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She showed up dutifully to every talk and had a hard time paying attention to a word that was said. In her mind, she kept seeing Lukas. She went to language classes and practiced and found herself wondering which ancient languages Lukas knew. She remembered the night of her prom when he’d confessed he liked studying Latin. She knew he even translated old documents sometimes.
“To keep my hand in,” he’d said, then added wryly, “And my brain.”
It had prompted her once to look him up in some scholarly indexes and she’d discovered he was there, that while he’d been out digging in the dirt with Skeet, he’d spent his evenings on ancient Sanskrit and Greek texts.
Every evening they prepared and ate local foods from the island she would be going to. It was a new program, an attempt to get them acclimated, to help them land on their feet. And while it was interesting and she learned it, it didn’t stir her blood the way watching Lukas in the kitchen had.
Her mouth watered when she thought about the spaghetti he’d made. He had half a dozen recipes he’d got from his mother and grandmother that he had fixed for her, too. “You don’t have to do all the cooking,” he’d told her. “Or we can do it together. Then we can do this while we’re waiting for the water to boil,” he’d said with one of his lopsided grins. And then he’d kissed her.
She ached remembering how Lukas had used almost any excuse to kiss her. She ached remembering the feel of his silky hair beneath her fingers, his rough, whiskered jaw rubbing against her cheek. She ached whenever she thought about the way he always knew where to touch her—and how he could let go and allow her to learn what pleased him.
“Don’t think about it. Forget him,” she said over and over. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. And she feared she would never forget this past month as long as she lived.
She went through the motions of the program day after day. She attended the lectures, practiced the language, learned new skills. She tried to fill the emptiness in her life with what she was learning now, what she was planning to do.
And at night when the other volunteers were drinking beer, laughing and talking and making plans, Holly walked on the beach alone.
It had seemed a brilliant idea last autumn when she’d looked into the project in the first place. But then she had finally come to terms with what had happened and had been trying to redefine her life after losing Matt. The Peace Corps had seemed to offer exactly what she needed to challenge herself, to do some good while finding out who she was and what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. It had been a good idea at the time.
Now it was too late.
Because she was, heaven help her, in love with Lukas Antonides. And all the lectures and language lessons and attempts to cook mysterious foods could not fill the hole that leaving him had opened in her life.
This wasn’t like the hole Matt had left. His death had brought an irrevocable end to life as she had known it. And she’d had to face that there was no way to change it, no possibility to bring him back. She’d had to face that—and learn to move on.
But Lukas hadn’t died. He hadn’t left her.
She had left him.
Lukas had said he loved her. Had always loved her. The words echoed in her mind as she stood and stared out at the setting sun. Lukas had asked her to marry him.
And she had been afraid to.
Holly wasn’t sure the exact moment she faced the truth—which wasn’t that Lukas didn’t love her, but that she was afraid to love him. She was afraid to open her heart, to risk the pain of loving again.
But it was too late to protect herself.
She already did.
* * *
Charlotte spun slowly around the cavernous space on the gallery’s fourth floor and said, “It’s getting very airy in here.”
Lukas, halfway through knocking down another brick wall, merely grunted and kept on working, first with a crowbar, then a hammer and chisel. He wasn’t knocking down any more walls than he and Alex had agreed on. Well, maybe a couple more, but it was his building, damn it. And he needed the exertion if he was going to stay sane. He’d thought about going back to Australia and digging again. He’d stayed because he had made commitments. No one could say he wasn’t reliable, he thought grimly.
Charlotte stopped spinning and came over to peer closely at him. “Are you sure you’re okay, Lukas?”
“I’m fine,” he said shortly. They were all fussing at him. He knew they were concerned. He’d never thought he was the sort of guy who wore his heart on his sleeve, but they all knew he was pining for Holly. It was embarrassing. But he endured it. What else could he do?
