If for Any Reason (Nantucket Love Story #1) - Courtney Walsh Page 0,35

Maybe he was just a terrible father. “I screwed up, Dad. I screwed up, and I think it’s too late to make it right.”

“It’s never too late,” Dad said. “Not as long as there’s air in your lungs.”

Hollis sighed. Easy for him to say. “I don’t even know where to start.” Hollis hated that he didn’t. He didn’t like it when things didn’t come easily to him—and Jolie definitely didn’t come easily to him. If she were into sports, at least they could go play catch or he could pass on what he knew about the game, but she wasn’t. She was a soon-to-be teenage girl with interests that made absolutely no sense to him.

“Start with her,” Dad said. “Figure out what she likes and then force yourself to care about that.”

Hollis frowned.

“You think your mother cares about baseball?”

“She loves baseball,” Hollis said. He glanced over at his mom, sitting under an umbrella next to Harper. Mom wore a giant sun hat and was still fully clothed like a woman allergic to the sun.

“No, Hollis,” Dad said. “She loves you.”

“She loves the game.”

Dad eyed Hollis for too many seconds.

“She doesn’t love the game?”

“She loved how happy it made you to play,” Dad said. “Think of how well she knew you because she took an interest in what you loved.”

He paused. “I don’t even know what Jolie loves.” And as much as he wished he could, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to take an interest in something like hair or makeup or clothes.

“Well, we know one thing she loves,” Dad said.

Hollis followed his father’s gaze out to the ocean, where Jolie was now waist-deep, laughing with her uncle. “Theatre.”

“Right,” Dad said. “You can get that children’s production back on at the arts center.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“For you, it will be. You’re on the board.”

“I also voted to get rid of the children’s programs, remember?”

Jolie raced out of the surf to the shore with a shout followed by a loud laugh. Even Hayes had found a way to connect with her. It didn’t matter how difficult it was, Hollis needed to try, because he had a feeling if she left Nantucket at the end of the month feeling no differently about him than she’d felt when she came, it was over.

Something about that had him reeling. It was time to step up—past time to step up. And he prayed he wasn’t too late.

Hollis spent the next couple of days chewing on his dad’s advice, which was probably why he now found himself inside the arts center and on the way up the stairs to Gladys Middlebury’s office. The old biddy was likely going to have a few choice words for him.

It had been nearly twenty years—no one would’ve guessed Emily would ever return.

He bypassed the receptionist’s desk—the last thing he wanted to do was spend an hour talking to Hillary Schweitzer about her cats—and went directly to Gladys’s office.

She was on the phone, sitting behind the large mahogany desk she’d inherited from her predecessor, a burly man everyone called Teddy. The desk didn’t suit Gladys—she was a lot smaller than Teddy and kind of prissy. Why she hadn’t replaced the giant desk was unclear.

Gladys’s family was one of the richest on the island. She didn’t take a salary for her work at the arts center—she didn’t need it. She only did it because she was bored and wanted to “contribute.” She never would’ve spoken to Hollis before he became a professional athlete. She wouldn’t have even noticed him on the street except to turn up her nose at him. That’s the kind of woman Gladys Middlebury was.

Which made speaking to her in a polite tone just on the edge of difficult for Hollis.

Gladys hung up the phone and glared at him. “Didn’t I tell you something like this would happen?”

Hollis closed the door behind him.

“You insisted they would never be back in Nantucket.” She stood. “You were so certain.”

“I don’t know what to say, Gladys,” he said. “I’m as surprised as you are.”

“Maybe we should discuss that eyesore of a house while she’s here.” Gladys walked over to a plant in a red pot that was sitting on the windowsill. She picked up a spray bottle and squirted it three times. “Maybe that would put her in her place.”

“I think I have a better idea,” Hollis said, hoping to distract Gladys away from the petition he knew she’d stuffed in one of those big desk drawers. Signed by at