Page 2 of Just Like in the Movies

His striking blue gaze flicked over her, the assessment both dispassionate and yet disturbingly intimate.

‘Luke Devlin,’ he said, and nodded.

The curt introduction struck her low in her abdomen. Even his voice sounded like his famous father’s – the deep American accent enriched by the sandpaper quality that had had the media dubbing Rafael Falcone ‘the voice of sex’ nearly half a century ago.

‘Rube …’ She cleared the rubble in her throat and attempted to introduce herself again, preferably without a helium squeak worthy of Minnie Mouse. ‘Ruby Graham, pleased to meet you,’ she murmured.

Although she wasn’t pleased to meet him. What was he doing here?

She’d spotted him yesterday at the back of the crowd in the crematorium. Even then, with his face downcast and his shoulders hunched, the resemblance to the man who had fathered him was striking enough to make Ruby catch her breath.

That had to suck.

But now the likeness almost made her swallow her tongue. Not easy with an asteroid in the way.

It had been Matty’s dying wish that Ruby invite his long-lost nephew to his funeral, one of several dying wishes he’d whispered to her from the gurney as they waited to wheel him into surgery. But Ruby was fairly sure he’d only done it at the time to be melodramatic. Matty had always been a drama queen, no way would he have missed the opportunity to milk a possible dying wish scenario. But he’d never met Luke Devlin, having been estranged from this man’s mother, his sister Helena, since before Devlin was born. Ruby had only sent the invite because, well … it had been a dying wish for goodness’ sake, intentional or not. She’d never expected Luke Devlin to show at Golder’s Green Crematorium on a rainy Wednesday morning. Especially as she hadn’t even been able to find an address for him, so had been forced to send the funeral notice to his mother’s agent.

Wasn’t the guy a property magnate in Manhattan?

Yesterday, he’d looked supremely uncomfortable, probably because he’d been hit on by half the congregation – after all, most of them were massive film buffs – then left without a word. The whole experience of burying her best friend had been so surreal and overwhelming, Devlin’s appearance had just been one other piece of weirdness Ruby hadn’t had a chance to process properly …

But she was processing it now, like a data analyst on crack.

She searched her memory banks for what she knew about the guy.

But her head was still too fuzzy with grief to remember anything coherent about Devlin. Just that he was rumoured to be the love child of Matty’s sister, renowned stage star Helena Devlin, and actor Rafael Falcone. Helena had always been coy about admitting who had fathered her oldest son – he had a couple of half-siblings, a brother by a Maine fisherman and a sister by British director Hal Markham whose parentage she hadn’t been nearly so coy about. Helena had been notorious in her day for having three love children by men she hadn’t married, children she had then proceeded to drag around the globe with her and shove into the full glare of the media spotlight. But all three of them had faded from the gossip columns as they’d grown up. Luke in particular was famous for being a bit of a recluse – which had to explain that dark frown.

But if he liked to keep out of the limelight, why had he attended Matty’s funeral? Matty’s death had been mentioned in the tabloids, even if it only got a couple of column inches, simply because of his association with Helena, who had hit ‘national treasure’ status last year, after a decade in the wilderness, with a Tony-winning role in a revival of Gypsy on Broadway. Ruby hadn’t spotted any photographers, but there was always a chance one might show up for a Where Are They Now? angle. Getting a photo of Falcone’s son, his only known progeny, would be a major coup.

Devlin acknowledged her with a slight inclination of his head, sweeping the thick wave of expertly styled hair off his brow when it threatened to slide down his forehead.

She dragged her gaze away and forced her knees to bend. Her bum hit the cool leather seat just as the rod in her spine collapsed.

Luke Devlin was here on Ryker’s invitation. He had to be. Which could only mean one thing. Devlin was attending as his mother’s representative. Had Matty left The Royale to his sister? After all, Helena and her three children were Matty’s only living blood relations.

Ruby had always considered herself Matty’s family, but she wasn’t his real family. And while he’d refused to speak to his sister for thirty-something years, and never met any of her children, Ruby had never once heard Matty say a mean thing about Helena.

Matty must have been planning to make some grand gesture of reconciliation from beyond the grave. Although he had probably intended to do it when he was ninety, not fifty-one. It would totally fit with Matty’s sense of the dramatic. She could just imagine him savouring this scene as he dictated the terms of his legacy to the solicitor. Either that or he’d had a crush on the debonair Ryker and had needed a reason to see him.

Panic combined with the grinding pain in the pit of Ruby’s stomach and turned the asteroid into a lump of radioactive waste. She’d been so busy making funeral arrangements in the last ten days and coming to terms with the great empty space in her life which would never be filled, she’d had no time at all to properly consider her future and the future of The Royale.

Was she about to lose her home and her job as well as her best friend? Because The Royale was her home, not only did she spend more waking hours there than she’d ever spent in her tiny flat in Maida Vale, the Art Deco cinema had been the home of her heart ever since she was twelve years old, and Matty had caught her sneaking into a Saturday matinee of The Magnificent Seven and offered her a job selling popcorn and ice creams in the foyer on weekends. She had quickly made herself indispensable, Matty’s expansive friendship and The Royale’s glittering fantasy world providing a sanity-saving escape from the chaotic council flat in Bayswater she shared with her mother, and her mother’s endless parade of inappropriate boyfriends.

‘Right, let’s get started,’ Ryker said with forced enthusiasm as he sat down behind his desk.

He opened his laptop and began to talk, but Ruby couldn’t hear a word, his calm sensible delivery washing through her like acid. A spot beneath her right earlobe prickled, far too aware of the man sitting behind her.

And to think she’d woken up this morning, the day after cremating her best friend and soul mate – and the only man she had ever loved – while rocking the killer hangover from hell, convinced her life couldn’t possibly get any shittier.

No such bloody luck, Rubes.

PART ONE

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Ruby Graham’s verdict: I want to live in Oz, where danger is defeated by friendship and solidarity, charlatans are exposed, your dreams are always in glowing Technicolor and you can get a pair of absolutely stunning ruby slippers simply by landing a house on a hag!

Luke Devlin’s verdict: Flying monkeys? Seriously?

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