Page 62 of Between the Lines

“I—” He grimaced. “Nothing realistic. Nothing I could present to the board as a viable alternative when profit is the only measure of success.”

Miranda traced a black-painted fingernail along the lines of the drawing. “How wouldyoumeasure success?”

“Happiness.” The word slipped out before he had time to censor it.

“Saving the Majestic would make you happy?”

“Not only me.” He looked away, back out over the sweltering city, indulging in the idea of telling Luca and Jude that he’d saved their hotel. Luca would smile his boyish smile and maybe hold out his arms. Theo would go to him and they’d hug and—Shit. His eyes stung and he blinked, turning away from the window.

“Ah,” Miranda said softly. “This is about Luca Moretti.”

His stomach flip-flopped painfully. “We should be working...”

“You’ve got ten minutes before your next meeting, and since you’ve basically been staring out the window all day, I guess you can spare the time.” He grimaced, but couldn’t deny it. “So come on,” she said, “what are you gonna do?”

“About what?”

“The Majestic. Luca Moretti. Both.”

He shook his head, reaching for the papers for his next meeting. “There’s nothing I can do, on either score.”

“Bullshit.”

“There’s not!” Theo fixed his eyes on the papers, trying to make sense of them. He should have read them last night but he’d been too distracted. “The Majestic’s going to be demolished, Miranda, and Luca will never forgive me. That’s it. That’s what’s going to happen.”

“Or—you could tell him how you feel, and make it right.”

He ignored her first, impossible suggestion. “Make it right how?”

She pushed the hotel plans back across the desk toward him. “I think you already know.”

He stared at her, shook his head, but that excited beat of possibility in the back of his mind pulsed harder. Was it possible? He got to his feet, walked to the window. Outside, the constant hum of the city fell away and all he could hear was the pounding of his heart, the rush of blood through his ears. It sounded like the distant roar of the ocean. “Dad’s right, the board would never agree,” he said. “I’d have to go it alone. And that would be impossible.”

“Would it?”

Well, notimpossible. He wasn’t without financial resources himself, although not enough for what he had in mind. “I’d need to find a couple of big investors.” Ideally, investors with ties to New Milton, and the balls to take a chance on something they believed in...

“You’re good at finding investors,” Miranda reminded him. “You’re good at turning ideas into reality. You’re good atthis, Theo. It’s what you do.”

It was. But this felt different. This felt as terrifying and exhilarating as dropping down the face of a wave with nothing but a flimsy board to cling to. But he’d done that once, and had lived to tell the tale. He’d done it because of Luca.

Heart pounding, he turned away from the window with a smile. “Miranda, I’m going to need your help.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

The farewell party was Jude’s idea.

Farewell to the Majestic and farewell to Luca. The hotel would be handed over to Lux Properties on September first, the last guests had checked out two days ago, and Luca would be heading to California tomorrow morning.

If it had been up to him, he’d have hit the road the same day as the final guests. Seeing the hotel empty and lifeless echoed painfully with his own feelings. But it wasn’t up to him. Jude wanted a farewell party to thank everyone in New Milton for their support over the years—former staff, former guests, friends, and supporters—and so Luca had taken on the task of arranging it all. He felt it was the least he could do.

Six weeks after her heart attack, Jude was more like her old self than he’d seen her all summer. Even though Don hovered like a mother hen, Jude looked healthy and... Well,happywasn’t the right word. Luca knew her heart ached as much as his own for the loss of the Majestic, but he couldn’t deny she was more relaxed now the strain of the sale was over. And the strain of his disapproval.

He’d taken a long look at himself in the wake of Theo’s departure—at the way he leapt to judgment, and the way he held grudges. He’d judged Theo, and it had driven him away. He’d judged Jude, after she married Don. And, perhaps, he’d even judged Don, too. He could see now that he’d clung to Don’s early offences, had used them to fuel his resentment, his jealousy, of the man who’d intruded into his little family. And he’d refused to accept that Don might be capable of change—that he mightwantto change. Either way, he couldn’t ignore the fact that Don had thought Theo deserved more justice than Luca had been prepared to offer. And that said something about both of them, something it was taking him time to digest. But he was working on it, on all of it, and organizing the farewell party felt like a good way to build bridges.

The morning before the party, Luca found himself on the hotel’s third floor, standing outside the Whitman suite. He hadn’t been inside since Theo had left. Perhaps it was sappy, but those two nights they’d spent there were special to him and he hadn’t wanted anything to overlay the memories. Looking back, he understood that the evening of Josh and Finn’s wedding was the night he’d tumbled into love. Or, perhaps he’d been there already but that was the night he’d let himself feel it. Every detail was still fresh in his mind, and, even now, with the late-August heat rich against his skin, Luca shivered at the memory.

Taking a breath, he opened the door to the suite, the brass key warm in his hand. But inside, it was only an empty room, devoid, now, of Theo’s presence. Afternoon sunlight spilled across the unmade bed—he’d slept in those sheets, made love in those sheets—and the door to the bathroom stood ajar. The faucet in the sink dripped slowly, must have been dripping for weeks, and Luca felt a spike of guilt that he hadn’t had time to get in there sooner. He turned it off with a twist of his wrist, stupidly aware that the last hand to touch it had been Theo’s. Then he picked up the towel from the floor by the tub, his finger rubbing over the soft fabric, knowing that Theo had last used it. The towel was bone dry now and he dropped it by the door to the room, gathered up the other towels and washcloths—Theo had used those, too—and dumped them together with the bath towel.

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