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.
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
