The Return Of Antonides

“Didn’t believe enough in myself,” he had told Lukas one cold day last winter, fossicking through rubble for opals.

They didn’t have heart-to-hearts, never talked about much personal stuff at all. Only mining. Football. Beer. Skeet’s sudden veer in a personal direction should have warned Lukas things were changing.

“Don’t pay to doubt yourself,” Skeet had gone on. And Lukas learned that by the time Skeet had made something of himself and had gone back to pop the question, Millicent had married someone else.

“So, what? You want me to play matchmaker to New York City?” Lukas hadn’t been able to decide whether he was amused or appalled.

Skeet chuckled. “Not necessarily. But most folks got somethin’ they want to reach for and don’t quite got the guts to do.” He’d met Lukas’s gaze levelly. “Reckon you know that.”

Then it had been Lukas’s turn to look away. He’d never said, but he knew Skeet had seen through his indifferent dismissal to a past that Lukas had never really confronted once he’d walked away.

Now, determinedly, he shoved all the memories away again and forced himself to go back to reading the applications. It was the first week of June. The deadline for application submissions was two weeks away. Now he had thousands of them. Even with Sera sorting through them, he needed to read faster.

He stared at the paper in front of him until his eyes crossed...then shut...

“Grace called.”

Lukas’s head jerked up. “What?”

Sera stood in the doorway frowning at him. “She says to pick her up at her grandmother’s at a quarter to eight. Were you sleeping?”

“No. Of course not.” Though from the hands on the clock above the file cabinet he’d been closing his eyes for over half an hour. Now he tried not to let his jaw crack with a yawn. He’d winced, realizing he had forgotten all about Grace. She was Millicent’s granddaughter, and Lukas sometimes wondered if she were Skeet’s own attempt at matchmaking from beyond the grave. The old man had found out a bit about Millicent’s life over the years. Chances were he’d known about Grace. He raked a hand through his hair. “Why didn’t you put her through?”

“She said not to bother, to just give you the message.” Sera studied him narrowly. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Lukas stifled another yawn. “Just bored.”

“Go meet Grace then,” Sera suggested with a grin. “You won’t be bored.”

“Can’t. Got to finish this.” He glanced at his watch. “Time for you to go home, though.”

“Soon. I have a few more applications to go through. You can do this,” she said briskly in her den-mother voice. Then she shut the door behind her.

Lukas stood and stretched, then paced the room, trying to muster some enthusiasm for dinner with Grace. He shouldn’t have to muster enthusiasm at all.

Grace was wonderful. His mother liked Grace. Sera liked Grace. Everyone liked Grace. Grace Marchand spoke five languages, had degrees in art history and museum conservation. She coordinated special exhibits for one of the city’s major art museums. She was blonde and blue-eyed and beautiful, looking a lot like her grandmother must have half a century ago. Skeet would have loved her.

Because of that, Lukas had taken her out several times since—to dinner, to a concert, some charity functions, a couple of command-performance family dinners. Grace was good company. She knew which fork to use, which was more than he often did. In his new more social role, he was grateful for that. But regardless of what Skeet might have been plotting or Lukas’s mother might be hoping, he wasn’t marrying her.

And now he really had come full circle because his head was throbbing again.

The door from the outer office opened once more, and Sera came in.

“I thought you were leaving?” Lukas said sharply.

Sera nodded. “On my way. Just finished the applications. There’s one that you should see.” She waved the envelope in her hand.

“I don’t want to see another application tonight.” He held out a hand to ward her off. “I’ve had it up to my eyeballs. Every person in New York City wants me to give them half a million dollars.”

“Not this lady.” Sera waved the envelope again. “She only wants half a boat!”

Lukas felt the words like a punch in the gut. “Half a—? What?”

Sera shrugged, grinning as she set the papers on his desk. “Half a boat. Can you believe it?”

Lukas crossed the room in three long strides and snatched up the papers from the desk. There was only one woman in the world who would ask him for half a boat—Holly.

Holly. After all these years. Lukas wasn’t bored anymore. His heart was pounding even as he stared at her signature at the bottom of a typed business letter on ivory paper.

Holly Montgomery Halloran. Firm, spiky, no-nonsense letters—just like the woman who had written them. He exhaled sharply just looking at her name. The letter had a letterhead from St. Brendan’s School, Brooklyn, New York. Where she taught. Matt had told him that a few years back. The letter was brief, but he didn’t have a chance to read it because with it, fluttering out of the envelope, came a photograph of a sailboat.

Lukas snatched it out of the air before it hit the floor and, staring at it, felt a mixture of pain and longing and loss as big as a rock-size gouge that there had been in the hull when he had last seen the boat in person. Someone—Matt—had repaired the hull. But the mast was still broken. Snapped right off, the way he remembered it. And there was still plenty of rotten wood. The boat needed work. A lot of work.

Lukas felt a tingle at the back of his neck and faint buzzing inside his head. He dropped into his chair and realized he wasn’t breathing.

“Yours?” Sera queried.

“Half.” Lukas dragged the word up from the depth of his being. It sounded rusty, as if he hadn’t said it in years.

Sera smiled. “Which half?”

There was no answer to that. He shook his head.

“I thought you must know her,” Sera said gently. “Holly?” Because, of course, Sera had read the letter.

“Yes.”

Sera waited, but when he didn’t say more, she nodded. “Right. Well, then,” she said more briskly. “Well, you deal with Holly and the boat. I’m off.”

Lukas didn’t look up. He waited until he heard the door shut. Then he picked up the letter, not seeing anything but the signature. Then he shut his eyes.

He didn’t need them to see Holly as clear as day.

He had a kaleidoscope of memories to choose from: Holly at nine, all elbows and skinned knees and attitude; Holly at thirteen, still coltish but suddenly curvy, running down the beach; Holly at fifteen, her swingy dark hair with auburn highlights, loose and luxuriant, her breasts a handful; Holly at seventeen, blue eyes soft with love as she’d looked adoringly at Matt; Holly at eighteen, blue eyes hard, accusing Lukas when Matt had broken his leg; and then, two weeks later, Holly on the night of her senior prom—beautiful and nervy, edgy and defiant. Then gentler, softer, laughing, smiling—at him for once.

And then Holly in the night, on his father’s boat, her eyes doubtful, then apprehensive, then wondering, and finally—

Lukas made a strangled sound deep in his throat.

He dropped the photo on the desk and, with unsteady fingers, picked up the letter—to read the first words he’d had from Holly Halloran in a dozen years.

CHAPTER TWO

WHERE THE HELL was she?

Lukas stood on the marina dock, hands on hips, squinting as he scanned the water, trying to pick Holly out of the Saturday-morning crowd of canoes and kayaks and pedal boats that were maneuvering in a sheltered basin on the banks of the Brooklyn side of the East River.

He should have been hanging drywall in one of the lofts above the gallery or helping set up the display cases in one of the artisans’ workshops. He should have, God save him, been reading more of the apparently endless supply of MacClintock grant applications.

Instead, he was here.

Because Holly was here.

Or so the principal of St. Brendan’s School had promised him.

Three days ago, as he’d read her stilted, determinedly impersonal letter requesting that he join her in making a gift to St. Brendan’s School of the sailboat he and Matt had intended to restore while they were in college, because she was “tying up loose ends before she left,” a tidal wave of long-suppressed memories and emotions had washed over him.

He could, of course, keep right on suppressing them. He’d had plenty of practice. So for all of thirty-six hours he’d tried to push Holly back in the box he’d deliberately shut a dozen years ago.

It was over, he’d told himself, which wasn’t quite the truth. The truth was, it had never really begun. And he should damned well leave it that way.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t just sign the deed of gift she’d attached to the letter. He couldn’t just walk away. Truth to tell, the mere thought of Holly was the first thing to really energize him since he’d come home.

So on impulse, he had called St. Brendan’s and asked to speak to her.

Of course it had been the middle of the school day. Holly was teaching. The secretary offered to take a message.

Lukas said no. He could leave a message, but she wouldn’t call him back. He knew Holly. If she had wanted to talk to him, she would have given him her number in the letter. She’d have written to him on her own notepaper, not printed out an impersonal little message on a St. Brendan’s official letterhead.

He got the message: Holly still didn’t want anything to do with him.

But it didn’t mean she was going to get her way. He called back and spoke to the principal.

Father Morrison was pleasant and polite and had known instantly who Lukas was. “Matt spoke very highly of you.”

“Matt?” That was a surprise.

“He volunteered here. He and Holly taught extracurricular kayaking and canoeing. Matt wanted to teach the kids to sail. Right before he died, he told me he had a boat they could use. After... Well, I didn’t want to mention it to Holly. But she brought it up a few days ago, said she had written to you hoping you’d agree to make it a gift to the school.” The statement had been as much question as explanation.

“I want to talk to Holly,” Lukas said, deliberately not answering it. “I’ve just moved back from Australia. I don’t have her phone number.”

“And I can’t give it to you. Privacy, you know,” Father Morrison said apologetically. Then he added, “But you might run into her at the marina. She still goes there most Saturday mornings to teach the kids.”

“I might do that,” Lukas said. “Thanks, Father.”

So here he was pacing the dock, still unable to spot her. He hadn’t seen Holly since her wedding ten years ago. Every time he’d been back since—less than half a dozen times in the whole decade—he’d seen Matt, but never Holly.

She had been visiting her mother or at a bridal shower or taking books back to the library. Maybe it had been true. Certainly Matt seemed to think nothing of Holly’s excuses. But Matt didn’t know Holly was avoiding him.

Now Lukas jammed his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts, annoyed that she was so hard to spot, more annoyed that he cared. His brain said there was no sense dusting things up after all this time. He probably wouldn’t even recognize her.

He’d recognize her.

He knew it as sure as he knew his own name.

A day hadn’t gone by that Holly hadn’t wiggled her way into his consciousness. She had been a burr in his skin for years, an itch he had wanted to scratch since he’d barely known that such itches existed.

A couple of days after his family had moved from the city out to the far reaches of Long Island, he had met Matt. They had been standing under a tree near his house, and Lukas had said his dad would take him and Matt sailing, that it would be cool to have a new best friend.

And suddenly a skinny, freckle-faced urchin dropped out of the tree between them and stuck her face in his. “You can’t be Matt’s best friend. I already am!” She’d kicked him in the shin. He’d pulled her braid. It had pretty much gone downhill from there.

Lukas had two sisters already. He didn’t need another girl in his life, especially one who insisted on dogging his and Matt’s footsteps day after day after day.

“I was here first!” she had insisted.

“Go away! Grow up!” Lukas had told her over and over when he wasn’t teasing her because he knew her face would get red and she would fight back.

But it was worse when she did grow up. She got curves—and breasts. She traded in her pigtails for a short shaggy haircut that accentuated her cheekbones rather than her freckles. She made her already huge blue eyes look even bigger with some well-placed eye shadow. She got her braces off, wore lipstick and sometimes actually smiled.

But never at him.

Except...sometimes, obliquely, Lukas thought she watched him the way he watched her.

But her focus was always on Matt. “I’m marrying Matt.” Holly had said that for years.

Hearing her, Lukas had scoffed. And at first Matt had rolled his eyes, too. But he had never been mortified by her declaration as Lukas would have been.

“That’s Holly,” he’d said and shrugged. Then, when he was fourteen, he told Lukas that he’d kissed her.

“Holly?” Lukas felt as if he’d been punched. “You kissed Holly?” Then, hopefully, he’d asked, “Was it gross?”

Matt’s face had turned bright red. “Nope.”

It couldn’t be different than kissing any other girl, Lukas had thought. So he’d done that. And then he’d kissed another. And another. He couldn’t believe Matt kept on kissing only Holly.

Then, Christmas of Holly’s senior year in high school, they’d got engaged.

“Engaged?” Lukas hadn’t believed his ears. It was ludicrous, he’d told Matt fervently. He’d told Holly the same thing. “You’re crazy,” he’d said. “How can you think about spending the rest of your life with one person? You’re not in love!”

But they hadn’t paid any attention to him. And when he’d tried to make it clear to Holly, well, let’s just say she hadn’t got the message. In fact, she’d hated him even more.

Then, when Matt was twenty-two and Holly just twenty, they had tied the knot.

Lukas had been on the other side of the world when he got Matt’s call to come home and be his best man.

“I’m in Thailand!” Lukas had objected. He’d been crewing on a schooner that summer, basking in sunny days, balmy nights and the charm of a bevy of intriguing, exotic women. He hadn’t been home for three years, had no intention of going to the wedding.

“There are planes,” Matt had said. “Get on one.”

Lukas had argued, but Matt was implacable. “You’re my best friend,” he’d insisted. “You’ve always been there, always had my back.”

The words had stabbed his conscience. “Fine,” he’d muttered. “I’ll come.”

He’d done it. Had even managed a toast to the happy couple at the reception. Then he’d got the hell out of there, lying about the departure time of the plane he had to catch. He’d been back in Thailand twenty-four hours later—back to his real life, back to being footloose and fancy-free. Matt could have marriage with its boredom and sameness.

Lukas had been telling himself that for a decade now. Today was no different, he thought as he shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted out across the water. It was just a matter of putting the past to rest.

And then he saw her.

One minute he was scanning the water where everyone pretty much looked alike paddling their canoes and kayaks and pedal boats in the confines of the marina. The next moment his gaze locked onto a woman in the back of a canoe out near the breakwater. There were two kids in front. And in the back there was Holly.

His heart kicked over in his chest. He didn’t know how he’d missed her before. There was, as always, a purposefulness about her. Everyone else was splashing and floundering. Holly was cutting through the water with ease and determination, as if she knew what she wanted and aimed to get it.

She hadn’t changed a bit.

He remembered when she hadn’t known how to paddle a canoe, and, taking advantage of that, Lukas had refused to let her come with him and Matt.

Her chin had jutted. Her eyes had flashed. “I’ll learn.”

He’d scoffed. “From who?”

It turned out his oldest brother, Elias, was no proof against big blue eyes. Elias had taught her, and the next time they went canoeing, Holly had come, too.

Suddenly there came a whistle from the car park. A man wearing a green St. Brendan’s T-shirt waved broadly. “Bring ’em in!”

With greater or lesser skill, the paddlers turned their canoes and kayaks and headed for shore. Lukas kept his eyes on Holly. He could see her talking to the students, giving instructions to back off a bit and let the earlier arrivals dock first.

She still hadn’t seen him, but she was close enough now that Lukas could study her more easily. Gone were the luxuriant dark waves she’d worn at her wedding. Now she had the same pixie-ish look she’d had as a child. Most of her face was hidden behind a pair of sunglasses and she wore a sun visor for shade, as well. The boy in the front of her canoe said something that made her laugh. And Lukas’s breath caught in his throat at the husky yet feminine sound.

“Gimme a hand, mister?”

Lukas looked down to see a kayak alongside the dock and two boys looking up at him. One held out a line to wrap around the cleat. Lukas crouched down to steady the kayak while the boys scrambled out. Then he helped them haul it out so they could carry it up to the waiting van. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept an eye on Holly’s canoe where she was talking to her students. She was still several feet away from the dock.

One by one, as the canoes and kayaks came up against the dock, Lukas helped them all until finally when he turned back there was just one canoe left.

Holly sat in the stern, unmoving, her sunglass-hidden gaze locked on him. No question that she’d seen him now.

Lukas straightened nonchalantly. “Holly,” he said casually. “Imagine meeting you here.”

The boy and girl in the canoe looked at him, surprised. Holly’s sunglasses hid her reaction. She still didn’t move as the two students brought the canoe against the tires lining the dock, and Lukas grabbed the bow to hold it for them.

The boy scrambled out, followed by the girl. Holly stayed where she was.

“Thanks, mister,” the boy said.

“You’re welcome.” Lukas had seen all the St. Brendan’s canoes now, and this one, with its deep, narrow hull, was far nicer and swifter than the wide-bottomed trio he’d helped pull out earlier. He let his gaze slide slowly over it, then brought it to rest on the woman who hadn’t moved. “Nice canoe. Yours, Holly?”

“How come you know Ms. Halloran?” the girl demanded.

“We grew up together—I’ve known Ms. Halloran since she was about your age.”

The boy’s brow furrowed, as if he couldn’t imagine either of them being that young. “You kiddin’?”

“Not kidding.” Lukas held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“You were never a Boy Scout!” Holly blurted.

“Ah, she speaks,” Lukas drawled.

Her freckled cheeks were suddenly a deep red.

“I was a Cub Scout,” Lukas said, “when I was eight. You didn’t know me when I was eight.”

Holly gave a muffled grunt. She still didn’t move to get out.

And knowing her, she probably wouldn’t, unless Lukas forced the issue. “Nice to see you again, too, Hol’. It’s been a long time.” He held out a hand to help her out of the canoe, daring her to refuse it.

She muttered something under her breath that sounded like “Not long enough.”

And of course, she ignored his hand. Instead, she set the paddle on the dock and shoved herself up, trying to step sideways at the same time so as to avoid his outstretched hand.

In a flatter-bottomed canoe, it might have worked. In this one, she’d barely edged sideways when the canoe tipped.

“Oh!” she yelped. “Oh, hel—”

“Ms. Halloran!” The kids shrieked as Holly pitched, arms flailing into the water.

Lukas couldn’t hide the unholy grin that stretched across his face.

More kids came running. So did the men loading the canoes onto the trailer with St. Brendan’s van. Lukas didn’t move.

Holly sputtered to the surface, hair streaming, sunglasses gone, those all-too-memorable blue eyes shooting sparks in his direction. He still couldn’t stop grinning.

All around him kids clamored. “Ms. Halloran! Are you okay?”

“Ms. Halloran! You fell in!”

“You’re s’posed to stay in the center of the canoe, Ms. Halloran!”

One of the men who’d come from the van pushed past Lukas, a hand outstretched to help her. “Are you all right?”

“She’s fine,” Lukas said abruptly, stepping around the man and reaching to grasp her arm. He hauled her unceremoniously up onto the dock, steadying her with a hand against her back, aware of the warmth and suppleness of her body through her wet T-shirt even as she shivered. “Aren’t you fine?” She sure as hell looked fine, her nipples pebbling beneath the cotton of the shirt and her bra. He swallowed.

“Of course I’m fine,” she said brusquely, clearly unaware of the spectacle she presented as she turned to the students. “I slipped. We’ve all done it, haven’t we?”

At the fervent bobbing of heads, Holly grinned, shaking her hair out of her eyes. “So, I’m just today’s reminder. Do what I say, not what I just did. Now, let’s get the canoe out.” And with a deft move, she twisted out of Lukas’s grasp to haul the canoe up onto the dock.

If the T-shirt was a temptation, it was nothing compared to the way her shorts plastered to her rear end. Lukas’s mouth went dry. The other men and boys seemed to be appreciating the view, as well.

Stepping between Holly and her interested audience, Lukas wrested the canoe away from her, simultaneously snapping at one of the teachers. “Get her a towel. The rest of you, give me a hand.”

Everyone jumped to obey, and by the time Lukas and the boys wrestled the canoe onto the dock, Holly was wrapped in a towel.

The man who had provided it held out a hand to Lukas. “I’m Tom. Thanks for helping her out.”

Lukas grinned. “It has always been my pleasure to pull Holly out of the water.”

“Usually after you pushed me in,” Holly retorted.

Tom blinked. “You two know each other?”

“We’re old friends,” Lukas said.

“He’s an old friend of my husband’s,” Holly amended. “Lukas Antonides.”

Tom Williams beamed. “Great. He can take you home then.”

“I ride the bus!” Holly protested.

Tom raised doubtful brows at her sodden clothes and streaming hair. “They aren’t going to let you on like that.”

“I’ll take a taxi.”

Tom shook his head. “Not likely, Hol’.”

“It’s all right,” Lukas said. “I’ll take her.”

Tom beamed and grabbed Lukas’s hand, pumping it up and down again. “I wouldn’t want to leave her to get home on her own, and I’ve got to get these kids back to school. See you Monday, Hol’. Come on, gang.” He clapped two of the boys on the shoulder, then herded all the kids up to the van.

Holly didn’t speak until they were all out of earshot. Then she said, “I’m not going with you.”

“Right,” Lukas said. “You’re just going to stand here until you dry.”

He could hear her grinding her teeth. She didn’t look at him, just hugged her towel tighter and stared at the departing van. Lukas didn’t care. He stood there and drank in his fill of Holly Halloran.

It felt oddly like reaching an oasis after a lifetime of wandering in the desert. He had spent so many years determinedly not thinking about Holly that it was hard to believe she was actually here in front of him.

She was definitely no less eye-catching than she had ever been. Her bones were sharper now, her eyes set deeper. Tiny lines fanned out at the corners of them. From laughter? From sorrow? God knew she’d suffered that. Lukas wanted to reach out a finger and touch them.