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“I want to talk to Holly,” Lukas said, deliberately not answering it. “I’ve just moved back from Australia. I don’t have her phone number.”
“And I can’t give it to you. Privacy, you know,” Father Morrison said apologetically. Then he added, “But you might run into her at the marina. She still goes there most Saturday mornings to teach the kids.”
“I might do that,” Lukas said. “Thanks, Father.”
So here he was pacing the dock, still unable to spot her. He hadn’t seen Holly since her wedding ten years ago. Every time he’d been back since—less than half a dozen times in the whole decade—he’d seen Matt, but never Holly.
She had been visiting her mother or at a bridal shower or taking books back to the library. Maybe it had been true. Certainly Matt seemed to think nothing of Holly’s excuses. But Matt didn’t know Holly was avoiding him.
Now Lukas jammed his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts, annoyed that she was so hard to spot, more annoyed that he cared. His brain said there was no sense dusting things up after all this time. He probably wouldn’t even recognize her.
He’d recognize her.
He knew it as sure as he knew his own name.
A day hadn’t gone by that Holly hadn’t wiggled her way into his consciousness. She had been a burr in his skin for years, an itch he had wanted to scratch since he’d barely known that such itches existed.
A couple of days after his family had moved from the city out to the far reaches of Long Island, he had met Matt. They had been standing under a tree near his house, and Lukas had said his dad would take him and Matt sailing, that it would be cool to have a new best friend.
And suddenly a skinny, freckle-faced urchin dropped out of the tree between them and stuck her face in his. “You can’t be Matt’s best friend. I already am!” She’d kicked him in the shin. He’d pulled her braid. It had pretty much gone downhill from there.
Lukas had two sisters already. He didn’t need another girl in his life, especially one who insisted on dogging his and Matt’s footsteps day after day after day.
“I was here first!” she had insisted.
“Go away! Grow up!” Lukas had told her over and over when he wasn’t teasing her because he knew her face would get red and she would fight back.
But it was worse when she did grow up. She got curves—and breasts. She traded in her pigtails for a short shaggy haircut that accentuated her cheekbones rather than her freckles. She made her already huge blue eyes look even bigger with some well-placed eye shadow. She got her braces off, wore lipstick and sometimes actually smiled.
But never at him.
Except...sometimes, obliquely, Lukas thought she watched him the way he watched her.
But her focus was always on Matt. “I’m marrying Matt.” Holly had said that for years.
Hearing her, Lukas had scoffed. And at first Matt had rolled his eyes, too. But he had never been mortified by her declaration as Lukas would have been.
“That’s Holly,” he’d said and shrugged. Then, when he was fourteen, he told Lukas that he’d kissed her.
“Holly?” Lukas felt as if he’d been punched. “You kissed Holly?” Then, hopefully, he’d asked, “Was it gross?”
Matt’s face had turned bright red. “Nope.”
It couldn’t be different than kissing any other girl, Lukas had thought. So he’d done that. And then he’d kissed another. And another. He couldn’t believe Matt kept on kissing only Holly.
Then, Christmas of Holly’s senior year in high school, they’d got engaged.
“Engaged?” Lukas hadn’t believed his ears. It was ludicrous, he’d told Matt fervently. He’d told Holly the same thing. “You’re crazy,” he’d said. “How can you think about spending the rest of your life with one person? You’re not in love!”
But they hadn’t paid any attention to him. And when he’d tried to make it clear to Holly, well, let’s just say she hadn’t got the message. In fact, she’d hated him even more.
Then, when Matt was twenty-two and Holly just twenty, they had tied the knot.
Lukas had been on the other side of the world when he got Matt’s call to come home and be his best man.
“I’m in Thailand!” Lukas had objected. He’d been crewing on a schooner that summer, basking in sunny days, balmy nights and the charm of a bevy of intriguing, exotic women. He hadn’t been home for three years, had no intention of going to the wedding.
