The Return of Antonides: Christmas at the Castello(28)

The thought made her smile. She could imagine him shirtless, working  with a crowbar, muscles flexing and bunching. She wondered if he was  wearing a tool belt. She was almost tempted to go up and see. But she  didn't.

She was living in the moment-and the moment was here in the gallery, getting a grip on what she needed to do.

There would be time for Lukas later, she was sure of it.

And she was right. He banged on her door at seven and said, "Enough work," in an authoritative tone. "Come and eat."

"I have to change. Where are we going?"

"To my place," he said. "And as far as I'm concerned, you don't have to wear anything at all."

She took a shower and put on clean clothes and went upstairs, reining  in her skepticism about Lukas's ability to cook. But he really had made  dinner-spaghetti and meat sauce, a fresh green salad and crusty hot  garlic bread.

She was amazed. Matt couldn't boil water. She'd given up trying to  teach him how to do anything in the kitchen. It was easier to do it  herself. But it was wonderful to actually have a man cook for her-even  one who had her out of her clothes and back in his bed before she could  offer to wash the dishes.

"That's what dishwashers are for." Lukas was busy yanking his own clothes off, his gaze devouring her nakedness.

"Yes, but you have to load them," Holly protested.

"Not now. We have better things to do."

They did. They made love until the wee hours of the morning. Then they slept, wrapped in each other's arms.

Living in the moment, Holly thought, could be addictive.

She would have liked to spend all day there. But Lukas was already up  and shaved. He was fixing breakfast when she emerged from the bedroom,  still tender in places she had almost forgotten about.

"Morning." He kissed her with lingering thoroughness, then said, "Gotta  stop that or I won't be meeting the mayor this morning." He set a bowl  of oatmeal and raspberries in front of her.

"You're meeting the mayor?" Holly raised her brows.

"More likely one of his flunkies. We're going over logistics for the  reception at the Plaza." He shot back his cuff and consulted his watch.  "And I'm going to be late. Will you be okay here?"                       
       
           



       

"Of course," Holly said. "I've got my work cut out for me."

"You don't have to," Lukas said.

"Oh? You got me here under false pretenses, did you?" A corner of her mouth twitched.

"Any way I could get you," Lukas said. He snagged a suit coat off the  back of a chair and shrugged it on. "I'll be back by lunchtime."

Holly finished her breakfast, then loaded the dishwasher with last  night's dishes and this morning's, then turned it on. She went back into  Lukas's bedroom and straightened the bed, letting herself remember how  they'd spent the night. Her cheeks grew warm just thinking about it.

"Live in the moment," she reminded herself. Lukas was heading uptown. It was time for her to get cleaned up and go to work.

She turned up in Sera's office half an hour later to ask for whatever  material she had that she'd been saving for Jenn. "Lukas said I should  get it from you," she told his assistant.

"You're the new gallery manager?" Sera's eyes were like saucers. A knowing smile lit her face.

Holly felt her own cheeks reddening. "Just for six weeks," she said. "Less if Lukas finds someone else."

"What happens in six weeks?"

So while Sera pulled up files and printed out material, Holly told her about the Peace Corps.

Sera's surprise was evident. "You're going away? For two years? And Lukas is okay with that?" she said doubtfully.

"It's not Lukas's decision," Holly told her.

"I wonder if he knows that," Sera murmured as she collated the material and put it in a folder.

Holly was sure Lukas knew it. She was sure it was exactly what he  wanted. But she didn't say any of that to Sera. She just thanked her for  the files and said she'd be back to pick her brain later.

The job, she discovered, was just as Lukas had said, not unlike  teaching. The better you knew your students, the better job you could  do. The same thing applied to the gallery. The more she knew about the  artists and their work, the better job she could do promoting them with  the public, and the more she could help them get the best out of the  gallery and vice versa.

It was no hardship to get to know them better. They had stopped  whatever they'd been doing on Saturday night to help her. She wanted to  return the favor.

So besides going over the material Sera gave her, she went from studio  to studio talking to the artists. She learned a lot about them, which  she had expected. She also learned a good deal about Lukas, not just  from what they told her, but from those blowup photos she hadn't had  time to really look at the afternoon he'd first given her a tour.

They were photos of what she inferred were some of the mining sites  where Lukas worked. They were blowups, of dirt and rubble and two dusty  men, one much older, thin and wiry with gray hair buzzed close to his  skull and wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end on his nose, the other  lean, yet muscular, the ends of his normally sun-tipped locks even  blonder in the harsh Australian sun.

They were candid shots, taken by friends, Holly presumed. But they  captured well the relationship of Lukas and the old man. They were  working together, talking together, standing together, covered with  dust, their arms slung around each other's shoulders as they beamed at  the camera. In the last shot they toasted each other with broad grins  and pints of beer. Lukas looked as happy-and as satisfied-as she had  ever seen him. And the pride in the old man's eyes was evident.

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 pâté 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!"