The Return Of Antonides

Her fingers tightened on the towel wrapped across her breasts. “I sent you a deed of gift and asked you to sign it. Or to tell me if you wanted to keep the boat yourself.”

“I read that.”

“So, I repeat, what are you doing here?” The afternoon sun made her hair look more auburn than brown, like spun copper.

“I figured we could talk about it.” He paused. “I wanted to see you.”

Wanted to see if whatever he’d once felt was still there. It was perverse, he supposed, how Holly’s contrariness had always sharpened his senses. Going head-to-head with Holly always exhilarated him, made him feel alive. As a boy he hadn’t understood the subtext to their encounters, hadn’t yet connected the dots. It was all about attraction. His brain had finally recognized it at fifteen. His body had known it sooner—probably from the very moment he’d met her when he’d been shaken and stirred, both at once. He’d put it down to the suddenness of her tumbling out of the tree and confronting him. His heart had pounded and his pulse had raced the same way they were doing now.

The way they had the night he had incurred Holly’s everlasting wrath, the night he’d crossed the line.

And heaven help him, Lukas wanted to cross it again. He’d been gone for a dozen years, had dated more women than he could even remember, and they’d all paled in comparison to Holly. His best friend’s girl, and he’d never stopped comparing other women to her! He wanted to touch her again now, wanted to feel the softness of her skin and to trace her curves, to kiss her lips and still the chatter of her teeth. Good lord, her lips were blue!

“Come on,” he said abruptly. “Let’s get you home.”

“I don’t need you to—”

“Don’t be an idiot, Holly. I’m offering you a ride. Nothing else!”

For the moment.

For a dozen years he’d told himself that the past was past, that they’d all moved on, that what he’d felt was kid stuff, that he was well over her. After all, when he’d come back to New York, he hadn’t sought her out. He hadn’t even considered opening that door again. Not until Wednesday when he got Holly’s letter.

And when the door had opened anyway, he knew he had to see her again. But even this morning he had been convinced that everything he’d ever felt for Holly wouldn’t stand the test of time. She had been the dream girl of his past, the one girl against whom he’d measured all the others he’d met since.

But he really hadn’t expected to do more than make his peace with the past—with her. He expected to feel maybe a little nostalgia—and a twist of guilt.

But seeing her now, he knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as that. He felt the guilt, all right. But he didn’t feel nostalgia.

He felt as fierce an attraction as he’d ever felt. Some elemental connection that he’d never felt to another woman. He had a lot more experience now than he’d had back then.

Yes, she was obviously still holding a grudge. But he had to believe she’d changed, too, that she couldn’t hate him forever. Could she?

Lukas slanted a glance at the girl who had stirred his blood, at the woman apparently capable of stirring it still, and knew he was going to stick around and find out.

For all that he suspected he should, he couldn’t walk away.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MINUTE SHE saw Lukas, Holly had felt her heart kick over in her chest. All the years of pretending he didn’t exist blew right out the window. It was like being eighteen again—young and intense and, above all, foolish.

And there was nowhere to run. Nowhere at all.

For years every time Holly remembered the night of her senior prom, she had done so with a bucket load of guilt—and a heart load of resentment.

It never should have happened, she told herself. And it was all her fault.

She should have been stronger. Firmer. She should have said no, right from the start, when Matt had broken his leg.

At least it hadn’t been her fault he’d broken his leg. That had, of course, been Lukas’s—just as every hair-raising, death-defyingly stupid thing Matt and Lukas had ever done could be laid squarely at Lukas’s door. In this case, two weeks before her prom, Lukas had persuaded Matt to climb Mount Katahdin in Maine.

Holly had not been invited.

She couldn’t have gone anyway because, while Matt and Lukas were sophomores in college and their schedules that Friday were free, Holly was a senior in high school with classes every day. Besides, it was the weekend she was getting her dress fitted for the prom, not to mention that her mother would have freaked out if Holly ever dreamed of going camping with two guys, even if one was her fiancé.

Lukas thought their engagement was idiotic. He had looked confused, then appalled when she had held out her hand to show off her ring. “What’s that?” he’d asked warily.

And when she’d said, “I’m engaged,” he’d stared at her in disbelief.

“To get married?”

“No, to wash windows.” Holly had rolled her eyes. “Of course to get married. What do you think?”

He had thought they were out of their minds, and he hadn’t hesitated to say so. He’d told Matt he was foreclosing on his options too early, that he had no idea what other women were on the planet, that he would never know what he was missing. He didn’t tell Holly anything. Obviously he considered Matt to be the one making the bad choice. She’d wanted to smack him.

But Matt—her dear, dependable Matt—had just laughed and said, “I’m not missing anyone important. I’ve got the only one who matters.” And he’d wrapped an arm around Holly’s shoulders, hauling her hard against him, the two of them presenting a solid wall of defiance in the face of Lukas’s scorn.

Only then had Lukas turned to Holly. “You can’t be serious.” His tone had said he wasn’t joking. Their gazes met and something flickered between them that Holly immediately suppressed. Attraction? Connection? She had never let herself examine it too closely. Lukas Antonides was far too powerful, too unpredictable—too intensely male—for Holly to handle.

“I love Matt,” she had said flatly. It was true. Matt was comfortable, predictable—every bit as male as Lukas, but without the intensity she found so unnerving.

Lukas hadn’t disputed it. But he hadn’t shut up, either. Over the following weeks he had told her she was too young. He’d questioned whether she knew her own mind.

Deliberately Holly had turned a deaf ear. “What do you care?” she’d asked.

If he’d said, “I love you,” what would she have done? Holly laughed at herself for just thinking it. Lukas love her? Ha! Lukas had been going through girls for years!

He’d scowled then. “I don’t want you making a mistake.”

“I’m not making a mistake.”

But Lukas didn’t seem to agree. As winter turned to spring, he’d found ways to keep them apart. In February he and Matt had bought the battered old sailboat in New Haven. It wasn’t seaworthy. It would have sunk in a bathtub, but Lukas had convinced Matt they could repair it.

“It will take months,” Holly had pointed out. And that would be if they worked on it every weekend, which would mean Matt would have less time for her.

“We can sail around the world after we graduate,” Lukas had gone on, undaunted.

“I’m getting married when I graduate,” Matt had reminded him.

Lukas had shrugged dismissively. “Who knows what will happen in a couple of years. You can at least help me work on it,” he’d said to Matt.

So, good friend that he was, every weekend that spring, Matt had worked with Lukas on the boat. Holly had barely seen him. The one weekend he had said he would come home turned out to be the weekend she was doing the final fittings on her prom dress.

“No problem,” Matt had said. “Lukas wants to go to Katahdin.”

Feeling hard done by, Holly had said shortly, “Let him.”

“He wants me to go, too. It’ll be a change from working on the boat. And you’re going to be busy anyway.”

So Matt had gone—and had broken his leg. Which was how Holly had ended up with Lukas as her date to her senior prom.

“I won’t go,” she’d told Matt. “No way.”

Matt had looked at her from his hospital bed, foggy-eyed with anesthetic. “Of course you have to go. You already have your dress,” he reminded her the day after he’d had half a dozen screws and a plate put in his left leg. “You’ve been counting on it.”

“I don’t mind staying home. Truly. Lukas doesn’t want to go with me. He doesn’t even like me.”

“Of course he likes you. He’s just...”

“Bossy? Opinionated? Wrong?”

And though she could still see the strain and pain on Matt’s face, he had laughed. “All of the above. It’s just the way he is. Ignore it. It’s your prom. And Lukas should take you,” he added grimly. “It was his idea to go climbing. He owes me.”

No doubt about that. But Holly was sure Lukas would refuse. She was stunned when he didn’t.

“Why?” she’d demanded suspiciously.

“Because he understands responsibility,” Matt said, looking completely serious.

She should have said no then. She hadn’t, telling herself that arguing with Matt would make him unhappy. It might also make him wonder why she was protesting so much. Holly wouldn’t even let herself think about why she was protesting so much.

She didn’t want to think about Lukas, about how when he wasn’t irritating her, the very sight of his muscular chest, lopsided grin and sun-tipped shaggy hair made her blood run hot in her veins.

It meant nothing. She was engaged to Matt.

Still, she wasn’t prepared two weeks later when she opened the door to Lukas, drop-dead gorgeous in a dark suit, pristine white shirt and deep red tie, for the impact of six feet of walking testosterone. The sheer animal magnetism of the man made all Holly’s female hormones flutter in appreciation while her brain screamed, No! No, no, no!

But she could hardly send him home. What would she tell Matt?

So she pasted her best proper smile on her face and tried to pretend she was completely indifferent. Yes, he was gorgeous. Yes, he smiled and chatted and charmed her mother. Yes, he brought her a corsage, which he fastened just above her left breast, standing far too close for comfort, so close that she could smell a hint of pine in his aftershave and see the tiny cut on his jaw where he’d nicked himself shaving.

She leaned toward it instinctively, then jerked back, practically getting herself stabbed by a florist’s pin in the process. “Sorry,” she muttered, mortified. “Sorry.”

He just smiled his engaging Lukas smile, the I’m-so-sexy one she had seen him turn on other girls but which until that moment he had, thank God, never turned on her.

“It looks good on you,” he said. It was a spray of tiny deep red roses. Delicate and aromatic. She drew a breath, trying to draw in the scent of roses to blot out the pine of his aftershave, to blot out Lukas.

But Lukas wouldn’t be blotted.

Worse, he unnerved her by being a perfect gentleman the whole time. He didn’t tease, he didn’t mock. He didn’t mention Matt or their engagement at all. He took her to dinner before the dance. It was expected. And Holly had thought they would go to one of the trendy upscale local places where most of her classmates went to see and be seen. But Lukas took her to a quiet romantic Italian place where he seemed to know everyone.

Holly couldn’t help looking surprised.

“We don’t have to go here,” Lukas said. “But I like it. It’s a little lower-key.”

Since when was Lukas lower-key? But Holly had nodded, glad they weren’t in the midst of a crowd. There might have been safety in numbers, but there would also have been lots of questions about what she was doing with Lukas, why she wasn’t with Matt.

They’d get asked at the dance, of course, but they wouldn’t become a conversation piece there. Holly didn’t want to be a conversation piece. “It’s fine,” she said. “I like it.” She managed her first real smile of the evening then, one that didn’t feel as if it had been welded to her lips.

Lukas smiled, too. Electricity arced between them—sharp and frighteningly genuine. “I’m glad,” Lukas said.

Holly wasn’t sure if she was glad or not. Tonight Lukas was everything Matt had assured her he would be: polite, charming, an easy conversationalist. When the waitress brought their menus, he didn’t tell her what she ought to order. He asked what she’d like to eat.

It was a sort of dream date—an intoxicating, heady experience. Unreal, almost. Holly kept waiting for him to revert to the Lukas she was accustomed to, but he never did.

At the dance, when she expected he would do his duty, dance once or twice with her, then disappear with the more interesting, flashier girls, he stayed by her side all evening. She wondered aloud whether he wouldn’t rather dance with other girls, but Lukas simply shook his head.

“I’m happy,” he said as the music started again. Without another word, he swept her into a dance while Holly’s mind spun and her body responded instinctively to Lukas’s powerful lead. One of her hands was gripped in his hard, warm fingers, more callused than Matt’s, rougher to the touch, giving her another tiny stab of awareness. Her other hand, resting on his shoulder beneath the smooth, dark wool of his suit coat, felt the shift and flex of strong muscles.

When she danced with Lukas, her eyes were on a level with his lips. Instinctively she licked hers and stumbled, red-faced, at where her thoughts were going.

“What’s wrong?” Lukas pulled her up and held her closer.

“N-nothing.” She tried to put space between them, averted her gaze from his lips. “What’re you doing?” she demanded as Lukas only drew her closer.

“It’s called leading.” The soft, almost teasing murmur in her ear sent a shiver to the base of her spine.

He led. She followed. Their bodies touched. The experience was nothing like the warm, slightly zingy buzz she experienced when she and Matt danced. No, each touch with Lukas felt electric, a shock to the system, a different sort of awareness altogether.

“Relax.” He breathed the word in her ear on a warm breath that did anything but relax her. She felt alert, aware, awake as she’d never been awake before. Expectant—though what she was expecting, she would not have dared to think.

Lukas didn’t say anything else, just moved with the music, drawing her with him, easing her closer. His hand slid to her hip, but went no farther. And gradually, unable to remain alert and wary every moment, Holly realized that she was relaxing. She found joy in the movement, in the rhythm, in the warm nearness of Lukas’s body. He made her feel oddly protected.

They danced almost every dance, far more than she ever would have with Matt, who much preferred to stand on the sidelines and watch while he talked sports with the guys. But Lukas danced. And eventually he began to talk, too, recounting what they had been accomplishing on the boat, then telling her what they had seen mountain climbing in Maine.

“So you don’t think breaking his leg is all we did.” His smile was wry.

Holly gave him a doubtful look, but she couldn’t help smiling and sharing a moment of rapport with Lukas. He asked her about her classes, and he surprised her by talking about his own courses.

“I don’t know what I want,” he said. “I just try things. See what I like. I’ve got geology this semester that is kind of cool. And—don’t laugh—but I like Latin. But what the hell do you do with Latin?” He shrugged. “What about you? What are you going to do?”

Holly, disarmed by Lukas liking Latin, found herself telling him about her own plans and dreams. “Nothing grandiose. I want to get married, have a family. I’ve always wanted kids.”

“Me, too,” Lukas said. Another surprise. “Not anytime soon, though,” he added quickly. “Not ready to settle down yet.”

She wasn’t at all surprised by that. “Before I have kids, though,” she went on, “I think I’ll teach.”

“You’ll be good at it,” Lukas said. And when she raised a questioning brow, he shrugged. “You should be able to handle a classroom. You always kept me in my place.” His wicked grin flashed, inviting her smile in return, and Holly did.

The whole evening was like that—Lukas attentive and fun to be with—a Lukas that once upon a time she had dared to imagine might lurk beneath his teasing, baiting, infuriating exterior. But if that Lukas ever even existed, he’d seemed far out of reach.

She shouldn’t even be thinking about him that way. She was engaged! She was going to marry Matt!

So she deliberately closed her eyes and tried to pretend that he was Matt. But the aftershave was wrong, the way he moved on the dance floor was smoother, easier. His height was wrong, too. She opened her eyes again at the feel of something feathery touching her forehead and saw Lukas’s lips so close they could kiss her brow. Holly sucked in a careful breath and shoved the thought away.

Why were there so many slow dances tonight?

Holly longed for something fast and furious to burn off her awareness, to give her some space. But when the next one was fast, it was no better. Seeing Lukas’s body shimmy and thrust to the music while she did the same, created something elemental, primeval, between them.

Holly tried to deny it. It was only dancing, she told herself. But their bodies were in sync, moving, shifting apart, coming together. And at the end Lukas grabbed her hand, then spun her out and reeled her back into his chest so that his body spooned against hers as he wrapped her in his arms.

“Oh!” Holly’s body was trembling, her heart hammering. His hands cradled her breasts. One of his legs had slid between her own. Holly tried to get her balance, to pull away. But her overheated body wanted nothing to do with that. She turned to stare breathlessly up at him.

Lukas was breathing hard, too. His cheeks were flushed, his forehead damp, his hair tousled across his forehead. Her fingers itched to brush it back, to feel its silkiness between her fingers. Deliberately, she knotted those fingers into fists.

“Hot work,” he muttered. “Let’s get something to drink.”

“Yes.” Before she went up in flames.

He got them each a soft drink, and they stood watching as the next dance began. It was a slow one again. Romantic. If they danced now, Lukas would pull her into his arms. Holly felt her body trembling.

“Let’s sit this one out.” Lukas’s voice was gruff.

“Yes.” Holly nodded and took a desperate gulp of soda, praying that it would cool her down. But nothing cooled her down that night. Amid the kaleidoscope of lights and sounds, of fast dances and slow, she was seduced by the moment, by the night. She told herself it wasn’t Lukas making her feel this way. But she had to admit he had made it a night to remember. He’d been the Lukas she’d dared to dream he could be.

When the prom ended, several friends were heading off together for a late meal. Had she been with Matt, no doubt they would have joined them. Holly expected Lukas to breathe a sigh of relief, bundle her into his car and take her straight home.

But when her friend Lucy called over, “Do you guys want to come to Woody’s?” Lukas had looked at her.

“Do you?”

She hadn’t expected that, and was ready to say no, sure he’d had enough of the evening, of her. But before she could answer at all, he went on. “That’s what you do on prom, isn’t it? Stay out till dawn?”

Stay out till dawn? With Lukas Antonides? An inappropriate flutter of anticipation tickled her. “Well, I—”

He raised a brow. “Would you go with Matt?”

“Sure, but—”

“We’ll come,” he said to Lucy. He slanted Holly a grin. “After all, I’m standing in for Matt.”

So they went to Woody’s, an upscale version of a fifties diner, full of her classmates, all laughing and talking, still on a high from the dance. Lukas, to her surprise, fit right in. He talked sports and surfing and sailboats with the guys. He was easy and charming to their dates.

They squashed into a booth with three other couples. Holly would have been comfortable with Matt shoved in next to her, would have relaxed when he slipped an arm around her. But when Lukas did it, she could feel every inch of the hard muscles of his arm. She was more aware of the heat of his body pressed hard against her than of anything anyone was saying.

She was sure Lukas wasn’t aware of her with the same intensity. His knee bumped hers, then finally settled against it, and he didn’t seem to notice. He kept right on talking to Sam, Lucy’s date, even as his fingers played with a strand of her hair. If she turned her head even slightly, her lips would brush his fingers. Holly shivered and looked straight ahead. It didn’t mean a thing. It was just Lukas. He didn’t mean anything by it.

But her whole body was thrumming with awareness by the time they left Woody’s. The noise subsided when the door shut behind them. The night breeze on her heated skin made Holly shiver.

“You’re cold,” Lukas said. “Here, have my jacket.” He made to shrug out of his coat.

Wear Lukas’s suit coat still warm from his body? Holly shook her head quickly. “N-no, thanks. I’m fine. It’s lovely out here, isn’t it?” She did a pirouette in the parking lot, looking up at the night sky, trying desperately to get her bearings, to get her feet on the ground.

Lukas glanced up briefly, then looked straight back at her. “Not as lovely as you.”

Holly stared at him in shock. Was she losing her hearing? Imagining things? “Was that a compliment?” she ventured.

“I can give them,” he said gruffly.

“Not to me.”

His mouth twisted. “Don’t let it go to your head.” Now he sounded more like the Lukas she’d always known, but perhaps just a little bit kinder. Then, like the gentleman he had never been until that night, Lukas opened the car door for her, then shut it once she got in.

“You know, one of the things I hated most about you—” she said when Lukas got in and shut the car door.

He had been about to put the key in the ignition. Instead, he stopped and looked at her, startled. Then a corner of his mouth quirked up. “Just one? I’m sure you have a whole long list.”

She did, but this was one she felt compelled to share. “Yes, but listening to you guys talking back there reminded me of this one.”

Lukas raised a brow, waiting for her to speak.

“I hated that you wouldn’t let me go sailing with you. You used to take Matt out with your dad and your brothers, but you wouldn’t take me.” She probably shouldn’t even be admitting that it had mattered.

Lukas looked thoughtful, then he nodded, put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car hummed to life, but he didn’t put it in gear immediately. Instead, he stared straight ahead in the dimly lit parking lot as if making up his mind about something. Deciding if he should apologize? That would definitely be un-Lukas-like.

Finally, he turned to her. “You want to go sailing? I could take you sailing.”

“When you and Matt get your boat finished?” Holly said with a tiny smile. “The twelfth of never?”

“No. Now.” There was a rough edge to his voice. And though it was dark in the car, Holly could feel his gaze on her as if he were touching her.

“Now?” she said doubtfully. “Tonight?”

“Don’t want to take the boat out in the dark. But when it starts to get light... How about that? We’ll end the night with a sail.” And he gave her one of those amazing Lukas Antonides grins that would have caused a saint to cave in to temptation.

Holly was no saint. Besides, it was just sailing, she told her sensible self, the one that was telling her to say no. He was, for once, being kind. It was Lukas’s way of making up for years of thwarting her. Was she supposed to throw it back in his face?

Besides, she did want to go sailing.

And with Lukas? Well, this had been Matt’s idea. Not hers.

* * *

He was playing with fire. Lukas knew it.

But he’d never been one to play it safe. And he hadn’t started this. It had been Matt insisting that he take Holly to the prom. What should he have done? Said no?