LITMIR.BIZ

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than he’s feeling with all of you gone.” She opened the door. “Well, I’ve got to be getting back to work. I’ll see you all later.”

      Max shook his head as June closed the door. He put his arms around Lily, giving her a hug to stave off the bout of guilt he saw in her eyes. “Always said June was the cheerful one in the family.”

      Jimmy looked after his sister-in-law thoughtfully. The last time Kevin had come up here, it had been to take part in his wedding. At twenty, June had seemed too young at the time. She wasn’t too young now.

      “Maybe that’s what we can do to get Kevin’s mind off whatever’s really bothering him.”

      “Do?” Lily echoed. “Do what? What are you talking about?”

      But Alison was already on Jimmy’s wavelength. “We’ll tell Kevin that June needs cheering up.” She brightened immensely. “Kevin’s at his best when he’s dealing with someone else’s problems.” She looked at the others. “The man is a problem solver. He misses having to deal with all our baggage.”

      Lily sniffed. “We didn’t come with baggage.”

      Jimmy gave his older sister a pointed look. “You had your own luggage store.”

      She laughed shortly. “And Casanova didn’t?”

      Max grinned as he tightened his arms around his wife-to-be. “I’m beginning to understand what Kevin did in the family. He kept the peace.”

      Lily got off her high horse. Turning, she brushed a kiss against her future husband’s cheek.

      “I’d say that gives Kevin something in common with you.”

      Dealing with Lily was where his people-reading skills came in handiest—and were the most challenged. “I’m not flattering myself,” Max told her. “I keep the peace for any one of a number of residents here. I know better than to try to exercise control over you.”

      “This marriage,” Jimmy announced to the others, “should work out just fine.”

      He ducked, but Max was quicker and caught Lily’s hand as she went to throw her cell phone at him.

      “Yes,” Max agreed, looking at Lily meaningfully as he gently pushed her hand down again, “it should.”

      Lily’s eyes sparkled, negating the frown she was attempting to form.

      Chapter Two

      Kevin slowly looked around at the groups of people milling around him at the Anchorage airport. He’d only gotten off the plane from Seattle fifteen minutes ago.

      It seemed longer.

      He felt a little homesick already, which was odd because Seattle had never been anything more to him than steel girders set against an almost continually misting sky.

      He supposed it had to do with his all-too-common need for the familiar. He wasn’t a man who suffered change well, although he wouldn’t have admitted this out loud to anyone, not even one of his siblings.

      The irony of it struck him as he continued to scan the interior of the airport. He might not do change well, but here he was, right smack-dab in the midst of it. Change. Change in his family structure now that they were all up here in Alaska and he was back in Seattle, and change in the very fiber of his life since he’d sold the only business he’d known for the past twenty years. Driving a cab had been his very first job. He’d started out as a driver for the company, saving and working endless hours, until he could manage, with the help of a bank loan and the money in the small trust fund his parents had left him, to buy the cab service when it was put up for sale.

      Back then, it had been only a three-cab company and the venture was decidedly risky, but he felt it was the only way to assure the futures of the three people who were depending on him.

      The thought added another blanket to the sorrow that threatened to smother him these days. There was no one depending on him now. Not his family, not the people who worked for him, because there were no people who worked for him anymore.

      It felt incredibly odd, being this free.

      Freedom, Kevin decided as he took yet another pass around the busy airport, was highly overrated and completely unfulfilling. At least as far as he was concerned.

      Dueling with a feeling of irritability, he glanced at his watch. His plane had been late getting in. His “ride,” otherwise known as the connecting private plane flight that would finally bring him to Hades, was even later. At least, he didn’t see his brother or either of his sisters in the vicinity.

      Maybe something had happened and they weren’t coming. Maybe there’d been another cave-in at the mines and the whole town was involved in a rescue operation. It wouldn’t be the first time.

      He didn’t see why they couldn’t all just move back to Seattle.

      Feeling antsy, Kevin scanned the back walls to see if he could spy a car rental counter. It was the tail end of summer, and snow hadn’t come yet to cut off access to the small town his family had chosen to live in. If worse came to worst and no one showed up for him, he figured he could drive there—as long as someone handed him a map or at least pointed him in the right direction. He’d always prided himself on being able to find any place, given enough time.

      Kevin supposed that made up for the fact that when it came to interacting with people, he’d always found it better just to listen rather than talk. Alison had once said that gave him a wise aura. He thought of himself as shy.

      “Kevin?”

      He didn’t recognize the woman’s voice coming from behind him. Turning around, he didn’t recognize the woman, either. At least, not immediately.

      His eyes washed over a petite, trim woman wearing a work shirt rolled up at the sleeves and a pair of very worn blue jeans that had either originally belonged to someone else, or were a living testimony that she’d lost a goodly amount of weight. Kevin suspected it was the former. The young woman had hair the color of a radiant sunrise and eyes so blue they drew out the last drops of loneliness that were lingering within him. Her hair was pulled back into a single long braid, exposing a face that was kissed by the sun and was as close to heart-shaped as humanly possible.

      And then it came to him.

      Two years ago, when he’d last seen her, she’d been a child. Twenty years old and just finding her way into her features. Two years had obviously done a great deal to show her the right path.

      She was, without benefit of makeup and with absolutely no care whatsoever, one of the loveliest young women he’d ever seen.

      “June?”

      Her grin was quick, like lightning that came and went in a blink. While it was there, it transformed her face from remote to warmingly friendly. Kevin felt something within him quicken.

      He recalled hearing Jimmy tell him that if June Yearling liked you, you had a friend for life, someone to rely on no matter what. But by the same token, she selected the people she was close to very carefully, as if they were slivers of gold to be separated from the seductive but worthless fool’s gold.

      June slipped her hand into his, shaking it before he even realized that he’d offered it to her.

      “Hi, they sent me to get you.” She turned then, looking at the blond woman behind her. “Actually, they sent us,” she amended.

      June cocked her head to look at him, as if to decide whether or not he remembered them, or if reintroductions were in order.

      He recognized the other woman more quickly. Sydney Kerrigan. She was the doctor’s wife. The doctor who had convinced Jimmy to remain here. The one who’d originally enticed his sister to come before that.

      No, he amended, that wasn’t entirely right. Luc had been the one to convince Alison where her place was, and April had been the deciding factor in Jimmy’s life. It had been more for love

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