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He would see her every day. They’d work together. Talk together. No doubt argue together. And then what?
Lukas had never done relationships. Not real, long-term, committed relationships—except with people to whom he was related by blood or family ties. He wasn’t sure he knew how. Or if he wanted to.
Cold feet, anyone? he jeered at himself silently.
But his feet didn’t feel cold at the moment. They felt eager, alive, ready to run a marathon. Hold that thought, he counseled himself.
He grinned at her. “Terrific. Welcome aboard.” He punched in a number on his mobile phone.
Charlotte, the textile artist, the one whose work Holly had particularly admired, answered at once.
“Rustle up as many of the bunch as you can,” he told her. “We need lots of hands. And bring all the boxes and crates you can find. We’re going to move in our new gallery manager.”
* * *
And just like that, Lukas sorted out her life.
One minute Holly was suffocating in dust and clutter and far too many decisions—about what to keep and what to toss and where to put anything she hung on to—and the next, Lukas had taken over.
It was like the first time she’d gone white-water kayaking. She had been moving down a stream nice and easy—everything under control. And then she’d spied rapids ahead and instinctively began sculling backward, apprehensive, trying to size things up, to get a bead on a through-line, to keep control the way Matt had told her to.
Then all her planning, all her care vanished as she felt the surge of the water beneath her, lifting and pulling the kayak past the point of no return. The current simply swept her up in its power and carried her into the rapids. Then all she could do was pray—and hang on to the paddle for dear life.
Exactly the way she was doing now. Minus the paddle.
Lukas Antonides in action was a class-four set of white-water rapids. Within an hour half a dozen of the artists, sculptors and jewelry makers she’d met turned up on her doorstep with boxes and crates galore.
“What goes? What stays? Tell us what to do,” Sam, the birdcage maker, said.
“We’re experts at packing,” Charlotte told her. “I’m so glad you’re going to work with us.”
The other three, Geoff and Paul and Teresa, nodded in agreement.
“Where’s the boss?” Geoff asked, looking around with a grin.
“I’m the boss,” Holly said firmly and wished she actually sounded like it. She still felt dizzy. “Lukas went to get pizza and beer.”
By the time he got back, Holly and her helpers had blitzed their way through the kitchen and the hall closet. It was easier, she found, to have the others there, not just for the help, but for the distance their involvement gave her.
It was less painful to step back and say yes to this and no to that when Charlotte or Geoff held up something than it was to handle each piece herself and be caught by indecision or carried away by memories.
By the time Lukas got back, they’d cleared the kitchen and bathroom entirely. After a brief pause for sustenance, he herded the guys into her bedroom to begin dismantling the bed and carrying the dressers down to the truck.
“Hey, wait! I have to sleep somewhere,” Holly protested.
“In your new apartment.” Lukas was collapsing the bed frame as he spoke. “You’re moving. Remember?”
Holly swallowed. She’d just assumed she’d have until Tuesday to get used to the idea. Lukas, as usual, had other plans.
“What about this tablecloth?” Teresa appeared in the doorway. “Save or sell?”
So while Lukas and the other guys got on with dismantling her life, Holly went back to the living room and made another decision.
She made hundreds before they were done. But by ten o’clock all the furniture had been ferried to the gallery building, and stacks of boxes containing things she knew she wasn’t keeping stood in the middle of the otherwise empty bedroom. And another stack of boxes with the things she was storing at Lukas’s were in the living room. The cupboards were empty. The bookshelves were bare.
Now everyone had gone back to the gallery to unload the truck except Holly—and Lukas. He was labeling the boxes in the bedroom. She had finished with the last box in the living room and, at a loose end, moved restlessly around the room. The lights of Manhattan gleamed like bright patterns of stars across the river. They looked familiar, unlike the mostly empty room in which she stood. She stared at them, remembering the first night she and Matt had spent in the condo. They’d sat up all night, huddled together under a blanket on the sofa, just marveling at the view.
