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She understood very well why Lukas felt an obligation to see Skeet’s foundation was a success. The rapport between them was obvious. It was beautiful.
It gave her a greater appreciation for Lukas than she’d had before. She’d known him as a boy and as a self-absorbed young man. She didn’t see that here. She saw something deeper, something valuable.
What she saw there, she soon discovered, extended to the attitude of the artists toward the man who owned the gallery.
“He understands us,” Charlotte told her.
“He listens,” Teresa said. And she went on to tell Holly about how it was when she’d whined to him about lack of opportunities, that he’d said, “What would make it better?”
“I just babbled,” Teresa told her. “Told him how wonderful it would be to have access to a North American market, to be promoted on the other side of the world. I didn’t see it ever happening. I was just talking. But he made it happen.”
“He lets us alone,” Charlotte said. “He doesn’t try to get us to do particular things. He never makes suggestions. Not even about how we display our work in his gallery. He’s determined that it’s ours, not his.”
Not one person said, He’s bossy. He’s autocratic. He thinks he knows it all.
He certainly wasn’t micromanaging her. He found her when he came back at lunchtime and asked if she wanted peanut butter and jelly or paté de foie gras.
“What?” Holly was behind the desk in the main gallery reading over a spreadsheet.
He repeated it. “I’ve got peanut butter upstairs. Or I can take you out.”
“I need to keep going. Jenn left a list of appropriate region-specific foods, but I have to find a caterer who can actually make them.” It was a good idea to serve Australian, New Zealand and Pacific finger foods and desserts. But it was going to take a bit of effort to come up with a provider.
“Fine, but you have to eat,” Lukas said, drawing her to her feet.
“I need to make phone calls.”
“Right. Peanut butter and jelly it is.”
He made a mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Holly had to give him that. But after he did he let her go back to work. He didn’t turn up every ten minutes to make suggestions or to boss her around. There was the normal amount of noise in the gallery until about four o’clock, when the pre-opening hours closed to the public.
Then the banging and hammering began. Holly found she actually liked hearing it. She liked the images it called to mind. But when it stopped just after six, she found that her imagination was lacking.
Moments after it ended, Holly looked up to catch her breath at the sight of a sweaty, grimy, shirtless Lukas Antonides standing in her office doorway, wearing jeans—and a tool belt. Holly swallowed at the sight.
“Time to quit,” he said.
“No more walls to knock down?”
“Not if I want the building to keep standing. Let’s take a shower.”
“Lukas!”
He grinned unrepentantly. “Come on, Hol’. You know you want to wash my back.”
She wanted to wash a great deal more than that. She wanted to wash all of him. Holly swallowed a whimper. Then she drew an anticipatory breath and stood up. “All right. Let’s.”
* * *
Sometimes over the days that followed, Lukas felt as if he’d died and gone to heaven.
He had Holly in the office, bright-eyed and eager, yet still businesslike, every day. He had Holly in the kitchen—sometimes his and sometimes hers—for breakfasts and dinners. She was a good cook—and she ate his own attempts with relish.
“A man to cook for me?” she said. “Be still my beating heart.”
His own heart beat a whole lot more rapidly when she was around. He had expected that the reality of Holly might well pale compared to his youthful dreams of her. How often, after all, did the real thing ever measure up?
But Holly more than measured up. The memories of her had always outshone any girl or woman Lukas had ever dated. But she outdid herself, as well.
For a man who had always had his eye on the horizon, who’d spent his life in pursuit of what was beyond it, this was a whole new experience.
He didn’t want it to end. What the hell did Holly need to go halfway around the world to find herself for? She was doing fine right here with him.
There was no question that taking Holly to bed was amazing. But they got along well outside of bed, too. He remembered she used to like baseball so he’d invited her along to his softball games. She came and cheered him on.
