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.
A heated memory of chocolate eyes that sparkled and urgent fingers threaded through his hair made him smile.
Well, he hadn’t made any promises.
TWO
It took all of Ruby’s strength to follow Paul up the small flight of brick steps to the production office. She literally had to remind herself to place one foot in front of the other, as her body really, really wanted to carry her in the opposite direction. Away from the scene of unquestionably one of the most humiliating moments of her career. Her life, even.
How
