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“Whenever he can.” A fond smile tugged at Sydney’s lips. Since she’d come to live here five years ago, she had learned quite a bit about the people of the town. Mostly all good. “They’re very close.”
She debated for a moment, then decided that it wouldn’t hurt for Lily to have a few facts at her disposal. It wasn’t as if this was a secret, and it might help her see Max in a better light.
“From what I gather, their mother sort of drifted away into a land all her own after their father just took off one day. April was eleven, Max was ten. June was about seven, I think. Anyway, April tried very hard to be both mother and father to the others, even after her grandmother took them all in. Max feels he owes them both a lot—his grandmother and April.” She spared Lily a glance as she drove into the heart of the town. “He’s sensitive that way.”
Lily watched the car up ahead disappear around the bend and frowned. “He certainly doesn’t strike me as being the sensitive type.”
“That’s just Max’s way. He doesn’t warm up much until he gets to know you. Give him time.”
There wasn’t another soul around anywhere, Lily noted. This place was even more desolate than she’d remembered. No wonder she’d read that they paid people to live here. They certainly couldn’t pay her enough to spend her life in Alaska.
“I don’t intend to be here that long.”
Sydney merely smiled to herself. She’d heard those words before more than once. Had even thought them herself when she’d first arrived. She’d come then to marry the man who had written her such wonderful, glowing letters about the region where he lived. He’d won her heart with his beautiful prose. But when she’d deplaned in Anchorage, after pulling up stakes and packing up her entire life, she’d discovered that her almost-husband had had a change of heart. He’d run off with the woman he’d been trying to get over when he’d written all those letters to her.
It was his brother, Shayne, who’d come to the airport to give her the bad news. Feeling sorry for her, Shayne, who’d been struggling with his own loss at the time because his brother was the only other resident doctor in the area, had offered her temporary lodgings until she could book a flight back to where she’d come from.
It was a lucky thing, she thought, looking back now, that Hades hadn’t had a hotel. Otherwise, she might have very well left without finding her heart. But she’d stayed with Shayne and wound up marrying him. Being jilted by his brother was the best thing that had ever happened to her, she mused.
Life had a funny way of making things work whether or not you were aware of it.
Sydney glanced at the woman beside her. Who knew what the future held for Lily? Both of her siblings had come here, intending to be in Hades for only a short while. Alison had come to earn credits toward her nurse practitioner degree by working in the town’s only clinic. Jimmy had just come to visit Alison. Both had wound up falling in love with natives of Hades and putting down roots here.
“Fate’s kind of funny,” she told Lily, guiding her vehicle carefully along a winding road. “It doesn’t really pay much attention to what you intend so much as what it intends.”
It was all Lily could do to keep from closing her eyes and sighing. Another homily. Did everyone around here sound as if they had stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting?
She sincerely hoped that living in this small, isolated Cracker Jack box-size village hadn’t done a number on Alison’s brain or on Jimmy’s.
“I’ve got a life waiting for me back in Seattle. A life and a restaurant,” she added. “I’m just here because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen either Alison or Jimmy and I thought it might be time for a visit.”
Lily covertly slanted a look toward Sydney to see if the woman seemed to know anything to the contrary. She didn’t think Alison would have told anyone that she was coming here to get over breaking up with Allen, to somehow make peace with the fact that she had wasted three years of her life on a man who didn’t have the depth of a hand mirror.
Sydney merely nodded politely, allowing the other woman to have her lie and her dignity. She knew exactly why Lily Quintano had suddenly put her extremely busy life on hold and come out here to “the wilderness,” as she knew Lily referred to Hades. It wasn’t an overwhelming need to see her siblings so much as to mend a bruised ego and heart, in that order.
It wasn’t that unusual a reason. Her best friend, Marta, had come for the same one. To get over a man, or, more specifically, to get over what had amounted to a very bad relationship.
This was the place for it, all right. Sydney turned to the right to avoid the rabbit that bounded into the road.
“Sorry. Rabbit,” she explained when Lily made a grab for the dashboard.
They had men of all sizes and shapes to spare in and around Hades, Sydney thought. Even the plainest woman could hope for more than a little ego-soothing attention, and Lily Quintano was far from plain. Her ego should be up and running in no time.
“Family’s important,” Sydney went on to agree. “I didn’t have any when I first came out here. My father had just died and I was totally alone.” She didn’t bother telling Lily what had brought her to this place. That would come later, if the other woman was interested. Right now, she had a feeling it would only bore her. “But I got very lucky. I found a wonderful man and he came equipped with two children.” Whom she couldn’t have loved more if they were her own. They had a daughter of their own now and all three children had equal claims to her heart. “The townspeople became my extended family.”
Definitely Norman Rockwell, Lily thought. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t need solitude, she decided. She needed someplace busy, someplace with noise to fill her head and make her forget everything else until she got over being angry that she had been such an idiot.
“This is a great place to visit—or to stay in,” Sydney was saying as she pulled up to the clinic.
Lily remained where she was, looking around at the area. She’d only been here once before and the compactness of the town still amazed her. There was hardly more than a handful of streets, with buildings haphazardly scattered among them. She tried to picture what daily life would be like here for her brother and sister. Besides boring.
Alison, Lily knew, had always been self-contained, driven by a sincere desire to help others. Until she’d heard about Shayne’s open plea for medical personnel, she’d been considering travelling to a Third World country to work with underprivileged children to earn her practical credits. Lily supposed that living here would almost be considered a luxury in comparison to that.
But Jimmy… Jimmy had been a different story. Her younger brother had always been footloose and fancy free. Jimmy loved the nightlife. He was almost as good at partying as he was at being a cardiac surgeon. How did he, more than Alison, stand living here in this one-horse town?
Sydney had already gotten out of the vehicle and retrieved Lily’s suitcase. She now stood with it in her hand, waiting. Lily didn’t seem to be moving.
“Are you coming?” Was anything wrong? she wondered. “This is where Alison and Jimmy work. They should be all finished with the emergency that kept them from coming to meet your plane in Anchorage. Mrs. Newhaven went into early labor and was hemorrhaging,” she explained with the matter-of-factness of a doctor’s wife who had heard almost everything at least twice. “They had to do an emergency C-section.”
Hardly hearing her, Lily got out of the sports utility vehicle. She shaded her eyes against the almost-blinding sun and looked at the wooden, one-story building with its new roof and brand-new paint job.
This was it, she thought sadly. Jimmy had given up a promising career in Seattle’s Community General to stitch and mend here.
Maybe it was judgmental, but she couldn’t help shaking her head. She wasn’t driven by the thought of accumulating a fortune—none of them were—but they’d all done without as children and each of them knew that money was always a good thing to have, to fall back on when other things blew up in your face.
How could Jimmy hope to ever achieve his full earning potential in a place that was barely the size of a postage stamp? That didn’t even have a hospital, just a clinic? Could he really be happy here, or was he staying because he loved April and she wanted to stay in Hades?
Sydney laid a hand on her shoulder. “Something wrong?”
Coming to life, Lily shook her head. She didn’t believe in sharing feelings with strangers and, despite her smile and her friendly manner, Sydney Kerrigan was a stranger. “No, just thinking.”
And I can guess just what you’re thinking. “It’s bigger than it looks.”
Lily blinked, struggling to pull herself together. “It would have to be.”
Across the street, Max stood by the window in his office. He’d walked in only a couple of minutes ago. The red light on his answering machine had been blinking but for once he’d chosen to ignore it, at least for a few minutes.
He silently watched Sydney take Lily into the clinic. He was surprised the latter wasn’t struggling to ward off a nosebleed. She was certainly holding her head high enough to warrant one.
He supposed that she reminded him a little of the way April had been before she’d left Hades. Maybe even a little of the way she’d been when she’d returned. At first. He’d certainly agree that it took a while for the town’s virtues to sink in.
He bet that Lily Quintano was counting the minutes until she got back to Seattle.
As for him, Max couldn’t see himself living anywhere else.
It amazed him how two sisters could be so different. From all that he could tell, Alison was easygoing and dedicated. Lily was wound as tight as his grandfather’s old pocket watch had been just before the spring had popped out of it.
He couldn’t help wondering what would make Lily’s spring pop out of its setting.
With a shrug, he went back to his desk to play his message and to get back to the work that Alison’s sister found so inconsequential.
“I don’t really want a party,” Lily protested later that afternoon.
Alison had taken the latter part of the day off at Shayne’s insistence and taken her sister to the house she and Jean Luc shared. Jimmy had opted to pop over with them, promising Shayne to be back within the hour.
It looked now as if it might be a little longer than that, but Alison knew Jimmy didn’t want to leave her with her hands full. Even if she did have Luc there with her to lean on. Lily, even in good spirits, could be overwhelming and in her present state she could roll right over everything and everyone in her path.
“I came to get away from everything, remember?” Lily reminded Alison. “Not to be hurled into the middle of it.” The very last thing she wanted was to have to pretend to be having a good time amid all these backwoods people. It was different at Lily’s. She came out of the kitchen periodically to do a little kibitzing, a little glad-handing and a fair amount of smiling, then retreated back to what she knew. Spice racks, soufflé bowls and ovens.
“No hurling, I promise.” Alison raised her hand in a solemn oath.
“It’ll do you good to get out amid people, Lil,” Jimmy told her. “These are our friends.” He pretended to give her a penetrating look, knowing that no one could ever really know what was going on in his sister’s mind. Despite her commando ways, she played things very close to the chest. “What’s the matter, Lil? You always liked being the center of attention before.”
Had he been paying that little attention to her, too? “No, I always liked being in the center of doing things,” she pointed out to her brother. “I don’t like attention for attention’s sake and if I go with you to this Salt Water Taffy place—”
“Salty Dog,” Luc corrected, grinning. He took no offense at the slip, even though he and his cousin, Ike, were co-owners of the saloon, as they were with various others pieces of property in and around Hades. He could see that beneath the bravado his sister-in-law was one unsettled lady.
“Whatever.” Lily flashed what passed as an apologetic look at Luc. She hadn’t meant to insult him, it was just that she thought it was a silly name. The Salty Dog Saloon. Who went to places like that these days? “If I go there with you tonight, I’m going to feel as if I’m on display.”
“You will be,” Jimmy told her, draping his arm around Lily’s thin shoulders. She looked drawn and tired, he thought, not like her old self. Alison had gotten her out here just in time. He wished he was back in Seattle for ten minutes, just long enough to do a number on the no-good bastard who’d made her suffer like this—even though he was relieved that Allen wasn’t going to be part of the family after all. “We don’t have that many new faces. And it’s all in harmless fun.” He gave her a quick one-armed hug. “C’mon, Lil, you’ve got to snap out of this. Allen wasn’t worth it.”
Lily shrugged off his arm, stepping back. She didn’t like attention being brought to her mistake. “No, he wasn’t, but I’m not in anything to snap out of, I just have a little jet lag, that’s all.”
They all knew denial when they heard it, but no one pointed out the obvious.
Still, Alison felt compelled to say, “It wasn’t that long a trip, Lily. Jimmy and I have taken it enough times to know.”
Boxed in, knowing that all three meant well, Lily shrugged helplessly. “All right, I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” Alison took her hand, pulling her to the guest room. “While you’re thinking, get dressed.”
Digging in her heels, literally and otherwise, Lily looked down at her suit. “This isn’t good enough for your friends?”
Alison exchanged looks with Luc. Lily was missing the point. “Nope, it’s too good.” She saw her sister raise a confused brow. “We like our comfort here in Hades. The byword is casual.”
She worked seven days a week at a clip, and dressed the part of a restaurant owner. Casual didn’t exist in her closet.
“Maybe I should have worn a torn pair of jeans,” she said sarcastically.
Luc nodded. “Maybe.”
She flushed, hoping she hadn’t insulted him. She genuinely liked her sister’s husband and didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But she didn’t want to mingle with a bunch of sex-starved miners and lumberjacks, either. That wasn’t why she’d come.
She tried to present her case to Luc. “Look, all I want is a quiet evening with my brother and sister and their spouses.”
Knowing that Luc had the heart of a lovable puppy when confronted with a damsel in distress, Alison decided to take over. She tugged on her sister’s hand. “This’ll be fun, Lily. Trust me.”
But Lily wasn’t going to be outmaneuvered. “If it’s all the same to you—”
“Say, Lily,” Jean Luc began genially, moving to her other side. “Since we are throwing this party tonight at the Salty, maybe you could help me out?”
Suspicion padded over on light cat paws. Lily raised one eyebrow. “How?”
“Well, I was thinking of making spareribs for tonight’s menu—” He looked as if he was struggling with the thought. “But, you know, that hasn’t been moving very well lately. Used to be a real crowd pleaser, but not anymore.” He looked to her for help. “I think everyone’s gotten bored with it.”
In Lily’s experience, nothing should remain on a menu indefinitely. And she had a pretty good idea that nothing on Ike and Jean Luc’s menu had changed for the last quarter of a century. Maybe longer.
“You’re probably right. You’ve got to spice things up, never let yourself get predictable. Menus have to change and, even if they remain the same for a while, you change the ingredients. Customers like that. The same, but different.” Her whole demeanor changed. This was her realm and she stepped into it gladly. “What kind of sauce have you been using?”
Luc looked at her innocently. “I’m not sure. Something Ike whipped up.”
She nodded. Klondyke LeBlanc was the driving force behind the partnership. Luc had told her that it was Ike’s vision that had gotten them rolling to begin with, but she had a feeling that the vision was severely limited when it came to things such as food.
“Something with ketchup, water and tomato paste, no doubt,” she said under her breath. “What time is this party?”
There was a sparkle in Lily’s eyes. Luc suppressed his smile. “Eight.”
Lily looked at her watch. “Eight?” That only gave them five hours to get ready. “What are you standing around here for? We need to get started.” Ignoring Alison and Jimmy, she was already hustling Luc toward the front door. “How many people are you expecting?”
He gave her an honest answer. “Hard to say. Probably most of the town’ll show up at one point or other.” All the people of Hades had to hear was the word “party” and they turned out in force.
Lily paused. She was vaguely aware of the fact that the population hovered around five hundred. Doing a quick calculation in her head, she began rattling off ingredients and quantities at him as she tugged him toward the front door again.
Alison knew what Lily could be like once she got going. There was no such thing as “half measure” with her sister. “Wait, Lily, we didn’t invite you here to work.”
“This isn’t work,” Luc told her innocently. “This is pitching in, right, Lily?”
Lost in the list she was making up in her head, Lily hadn’t even heard the question or her sister’s protest. “We’re wasting time, Luc. I’m going to need an extra set of hands to peel onions.”
“Why don’t you go on ahead to the car? I’ll be right there,” he promised, pausing by the door.
Alison crossed to him and rose on her toes. “And here I thought you didn’t have a devious bone in your body.” She brushed a kiss against his lips. “Nice going, Svengali.”
He grinned and winked. “I thought so.” Then, for good measure, he cupped the back of his wife’s head and kissed her in a way that aroused them both.
“Be careful she doesn’t work you to death. She can be rough when she gets going,” Jimmy warned him. “I’m talking about Lily this time,” he added, smirking at Alison.
“Don’t worry,” Luc answered. “I live with Alison. I know what I’m up against.”
With a huff, Alison turned on her heel to find something suitable for her sister to wear tonight. She knew she would have to bring it to the Salty because once Lily got going in the kitchen, only dynamite would dislodge her.
Lily paused. It had to be a hundred and ten degrees in here, she thought, pointing her face toward the small oscillating fan on the wall. Alison had arrived at the Salty a few minutes after she and Luc had forced her to change into a T-shirt and jeans—Alison’s since she hadn’t packed any. Luckily, they were the same size.
Her own curves were a little rounder than her sister’s, so the fit was tight, but sufficient. She knew she would have completely melted if she’d remained in this kitchen wearing the outfit she’d arrived in.
The tight fit chafed now, but she hadn’t been thinking about clothes when she allowed herself to be momentarily sidetracked and redressed. She was thinking about the temperature beneath the huge pot of sauce she was simmering.
The instant she’d walked into the small space that Ike and Luc laughingly called a kitchen, she had commandeered it with the aplomb of not an invading soldier, but a conquering one. The part-time cook that the Salty employed, Isaac, was relegated to finding and preparing vegetables and collecting the various ingredients that Lily just couldn’t work without.
The sauce, complete with submerged spareribs, had been simmering for well on to three hours now.
“Here’s black pepper,” Isaac offered after what had been a prolonged search.
She looked at the small man in mounting exasperation. She’d already learned that the only three ingredients he was aware of were salt, salt and more salt.
“I said cayenne pepper, not black. What is it about the word ‘cayenne’ you don’t understand?”
“Maybe he doesn’t know what cayenne pepper is,” Max suggested, amused. He’d been watching her for the last few minutes. The women was a whirlwind in action.
