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Ruby closed her eyes tight shut, trying to assemble her thoughts. Trying to assemble herself, actually.
The fog had cleared. Reality was re-entering—her reality. Straightforward, straight-talking Ruby Bell. Who was not taken to romantic notions or embracing total strangers.
He wasn’t crew. He must be an extra, some random guy minding his own business before she’d literally thrown herself into his arms.
Inwardly, she cringed. Too late, mortification hit. Hard.
Rational, no-nonsense words were right on the tip of her tongue as she opened her eyes.
But instead of speaking, she sucked in a sharp breath.
He’d moved closer. So, so close.
The man didn’t look worried now. He looked almost...predatory. In a very, very good way.
She swallowed. Once, twice.
He smiled.
Beneath traitorous fingers that had crept along his shoulders to his nape, his overlong hair was coarse beneath her fingertips.
‘You,’ he said, his breath fanning against her cheek, ‘are quite the welcoming party.’
Ruby felt overwhelmed by him. His size, his devastating looks, his nearness. She barely made out what he’d said. ‘Pardon?’
He didn’t repeat himself, he just watched her, his gaze locked onto hers.
Whatever she’d been going to say—the words had evaporated.
All she seemed capable of was staring at him. Into those eyes, those amazing, piercing...familiar blue eyes.
Finally it clicked into place.
‘Has anyone ever told you, you look just like Devlin Cooper?’ she said. Babbled, maybe. God. She didn’t know what was going on.
One of his hands had released her waist, and he ran a finger down her cheek and along her jaw. She shivered.
‘A couple of times,’ he said, the words as dry as the grass they stood upon.
No, not quite like the famous Devlin Cooper. This man had dark circles beneath his eyes, and his darkest blond hair was far too long. He was too tall, surely, as well—she’d met enough leading men to know the average Hollywood star was far shorter than they looked on screen. And, she acknowledged, there was a sparseness to his width—he was muscled, but he didn’t have the bulk of the movie star. He looked like Devlin Cooper might look if turned into one of those method actors who lost bucket-loads of weight for a role. Not that Ruby could imagine that ever happening—Devlin Cooper was more generic-action-blockbuster-star than the Oscar-worthy-art-house type.
But as the man’s fingers tipped her chin upwards any thought of Devlin Cooper was obliterated. Once again it was just her, and this man, and this amazing, crazy tension that crackled between them. She’d never felt anything like it.
She was sure she’d never wanted anything more than to discover what was going to happen next.
He leant forward, closing the gap between their lips until it was almost non-existent...
Something—a voice nearby maybe—made Ruby jump, and the sound of her shoulders bouncing against the trailer was loud in the silence. A silence she was suddenly terribly aware of.
That rapidly forgotten wave of mortification crashed back over her, this time impossible to ignore. With it, other—less pleasant—sensations than his touch shoved their way to the fore. The fact she was covered in dirt and drying coffee. The fact her whole body suddenly appeared capable of a head to toe, hot, appalled blush.
She was still hanging off the man like a monkey, and she snatched her hands away from his neck.
‘Hey. You’re not going to catch anything,’ he said, a lightness in his tone as he watched her unconsciously wipe her hands almost desperately against her thighs.
She stilled the movement and met his gaze. His eyes had an unreadable glint to them, and for the first time she noticed their thin spidery lines of bloodshot red.
‘Who are you?’ she asked in a sharp whisper.
His lips curled again, but he didn’t say a word. He just watched her, steadily, calmly.
He was infuriating.
She ducked to her left, and the hand that had remained on her waist fell away. Ridiculously, she missed the warmth and weight of his touch immediately, and so she shook her head, desperate to refocus.
She put a few steps between them, taking deep, what-the-heck-just-happened breaths as she glanced to her left and right.
They were alone. No one else stood in this path amongst the trailer metropolis.
No one had seen them.
Relief swamped her. What on earth had she been thinking?
But then approaching footsteps made her freeze, as if whoever walked around the corner would immediately know what had just happened.
Of course, it was Paul.
‘Ruby!’ her producer exclaimed loudly. ‘There you are.’
‘Ruby,’ the man repeated, slowly and softly, behind her. ‘Nice name.’
She shot him a glare. Couldn’t he just disappear? Her mind raced as she tried to determine exactly how long it had been since she’d barrelled into the man. Surely not more than a few minutes?
It wasn’t like Paul to come looking for her. Fume alone in his office if she were late, yes—but come find her? Definitely not.
It must be a real emergency.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ruby managed, finally, and meant it. But how to explain? She ran a hand through her hair; the movement dislodged a few forgotten blades of grass. ‘I fell over,’ she said, more confidently, then nodded in the man’s direction. ‘He was just helping me up.’
She smoothed her hands down her shirt and its collection of dust, coffee and grass stains for further effect.
There. All sorted, the perfect explanation for why she wasn’t in Paul’s office five minutes ago.
Out of the corner of her eye, the man grinned. He’d propped himself up against the trailer, ankles crossed—as casual as you like. A normal person would surely size up the situation, realise something was up and—she didn’t know—do anything but act as if all he were missing were a box of popcorn and a choc-top.
‘Thanks for your help,’ she said, vaguely in his direction. For the first time she noticed the matching coffee-coloured marks all over the man’s grey T-shirt, but she couldn’t make herself apologise. He was just too frustratingly calm and oblivious. He could keep his smug smile and newly stained T-shirt.
She walked up to Paul, assuming they’d now go back to his office. ‘So, what do you need me to do?’
Paul blinked, his gaze flicking over her shoulder to the man that still stood so nonchalantly behind her.
‘You left in a hurry,’ he said—not to Ruby, but to the man.
Ruby turned on her heel, looking from Paul to the man and back again—completely confused.
The man shrugged. ‘I had things to do.’
Paul’s eyes narrowed and his lips thinned, as if he was on the verge of one of his explosions.
But then—instead—he cleared his throat, and turned to Ruby. A horrible sense of foreboding settled in her stomach.
‘So you’ve met our new leading man.’
She spoke without thinking. ‘Who?’
There was a barely muffled laugh behind her.
The man. His knowing smile. The charisma that oozed from every pore.
Finally, finally, she connected the dots.
This was Paul’s latest drama. This was why she’d been rushing back to the office.
They had a new leading man.
She’d just met him.
She’d just covered him in dirt and coffee.
Worst of all—she’d just nearly kissed him.
And he didn’t just have a passing resemblance to Devlin Cooper. A passing resemblance to a man who commanded double-digit multimillion-dollar salaries and provided continuous tabloid fodder to the world’s magazines and salacious television entertainment reports. A man who’d long ago left Australia and now was mentioned in the same breath as Brad, and George, and Leo...
‘You can call me Dev,’ he said, his voice deep and oh-so intimate.
Oh.
My.
God.
Dev Cooper smiled as the slender blonde raked her fingers desperately through her short-cropped hair.
Ruby.
It suited her. She was striking: with big, velvety brown eyes beneath dark blonde brows, sharp-edged cheekbones and a lush mouth. Maybe her elegant nose was a little too long, and her chin a little too stubborn—if she were a model his agent had picked out for him to be photographed with at some premiere or opening or whatever.
But, thankfully, she wasn’t. It would seem she was a member of the crew of this film he was stuck working on for the next six weeks. And—if the way she’d been looking at him a few minutes earlier was anything to go by—she was going to make the next few days, maybe longer, a heck of a lot more interesting.
Ruby crossed her arms as she spoke to the producer—Phil? No, Paul. The man who’d owed his agent Veronica a favour. A really big favour, it turned out, given his agent had bundled him onto the plane to Sydney before she’d sorted out the pesky little detail of whether or not he had the role.
Dev guessed, knowing Veronica, that Paul had discovered he was replacing his leading man just before Dev had turned up in his shiny black hire car. Chauffeur driven, of course—his agent was taking no chances this time.
He shifted his weight a little, easing the pressure on his left leg, which throbbed steadily. Had it really only been a week?
The pancake-flat countryside where he now stood couldn’t be further away from his driveway in Beverly Hills—the site of ‘the last straw’ as his agent had put it. Even Dev had to admit that forgetting to put his car into reverse wasn’t his best moment. Ditto to driving into his living room, and writing off his Jag.
On the plus side, he hadn’t been injured, beyond some temporary muscle damage, and, thanks to the fortress-style wall that surrounded his house, no one beyond his agent and long-suffering housekeeper even knew it had happened.
And, despite what Veronica believed, he hadn’t been drunk.
Exhausted after not sleeping for four nights—yes. But driving, or attempting to drive, drunk? No, he hadn’t slid that low.
Yet?
Dev scrubbed at his eyes, uninterested in pursuing the direction his thoughts had taken him. Instead, he refocused on Ruby and Paul, who had stopped talking and were now looking at him.
Ruby’s gaze was direct, despite the hint of colour at her cheeks. She was embarrassed, no doubt. But she was brazening it out.
He liked that.
‘I’m Ruby Bell,’ she said, ‘Production Co-ordinator for The Land.’
Her arm moved slightly, as though she was going to shake his hand before thinking better of it.
A shame. He was impatient to touch her again.
Maybe she saw some of what he was thinking, as her eyes narrowed. But her tone revealed nothing. ‘Paul will give me your details, and I’ll send through tomorrow’s call sheet once I’ve spoken to the assistant director.’
He nodded.
Then Paul started talking, putting lots of emphasis on tight timelines and stop dates and getting up to speed as quickly as possible—all things he’d said in their abruptly truncated meeting earlier.
Lord, anyone would think he made a habit of missing his call...
He smiled tightly at his private joke, eliciting a glare from Paul.
Dev tensed. This film might have a decent budget for an Australian production, but it was no Hollywood blockbuster. He was replacing a soapie star as the lead, for heaven’s sake.
No way was he going to take a thinly veiled lecture from some nobody producer.
‘I get it,’ he said, cutting him off mid-stream, the action not dissimilar to what had happened in Paul’s office when he’d had enough of his blustering. ‘I’ll see you both,’ he said, pausing to catch Ruby’s gaze, ‘tomorrow.’
And with that, he was off.
Six weeks of filming. Six weeks to placate his agent.
Six weeks working in a town out beyond the middle of nowhere. Where—he knew his agent hoped—even Dev Cooper couldn’t get into any trouble.
