AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Someday, he figured, he’d even get over it. Though since he’d carried a torch for her for two thirds of his life already, he wasn’t going to hold his breath.
“A bunch of us are going out for pizza in about an hour,” Charlotte said when he stopped hammering. “Want to come with us?”
Lukas shook his head. “No.” Then, realizing how abrupt that was, he grimaced and added, “Thanks. Not hungry.” He kept moving the chisel, whacking it with the hammer, moving it again. Each blow sent pieces of brick scattering to the canvas tarps below. Lukas wiped a weary forearm across his brow.
“You have to eat,” Charlotte reminded him. “You’re getting skinny,” she said, assessing his shirtless frame.
“I eat.”
Tallie saw to that. She kept bringing him food and inviting him for dinner. Ever since she and Elias had discovered that Holly had left, they’d been hovering like worried parents.
“Tallie left me, too,” Elias reminded him. “Took me months to find her.”
“I know where Holly is,” Lukas said stonily.
“So go and get her,” his brother said bluntly.
Lukas just shook his head. He couldn’t tell them that Holly wouldn’t welcome him if he did, that she didn’t want him, didn’t love him, that it had only been an affair to her.
“If we can do anything...” Tallie said, putting a hand on his arm as they were leaving. “If you want to talk...”
He didn’t want to talk. For once in his life Lukas had absolutely nothing to say.
He stonewalled his family. He stonewalled Sera, who fretted about him whenever she came into his office and found him staring into space. He stonewalled Charlotte and the rest of the artists who kept trying to find helpful ways for him to convince Holly to come back and be the business manager again. He didn’t tell them he figured she’d probably be happy to remain as the business manager if only he would go away.
Thinking about it now, his throat got tight. It wasn’t the thinking that did it. It was because he was knocking down walls and there was dust everywhere. Too much damn dust.
“If you change your mind, we’re leaving sixish,” Charlotte said, then headed toward the door. “Leave a wall or two standing,” she added. “We don’t want the world to come crashing down.”
God no, Lukas thought grimly, we certainly don’t want that.
Charlotte had barely disappeared when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It would be Tallie telling him to come for dinner. He dug into his pocket, already deciding that he wasn’t going over there tonight. Enough was enough. But it was Sera’s name on the caller ID.
“I thought you’d gone home,” he said when he answered.
“I was just leaving when someone came in who wants to apply for a MacClintock grant.”
Lukas groaned. “We’re done with that.”
“For next year,” Sera qualified. He could hear the smile in her voice. She knew he was so relieved to have it over for the year that she could tease a bit.
But Lukas had had enough of grant applicants for a while. “Tell him to come back next year.”
Sera didn’t say anything. She had learned by now that if she wanted something, she could always wait him out.
Lukas sighed. “Oh, hell, fine. Send him up. I’ll discourage him myself.” Or maybe he could kick the guy in the butt, give him some gumption like Skeet wanted.
Because look where gumption got you, Lukas thought bitterly. He, for example, had accomplished so much by laying his heart on the line.
He slid down the ladder at the sound of footsteps on the stairs and turned to meet the prospective MacClintock applicant.
It wasn’t a guy. A slender, dark-haired woman was silhouetted in the late-afternoon sunlight that spilled into the room. Lukas glanced, and felt his heart kick over in his chest because it looked like... But he was dreaming. Had to be. It was a mirage. Like one of those damned oases that tempted camel drivers who had spent too long in the desert.
And then she came toward him.
“Holly?” Lukas dropped the hammer on his foot.
* * *
“Lukas! Oh, God, are you all right?” Holly didn’t have time to stop and drink in the sight of him, didn’t, in the end, worry that he would take one look and tell her to get the hell out of his life.
Once she saw the hammer fall and saw Lukas wince with pain, all her own misgivings fled. She dashed across the room to kneel at his feet.
“Sit down!” she demanded, tugging at the hem of his faded denim jeans. She shoved the offending hammer away and tugged again, and finally Lukas sat. She fumbled off his work boot and sock to find a goose egg forming on the top of his foot. “We need to get ice on it.”
