all he got was a headache.
Or maybe it wasn’t the city giving him a headache. Maybe it was the rest of his life.
Lukas thrived on hard work and taking charge. But he had always known that if he wanted to, he could simply pick up and walk away. He couldn’t walk away from the gallery—didn’t want to. But being everything to every artist and craftsperson who was counting on him—and the gallery—when for years he had resisted being responsible for anyone other than himself made his head pound.
Ordinarily, he loved hard physical labor. Throwing himself body and soul into whatever he was doing gave him energy. That was why he’d taken over the renovation of not only the gallery, but the rest of the offices and apartments in the cast-iron SoHo building he’d bought three months ago. But the gallery cut into the time he had for that, and getting behind where he thought he should be was causing a throb behind his eyes.
And then there was his mother who, since he’d got back from Australia, had been saying not so sotto voce, “Is she the one?” whenever he mentioned a woman’s name. He knew she was angling for another daughter-in-law. It was what Greek mothers did. He’d been spared before as there were other siblings to pressure. But they were all married now, busily providing the next generation.
Only he was still single.
“I’ll marry when I’m ready,” he’d told her flatly. He didn’t tell her that he didn’t see it happening. He’d long ago missed that boat.
But more than anything, he was sure the headache—the pounding behind his eyes, the throbbing that wouldn’t go away—was caused by the damned stalagmites of applications for grants by the MacClintock Foundation, which, for his sins, he was in charge of.
“Just a few more,” his secretary, Serafina, announced with dry irony, dropping another six-inch stack onto his desk.
Lukas groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. The headache spiked. He wasn’t cut out for this sort of thing. He was an action man, not a paper-pusher. And Skeet MacClintock had known that!
But it hadn’t stopped the late Alexander “Skeet” MacClintock, Lukas’s cranky friend and opal-mining mentor, from guilting him into taking on the job of running the foundation and vetting the applicants. He’d known that Lukas wouldn’t be able to turn his back on Skeet’s plan for a foundation intended to “Give a guy—or gal—a hand. Or a push.”
Because once Skeet had given Lukas a hand. And this, damn it, was his way of pushing.
Lukas sighed and gave Sera a thin smile. “Thanks.”
“There are more,” Sera began.
“Spare me.”
Sera smiled. “You’ll get there.”
Lukas grunted. For all that he’d rather be anywhere else, he owed this to Skeet.
The old man, an ex-pat New Yorker like himself, had provided the grumbling, cantankerous steadiness that a young, hotheaded, quicksilver Lukas had needed six years ago. Not that Lukas had known it at the time.
He would have said they were just sharing digs in a dusty, blisteringly hot or perversely cold mining area in the outback. Skeet could have tossed him out. Lukas could have left at any time.
Often he had, taking jobs crewing on schooners or yachts. He’d leave for months, never promising to come back, never intending to. But for all his wanderlust and his tendency to jump from one thing to next, there was something about opal mining—about the possibilities and the sheer hard work—that energized him and simultaneously took the edge off his restlessness. For the first time in years, he had slept well at night.
He felt good. He and Skeet got along. Skeet never made any demands. Not even when he got sick. He just soldiered on. And at the end, he had only one request.
“Makin’ you my executor,” he’d rasped at Lukas during the last few days. “You take care of things...after.”
Lukas had wanted to deny furiously that there would be an “after,” that Skeet MacClintock would die and the world would go on. But Skeet was a realist. “Whaddya say?” Skeet’s faded blue eyes had bored into Lukas’s own.
By that time the old man had seemed more like a father to him than his own. Of course Lukas had said yes. How hard would it be? He’d only have to distribute the old man’s assets.
Skeet had plenty, though no one would ever have guessed from the Spartan underground digs he called home. Lukas only knew of Skeet’s business acumen because Skeet had helped him parlay his own mining assets into a considerable fortune.
Even so, he had never imagined the old man had a whole foundation up his sleeve—one offering monetary grants to New Yorkers who needed “someone to believe in them so they could dare to believe in themselves.”
Who’d have thought Skeet would have such a sentimental streak? Not Lukas. Though he should have expected there would be a stampede of New Yorkers eager to take advantage of it when the news spread.
He’d had a trickle of applications before the What’s New! article. But once it hit the stands, the postman began staggering in with bags and bags of mail.
That was when Serafina had proved her worth. A fiftysomething, no-nonsense mother of seven, Serafina Delgado could organize a battalion, deal with flaky artists and cantankerous sculptors and prioritize grant applications, all while answering the phone and keeping a smile on her face. Lukas, who didn’t multitask worth a damn, was impressed.
“Sort ’em out,” he’d instructed her. “Only give me the ones you think I really ought to consider.”
He would make the final decisions himself. Skeet’s instructions had been clear about that.
“How the hell will I know who needs support?” Lukas had demanded.
“You’ll know.” Skeet had grinned faintly from his hospital bed. “They’ll be the ones that remind you of me.”
That was why the old man had created the foundation in the first place, and Lukas knew it. Back when it mattered, when he was in his twenties, Skeet hadn’t believed in himself. Deeply in love with a wealthy young New York socialite, poor boy Skeet hadn’t felt he had anything to offer her besides his love. So he’d never dared propose.
“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
