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It wasn’t that she loved Allen with her dying breath, she knew she didn’t. She’d thought they went well together and, on paper, he was all the things she’d thought she wanted in a man. Handsome, successful, intelligent. Somewhere along the line, though, she must have missed the part about being a lying cheat. So she’d cut him loose, her pride smarting somewhat.
It was just that…just that she felt alone. Again. And every so often, being alone had sharp edges to it that hurt.
Enough of this self-pity, Lily upbraided herself, annoyed. She had her restaurant, her reputation and her career. And a family who loved her. Not everyone was nearly so lucky.
Squaring her shoulders, Lily marched over to the piano and the framed photograph of Allen. He’d given it to her on her last birthday with an inscription. The Best For The Best.
Should have been a clue, Lily. Should have been a clue…
Taking the photograph in hand, Lily escorted it to the kitchen where she threw it, frame and all, into the trash. Glass shattered as it hit the side of the metal container on its way to the bottom. It was a satisfying sound.
Lily felt marginally better as she went to pack.
Max Yearling passed his hand over the rim of the tanned hat in his hand as he looked around the vast airport, trying to spot a woman he only vaguely remembered meeting once several years ago.
He wasn’t sure just how he’d gotten roped into this. As a rule, he didn’t like to fly and only did so as a last resort. If God had really meant men to fly, He would have made them with feathers instead of hair.
But April didn’t ask for much and she had asked for this, so he’d said yes.
It wasn’t as though he could hide behind the fact that he was busy. He wasn’t. Being sheriff of Hades and its surrounding territory had its busy times, but today wasn’t one of them. Most times, the job involved a great number of small tasks and duties that most people would find monotonous.
But he didn’t. Not usually. There was comfort in the familiar and he never looked down his nose at any part of his job. Not even looking under the Widow Anderson’s bed to assure her that no one had sneaked into her home, waiting to have their way with her once she was asleep.
All of eighty-one, the widow had a healthy imagination, he thought, smiling to himself. A little like his own grandmother’s, except that Ursula Hatcher, Hades’s postmistress for as long as anyone could remember, would probably have been delighted to have a man stashed under her bed, waiting for the lights to go out. At seventy-two, having buried three husbands and on the lookout for a fourth, his grandmother was the youngest woman he knew.
Not that there were all that many women to know in Hades, he mused, scanning faces as a fresh wave of passengers made its way into the baggage claim area. Men outnumbered women seven to one in the town he was born in. He knew that if he were to ever have that family he occasionally thought about, he was going to have to go to one of the real cities in Alaska to find a wife.
Didn’t seem likely, though. In his heart, he sincerely doubted that any woman from a city larger than a bread box would want to transplant herself to a place like Hades, where people and time seemed to move in slow motion for the most part, barring earthquakes, fires and cave-ins at the local mine, the industry that employed two-thirds of the male population.
Oh, sure, Sydney, Marta, and Alison had all come from outside the state and wound up marrying local men, but they were exceptions. And most of the home-grown women were on their way out the second they reached their eighteenth birthday. Even his own sister hadn’t been able to wait to get away. The only reason April had returned at all was that their grandmother had gotten ill and neither he nor June had been able to give her the full-time attention that April felt she needed. It had been April’s intention to stay for no more than two weeks, the time necessary to talk their grandmother into having heart surgery. Instead, she’d fallen in love and married the visiting heart surgeon, Alison’s brother, Jimmy.
Funny how things arranged themselves, Max thought, shifting from foot to foot as he waited beside Sydney Kerrigan, the wife of Hades’s first resident doctor. Sydney had been one of the women who had come from somewhere else to be here. And, like him, Sydney was happy to remain here for the rest of her life. She’d even learned to fly her husband’s plane to help bring in supplies. For a while there, Dr. Kerrigan’s plane had been the only one making trips in and out. But now there were two planes and three pilots in the immediate vicinity.
Yup, he thought, his lips curving in amusement, Hades was growing up. If not by leaps and bounds, then by hops and skips, but it was happening. Fast enough to suit him.
What wasn’t happening fast enough to suit him was Lily Quintano’s appearance.
“You see her?” he asked Sydney impatiently, glancing down at the photograph Alison had given him of her sister.
He wished Alison or Jimmy were here in his place. Both Alison, who was the only nurse in town, and Jimmy, referred to by the locals as “the doctor who had come on vacation only to remain,” were tied up in an unexpected surgery. Neither had been able to get away to pick up their sister, thus Jimmy’s call to April, who in turn had called him.
His sister was busy working against some deadline or other, snapping pictures of melting snow for some magazine and pretending it was work.
Someday, he thought, he was going to learn how to say no.
Flying out of Hades into Anchorage Airport to be the unofficial welcoming committee for a woman reputed to be a man-hating workaholic wasn’t exactly his idea of a good way to spend an afternoon.
“Someone from the family has to be there,” April had insisted when he’d challenged her as to why Sydney wasn’t sufficient to welcome Lily Quintano and bring her back to town.
“But she doesn’t know me from Adam,” he’d protested fruitlessly. As far as he could remember, he’d only caught a glimpse of her at Alison and Luc’s wedding. If not for the photograph in his hand, he wouldn’t have been able to identify her at all.
“She will as soon as she looks into those beautiful green eyes of yours, little brother,” April had assured him.
He really should have said no, he thought now, but there hadn’t been anything else more pressing to do. His investigation of Jeffords’s broken traplines was going nowhere at the moment and he’d thought, recklessly, that maybe a plane ride in the single-engine Cessna would clear his head. Besides, April, only eleven months his senior, knew how to nag better than any woman he’d ever met. When it came to April, he’d learned a long time ago that it was easier just to say yes.
Sydney shook her head in response to his question. And then suddenly she caught hold of his arm, pointing. “Over there, the woman in the red leather coat next to the baggage carousel. Is that—”
Max looked to where Sydney was pointing, then glanced down at the photograph. It was hard to decide. The woman in the photograph was smiling. The woman in the red leather coat was definitely not. Even at this distance, she reeked of impatience. She was frowning as she scanned the area.
Frown or not, Max had to admit that he’d never seen a finer-looking woman.
“Only one way to find out,” he told Sydney, pocketing the photograph. “Wait here.”
Still holding his hat in his hand, Max made his way through the crowded terminal to the baggage claim area. The closer he got, the finer the dark-haired woman looked. In the absolute sense. Given his preference, he preferred women who smiled.
He noted that, unlike a lot of passengers, the woman was dressed almost formally, wearing a light gray suit beneath her open coat. She had on what appeared to be three-or four-inch heels, which gave her the appearance of height.
She was a slight woman, he realized, with fine features and the greatest set of legs he’d ever seen.
“All the better to grind men into dust,” he’d once heard from Jimmy. Her brother ought to know, Max thought.
There were a lot of men in Hades who could be led around by the nose by someone like Lily Quintano. He was going to have to watch this one—which wouldn’t be all that much of a hardship, he decided as he placed himself in front of her.
“Ms. Quintano?”
Lily spun around, all but colliding with the tall, broad-shouldered man in the sheepskin jacket. As the jacket moved, she caught sight of the badge pinned to his shirt. “Yes?”
The woman knew how to cut people down into tiny pieces, he thought, judging by the way she looked at him. “You might not remember me—”
Lily prided herself on having one hell of a memory. She remembered every single recipe she’d ever read. “Sheriff Max Yearling, April’s brother. Yes, I remember you,” she said in a crisp tone. “You were at Alison’s wedding. So was I.”
It suddenly occurred to her why the sheriff might be here in her sister’s place. Lily looked beyond his shoulder. Alison was nowhere to be seen. Neither was their brother. An uneasiness struck.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, firing the words at him point-blank. “Has something happened to Alison and Jimmy?”
He could almost see the thoughts ricocheting in her head from one spot to another. She talked like she danced. Quickly. He recalled seeing her dancing at the wedding. At the time, she’d been on the arm of a very self-absorbed-looking male. Her fiancé, he’d been told. The only opinion he’d formed at the time was that she could have done better, but then, it hadn’t been any of his business.
“There was an emergency at the clinic and they couldn’t get away, so they asked me to come and bring you back.”
She wondered if he made it sound as though he were fetching a package on purpose, then decided that she was probably giving the man too much credit.
She took the measure of him now. Handsome. Probably used that to his advantage. She wondered how many women he was stringing along, then remembered that Hades didn’t have that many to string.
“They were afraid I’d get back on the plane?” she finally asked.
She was scrutinizing him. Was she planning on dissecting him? he wondered, half amused. “Something like that.”
The next moment, Sydney came up to join them. Sydney had never been one to stand on ceremony and her years as the doctor’s wife out here had only served to make her more gregarious. She embraced Lily warmly.
“Welcome back.”
Stunned, her arms pinned to her sides, Lily pulled her head back and looked at Sydney. The other woman made it sound as if she was returning after a long journey rather than visiting for a short while to pull the unraveling ends of her life together.
All things considered, Lily supposed that the hug was appreciated. Awkwardly, she raised her arms and hugged Sydney back, her eyes on Max.
“So, has transportation improved any since the last time I was out here?”
“We’ve replaced some parts in the plane,” Sydney told her amicably. “And since this is summer, there is a road you can use with an all-terrain vehicle. But in the winter, the road becomes impassable and there’s still no way in or out of Hades except by dogsled or plane.”
Lily nodded. She was just making conversation. She knew exactly what to expect, thanks to Alison.
“Sounds perfect,” she answered. “Right now, I could do with a little seclusion and a lot of peace and quiet.”
But even as she said the words, she wasn’t all that sure she meant them. A big-city girl all of her life, Lily was already feeling homesick for the sound of traffic—of blaring horns, impatient drivers and raised voices.
And they hadn’t even left the terminal yet.
Maybe, she thought as Max went to get her luggage, she’d made a mistake in coming here.
Chapter Two
Max smiled to himself. He’d been observing Alison’s older, successful sister since they’d gotten airborne ten minutes ago. Judging by her frozen stare and the way she clutched her left armrest, Max figured that Lily Quintano reacted to flying much the way he did.
“I don’t like it, either.”
Startled, Lily turned her head away from the vast expanse of nothingness right beneath her and almost bumped into the sheriff. He was sitting much too close, but she supposed that wasn’t entirely his fault. The plane was crammed, to say the least.
Right now, he seemed to be using up all her available air.
“Like what?” She wanted to know.
Max nodded around him. “Riding in a small, single-engine plane. I keep waiting for a giant hand to reach right out of the sky and bat the plane to the ground, like in those cartoons they used to have for kids.” He glanced toward Sydney, who was sitting in front in the pilot’s seat. “No offense, Sydney.”
Sydney laughed lightly, knowing exactly how he felt. That had been her reaction once, too. “None taken. I wasn’t thrilled with my first ride to Hades, either. I was sure this plane was going to go down like a stone.”
Eventually, though, she’d changed her mind and managed to talk Shayne into giving her flying lessons. Lucky thing, too, otherwise she would have never been able to fly him to the hospital when he’d come down with appendicitis. She’d gotten him there just as it ruptured. Saving his life was a handy thing to hold over your husband’s head when discussions got a little heated.
“You feel better about it when you’re at the controls.” Sydney glanced over her shoulder. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few more pilots in Hades. Or a few more planes, for that matter. God knew, there were enough demands on her time these days. What Hades needed was a professional pilot who did nothing else, not like the rest of them. “Maybe you should take lessons, Max. I’d be happy to—”
He was already shaking his head. Air was not what he considered to be his natural environment.
“Thanks just the same,” Max told her. “I like having my feet firmly planted on the ground. I only fly when it’s absolutely unavoidable.”
Lily looked at him. That didn’t make sense to her. “So why did you volunteer to come meet my plane?”
“I didn’t come to meet your plane, I came to meet you.” He had no idea why it tickled him to correct her. Maybe because he could see that it irritated her, and he had a feeling that Ms. Lily Quintano was far too uptight for her own good. “And it wasn’t so much a case of volunteering as being volunteered.”
“Oh.”
Well, that was putting her in her place, Lily thought. Nothing like being regarded as a burden. Maybe she would have been better off staying home. She could have made a dartboard of Allen’s photograph and cleared her head that way. It would have been a lot less complicated than what she’d had to go through to make arrangements to spend two weeks away from the restaurant.
“I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
The woman was blunt and she could be chillier than an Alaskan January night, Max thought. He was beginning to see why the wedding had been called off. Took a hell of a man to commit himself to the likes of Lily Quintano.
He made no apologies for her assumption. “Just part of being a sheriff,” he told her carelessly.
Her eyes narrowed. Now he was lumping her in with chores? Why had Alison and Jimmy sent this character? “I thought being a sheriff was catching bad guys and keeping the peace.”
He’d wondered when she’d get around to being sarcastic. “The peace more or less keeps itself out here and our bad guy supply has pretty much dwindled out.”
Max didn’t bother telling her about how Sam Jeffords’s traps kept being broken into and destroyed. Coming from where she did, he figured Lily would probably laugh at that being thought of as a crime. He knew it didn’t occur to people who lived in a city that some people’s livelihoods were still being made from setting traps and bringing in furs.
Personally, he knew he couldn’t do that himself—trap an animal so that someone could wear its pelt around their shoulders—but he wasn’t about to impose his own values on anyone else. Took all kinds to make the world go around. Faux fur notwithstanding, there was still a large market for animal skins. And, he supposed, on the plus side, it did keep the beaver population from multiplying and overwhelming the township.
“Then what is it that you do do?” The bright noonday sun was highlighting everything within the small cabin. The nose of the weapon he had tied to his thigh peered out of its holster, gleaming. It caught Lily’s attention. “Besides polish your gun?”
He wondered if she sharpened her tongue daily on a miller’s wheel or if it just maintained its edge naturally.
“A little of this, a little of that.” He looked at her pointedly. “Hunt for lost tourists.”
She never flinched. “Get many of those?”
“Even one is too many,” he told her honestly.
It was easy to get lost out here if you weren’t careful. Even people native to the area got lost on occasion. It wasn’t unusual to have to organize the town into a search party. He supposed that was what he liked best about living in a place like Hades, knowing that he could rely on his neighbor if he had to.
“Your brother got lost when he first came out here. He went to the Inuit village to inoculate the children against the flu that was going around that year. It was the beginning of June, but a freak snowstorm hit when he was on his way back. My sister was guiding him. If Jimmy and April hadn’t found their way to the cabin, they would have died from exposure.” He didn’t mention that, ironically, it was the cabin where he and his sisters had lived before their mother had retreated from reality. “This can be a very unforgiving land, Lily.”
There was something almost unsettlingly intimate about having him address her by her first name. Maybe the altitude was making her giddy, she thought, dismissing the odd feeling.
“If it’s so unforgiving, why do you and my sister stay?”
She wasn’t even going to mention Jimmy. When she first heard that her playboy brother had decided to take up residence in a place that was less than a fly speck on the map, she was rendered utterly speechless for one of the few times in her life. She knew that Jimmy had a good heart, and that he also liked to have a good time. From what Alison had told her, there was no nightlife in Hades other than the Salty Dog Saloon and a couple of movie theaters.
“Why does anyone stay?”
Max smiled to himself. If he had to explain, then she missed the point. But since she was waiting for some kind of answer, and he had a feeling she was the type who wouldn’t just let something go, he said, “Like a beautiful woman, it has its allure.”
She had another take on why he, at least, remained here. From the way he spoke and conducted himself, she had a feeling that he wasn’t exactly a go-getter. She wouldn’t have given him two minutes in her world.
“Or maybe it’s easier being a sheriff here than in, say—” she looked at him pointedly “—Seattle.”
If she was trying to put him on the defensive, he thought, she was going to be disappointed. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t know everyone in Seattle the way I do here.” He made himself comfortable in his seat, knowing they’d be landing soon. “I like knowing who I’m protecting.”
The plane suddenly dipped and without thinking, Lily grabbed onto Max, jerking him toward her.
“Sorry about that.” Sydney tossed the words over her shoulder. “We hit an air pocket.”
