LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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