LITMIR.BIZ

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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 than for work that they had each remained.

      Love, it seemed, made the world go around. Just not in his case.

      But that boat had been one that had sailed a long time ago. Kevin knew that. He’d made his choice. It had come down to either Dorothy, or his siblings. But that had hardly been a contest. Dorothy had never stood a chance. Anyone who’d asked him to choose between them and his family wasn’t anyone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

      It just got lonely sometimes, that’s all. Especially now with so much of life behind him.

      The young woman in front of him, he thought, had the whole world before her.

      He wondered why she hadn’t left the confines of her Alaskan “prison” the way so many of her age had, according to Jimmy. He was the one who’d told him about the penchant most Alaskan teenagers had for fleeing the area the moment they were old enough.

      Jimmy’s own wife, April, June’s sister, had shot out of the region like a bat out of hell the moment she’d turned eighteen. Only her grandmother’s illness had brought her back. Temporarily, she’d thought. She was still here.

      As for him, Kevin couldn’t help wondering what the allure was, what kind of magical pull the region exercised over people like April, Max and June. Why were they still here when there was so much more to be had in the lower forty-nine?

      “Jimmy and Alison couldn’t get away,” June was explaining. “The vaccine they’d been waiting for came in. They needed to get inoculations underway immediately.”

      At least, that was what Jimmy had told her. She still thought the excuse was a little fishy, but she’d needed a break anyway. If it wasn’t for the fact that she hated accepting defeat in any shape or size, she would have begun rethinking the wisdom of her change in occupation. Farming was not the closest thing to her heart, but making a go of the family farm had become a matter of honor to her.

      Getting in front of Sydney, June reached for Kevin’s suitcase. “And Lily’s busy getting ready.”

      The woman looked as solid as a spring breeze. He placed his hand over the handle, stopping her from picking up the luggage. “Ready for what, the wedding?”

      “You,” Sydney told him over June’s head.

      “Me?” That didn’t make any sense. Why would Lily be fussing over his arrival? “I’ve seen her first thing in the morning, stumbling down the stairs wearing an old pair of men’s pajamas and looking like hell on an off day. There’s

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