LITMIR.BIZ

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might be—and how flat and empty it was. She pressed her lips together and made herself stare at the cars they were passing.

      Suddenly Althea’s hand was on her knee, giving it a sympathetic squeeze. “I know you miss him,” she said, her voice soft but thick with emotion. “We all miss him.”

      Matt, she meant. Her brother. Holly’s husband. The center of Holly’s life.

      Just thirty years old, Matthew David Halloran had had everything to live for. He was bright, witty, handsome, charming. A psychologist who worked mostly with children and teens, Matt had loved his work. He’d loved life.

      He had loved hiking, skiing and camping. He’d loved astronomy and telescopes, basketball and hockey. He’d loved living in New York City, loved the fifth floor walk-up he and Holly had shared when they’d first moved to the city, loved the view across the river to Manhattan from the condo they’d recently bought in a trendy Brooklyn high-rise.

      Most of all, Matt had loved his wife.

      He’d told her so that Saturday morning two years and four months ago. He had bent down and kissed her sleepy smile as he’d gone out the door to play basketball with his buddies. “Love you, Hol’,” he’d murmured.

      Holly had reached up from the bed she was still snuggled in and snagged his hand and kissed it. “You could show me,” she’d suggested with a sleepy smile.

      Matt had given her a rueful grin. “Temptress.” Then he’d winked. “I’ll be home at noon. Hold that thought.”

      It was the last thing he’d ever said to her. Two hours later Matt Halloran was dead. An aneurysm, they told her later. Unknown and undetected. A silent killer waiting for the moment to strike.

      Going in for a lay-up at the end of the game, Matt had shot—and dropped to the floor.

      Simultaneously the bottom had dropped out of Holly’s world.

      At first she had been numb. Disbelieving. Not Matt. He couldn’t be dead. He hadn’t been sick. He was healthy as a horse. He was strong. Capable. He had his whole life ahead of him!

      But it turned out that Holly was the one who had her life ahead of her—a life without Matt. A life she hadn’t planned on.

      It hadn’t been easy. All she had wanted to do those first months was cry. She couldn’t because she had a class full of worried fifth graders to teach. They looked to her for guidance. They knew Matt because he and Holly took them to the marina on Saturdays to teach them canoeing and kayaking. They shared her grief and needed a role model for how to handle it.

      Psychologist Matt would have been the first to tell her so.

      So for them, Holly had stopped wallowing in misery. She’d wiped away her tears, pasted on her best smile and resolutely put one foot in front of the other again.

      Eventually, life began to resemble something akin to normal, though for her it never would be again—not without Matt to share it.

      But even though she had learned to cope, she wasn’t prepared when friends and family began trying to set her up with another man. Holly didn’t want another man! She wanted the man she’d had.

      But ever since last summer Althea had been dropping hints. Holly’s brother, Greg, a lawyer in Boston, said he had a colleague she might like to meet. Even her mother, a longtime divorcee with not much good to say about men, had suggested she take a singles cruise. At Christmas Matt’s parents had begun telling her she needed to get on with her life, that Matt would want her to.

      She’d always done everything Matt wanted her to. That was the problem!

      “At least you’re dating Paul.”

      “Yes.” A few months back, Holly had determined that the best way to deter meddling family and friends was to appear to have taken their advice and gone out. Charming, handsome, smart, a psychologist like Matt, Paul McDonald was like Matt. But he wasn’t Matt. So no danger to her at all. It just kept well-meaning relatives and friends off her back. And she knew she wasn’t leading Paul on. Long divorced, Paul was a complete cynic about marriage.

      “If you married Paul,” Althea said, oblivious to Paul’s lack of interest, “you wouldn’t have to hare off across the world to sit on a coral atoll somewhere.” She gave Holly an indignant glare. “I can’t believe you’re even considering that!”

      Joining the Peace Corps, she meant. Last fall, fed up with the emptiness of her life and admitting to herself at least that she needed to find a new purpose, a new focus, Holly had sent in her application. They had offered her a two-year teaching position on a small South Pacific island. She was to start preliminary training in Hawaii the second week in August.

      “I’m not considering. I’m doing it,” she said now.

      “Paul can’t talk you out of it?”

      “No.”

      “Someone should,” Althea grumbled. “You need a man who will make you sit up and take notice. Paul’s too nice. You need a challenge.” Abruptly, she sat up straight, a smile dawning on her lips. “Like Lukas Antonides.”

      “What? Who?” Holly felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the universe. She was gasping as she stared at her sister-in-law. Where had that come from?

      “You remember Lukas.” Althea was practically bouncing on the seat now, her cheeks definitely rosy.

      Holly felt hers burning. Her whole body was several degrees warmer. “I remember Lukas.”

      “You used to follow him around,” Althea said.

      “I did not! I followed Matt!” It was Matt, damn him, who had followed Lukas around.

      Lukas Antonides had become the neighborhood equivalent of the Pied Piper from the minute he’d moved in the year he and Matt were eleven and Holly was nine.

      “Ah, Lukas.” Althea used her dreamy voice. “He was such a stud. He still is.”

      “How do you know?” Holly said dampeningly. “He’s on the other side of the world.”

      Lukas had spent the past half dozen years or so in Australia. Before that he’d been in Europe—Greece, Sweden, France. Not that she’d kept track of him. Matt had done that.

      Since Matt’s death she hadn’t really known where Lukas was. She’d received a sympathy card simply signed “Lukas.” No personal remarks. Nothing—except the spiky black scrawl of his name—which was absolutely fine with her.

      She hadn’t expected him at the funeral. It was too far to come. And thank God for that. She hadn’t had to deal with him along with everything else. For a dozen years now she hadn’t had to deal with him at all. So why was Althea bringing him up now, when he was off mining opals or wrangling kangaroos or doing whatever enthusiasm was grabbing him at the moment?

      “He’s back,” Althea said. “Didn’t you see the article in What’s New!?”

      Holly felt her stomach clench. “No.” It was the end of the school year. She didn’t have time to read anything except student papers. “What article?” What’s New! was a hot, upscale lifestyle magazine. Out of her league. She wouldn’t normally read it anyway.

      Since getting engaged to Stig, Althea always read it. Sometimes she was even in it. Now she nodded eagerly. “Gorgeous article. Just like him.” She grinned. “He got the centerfold.”

      “They don’t have centerfolds in What’s New!” But the image it conjured up made Holly’s cheeks flame.

      Althea laughed. “The centerfold of the magazine. There’s a double-page spread of Lukas in his office. Big story about him and his foundation and the gallery he’s opening.”

      “Foundation? Gallery? What gallery?”

      “He’s opening

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