LITMIR.BIZ

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want a mile, Lily. I don’t even want the inch.” The belt snapped apart. “There, you’re free.”

      Why the air had managed to lodge itself in her lungs when he’d raised his eyes to hers just then, she had no idea.

      Maybe she was a little unstable from the flight, she thought, her head slightly foggy.

      “Yes,” Lily heard herself saying, “I am.”

      As she reached for the side of the cabin, to brace herself before she took that first long step down, she felt his wide hands on her waist, his tanned, strong fingers registering one by one. The next moment, he was swinging her out of the plane and her feet were touching the ground.

      It was hard working her tongue around the cotton in her mouth. “Thanks.”

      He touched his fingers to the brim of his hat by way of acknowledgment. “Don’t mention it.” Glancing at Sydney, he said, “She’s all yours,” with what sounded like unadulterated humor and relief.

      And with that, he turned and walked away.

      Lily wished that she’d come in winter instead. That way, there would have been snow on the ground and she could have made a snowball. Throwing one at his head would have made her feel a whole lot better.

      Chapter Three

      Lily turned back to look at Sydney. “Is he always this charming?”

      Sydney smiled, taking out the single suitcase that Lily had brought with her. Funny, she would have pegged the woman for someone who packed a minimum of two suitcases just to go away for the weekend. Just showed you could never tell.

      She glanced at Max’s retreating back. “Pretty much.”

      Lily took the suitcase from her. “I was being facetious.”

      “I know.” Sydney’s grin grew wider. “I wasn’t.”

      She led the way to her sports utility vehicle, which stood waiting for them at the end of the small runway. The airstrip was little more than a large clearing, but then, there really wasn’t much need for anything more. Not until there were more airplanes in Hades than just theirs and the one that belonged to Jeb Kellogg, the former grocer’s son.

      Sydney opened the door on the driver’s side and reached in for the trunk release. “Well, let’s get you delivered.”

      Lily dropped her suitcase in, then came around to the passenger side. “You didn’t lock your car?”

      Sydney shook her head. “The only thing we lock our doors against in Hades is the wind, not each other.” Getting in, she put her key into the ignition.

      Lily watched the only other vehicle in the area pull away. The word Sheriff was painted on the side of the Jeep in big, bold black letters.

      Black suited her mood, as well, and she wasn’t altogether clear as to why. Residue from Allen, she surmised. That, and having to deal with an irritating specimen of manhood just now. “Why did he bother coming at all, I mean, if he was just going to leave like that?”

      Sydney noted the way Lily was watching Max drive away. She doubted the woman even realized how interested she looked. Well, Alison’s sister wouldn’t be the first woman, young or old, to get hooked on the town’s sexy sheriff.

      Glancing in her rearview mirror for any stray animals darting into the road, Sydney put the vehicle in gear and pulled out. “Because April asked him to.”

      So he had indicated. She didn’t like thinking of herself as an assignment, liked his thinking of her as such even less. “Does he always do everything April asks him to?”

      “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,”

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