by Heidi Rice
‘If that’s what you want,’ he said, giving her one last chance to change her mind.
‘I do,’ she said, her voice trembling with emotion, but still firm, still sure.
‘Then I guess this is goodbye, Ruby.’
She nodded, her face a picture of regret. A regret he could feel in his own gut, and had spent a lifetime learning to ignore. But as he walked away, he felt the knife twist as he heard her murmur behind him.
‘Goodbye, Luke.’
***
Rubes? I’m outside waiting in the rain? Where r u we’re opening in half an hour!
Ruby made her way down the flat’s staircase, her head aching from a crying jag that had begun as soon as Luke had walked out of her life, for good this time, and would not stop.
Pull yourself together. Tears never solved anything. He’s gone. And you’ll survive.
‘Just opening up now,’ she shouted through the metal shutter in reply to Jacie’s text.
She flicked up the switch to lift the shutters.
Luke had reconditioned the motor and replaced the tracking last week, so the shutter lifted smoothly in half the time it used to take.
Ruby sniffed loudly, wishing she had those extra minutes now to compose herself. A new boulder swelled in her throat. Every time she worked the shutter she’d think of him.
Until you sell.
With the shutter lifted, Ruby unlocked the door and shoved it open.
Jacie turned to shake her umbrella before ducking into the foyer, giving Ruby a few precious extra seconds to compose herself. But despite her best efforts to do so, as soon as Jacie’s gaze landed on Ruby’s face she knew the sixty-second shutter lifting delay that Luke had left her with hadn’t been long enough to hide the evidence of her Luke-induced meltdown.
‘Ruby, what’s wrong? You look like shit,’ Jacie said, appalled. ‘Is Luke still here? Didn’t he tell you he’s going to save the cinema? And why aren’t you dressed yet, it’s almost noon?’
Because I’m falling apart.
Luke had only left an hour ago. So much for being strong, being a survivor, finding a new life, she was an abject failure at all three.
‘I look like shit because I feel like shit.’ She waved her arm in the vague direction of the door to her flat. ‘I’ll go get dressed. Could you open up?’
‘Wait, where’s Luke?’ Jacie asked, cutting off Ruby’s retreat.
‘He’s gone. He’s not coming back. End of story.’ Ruby scrubbed her face and talked around the sob threatening to choke her. ‘You shouldn’t have told him about what happened at The Rialto meeting. And you shouldn’t have persuaded him to come back for the screening, I’m guessing that costume was your idea.’
‘He didn’t need any persuading.’ A blush darkened Jacie’s skin, but she didn’t relinquish eye contact. ‘I thought …’
‘You thought what?’ Ruby asked.
‘I thought he was going to stay,’ she said simply.
So did I, for one brief shining moment of stupidity.
Ruby’s face collapsed, the tears rushing back.
Jacie rushed towards her and enveloped her in a hard hug. ‘I’m so sorry, Rubes.’ Her friend fished a damp tissue out of her raincoat pocket. ‘Here, blow,’ she said, holding the tissue to Ruby’s nose.
Ruby blew, attempting to clear out the sadness clogging her sinuses.
It didn’t work. She felt washed out. Exhausted.
‘Why don’t I ring Beryl and Tozer and get them to cover for the matinee today?’ Jacie said. ‘We can order in pizza, steal some medicinal Prosecco from the bar and keep working on Plan B.’ Her friend examined her tear-streaked face. ‘I’m guessing you turned down his offer?’
Ruby’s tear ducts threaten to flood again as she nodded. ‘I couldn’t take his money, Jace. Please understand.’
I told him I loved him, and he had nothing to say.
She had re-considered her decision several hundred times since he’d left an hour ago – had she just done the stupidest thing imaginable by refusing his, what had he called it, his ‘financial settlement’ – but she couldn’t make herself regret it.
Maybe her head was saying she should have accepted the money. But her heart knew the truth. Accepting Luke’s money would have confirmed what Luke had always believed: that Matty had left him half The Royale because he expected his nephew to bail them out. When she knew the opposite was true.
But more importantly, this wasn’t about Matty, anyway, it wasn’t even really about The Royale – it was about her, and Luke.
It was Luke she wanted, not his money. And she couldn’t have him. Because he didn’t want her. How could she ever move on if she didn’t confront that reality? And while what she’d said about starting a new life had been a desperate attempt to get him out of the flat before she lost the last of her resolve and begged him to want her – like she’d watched her mother do too many times to count – maybe there was some truth in it. She had been hiding at The Royale. Allowing Luke to save her, the way she’d once let Matty save her, wasn’t good enough. What she needed to do was save herself.
‘I do understand,’ Jacie said, not giving Ruby the argument she had been braced for. ‘I wish I didn’t. So, what happens now?’ she asked, but it was obvious from her expression she knew the answer.
‘I’m going to sell.’ Ruby looked around the foyer. ‘It will still be a cinema, which is the most important thing. And Gallagher has agreed to keep everyone on – on full pay – while they refurbish.’ It was a white lie, because she hadn’t had a chance to contact Gallagher yet, but she would drop the price to whatever he asked to get that much for her staff.
‘Really?’ Jacie looked surprised. ‘That’s incredible, he never struck me as the generous sort. I mean, it would have been cooler if you and Falcone’s son still owned it together, but you’ll be rich right? There’s that.’
Ruby sniffed and forced herself to smile. ‘Absolutely loaded.’ Hopefully, she’d have enough to put a deposit on a flat, and take some time out to go travelling before finding a new job. The way she’d always planned. Even if that was the very last thing she felt capable of doing right now.
Going to LA was definitely out, because being in the US would be too close to Luke.
‘So loaded, I won’t have to work for a while,’ she added. ‘The manager’s job is there if you want it.’
‘Wait a minute, you’re not going to be managing the place anymore?’
‘I decided not to,’ Ruby said, making sure she sounded jaunty rather than lost. ‘I think I’ve spent too long here. It’s just not the same with Matty gone.’ And Luke gone. ‘And I need a new challenge,’ she added. It felt like another lie now, but she knew she needed to make this break. She couldn’t stay here, she had to stop hiding, however painful that was going to be.
‘Right.’ Jacie didn’t look convinced, but what could she do about it. ‘So next week marks the end of an era?’
‘Yes, I thought we could schedule the last of Matty’s Classics for the final showing before we shut down for six months.’ Not we, Ruby. She swallowed past the lump of grief stuck in her throat.
Jacie’s brows furrowed. ‘But isn’t the only one left The Last of the Mohicans? Are you sure that’s the right choice for The Royale’s final film? It’s a really dark movie.’
‘It’s not that dark, it’s an epic romantic adventure.’ Not unlike her romance with Luke, a rollercoaster ride of emotion.
‘People get burned alive and take headers off cliffs,’ Jacie pointed out. ‘And pretty much everyone dies at the end. So I’d have to disagree with you there. Don’t you want to choose something more upbeat? Seeing as how you’ve already had your heart broken by Luke Devlin?’
‘My heart is not broken,’ Ruby said, determined to believe it. She loved him, she’d told him, and he’d confirmed what she had always known to be true: he couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to love her back. She refused to wallow. ‘We were only really a thing for three weeks.’ Goodness that was even
shorter than some of her mum’s grand love affairs.
‘Hawkeye and Madeleine Stowe were only a thing for about three hours, but that didn’t stop her promising to survive a fate worse than getting her heart cut out and eaten by the acne-faced guy to be with him again,’ Jacie said pragmatically, because suddenly, she was the authority on Last of the Mohicans.
‘Losing Luke is not a fate worse than getting your heart cut out and eaten by Wes Studi,’ Ruby said, fairly sure it wouldn’t feel that way, eventually.
‘It’s not me you have to convince, Rubes.’ Jacie headed towards the auditorium to grab some medicinal Prosecco. ‘It’s you.’
Chapter 20
‘You’re late,’ Luke said, as his kid brother Jack strolled into the small bar in Les Halles. Tucked in a side street, the dark interior smelled of stale beer and garlic and was crammed with tiny tables full of burly guys who looked as if they’d just finished unpacking truckloads of fresh fruit and vegetables as Paris’s premiere market, probably because they had.
‘I didn’t come all the way from Manhattan to see you, just to get blown off for …’ Luke checked his watch. ‘Close to forty-five minutes.’
He’d made the last-minute decision to come to Paris yesterday, after only five days back in New York, when he’d received the text from his brother saying he was going to be hanging out in the City of Lights for the summer. But now Luke was here, he didn’t know why he’d bothered. Sure, his penthouse had felt like a prison the last five nights, and he hadn’t seen his brother in a while, but he had a ton of work to do in New York and Jack clearly did not appreciate his efforts to totally rearrange his schedule just to make this meet-up happen.
‘Stop pissing and moaning and give me a hug, man,’ Jack said, then tugged him out of his chair and pulled him into his embrace.
Luke hugged him back, the irritation subsiding as he absorbed the smell of motor oil and leather and soap that clung to his brother’s standard uniform of battered jeans, T-shirt and biker jacket.
Standing back, Jack gripped Luke’s shoulders. ‘Good to see you, too, big bro,’ he said, still smiling that killer smile, then signalled to the bartender.
Luke sat, fighting the dumb lump of something closing his throat.
Jack was a pain in the butt, he always had been, and after this afternoon he probably wouldn’t see him again for another year, because his brother was currently drifting his way through Europe doing odd jobs, as far as he knew.
‘What you having?’ Jack asked, as if the last time they’d seen each other had been a week ago, instead of close to twelve months by Luke’s count.
The barmaid, who’d been super surly when Luke had walked in forty-five minutes ago, hurried over to take Jack’s order as if someone had lit a fire under her butt.
Funny that. But then, Jack tended to have that effect on women. The more laid-back he was, the more attentive they became.
‘A Stella, I guess,’ he said.
‘Not a Sam?’ Jack asked, surprising Luke by remembering the brand of bottled beer he drank. He shook his head. The last Sam Adams he’d had was in Brynn’s, with Ruby crooning to him.
He cut off the thought. Not going there.
‘They don’t have the Boston Lager here,’ he murmured, knowing that wasn’t the real reason. He was avoiding anything that reminded him of her. Unfortunately, that was turning out to be pretty much everything from his empty minimalist penthouse in the Meatpacking District – because it wasn’t her cramped apartment above The Royale – to his favourite craft beer.
‘Such a purist,’ Jack mocked, then ordered from the waitress. His brother bantered back and forth with the punky girl in perfect French for a moment, then she headed off to get their order, all the time grinning at his brother as if he were cuter than Ryan Reynolds.
‘Looks like you scored,’ Luke mumbled, as Jack pulled out the chair opposite, flipped it round, then straddled it. What was it about Jack that he could never sit on a chair properly?
Jack watched the woman leave, his gaze lingering on her butt. ‘Nah, she was just being friendly.’
‘She wasn’t as friendly to me,’ Luke said.
‘You speak any French?’ his brother countered.
‘Not a lot,’ he had to concede.
‘Then there’s your answer, French women prefer to converse in their native tongue. Go figure,’ his brother replied.
They both knew that wasn’t the reason for the girl’s attentiveness, but Luke had to admit that was one of Jack’s few endearing features. He loved women, but he never took for granted all the attention he’d been receiving from the opposite sex since hitting puberty.
Unlike you.
Luke dispelled the unpleasant thought. And the memory of Ruby’s devastated face on their last morning together when she’d told him she loved him. And he’d had no reply.
Not your responsibility. She told you so.
‘So, what you doing in Paris?’ Luke asked.
‘Looking for a job,’ his brother replied as he popped an olive in his mouth from the dish the bargirl had brought to their table.
‘Do you need any money?’ Luke asked, out of habit as much as anything else. ‘Or a place to stay? I’ve got a company apartment a couple of blocks from here?’
Jack’s smile became rueful. ‘Nope. I’m good.’
He bristled at the easy refusal. He had no idea how his brother survived. As far as Luke knew, Jack hadn’t had a steady job since he’d dropped out of art college age eighteen. He didn’t own any property or have any possessions other than what he could fit on the back of his bike. But he hadn’t asked Luke for money for years now. So whatever he was doing, it must be working for him.
‘Still no plans to settle down and live a normal life?’ he asked, not quite able to stop himself from needling Jack anyway.
His brother just grinned some more, then thanked the bartender for his beer.
‘Nuh-uh,’ he said, after the girl had left. He took a long gulp of the cold beer, then smacked his lips, still smiling. ‘I left that to you, remember?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Luke snapped.
How the hell did his brother do that, look super smug and super could-not-give-a-shit at the same time? It was a gift his brother had possessed which reeled in women by the dozen and allowed him to be rootless and without a care in the world. And while he had always tried to take Jack’s attitude problem in stride when they met up, today it was bugging him. Big time.
‘You did the settling down thing so well, bro, I’d feel kind of outclassed before I even started. And I’m just not the competitive type.’
‘You mean you’re not the mature type,’ Luke countered, knowing he was going to lose this argument, but unable to let it drop.
‘That too.’ Jack took another sip as if he’d just been complimented not insulted. Another of Jack’s irritating life skills: to piss on criticism with charm and bonhomie. ‘So enough about me,’ Jack said easily, because he was well used to deflecting Luke’s attempts to get him to grow up. He dumped the bottle back on the table and stabbed another olive with a cocktail stick. ‘How’s tricks in the world of property development and gazillionaire-domination?’ he said before eating the olive.
Luke gave a strained laugh. The distraction this meet-up had offered yesterday wasn’t looking so good anymore.
He usually enjoyed hanging out with Jack. Jack was the original good-time guy, who could make any problem seem small and unimportant. But all he felt was irritable and out of sorts. And Jack seemed to have picked up on it.
Terrific.
‘Great, I guess,’ Luke said. ‘I’m seeing a couple of sites in France, thinking of investing in a new project in Lille to make this trip worthwhile. Then I’m heading home in a couple of days.’ Even if home didn’t feel like home, anymore.
‘So the stories aren’t true,’ Jack said. ‘I figured they had to be BS.’
‘What stories?’
‘That you were moving to London fu
ll time to run a movie theatre with some British chick.’
‘Who told you that?’ Luke’s insides churned, and the vice around his ribs which had been there for days – ever since he’d walked away from Ruby – tightened.
‘Mom by way of Becca. For the record, kid sis didn’t believe it either.’ Jack’s gaze narrowed.
‘Is that why you got in touch?’ Luke said, annoyed all over again. What the fuck? Why couldn’t his family butt the hell out of his business? He’d come to Paris to get away from thoughts of Ruby and now he was having to talk about her with his kid brother, who had never even met her.
‘Maybe,’ Jack said, still nonchalant and unconcerned. ‘Okay, now I’m confused, because you’re blushing.’
Luke could feel his face glowing under Jack’s stare. ‘I’m not blushing.’
‘Yeah, you are, bro. Then it’s true?’
‘No, it’s not true. I got served with community service over there so I had to …’
‘Whoa.’ Jack spurted out the mouthful of beer he’d just necked. ‘You? You got served by a judge? You have got to be shitting me,’ he said, looking more animated than Luke had seen him in years. Probably ever. ‘What the hell did you do? Lecture someone to death?’
‘Is it really that hard to believe I’d break a law?’ Luke asked, indignant now as well as annoyed. Was he really that much of a stuffed shirt?
‘Hell, yeah. Luke, you’re the dude who came out in a rash when I dissed the on-set tutor. What law did you break? ’Cos this I’ve gotta hear.’
‘Trespassing in a Royal Park.’ He decided to leave out the part about disturbing the peace, because that would require him mentioning singing with Ruby. And he was not going there. Jack would probably choke. And he wasn’t sure his ribs would survive the recollection of Ruby standing on the jetty, her sweet soulful voice drifting into the night as she scattered his uncle’s ashes.
‘No shit,’ Jack said, sounding genuinely impressed with Luke for the first time in his life. ‘They have laws about that stuff in London?’
‘They have laws about that stuff everywhere Jack. Just because you chose to ignore them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there …’ He trailed off, because railing on Jack just didn’t seem worth it anymore.
