When Luke’s eyes opened the next morning, he saw the twinkle of green lights above his head, heard a melodic voice singing about lemon drops and chimney tops in the distance, felt the squishy softness of the mattress beneath him and breathed in a lungful of evocative aromas. Rose shampoo and sex and … was that coffee?
Had he been transported to a triple-X-rated Land of Oz?
He shifted, the twinge in his back from the too-soft mattress protesting. As Ruby’s bedroom came into focus, the memories from yesterday flowed back.
His mother’s ashen face, the shocking revelation about his father and Matty, the hours spent wandering the streets of West London, re-evaluating his whole childhood and adolescence and everything he’d known about his old man – or thought he’d known – ending up in Brynn’s Babes knocking back one too many spiced rums while the crowd went nuts for a queen called Tina Turn You On doing a dead-on rendition of ‘River Deep Mountain High’…
And then Ruby.
Her soft smiles and hungry kisses, her incredible rack and the taste of her – so sweet and exotic – on his tongue. Then the tight clasp of her body as he shot his load in two seconds flat. He would be humiliated, if the memory of that moment wasn’t giving him a morning boner.
But then the hours after his titanic orgasm came back too, and the woody wilted. It had taken him until two am to finally fall asleep, and he still hadn’t got much straight in his head, but listening to Ruby’s soft snores, stroking her lush curves, inhaling that exotic scent, he’d figured out one certain truth from the whole cluster fuck of yesterday. Sleeping with her last night had not been his smartest move.
His whole existence had been crushed and mangled yesterday with his mother’s news – like a steel girder under too heavy a load – and sleeping with Ruby had been a way to un-crush and un-mangle it – to feel normal again. To feel better than normal for a few hours at least.
He breathed in the addictive chicory scent of the coffee and detected the salty aroma of bacon. His stomach grumbled. And the guilt and shame threatened to gag him. To add insult to injury not only had he used her for sex last night – mind-blowing unforgettable sex – but then he’d stayed the night.
Ruby was cooking him breakfast. As if they were some kind of a couple – which they weren’t, not really.
He rolled, or rather bounced, off the too-soft bed and located the clothing he’d flung off yesterday neatly folded on a vintage armchair in the corner of the room.
After getting dressed, he followed the scent of coffee and bacon down the apartment’s hall, his stomach rumbling all the way as he listened to Ruby’s soulful voice caress the lyrics of the show tune that had gotten them both arrested what felt like a lifetime ago.
Reaching the doorway of the kitchen, he propped his shoulder against the frame and stopped dead, taking the opportunity to watch her unobserved.
She wore a silk robe decorated with sunflowers, tied tightly around her waist, her bounteous curves jiggly beneath it as she stirred a pan full of eggs. Was it any wonder he’d taken what she offered last night? Not just taken, gorged himself on it. And her. She was so good just to look at. He loved the way she moved, the way her forehead puckered in a frown of concentration, the quick flicks of her wrist to push her wild hair out of her eyes as she worked. Watching Ruby gave him a buzz that went beyond the sex.
Something warm spread across his ribs then sunk low to glow in his empty stomach. Filling it up with … Comfort? Contentment? Desire? He wasn’t entirely sure what he was feeling. But whatever it was, it probably wasn’t good news.
Not least because his parents – between them – had managed to screw her best friend over, years before he died.
He cleared his throat.
She startled, flicking some of the eggs on to the countertop and clutched her hand to her beautiful rack. ‘Luke? You’re awake.’
‘Yup.’ He stayed where he was, resisting the urge to wedge himself behind her, wrap his arms around her waist, sink his face into that wild spray of hair and breath in her delicious scent. Not much he could do about the revitalized boner though, so he ignored it.
‘Good morning, Ruby,’ he said, even though it wasn’t a good morning. He’d screwed up last night and now he had to fix it.
She laughed, the rich full sound making his woody even gladder to see her.
‘Someone woke up very perky,’ she said, a little breathlessly as her gaze drifted down to the bulge in his shorts. ‘Shall we put this on the back burner?’ she asked. ‘We’ve got at least an hour before Jacie gets here.’
He frowned, realizing how simple it would be to jump her again.
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he said, surprised how much he wanted to take her up on the offer. But there was nothing simple or easy about sex with a woman like Ruby. She would have hopes, expectations, which he couldn’t possibly fulfil. They were going to be working together until the end of the month and things could get awkward between them if they didn’t establish boundaries. ‘I could use some food. I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.’
‘Oh, okay,’ she said, the spike of concern and curiosity in her voice making him realise he owed her an explanation.
‘Take a seat at the table, and I’ll serve this up while it’s still hot,’ she added.
She brushed her hair behind her ear, and he imagined kissing the spot on her neck he’d got attached to last night.
Get a clue, Devlin. Not gonna happen.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, as he strolled into the living room.
There would be questions, questions she deserved answers to, but he would wait until she asked them. He’d never been good at emotional conversations, especially after a hook-up.
His mouth watered as he straddled the chair at the small table in the living room and watched Ruby serve up breakfast.
As he shovelled in the crispy bacon, fat sausages, hot buttered toast, fried tomatoes, and herby eggs, he ignored the continued twist of anxiety in the pit of his stomach.
Ruby was an adult. She could make her own decisions. He’d used her, but she’d enjoyed herself. And like Jake in the cowboy film they’d watched a week ago together, he hadn’t been able to quit her last night.
***
Ruby stirred a couple of sugars into her coffee and admired the spectacular view in her living room, still not quite able to believe Luke hadn’t vanished in the night. Or made a speedy exit as soon as he woke this morning.
She’d left him sleeping earlier and started putting together a man-sized breakfast to calm her nerves, totally resigned to probably eating it alone.
She wasn’t taking anything for granted.
But her spectacular booty call was still here. Looking buff and built and beyond gorgeous with his 8 a.m. beard scruff, his creased T-shirt and stretchy boxers, eating the meal she’d cooked for him as if it were the last supper.
‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.’
Why hadn’t he eaten? What had happened to him yesterday to change him from the practical pragmatic, we-can’t-have-sex-under-any-circumstances guy of their hair rinsing date into the rumpled, reckless, and ridiculously hot let’s-bang-ourselves-senseless sex machine who had come to her last night?
Not that she was complaining. Now she knew what Luke was capable of in the sack, his hotness quotient had hit the stratosphere. But there was something off about the whole scenario. His unexplained disappearance yesterday, the slight edge of desperation when he’d taken her to bed last night, the frown which contradicted the impressive ridge in his pants this morning. Last night hadn’t been the Luke she’d come to know. Luke had always been hot. But playful, insatiable Luke had been scorching.
The old Luke was back now with a vengeance, though. She knew what was coming. She’d had the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech enough times before to see the signs. But this felt different. Was it because the sex had been so hot? Was that why she felt bereft at the thought of getting the usual brush-off? It had to be. Because she had known last night, even as it was happening, that Luke wasn’t himself and their hook-up was unlikely to be repeated.
She took a long gulp of her coffee watching Luke over the rim as he took his time mopping up the last of the breakfast juices with the final slice of toast.
‘Did that hit the spot?’ she asked, as he pushed his plate away.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘And then some.’
She smiled. ‘I’m glad.’
The frown was still there on his forehead, telegraphing what he was about to say. Even so, as he opened his mouth to say the words she had been expecting, ever since falling asleep in his arms last night, her heart did an unfortunate little jitterbug in her chest.
Hello, cock-eyed optimism.
‘Ruby, about last night …’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t … It wasn’t meant to happen.’
‘I know,’ she said, keeping the easy smile firmly in place, even as the jitterbug in her chest died. ‘But I enjoyed it immensely, so I’m not sorry. And I don’t think you should be either.’ She crossed her legs, struggling to ignore the pulse of heat between her legs.
Down, girl.
‘Unless of course you didn’t enjoy it as much as I did,’ she added, not caring her cheeks were probably glowing now too.
If a girl couldn’t fish shamelessly for a compliment when she was getting the brush-off from the best-sex-of-her-life guy, seriously, when could she?
‘You know I did,’ he said, but he was still frowning. ‘I’m sorry because …’ He looked down at the empty plate, brought his hand up to tap his fingers on the table. She waited, for him to come up with the right words, fascinated despite everything at how hard it seemed to be for him to find them. She would have assumed Luke had given women the brush-off a ton of times before, he’d been so confident and hot last night in bed. She imagined every woman he’d ever dated had probably fancied themselves in love with him at least a little bit. Awesome hook-ups could do that to a woman.
At last, he raised his head, his stare doing interesting things to the glow in her knickers. ‘I’m sorry, because I used you last night, to make myself feel better about … about some stuff. And that’s a pretty shitty thing to do to anyone.’
Her heart rate started jitterbugging again at the sincerity in his voice, and the regret. She couldn’t tell him that was easily the sweetest most chivalrous brush-off she’d ever gotten, from any guy – or he might get the impression she was expecting more from him than hot sex, when she never had. But she filed the thought away.
She covered his hand, to still the nervous tapping. Then released it again, so he didn’t get the wrong impression about that either.
Time to set him straight.
‘Luke, I knew something wasn’t right, when you arrived here last night looking so lost and alone and smelling of rum. And I took advantage of your awesome oral sex skills anyway, so I’m really not sure who used who.’
‘Huh?’ His eyebrows popped up, and her smile became genuine.
Men were such adorable dopes sometimes.
‘But be that as it may …’ Moving swiftly on. ‘What stuff was bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?’
It was a risk, she knew that. He’d just told her she had no hold on him, which she totally got. But as a friend, she wanted to help, if she could, by doing something other than just taking advantage of his ninja cunnilingus skills.
‘Not really,’ he said. The frown was back with a vengeance.
‘Then you don’t have to,’ she said, reaching for the plate. She’d expected that response and she wanted him to know this wasn’t about her curiosity, this was about him. If he wanted to talk about it, she was a good listener. If not she was equally good at not pushing.
But as she stood to lift the plates off the table, he grasped her wrist.
‘Sit down,’ he said, the edge she’d noticed the night before back in his voice.
She sat down, and he let go of her wrist.
‘Actually, I kind of do …’ he said, a wary look clouding his expression, ‘have to talk to you about it.’
‘No, you really don’t, Luke,’ she replied. ‘Just because we hooked up last night. And used each other,’ she added, glad when a rueful smile lifted his lips. ‘It doesn’t make whatever happened to you yesterday any of my business. Okay?’
Luke was a super private guy. She didn’t want to make this any more uncomfortable for him than it had to be.
She reached for the empty plates again.
‘It’s not just about me though,’ he said and she let go of the plates again.
She could hear the brittle note which had been missing last night. It saddened her to hear it again, but what saddened her more was knowing that without it, Luke wasn’t really Luke.
‘It’s about Matty and my dad, and my mom …’ he continued. ‘And it’s kind of about you, too. And The Royale.’
The mention of Matty brought with it the hard hit of grief Ruby had somehow managed to dodge this morning, ever since waking up with Luke’s arm thrown over her hip and her clitoris still humming … But even as her lungs squeezed, and her eyes stung, the grief tugging at her again, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Luke’s troubled expression.
‘It is?’ she said, because he’d lost her, the guarded look on his face only saddening her more. Whatever this was about, it was even harder for him to talk about than finding the perfect break-up line.
‘Yeah, it is.’ He propped his elbows on the table and scrubbed his hands over his face, then swore softly. He raked his fingers through his hair as he straightened, and finally met her gaze. ‘I went to see my mom yesterday.’
Her brain knotted around the logistics. ‘You flew all the way to New York and back in a day?’ Was that even possible?
‘No.’ He barked out an unamused laugh. ‘She’s in London, preparing for a one-woman show at the National next month.’
‘She is? But that’s wonderful,’ Ruby said, although she couldn’t imagine what that had to do with her and Matty and The Royale. ‘How cool. Is that why she rang you last week?’
‘It’s not wonderful. Or cool.’ The furrow on his brow became a chasm. ‘My mom brings drama with her wherever she goes, she can’t help it. And she didn’t call me a week ago, she called you.’
‘She was probably only trying to get hold of you though. I mean, why would she …’
He clasped her hand, squeezed her fingers to silence her. ‘Ruby, she called you because she had something to confess to you.’
‘She did?’
‘To confess to us both. And what she told me explains why Matty left me half of The Royale. It’s kind of messed up.’
‘What did she say?’
He ducked his head. Whatever his mother had told him he was extremely unhappy about it.
‘She told me Matty and my old man were lovers. Not just lovers, hopelessly in love. They met on the set of The Sorrento Summer, and had a secret affair while Falcone was filming the scenes in London. They used to sneak into the Serpentine after dark to go swimming, and to make love.’
‘One Summer in Sorrento,’ Ruby corrected him, her mind racing as her chest collapsed in on itself.
Matty had known Falcone. Had been in love with Falcone. And Falcone had loved him back. For real. And he’d never told her? How was that even possible?
She thought of all the nights when they’d talked about their mutual obsession with Falcone over the years, poured over the actor’s best movie moments. She could still remember vividly the day they’d both heard about Falcone’s death, when she was twelve, and doing her illegal Saturday job manning the ticket booth at The Royale. She’d been hopelessly in love with Falcone, or rather his bad boy persona, ever since she hit puberty. While other girls had swooned over Leonardo DiCaprio and Channing Tatum, she had been enthralled by a guy who was practically old enough to be her granddad.
But she hadn’t been as devastated as Matty by his death. Matty had insisted they run a midnight screening of Boy Blue, Falcone’s B-movie debut from the late-seventies, on the day news of the actor’s suicide broke. They’d had a packed house of hipsters, movie buffs, Matty’s friends and a contingent of blue rinse matrons who must have taken speed to stay up all night. She’d found Matty in the projection booth before the show, tears rolling down his cheeks as he re-looped the old 35mm projector they’d cleaned up for the occasion. She’d been shocked because Matty never cried. Or certainly not in silence – with real tears and without an audience.
She’d wondered briefly then if he had known Falcone. After all, the actor had once had a world-famous love affair with Matty’s sister, when Matty was still talking to her. But when Ruby had asked, he’d simply stared at her for the longest moment, and shaken his head.
Then she’d gotten a grip and realised Matty couldn’t possibly have known Falcone, because no way would Matty have kept it a secret. Matty didn’t keep secrets, especially not juicy ones concerning himself and one of the most iconic celebrities on the planet. And he’d never kept any secrets from her.
Only he had.
Her throat hurt and her eyes burned.
Matty had kept a lot of secrets. The secret of his will, the secret of the theatre’s catastrophic debts, the secret of his feud with Helena, the secret of his love affair with Falcone, the secret of why he’d wanted his ashes scattered over the Serpentine in the hours after dusk …
What else had he kept from her? And why had he? Perhaps she hadn’t been as good a friend to him as she always thought.
‘What did you say?’ Luke asked.
‘One Summer in Sorrento,’ she repeated. ‘That’s the name of the movie you’re talking about. The only movie Falcone made with your mother.’
‘Right …’
‘Do you know what happened? How Matty’s affair with Falcone ended?’ she asked, not sure she really wanted to know, because it must have ended tragically. But feeling she ought to know, because Matty had been her friend.
Offering solidarity and sympathy from beyond the grave wasn’t going to do much good, but at least she could finally quash any of the little resentments she’d felt when she’d first found out about his will.
‘Can’t you guess?’ Luke said, the edge in his voice confusing her.
Was he mad about something?
‘No … I … Matty never mentioned any of this to me,’ she said.
Luke huffed out a breath, the frown catastrophic now. Why was he so tense? Was this the news that had disturbed him so much last night? Turned him into a man she didn’t recognise? Made him seem wounded, and vulnerable?
Her head began to hurt because she didn’t understand any of it anymore.
‘My mom happened,’ he said. ‘That’s how it ended …’
‘I don’t … I still don’t understand.’
‘Matty found my mom and Falcone in bed together,’ he said flatly. ‘It was the night she got pregnant with me.’
Oh, no, Matty.
What a blow that must have been. He could only have been nineteen the year that film was made. What a devastating betrayal. Was that why he had never spoken of his relationship with Falcone – because it had simply been too painful? Was that why he had stopped speaking to his sister? It must have been.
Ruby placed her hand on her stomach, which was starting to hurt. She rubbed the ache, feeling responsible in some weird way for Matty’s pain. How hurt he must have been. How devastated. And what kind of friend to him had she really been, if he couldn’t even confide in her the truth about his passionate affair with a man they’d both idolised? But then the significance of Luke’s inheritance occurred to her.
‘He must have forgiven her,’ she whispered. ‘And your father.’
‘What?’ Luke said.
‘Matty, he must have forgiven them both.’ It all made a strange, sweet, symbolic kind of sense, she thought as the knots in her stomach eased. ‘That must be why he left half of The Royale to you,’ she continued, when Luke just stared at her. ‘It’s the only explanation, for the bequest. Did you tell your mother Matty left you half of The Royale? She seemed so sad last week when I spoke to her. So devastated by his death. I’m sure it would help her immensely to know Matty forgave …’
‘Ruby, she knows.’
‘Okay, well that’s good,’ she said, glad that he’d told Helena.
‘Is it?’ She heard it again, the edge to his voice.
‘Yes, I think it is, why don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Because I’m not sure she deserves to be forgiven for what they did.’
‘Why not?’ she asked. He seemed so angry.
‘She slept with the guy her own brother was in love with. And if that isn’t crummy enough. She kept it a secret from me all these years, that my old man was gay. Or possibly bi.’
She stiffened. She could not have been more shocked with the bitterness in his tone if he had reached across the table and slapped her. This wasn’t just anger, it was much more than that. ‘Luke, why are you so furious?’
She refused to believe Luke was homophobic, he was far too intelligent for that. But something was going on here she wasn’t getting. Why was he so upset about something that had happened before he was even born? He was right, what Helena and Falcone had done to Matty was not cool, and it must have hurt Matty terribly. But people did stupid things all the time. Helena had been so young at the time too, much younger than either of them were now. She could well imagine that if Falcone was anything like his son it would have been far too easy to become infatuated with him. And it was very clear from the way Luke had talked to his mother on the phone a week ago – and the way he was talking about her now – that he had issues with her, but he seemed to be completely missing the most important point. That without that secret affair, he would never have been born.
‘Are you angry because your father loved another man?’ she asked, scared to hear the answer. ‘You’re not … you’re not ashamed of him because of his sexuality, are you?’
***
Luke stared at Ruby. The distress in her face giving him pause.
Was he? Ashamed of his father, because he had a love affair with a man? He examined the question, because it hadn’t even occurred to him until this moment. He’d never considered himself to be homophobic. But then people who definitely were homophobic probably thought they weren’t, either. He’d been shocked when his mother had told him the truth. Shocked and angry. And a lot of that anger stemmed from the fact his father had been living a lie all those years.
He’d never been honest, never admitted to the world who he really was. And after watching that damn cowboy film with Ruby a week ago, he knew exactly how destructive a secret like that could be. But was it really his old man’s fault that he had been forced to keep that secret to save his career?
Falcone had been the voice of sex, famous for being able to seduce women at fifty paces. And it was a reputation he’d gone out of his way to uphold. Luke couldn’t even remember all the times he’d been dropped off to see his dad as scheduled, and had bumped into some stunning young woman in the kitchen of his father’s house in Montecito, usually in their underwear or less. Actresses and models, hat-check girls and barmaids who his father had picked up the night before and then hadn’t bothered to get out of the house before he arrived.
How he’d resented those women at first, for taking all of his dad’s attention, but when he’d hit puberty, he’d been mortified, realising some of them were not much older than he was.
To discover now they had all been a lie, too …
His dad must have been bisexual, but why had he never had a long-term relationship with any woman, including his mom? His old man had hidden his true self behind a string of casual, careless, indiscriminate booty calls. But it wasn’t his father’s sexuality that Luke was ashamed of.
‘No, it’s not the fact he fell in love with another man that bothers me, it’s all the lies,’ he said at last, in answer to Ruby’s question. Because all he felt now was sad and disappointed that Falcone had never been honest about anything.
‘I’m glad.’ The relief on Ruby’s face was palpable. ‘It’s so important to know that the quality of your relationship with your father doesn’t have anything to do with him being bisexual,’ she said, sounding so earnest he had the weird urge to hug her. If only it were as simple as that. ‘My father was heterosexual,’ she added. ‘Or at least I assume he was, because I never met him. He disappeared faster than Harry Potter in his invisibility cloak when my mum told him she was pregnant with me.’
‘That’s tough. He sounds like a dick,’ Luke said, and felt the pointless anger scouring his throat again. This time on Ruby’s behalf instead of his own.
‘Yes, I suppose he was,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t need him in the end. Matty was the dad of my heart, and he made a much better dad than that guy could ever have made, so I consider myself lucky,’ she said.
So, Ruby had lost her father a month ago. No wonder she was still struggling with her grief.
‘But I don’t want to talk about my deadbeat dad right now,’ she said. ‘We were talking about yours,’ she added, neatly changing the subject again. ‘Why did you think he was a selfish arsehole?’
He jerked his shoulder. Shit, he really didn’t want to have this conversation. He hated talking about his father at the best of times, complaining about him now though – in the light of Ruby’s crap dad story – made that even tougher. But as she stared at him, somehow he felt he owed her this conversation.
‘My mom wanted me to form a relationship with him. But I don’t think he was ever that interested,’ he said. ‘I lost count of the times as a kid when he’d be due to take me out for the day, and he didn’t show. Or I’d get dropped off to spend the day with him in Montecito and he was too hung-over to do much of anything. Eventually I started to resent it and him. But maybe if I had known why he didn’t want to see me. Because I was a reminder of what he’d lost. A symbol of the night he’d fucked up what sounds like the one genuine relationship in his life …’ He sighed, and the weight in his stomach from the day before dropped back into his guts. ‘I guess I never thought of my father as someone who could be hurt, who deserved my sympathy. He was always so arrogant, so careless. Or so I thought. But to have that secret inside him that he could never acknowledge. It’s like Heath Ledger in that movie we watched. It must have destroyed him. I’ve disliked my father for a large part of my life, because I always thought he was a fraud. Pretending to be cool when he wasn’t, but now to discover he was kind of forced to be a fraud … and he must have been suffering.’
Ruby pressed a hand over his on the table, and the weight in his stomach rose up his torso. He blinked. Jesus, he was not going to cry. But the only way to stop the sting from becoming a flood seemed to be to keep talking.
‘When I found him that morning, I always figured the overdose was a mistake,’ he said, the words tumbling out. ‘I figured he didn’t really mean to commit suicide, he was just monumentally careless. Or maybe he was looking for attention. A headline. His career was on the skids by then thanks to his addictions. I was sure he had forgotten I’d agreed to come by, because he always forgot details. But now I’m not so sure. What if he meant it? What if he meant for me to find him? What if it was a cry for help? I’ve been angry with him for so long about the consequences of that day.’ The panic attacks, the nightmares that had plagued him for years, and the anxiety which he’d never quite been able to tame completely a result of the emotional fallout from that day. ‘But I’m not angry with him anymore,’ he continued. ‘Because I realise he was never to blame. I guess there’s not much point being angry with my mom, either, for taking so long to tell me the truth.’
He sunk into the kitchen chair. Drained. Exhausted. He hadn’t meant to say any of that, hadn’t even known it was inside him.
But when Ruby knelt down in front of him, put trembling hands on his bare knees he was forced to meet her gaze and saw the emerald green, misty with compassion.
He shifted, supremely uncomfortable at how much he wanted to bask in it. Even knowing he didn’t deserve it.
‘Luke.’ She pressed her cheek to his knees, the sheen in her eyes crucifying him. She looked as if she were on the verge of tears. Who was she crying for? ‘I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know it was you who found him.’
Shit! why had he let that slip out? He was seriously losing the plot and it wasn’t even noon.
***
Ruby felt Luke pull away and forced herself to hold in the tears that were making her eyes burn and get off her knees.
Displays of emotion were not the way to go here. He looked uncomfortable, wary, because he had shared much more than she suspected he had meant to share. She mustn’t read too much into it.
Just as she had suspected, last night hadn’t ever been about her, about them.
She lifted their used plates from the table. ‘Do you want to take a shower?’
His eyebrows lifted a fraction. Then he rubbed his hand over his jaw. ‘I should probably head back to my place, before anyone arrives. I don’t want you to be accused of sleeping with the enemy’
No one would think that – not anymore – not even Jacie. But she could see how keen he was to leave, so she nodded and forced a smile to her lips.
‘Good thinking, Batman. Do you want to head down the fire escape once you’re dressed, just in case?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You sure you don’t want me to help out with the dishes?’
She shook her head.
As much as she would have loved to take him up on his offer, and have him pressed against her hip while they washed the breakfast dishes together in her tiny kitchen, she would just be prolonging the inevitable. And she needed to get her own shaky emotions under control.
‘Maybe next time,’ she said, then winced.
There won’t be a next time.
He nodded, but instead of heading down the corridor to get dressed, he stared at her for the longest moment then said. ‘I’m sorry, Ruby.’
‘What for?’ she asked, hoping he wasn’t going to apologise for giving her the best sex of her life again.
‘For not being able to save the theatre,’ he said, surprising her, especially as she could see he meant it. ‘You and Matty deserved better.’
She could see the regret and the guilt shadowing his eyes and she realized that if she pressed, she could easily guilt him into investing in The Royale. Because he felt responsible now, in a way he hadn’t before.
But the fleeting thought passed almost as quickly as it came …
Saving Matty’s dream, saving her dream, keeping The Royale open had never been Luke’s responsibility, any more than being born made him responsible for the break-up of Matty and Falcone’s love affair. And she felt even more ashamed now she’d tried to make it his responsibility.
Tears clogged her throat as she touched her palm to the stubble on his jaw, felt the muscle bunch and flex. ‘Don’t be sorry, Luke.’
She would just have to come up with another plan … one which didn’t involve Luke.
He dropped his forehead to hers and grasped the back of her neck. His thumb drew tantalizing circles on her nape, making sensation ricochet down to her core. She could hear his breathing, syncing with hers. Even though the hunger twisted and burned in her belly, the yearning all but consuming her, she drew away first.
‘You better get going, before Jacie turns up,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’
He nodded, then left her standing in the living room.
She made herself busy, gathering up their empty plates. She could hear him getting dressed in the bedroom, then the soft pad of his footsteps as he walked down the corridor and climbed on to the fire escape. Once the sound had faded away, she stopped rinsing.
Last night had been her and Luke’s Brokeback moment, and it had been exciting and wonderful and devastating all at the same time.
She still had at least a month of him working in the theatre and she just hoped their Brokeback moment wasn’t going to ruin the time they had left together.
Because she was definitely Jack Twist in this scenario. And he was Ennis. Trying to make this more had the potential to hurt her a lot more than Luke – because she suspected he was a man used to denying his emotional needs. And she was a woman who had always yearned to indulge them, with the right guy.
She had to get it through her head that Luke wasn’t that guy.
She went back to washing their breakfast dishes.
‘So what’s occurring between you and the man of steel buns?’
Ruby jumped and spun round so fast she dropped one of the plates back into the dirty dishwater, splashing her robe. ‘Jacie! Give me a clue before you do that,’ she said, placing her hand over her racing heart and hoping to change the subject.
‘I would have needed a foghorn to wake you up from day-dreaming about you know who.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Forget it. I just saw him walk out the back alley, wearing the same clothes he had on when he left yesterday morning to go who knows where. And you have beard burn on your chin.’
Ruby cupped her palm over the sore spot and her cheeks warmed.
Bollocks. Jacie missed nothing. ‘Umm.’
Jacie’s grin split her face. ‘Oh. My. God. You shagged him, didn’t you? This is perfect.’
‘I did not shag him,’ she remarked, trying to sound indignant.
‘Ruby, you are the worst liar that ever lived. You do know that, right?’ Jacie shot straight back.
Ruby swallowed, trying to dislodge the thickness in her throat. ‘It was just a one night type of thing.’
‘How do you know it’s just a one night thing?’ Jacie asked. ‘Did he say that? Already? That’s so not classy.’
And there it was again, the anti-Luke sentiment Ruby thought had been tamed. ‘Jace, could you do me a big favour?’
‘Sure, what?’
‘Could you forget about me and Luke and please don’t tell the others. I couldn’t bear for this to become a massive issue. For him or for me. It was fun and casual and not a big deal.’
Jacie’s brow furrowed. Ruby knew she was effectively asking her friend to swallow a circus elephant by asking her to remain silent about the best bit of gossip since Kim Kardashian released her sex tape. But when it came to something this serious, she knew Jacie would choke down the elephant if she had to.
‘Why are you so determined to make this not a thing when it could be a thing?’ Jacie said. ‘I don’t get it? Don’t you want it to be a thing?’
‘I’m not sure it can be a thing, even if I wanted it to be,’ Ruby said. ‘And I’m not sure I do.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m grieving, Jace,’ Ruby stressed, knowing what could have been a convenient excuse to end the conversation was actually the truth.
As much as she had enjoyed last night, and been moved by Luke’s revelations this morning, was she really strong enough emotionally to embark on a relationship? A relationship which was full to bursting with complications before she and Luke had even touched each other for the first time. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Luke Matty had been the father of her heart. She was still processing the fact he hadn’t told her about his love affair with Falcone, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Would a man talk to his daughter about his failed love affair? Matty’s silence didn’t detract from the closeness of their relationship, if anything, it enhanced it. Matty had been protecting her, and her dreams, telling her the truth about Falcone would have been too much information.
But she was a grown woman now, and the truth about Luke was he was a complicated, conflicted guy trying to navigate the mistakes both his parents had made. Something she suspected was a lot tougher than he had let on after finding his father’s body. And while Luke didn’t blame his father anymore for that, she did. A little bit. Suicide was often a result of depression – which was beyond any person’s ability to control even with therapy and medication. She knew that, intellectually.
But the thought of Luke as a fourteen-year-old boy going to his father’s house to visit with a man who had failed him and finding something so horrific made her want to blame someone. And the only person she could think of to blame was Luke’s father. The man who should have loved him and protected him but had been too consumed by his own demons to do either. And that was without even factoring in how Falcone had failed Matty, too.
She let out a breath to release the tightness in her chest.
Anger was pointless and unproductive. Especially anger against a man who had died sixteen years ago.
People were fallible, parents made mistakes, love didn’t always conquer all, she of all people knew that. After all, she’d hardly spoken to her own mother since she’d left home at eighteen. There was no law that said you had to understand your parents, or the choices they made, and no law that said you needed to atone for them either.
But she wasn’t convinced Luke had gotten that message.
He clearly had a very strained relationship with his mother, but he hadn’t bailed on Helena Devlin the way Ruby had bailed on Margie Graham. Did that make him a good man, or a foolish one, or simply a dogmatic one? She didn’t know, but what she did know was she had no intention of breaking the confidences he’d given her, or exploiting the heat between them, any more than she had already.
Which meant she wasn’t going to force this thing-or-not-thing.
‘I just don’t have the head space for a grand love affair right now,’ she continued, because Jacie was still looking at her as if she’d punched a gift horse in the mouth.
And neither does Luke.
‘I’m too busy trying to save The Royale and deal with the fact that Matty is gone forever to think about much else.’
‘I think you’re missing the big picture here,’ Jacie said, still frowning.
‘What big picture?’
‘If you want Luke Devlin, and he makes you happy, maybe you shouldn’t give up on this thing so easily?’
The conviction in Jacie’s voice made Ruby’s throat thicken again.
‘I’m not giving up on anything. If we can keep things casual, I certainly won’t say no.’ She wasn’t ruling anything out, but she wasn’t going to rely on Luke either for anything. ‘All I’m saying is, I have to put myself first at the moment. And that means not relying on other people to make me happy or to fix stuff – other than my dodgy boiler or the cracks in the cornicing, that is.’
‘What about the plan to get Luke to invest his gazillions in The Royale?’ Jacie said, pragmatic as always. ‘Is that not happening now?’
‘No, it’s not,’ she said, feeling ashamed now she had ever seen Luke as a possible cash cow. ‘Saving The Royale is not Luke’s responsibility. It’s my job to get the theatre into profit and find a way to cover the debts.’
‘How?’ Jacie said. ‘You know as well as I do we can’t possibly make enough money to cover that much debt. Not unless you sell the cinema. And if you do that they’ll be no business anyway. There’s nothing wrong with our business model,’ Jacie added passionately. ‘Matty wasted money on stuff he didn’t have too, like the ten gallons of expired mimosa mix we found in the basement left over from the twenty-fifth anniversary screening of Steel Magnolias in 2014.’ Jacie huffed out an exasperated breath.
‘I know, Matty wasn’t the most astute businessman.’ Ruby had to agree, in the past month she and Jacie had been able to find a ton savings, and it hadn’t been that hard. The mimosa mix debacle was just one of Matty’s many sentimental expenditures. She could still remember how much he’d loved dressing up as Dolly Parton that night, though, so she didn’t begrudge him in the slightest.
Matty had been a showman first and foremost. Perhaps he should have let her and Jacie take over managing the budget a long time ago, but it was too late to agonise over that now.
‘If Devlin could just loan us the money to pay off the debts, we’d be able to pay him back. We’ve already got the budget for this month and next into the black, especially with all the extra revenue from Matty’s Classics,’ Jacie said.
‘I don’t want to ask him, though,’ Ruby said, knowing she couldn’t.
She placed the last plate on the draining board, dried her hands on the dishtowel, and swallowed past the raw spot in her throat.
‘So, we’re basically fucked, then?’ Jacie said, sounding devastated.
‘No we’re not …’ Ruby said. ‘All we need to do is come up with another plan.’
The kernel of an idea which she had flirted with weeks ago drifted back into the forefront of her brain.
‘What plan?’ Jacie said, sounding dejected. ‘We don’t have a plan. Devlin was the plan, remember.’
‘You know The Rialto chain?’ she said, naming a chain of independent cinemas who had luxury venues all over London.
Jacie nodded. ‘Of course I do, the new cinema they opened in Holland Park took a big chunk out of our revenue four years ago according to Matty’s records.’
Ruby smiled, the idea gathering pace. ‘Before they opened that cinema they tried to buy The Royale, Matty told me.’
‘Those sneaky bastards,’ Jacie murmured.
‘Not necessarily,’ Ruby said. It was a long shot, but it might work, if she and Jacie put together a good enough proposal.
And better yet, it would mean working overtime in the office for a while.
What she needed right now was a project not just to save The Royale but also to save her from day-dreaming about Luke and his tool belt and their one night together. And all the things she now knew about him that only made her like him more.