by Heidi Rice
Devlin straightened, and stared her down past that prominent nose. And for the first time since she’d met him, she detected a real emotional reaction from him. Unfortunately, the reaction wasn’t guilt, it was irritation.
‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Because I so want to get arrested on my last night in London? Was that your thinking?’
‘We won’t get arrested. That’s ridiculous. At the most we’d probably get a caution.’
‘Yeah, well, thanks but no thanks. You go scatter my uncle’s ashes all you want, but you can leave me out of it.’
Ruby clutched the backpack, wishing, for a moment, she could get out Matty’s plastic urn and dump the contents on Devlin’s perfectly styled hair. What a prick. Unfortunately, that would be a disservice to her best friend, who did not deserve to get scattered over a dipshit like Luke Devlin.
‘Fine, I will,’ she said. ‘I’m fairly sure Matty wouldn’t have wanted you along anyway if he’d ever actually met you.’
She marched to the door, ready to make a dignified exit. But then something twisted inside her. The same something which had got her in trouble age fifteen, when she’d told one of her mother’s boyfriends to get his hand off her bum, and again at age sixteen when she’d waltzed out of her maths GCSE exam after signing her name ‘Miss Couldn’t Care Less About the Sum of the Hypotenuse’ on the top of the paper. The same something that had come to her rescue two weeks ago when Matty had collapsed in front of her holding his left side and she’d had to pull herself together and call an ambulance before she went totally to bits. It was what her mum had once called her Arsey Gene. The gene that told her now, she needed to get the last word in here, if for no other reason than Matty’s wishes meant something. And this sod didn’t get to piss all over them with his snotty attitude.
She paused at the door. ‘But before I leave, I’ve got something to say to you.’
He sighed. ‘Don’t tell me, this is the big parting speech? How about you get it over with fast because I’ve got a plane to catch in three hours.’
She hesitated, momentarily taken aback by the biting sarcasm in his tone. Good grief, how did anyone get to be so jaded? Or so much of an insensitive dickhead? She swallowed, bolstering her courage and calling on her Arsey Gene, which seemed to have momentary malfunctioned on being introduced to his Couldn’t-Give-a-Shit Gene.
‘I don’t know who you think you are,’ she launched into her speech, only to have him interrupt her.
‘But I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’
‘And I have absolutely no clue why Matty gifted you half of a cinema that he adored and which you clearly could not give a single toss about …’ She continued riding roughshod over the cynicism in his tone.
Doesn’t matter Rubes, pearls before swine, kiddo.
‘But that cinema, and more importantly that man, meant everything to me.’ For one horrific moment, she could feel her eyes stinging and sunk her teeth into her tongue to force back the tide. Steadying her breathing and bringing the moisture back in-house she carried on, somewhat vindicated when Mr Snotty didn’t interrupt her again. He seemed momentarily struck dumb in the face of her emotion – clearly he was one of those guys who thought a woman’s tears had the power to slice off his testicles – well, good, all the better to flail him with.
‘Matty was kind and generous, an amazing teacher and a really bloody good laugh, and even when he was dying he knew how to bring down the house. And people meant something to him. People and making them feel good. Which was why he poured so much love and passion into a movie house that never made any money. Why he took me under his wing when he really couldn’t afford an assistant. And why I’d dance naked through Hyde Park scattering his ashes over the nearest policeman if that’s what he’d asked me to do. And why you can’t lift a finger to him, with your two-thousand-dollar suit and your pricey haircut and your humungous bank balance and your sexy cologne.’ Shit, did I just say sexy cologne? She breathed in a breath of said sexy cologne – sandalwood with hints of orange. Sod it, at least she was honest. ‘And that huge stick stuck so far up your bum I’m surprised it doesn’t give you lock jaw.’
She finally let out the breath she’d been holding.
Well, that had certainly wiped the cynicism off his face. The frown had disappeared, to be replaced with … well, nothing.
Mr Snotty had turned into a sphinx. She’d struck him dumb with her big parting speech. Just like Sally when she finally came clean about her feelings for Harry.
Not that she had any feelings for this jerk other than disgust. However much he might look like the man who’d fathered him.
‘Have a nice flight, Mr Devlin, and a nice boring conventional life,’ she said, all politeness. ‘I’ll be in touch with your assistant in the next quarter with your share of the profits from The Royale.’
And there would be profits, even if she had to work double shifts and open the cinema to the events management company who had been knocking down their door for the last year. If they had to close their doors in three months’ time she intended to keep Matty’s dream alive to the bitter end.
Because she had a heart. And however bruised and battered it felt right now, however fatally wounded, as she marched out of Devlin’s suite, she knew it had to be better than having no heart at all.
***
Shit!
Luke listened to the outer door of the suite slam shut and carried on packing.
Do not go after her. This is not your issue. She’s fine. She’ll survive, even if she does get busted. They’ll take pity on her. She’s grieving. She may also be hammered. You have a plane to catch. You do not have time to give a shit.
But his hands began to shake as he unplugged his phone charger from the wall and stuffed it into the bag’s front pocket.
And the look on Ruby Graham’s face, all fierce and furious and heartbroken, made his heart crash into his tonsils.
This is not your mess to fix.
He shouldn’t have deliberately tried to antagonise her. It had seemed a good strategy when she’d walked in with her urn. He’d figured it was by far the best way to persuade her he really was the emotionless property developer he appeared to be. He didn’t want to give her any more false hope. But he had been way too convincing. So convincing he felt like a Grade A asshat right about now.
Ruby Graham had just had her life kicked into touch.
And yeah, the theatre was not his mess to fix. And she needed to know that. But maybe this side mess was?
Swearing furiously under his breath, he found his boots, stamped them on, then charged out of the hotel room after her. Whipping his cell out of his pocket as he headed down the hall, he texted his assistant Gwen to rebook his flight for tomorrow morning.
He knew he was going to regret this. But he couldn’t let Ruby Graham go out into the night alone, to scatter her best friend’s ashes, looking as if she’d just been punched in the stomach.
Because the person who’d punched her in the stomach was him.
Chapter 4
‘Bugger, bugger, bugger.’ Ruby’s toes slipped on the rain-slick railings as she slung her hand over the bar and heaved. Her upper body strength was non-existent though, and two seconds later she was dropped back on to her feet on the wrong side of the park gate. For the tenth time. She was never going to get into the Serpentine section of the park. Why hadn’t she thought this through? The bloody gated area was over eight-foot high. She should have bought a step ladder.
‘Fuck a duck!’ she murmured, feeling defeated. And hating it.
‘I certainly wouldn’t advise that or you’re sure to get busted.’ The laconic comment – in a far too familiar American accent – gave her such a shock she let out a small shriek.
Luke Devlin stood behind her looking solid, and steady and smug.
‘If you’ve come here to gloat, go ahead,’ she managed, having lost all sense of decorum in her abject misery. ‘Then you can piss off.’
All she’d wanted to
do tonight was finally lay Matty to rest, the way he’d wanted, the way he’d asked her to. Why couldn’t she even achieve that much without making a tit of herself? But then she seemed particularly adept at making a tit of herself in front of Luke Devlin.
But Devlin wasn’t laughing, she realised, as he tilted his head to one side and studied her. ‘I’m not here to gloat. I’m here to apologise.’
‘What for?’ she asked, because there were about a million and one things she could think of.
Why did he have to be so detached? So unfeeling? So pragmatic? So broad and solid and hot? Okay, scratch that last bit, so not the point.
‘For making this even harder for you than it needs to be,’ he said.
He actually sounded sincere – and just like that her righteous anger deflated like a popped party balloon. Unfortunately, the anger had been keeping all of her misery at bay fairly effectively, which happily rushed in to the fill the vacuum.
‘Apology accepted,’ she said, turning back to the railings and ignoring him. ‘Now you can piss off,’ she added under her breath.
She gripped the railings again with numbed fingers and heaved herself up. She struggled and slipped and cursed and battled with the gate for a further two minutes, which felt like ten years, all the while assuming he’d pissed back off to his hotel and his flight.
But then the dry voice reverberated down her spine. ‘Why don’t you just dump the ashes in the park?’
She slumped against the railing, her forehead connecting with the cold slippery metal, perilously close to tears.
‘Because that’s not what Matty wanted. He specified the Serpentine.’ She pushed her finger through the locked gate at the dark expanse of water beyond. ‘Which is through there.’ She still hadn’t figured out why Matty had asked for this particular ritual to be carried out. But she was too numb and disheartened to care about figuring out the why. Suddenly, all the things she wasn’t going to be able to do for him anymore – like laugh at his rubbish jokes, make the popcorn to his lemon-tinis, or keep The Royale afloat – loomed large around her. This was one thing she refused to fail at, or compromise on.
She glanced through the gathering dusk at the road that ran through the park and the bridge in the distance that stretched over the lake – illuminated in waves by the headlights of passing cars.
‘Perhaps I could scatter them from the bridge?’ she thought aloud.
Getting over this bloody gate was not going to happen. And the thought of having to come back tomorrow with a stepladder felt too overwhelming.
‘Not a good idea,’ said Mr Pragmatic and Emotionless from behind her.
Why hadn’t he buggered off already?
‘There’s a lot more ashes than you think, it takes forever to scatter them. And you’ll be super exposed there.’
She let go of the railings and turned. ‘You’ve done it before?’
‘Sure,’ he said, frowning. ‘I scattered my old man’s ashes.’
‘You scattered Falcone’s ashes?’ she whispered, the thought – that she was standing less than a foot away from a person who had such an intimate connection with her cinematic idol – so shocking and yet epic she completely forgot to be pissed off with him.
‘Yeah. My mom asked me to.’ His shrug was stiff and unyielding and defensive, not unlike the look on his face when he’d sat under the Boy Blue poster in Matty’s flat on Friday night. Yup, there was definitely a story here and it didn’t look particularly Walt Disney. ‘And it took forever.’
She leaned against the railings to study him. Absorbing the strange situation she was in – standing outside the Serpentine in the almost dark, trying and failing to scatter Matty’s ashes with a man who was Rafael Falcone’s son. The son of the icon she had idolised through all of her lonely fatherless teenage years. His face a facsimile of the poster she’d had pinned to the door of her childhood bedroom so she could gaze at it while she fell asleep to the sound of her mum shouting at her latest boyfriend, or banging the bed against the wall in the bedroom next door in rhythmic thumps.
Maybe it was the Prosecco and the heartache talking, but it all suddenly seemed so surreal. ‘This is so bloody weird.’
‘What is?’ he asked, his frown deepening.
‘You sound just like him in all of his movies, you know?’
It was the wrong thing to say. She knew it instantly because his gaze became wary and tense, where before it had been pragmatic.
‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, not sounding remotely impressed with the observation. What was the story? Because she was exhausted and down-hearted enough to wonder about it now – mainly so she didn’t have to wonder about how she was going to scale an eight-foot high gate.
‘You’ve been told?’ she said, not even attempting to hide her astonishment. ‘You don’t know? Haven’t you watched any of Falcone’s movies?’ Surely he must have. His father had been one of the greatest actors of his generation. If not the greatest. Hailed as the successor to Brando and Dean and on par with De Niro and Pacino. A rare talent who had blazed across the screen like a comet, captured the zeitgeist and the hearts of millions, won an Oscar, been nominated for several more, changed the face of screen acting and then faded and died far too soon.
‘No,’ he said, the cutting tone slicing through her Falcone reverie like a machete.
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘They’re all brilliant. Well, apart from The Tangri-La, but that was just a blip. And he was your father, Luke,’ she added, going the full Darth Vader. But seriously, this man was the only child of a legend and he’d never even seen any of his father’s movies? It felt like a crime, somehow, a crime against everything she and Matty had held dear.
Instead of answering her perfectly valid question, though, his frown eased and he tucked his hands into the back pocket of his jeans. His lips curved in a cynical half smile as he tilted his head to one side – studying her in a way that didn’t feel entirely complimentary. ‘Funny, I didn’t spot you for one before now. But I guess it goes with the territory.’
‘Spot me for what?’
‘A Falcone nut,’ he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘Never ceases to amaze me how many of you there still are, even sixteen years after the old ham died.’
Old ham? What the fuck?
Ruby’s tongue swelled, her outrage on behalf of movie lovers everywhere choking her.
‘Well, of course it amazes you,’ she replied. ‘How could you possibly know how cool and incredible he is? I mean was?’ she corrected herself, feeling oddly flustered. She knew Luke Devlin had none of his father’s brilliance or sensitivity, but this whole scenario felt a bit too close to Mia Farrow’s predicament in The Purple Rose of Cairo when Jeff Daniels had literally stepped out of a cinema screen and invited her to Egypt. Surreal, Ruby decided, didn’t even begin to cover it. ‘Especially if you’ve never actually bothered to watch any of his movies?’
‘Uh-huh! And how would you know what a self-absorbed asshole he was,’ came the lookalike Falcone’s deadpan reply. ‘If you never actually met him?’
***
‘Your father was an asshole? Really?’ The mossy green eyes widened, Ruby’s avid curiosity making them even more luminous than usual. And Luke wanted to kick himself hard in his own ass.
Never engage, never discuss. Not with the Falcone nuts.
How had he forgotten the law he’d laid down when he was a thirteen years old? Ever since the last time he’d sat in the lobby of his mom’s LA mansion, on a sunny Saturday morning, with his soccer boots on and his heart bursting with excitement and pride and a foolish sense of hope that this time would be different. Sure the great Falcone would have to show eventually, because he’d promised Luke on the phone only the day before that he would.
But then he’d waited … and waited … for two endless hours, while the Falcone nuts amassed by his mom’s gate – also waiting – shouted at him to ask when his father was arriving.
It was the last of the many no-shows. And af
ter that he’d finally had the sense to tell his mom he didn’t want to schedule regular meet-ups with his father anymore. On the rare occasions he did show, they had to sneak around and do everything in secrecy anyway – to avoid the paparazzi and the Falcone nuts. He’d rather be playing with his friend Mitchell down the block. Or even his hyperactive kid brother, Jack. Hell, he’d almost rather kick a ball about with his toddler sister, Becca, who was only just out of diapers, than be caught dead waiting for a man again who half the time – no, three-quarters of the time – never bothered to keep his promises. And when he did …
He pushed the bitter memories aside. Yeah, definitely not going there. Especially not in front of a Falcone Nut. Time to change the subject.
He glanced past Ruby at the eight-foot high gate. ‘Move aside,’ he murmured, because getting arrested for dumping the ashes of some guy he didn’t know seemed like a much better option than reminiscing about his asshole of a father.
Ruby dutifully stepped back and he ran at the gate. Grabbing hold of the top bar he strained the muscles he’d first begun developing years ago at Harvard, flung his leg over the top, scrambled up and over and landed heavily on the other side – luckily, without breaking anything.
The rattle of the gate didn’t drown out her astonished shout.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Excellent upper body strength courtesy of Varsity crew,’ he said, as he shoved his hands through the railings and formed a stirrup. ‘Now it’s your turn. I’m not getting arrested on my own.’
‘We won’t get arrested,’ she said, as she puffed out her chest, grabbed the bars and stuck her muddy boot into his palms.
