Why Resist a Rebel - By Leah Ashton Page 0,6
for the faint-hearted, or anyone who needed the reassurance of a job associated with words like stable, or reliable.
Fortunately, that was exactly why Ruby loved it.
Ten minutes later, the four of them had a plan of sorts for the next few days, and she was closing Paul’s office door behind her as Sal and Andy rushed back to their desks.
For a moment she stood, alone, in the cottage’s narrow old hallway. Noise spilled from the two rooms that flanked it: music, clattering keyboards, multiple conversations and the occasional burst of laughter. A familiar hum peppered with familiar voices.
To her left was Sal and Andy’s office. Ruby didn’t need to glance through their open doorway to know they’d already be busily working away on the trestle-tables that served as their temporary desks. The office would also be perfectly organised—notepads and pens all lined up, that kind of thing—because it always was. They were in charge of the film’s budget—so such meticulous organisation was definitely a plus.
In theory, given her own role, she should be just as meticulous.
Instead, to her right was the room that, amongst other things, housed her own trestle-table desk, many huge prone-to-collapsing mountains of paper and only the vaguest sense of order. Or so it appeared, anyway. She had to be ruthlessly organised—but she didn’t need to be tidy to be effective.
The room was also the home of the three members of the production crew who reported to her—Cath, Rohan and Selena. Unsurprisingly, it was this room where the majority of noise was coming from, as this was the happening part of the production office where all day every day they managed actors and scripts and agents and vendors and anything or anyone else needed to keep the film going. It was crazy, demanding, noisy work—and with a deep breath, she walked straight into it.
As expected, three heads popped up as she stepped through the door.
‘I guess you all heard the news?’
As one, they nodded.
‘Was kind of awesome when he walked out on Paul,’ said Rohan, leaning back in his chair. ‘Paul came in here and ranted for a bit before charging out the door in pursuit. Guess he couldn’t find him.’
Ruby didn’t bother to correct him.
Instead, she spent a few minutes further explaining the situation, and assigning them all additional tasks. No one complained—quite the opposite, actually. No one saw the unexpected addition of a major star to The Land as anything but a very good thing. It meant they were all instantly working on a film far bigger than they’d signed up for. It was a fantastic opportunity.
She needed to remember that.
Ruby settled herself calmly into her chair, dropping her phone onto her desk—fortunately no worse for wear after hitting the dirt for the second time today. She tapped the mouse track pad on her laptop, and it instantly came to life, displaying the twenty-odd new emails that had arrived since she’d last had a chance to check her phone. Not too bad given it seemed like a lifetime since she’d been busily redistributing those last-minute script revisions to the actors.
She had a million and one things to do, and she really needed to get straight back to it. Instead, her attention skidded about the room—away from her glowing laptop screen and out of the window. There wasn’t much of a view—just bare, flat countryside all the way to the ridge of mountains—but she wasn’t really looking at it. Instead, her brain was still desperately trying to process the events of the past half-hour.
It didn’t seem possible that she’d so recently been wrapped around one of the sexiest men in the world.
While covered in dirt.
And had had absolutely no idea.
Inwardly, she cringed for about the thousandth time.
Work. She reminded herself. She just needed to focus on work. Who cared if she’d accidentally flung herself into Devlin Cooper’s arms? It was an accident, and it would never happen again—after all, she wasn’t exactly anywhere near Dev Cooper’s percentile on the drop-dead-gorgeousness spectrum. And he’d hardly had the opportunity to be attracted to her sparkling personality.
Despite everything, that thought made her smile.
No. This wasn’t funny. This was serious. What if someone had seen them?
She stood up, as sitting still had become impossible. On the window sill sat the antenna of their oversized wireless Internet router, and she fiddled with it, just so it looked as if she were doing something constructive. On a location this remote, they’d had to bring their own broadband. And their own electricity, actually—provided