The Return Of Antonides. Anne McAllisterЧитать онлайн книгу.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE MINUTE SHE saw Lukas, Holly had felt her heart kick over in her chest. All the years of pretending he didn’t exist blew right out the window. It was like being eighteen again—young and intense and, above all, foolish.

      And there was nowhere to run. Nowhere at all.

      For years every time Holly remembered the night of her senior prom, she had done so with a bucket load of guilt—and a heart load of resentment.

      It never should have happened, she told herself. And it was all her fault.

      She should have been stronger. Firmer. She should have said no, right from the start, when Matt had broken his leg.

      At least it hadn’t been her fault he’d broken his leg. That had, of course, been Lukas’s—just as every hair-raising, death-defyingly stupid thing Matt and Lukas had ever done could be laid squarely at Lukas’s door. In this case, two weeks before her prom, Lukas had persuaded Matt to climb Mount Katahdin in Maine.

      Holly had not been invited.

      She couldn’t have gone anyway because, while Matt and Lukas were sophomores in college and their schedules that Friday were free, Holly was a senior in high school with classes every day. Besides, it was the weekend she was getting her dress fitted for the prom, not to mention that her mother would have freaked out if Holly ever dreamed of going camping with two guys, even if one was her fiancé.

      Lukas thought their engagement was idiotic. He had looked confused, then appalled when she had held out her hand to show off her ring. “What’s that?” he’d asked warily.

      And when she’d said, “I’m engaged,” he’d stared at her in disbelief.

      “To get married?”

      “No, to wash windows.” Holly had rolled her eyes. “Of course to get married. What do you think?”

      He had thought they were out of their minds, and he hadn’t hesitated to say so. He’d told Matt he was foreclosing on his options too early, that he had no idea what other women were on the planet, that he would never know what he was missing. He didn’t tell Holly anything. Obviously he considered Matt to be the one making the bad choice. She’d wanted to smack him.

      But Matt—her dear, dependable Matt—had just laughed and said, “I’m not missing anyone important. I’ve got the only one who matters.” And he’d wrapped an arm around Holly’s shoulders, hauling her hard against him, the two of them presenting a solid wall of defiance in the face of Lukas’s scorn.

      Only then had Lukas turned to Holly. “You can’t be serious.” His tone had said he wasn’t joking. Their gazes met and something flickered between them that Holly immediately suppressed. Attraction? Connection? She had never let herself examine it too closely. Lukas Antonides was far too powerful, too unpredictable—too intensely male—for Holly to handle.

      “I love Matt,” she had said flatly. It was true. Matt was comfortable, predictable—every bit as male as Lukas, but without the intensity she found so unnerving.

      Lukas hadn’t disputed it. But he hadn’t shut up, either. Over the following weeks he had told her she was too young. He’d questioned whether she knew her own mind.

      Deliberately Holly had turned a deaf ear. “What do you care?” she’d asked.

      If he’d said, “I love you,” what would she have done? Holly laughed at herself for just thinking it. Lukas love her? Ha! Lukas had been going through girls for years!

      He’d scowled then. “I don’t want you making a mistake.”

      “I’m not making a mistake.”

      But Lukas didn’t seem to agree. As winter turned to spring, he’d found ways to keep them apart. In February he and Matt had bought the battered old sailboat in New Haven. It wasn’t seaworthy. It would have sunk in a bathtub, but Lukas had convinced Matt they could repair it.

      “It will take months,” Holly had pointed out. And that would be if they worked on it every weekend, which would mean Matt would have less time for her.

      “We can sail around the world after we graduate,” Lukas had gone on, undaunted.

      “I’m getting married when I graduate,” Matt had reminded him.

      Lukas had shrugged dismissively. “Who knows what will happen in a couple of years. You can at least help me work on it,” he’d said to Matt.

      So, good friend that he was, every weekend that spring, Matt had worked with Lukas on the boat. Holly had barely seen him. The one weekend he had said he would come home turned out to be the weekend she was doing the final fittings on her prom dress.

      “No problem,” Matt had said. “Lukas wants to go to Katahdin.”

      Feeling hard done by, Holly had said shortly, “Let him.”

      “He wants me to go, too. It’ll be a change from working on the boat. And you’re going to be busy anyway.”

      So Matt had gone—and had broken his leg. Which was how Holly had ended up with Lukas as her date to her senior prom.

      “I won’t go,” she’d told Matt. “No way.”

      Matt had looked at her from his hospital bed, foggy-eyed with anesthetic. “Of course you have to go. You already have your dress,” he reminded her the day after he’d had half a dozen screws and a plate put in his left leg. “You’ve been counting on it.”

      “I don’t mind staying home. Truly. Lukas doesn’t want to go with me. He doesn’t even like me.”

      “Of course he likes you. He’s just...”

      “Bossy? Opinionated? Wrong?”

      And though she could still see the strain and pain on Matt’s face, he had laughed. “All of the above. It’s just the way he is. Ignore it. It’s your prom. And Lukas should take you,” he added grimly. “It was his idea to go climbing. He owes me.”

      No doubt about that. But Holly was sure Lukas would refuse. She was stunned when he didn’t.

      “Why?” she’d demanded suspiciously.

      “Because he understands responsibility,” Matt said, looking completely serious.

      She should have said no then. She hadn’t, telling herself that arguing with Matt would make him unhappy. It might also make him wonder why she was protesting so much. Holly wouldn’t even let herself think about why she was protesting so much.

      She didn’t want to think about Lukas, about how when he wasn’t irritating her, the very sight of his muscular chest, lopsided grin and sun-tipped shaggy hair made her blood run hot in her veins.

      It meant nothing. She was engaged to Matt.

      Still, she wasn’t prepared two weeks later when she opened the door to Lukas, drop-dead gorgeous in a dark suit, pristine white shirt and deep red tie, for the impact of six feet of walking testosterone. The sheer animal magnetism of the man made all Holly’s female hormones flutter in appreciation while her brain screamed, No! No, no, no!

      But she could hardly send him home. What would she tell Matt?

      So she pasted her best proper smile on her face and tried to pretend she was completely indifferent. Yes, he was gorgeous. Yes, he smiled and chatted and charmed her mother. Yes, he brought her a corsage, which he fastened just above her left breast, standing far too close for comfort, so close that she could smell a hint of pine in his aftershave and see the tiny cut on his jaw where he’d nicked himself shaving.

      She leaned toward it instinctively, then