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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 …
