he said. Despite that one errant tear, and the weirdly hot Dorothy costume, Ruby Graham was pretty much the most forthright and restrained person he’d ever met. Of course, that wasn’t saying a whole hell of a lot, if you considered that apart from his work colleagues, sense and sanity didn’t run strongly in his list of close acquaintances.
But still, he had to give her credit for her honesty – and her lack of unnecessary drama in the face of extreme circumstances.
‘You’re grieving,’ he added, surprising himself even more with this demonstration of his previously untapped share-and-discuss skills. ‘Feeling shit and behaving like a nut job goes with the territory.’ I know. ‘Or so I’m told,’ he finished, yanking himself back from that piece of over-sharing.
He had no experience of the true ravages of grief, because he’d made a point of protecting himself from the kind of pain this woman was going through ever since he was fourteen by the simple expediency of keeping close relationships to an absolute minimum. And while a shrink – or his mom in fake-shrink mode – would have a field day with that, it worked for him.
She nodded. ‘I suppose,’ she said, not sounding convinced. ‘Although I really wish I hadn’t given you the impression I can’t even run a Wizard of Oz extravaganza without bursting into tears.’
She hadn’t burst into tears, even though she’d had more than enough provocation, but he didn’t think pointing that out would help him get back to where he needed to be so he kept his mouth shut. He doubted whatever she was going to say would change his mind about what needed to happen next, but he was willing to hear her out. Something he had planned to do before he’d been ambushed by the Falcone For Pope brigade in the lobby.
Negotiations were his strong suit.
‘I want you to know I’m absolutely committed to making this business more profitable,’ she said, the determination in her voice making the short hairs on his neck bristle again. Annoyingly. Sentiment, however well intentioned, had no place in a business negotiation.
‘I had a feeling our finances weren’t great,’ she continued. ‘Obviously I didn’t know how bad they were, because Matty was always super cagey about that and now I know why.’ She took an unsteady breath and he waited for her to continue her spiel. ‘Because he was trying to protect me.’ The wobble in her voice was quickly controlled. ‘But I’ve got lots of ideas to improve our revenue. Ideas that Matty wasn’t keen on because he felt they compromised The Royale’s mission as a community cinema—’
‘Exactly how keen on these ideas are you?’ he cut in, because he could hear the defensive tone. Coming up with ideas to solve a financial crisis were all well and good, but if you weren’t one hundred and one percent committed to them they wouldn’t work.
She straightened in her chair, her expression going flat and direct. ‘I’m keen on anything that will allow us to stay open for business,’ she said, which was a non-answer if ever he’d heard one. But at least the defensive tone was gone.
‘Okay,’ he said.
‘Okay?’ she asked, her brows launched up her forehead. ‘Okay, as in you’ll help me keep The Royale open?’ she added, jumping way ahead of herself. But the hope in her voice made it tougher than it should have been to set her straight.
‘No, okay as in, you don’t have to pay the money straight away,’ he said.
‘I don’t … I don’t understand,’ she said, her crest-fallen expression telling him she did understand, she just didn’t want to.
Hard truths were his stock in trade. But he could feel the blip in his heart rate when he gave it to her straight.
‘At a conservative estimate, this place is worth upwards of five million pounds sterling. It’s got a large footprint in a prime market location. It’s had listed buildings status for over two decades.’ Something his uncle must have angled for to save it from ever becoming a gas station. ‘Even though the London market is slowing down, a developer would snap it up.’ He’d taken a good hard look at the dimensions, and done some calculations on his iPhone while he’d sat in his rental car on the street outside and waited for the right moment to slip into the theatre unnoticed – which had turned out to be the wrong moment. ‘They’d have no problem getting planning approval because this area needs housing. And even if they only redeveloped into apartments to rent ins
tead of buy you’re talking at least six units, possibly eight. That’s a good six-figure profit margin.’
‘But it’s a cinema. I don’t want to sell it.’ Her expression became mulish. ‘I understand you would make a nice tidy profit if we do sell but I …’
‘Stop right there.’ He held up his hand. The remark had been guileless, and it really shouldn’t matter to him one damn bit whether this girl thought he was a freeloader anyway, but somehow it did. ‘This isn’t about the profit I can make. I’m not interested in taking anything out of this place. Like you say, I didn’t know my uncle and I wasn’t expecting this windfall. I sure as hell don’t need it. I’m quite happy to have my share used to pay off the debts when the sale goes through.’
‘You … You are?’ There was that hope again, shining too brightly in her eyes.
He was through pandering to it. ‘But that’s not gonna solve your problem if you don’t sell. Because if you don’t sell you’re gonna have to come up with a couple million on your own, and that’s at a conservative estimate.’
‘What happens if we can’t manage to pay all of it?’ she asked, the hope in her face crucifying him. She just wasn’t getting the fact this was a lost cause.
‘Matty borrowed the money against the property, so if you don’t cough up in time, the bank will foreclose and you lose the place anyway for less money.’ He stood up, suddenly keen to get out of the theatre, and away from the pointless hope in her eyes.
‘But perhaps if we could find an investor, someone willing to loan us the money?’
‘You’ll need to get it back in the black to make it attractive to an investor,’ he said, because he had a sneaking suspicion she still saw him as a possible sugar daddy in this scenario. ‘I figure it’ll sell pretty damn quick once it goes on the market,’ he said, trying to stick to the script and not get side-tracked by the grief hovering round the edges of the room like a bad smell, or the misguided hope in her eyes. The Dorothy outfit – complete with pop socks and ruby slippers – wasn’t helping, because now she looked younger and cuter and even more naïve than she had on the sidewalk outside Ryker’s office. ‘Like I said, I reckon a developer will snap it up if you put the right price on it,’ he added, the desire to soften the blow still festering in the pit of his stomach, alongside the pretzel. ‘If you want to take it to the wire you could give yourself two weeks on the market to sell it, giving you the maximum amount of time to turn this gig around, bring the business into profit and find that extra investment to cover the debts so you don’t have to sell up …’ He glanced at his iWatch to confirm today’s date and do a quick calculation. ‘Which gives you until around June twentieth, before you have to make that choice.’
