LITMIR.BIZ

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around?”

      He shrugged, afraid to commit himself, especially when she didn’t seem to want his commitment. “Maybe.”

      She nodded slowly. “It’s good for the town.”

      About to slice carrots, he glanced in her direction. “How about for you?”

      “Hey, what’s good for the town is always good for me.”

      She took it no further than that.

      She had no feelings about it one way or another. He didn’t have to be hit on the head to pick up a cue, Kevin thought. He turned his attention back to making supper for them.

Chapter Thirteen

      Kevin climbed down off the ladder to survey his work. His mind wasn’t really on the wall he was painting, except in the most perfunctory of ways.

      They’d been steering clear of each other.

      Not an easy matter since he was still coming over to work on the house.

      Having finished the exterior, he was now busy painting the rooms themselves. Because June hadn’t expressed a preference for any particular color, he’d made the decision for her. He’d painted the walls a light shade of icy-blue, using white as an accent whenever he could. The house was slowly going from oppressively dreary to bright and cheery.

      The same couldn’t be said of their relationship. Whatever conversation might have existed before had now disintegrated into short sentences populated with fleeting, monosyllabic words. Not wanting to press, he’d taken his cue from her, thinking that June had either decided to regret what had happened between them or was trying to work her way through her ambivalent feelings regarding her father’s appearance and Yearling’s desire to make amends any way possible.

      In any case, she was reacting to Kevin as if he were some kind of stranger, not a man she’d made love with. He wasn’t sure just how much more he could take in tolerant silence.

      June was gone more than she was there. She was either working in the field, working in the barn or going to town to talk to her relatives.

      The one thing that was clear was that she didn’t want any part of him.

      It put a whole new light on things for him as to his thoughts about actually relocating here and starting up a transport service for Hades. As he’d mulled it over, the latter actually began to sound like a good idea in his opinion.

      But his motives weren’t so grounded in rock.

      With a sigh, he retired his paintbrush, leaving it horizontally perched across the mouth of the paint can. Initially, the idea of investing his time and money in a business here had to do with being close to his family. Lily had been gone from Seattle only a short while, and although they hadn’t exactly lived in each other’s pockets, they had gotten together a couple of times a week. He would either come to her restaurant, or Lily would drop by the house. The fact that lately the only time he heard her voice, or any of their voices, was when he picked up a telephone to call didn’t really sit well with him. He was and always had been, first and foremost, a visual person. Sight figured in quite prominently with his required family hit. That meant relocating here.

      But if he were being honest with himself, the real reason he’d begun to explore this business possibility was June. Running a transport service would give him a good excuse to interact with her. After all, the planes were going to need a regular mechanic and June didn’t seem completely wedded to the idea of the farm. Oh, she was working hard at it for the moment, but he suspected that was because it wasn’t in her to do anything else, even if she wasn’t really committed to the idea of making farming her calling. June wasn’t a woman who believed in half-measures.

      Woman.

      His mouth curved in a smile tinged with surprise as well as a bittersweet feeling. That was the first time he’d referred to her as a woman, not a girl, in his mind. Maybe he was losing his grasp on the age thing as a stumbling block.

      Heaven knows he certainly couldn’t think of her as a girl anymore. Not after the other day. First time or not, she’d been all woman in his arms.

      And he ached for her.

      He wiped his hands on the cloth that was hanging from his back pocket. Without the protective shield of ageism to hide behind, it hit him with the speed of a bolt of lightning. June was, quite frankly, everything he’d ever wanted in a woman.

      In bed and out.

      But it was the out of bed that was now the problem.

      Age might not be a factor, but there were other things in the way now. Predominantly the barriers she was throwing up between them. Maybe he’d been too convincing in his initial arguments about being too old for her and she’d finally decided to believe him.

      Or maybe there were other demons she was wrestling with.

      In either event, he had to decide whether to remain here and try to make her come around, or just leave her be and accept the fact that maybe this was one of those things that wasn’t meant to happen.

      He sighed, wadding the cloth up and pushing it back into his pocket. June had been right about one thing. He did have a tendency to overthink things.

      Surveying the room slowly to see if he’d missed any spots, Kevin decided that he was finished with the living room. Time to call it a day. He’d already done the two bedrooms earlier this week. That only left the kitchen, but that could be for another time.

      Right now, he wanted to get a little more information about the costs of running the kind of venture he’d been toying with. If it turned out to be prohibitive, that could call a halt to his planning right there. He only had as much money to work with as he’d made by selling the taxi service.

      There were other ventures, of course, other things he might be able to do here, but maybe that was just pushing things that weren’t meant to be pushed.

      Pulling off the T-shirt he’d put on before beginning to paint, he slipped on his regular shirt and headed out the door.

      “Have you decided to start that transport service yet?” Max uttered the question by way of a greeting as he stopped by the sheriff’s office later that afternoon.

      Kevin took the seat he indicated on the opposite side of the desk. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know about that.”

      “Know about it?” Max laughed. “People haven’t been talking about anything else since the subject came up.” Thanks to his grandmother, he added silently. “They’ve taken to thinking of you as their second messiah. You’d be opening up a whole new world to them,” he added frankly. There were still citizens, although not too many, who had lived their entire lives within the confines of Hades, never having even ventured out to sample what the rest of the state, much less the country, had to offer.

      Kevin didn’t want people getting ahead of themselves, especially since he was still very much on the fence about the project. “This is only in the planning stage.”

      “Most people are hoping you’re planning on doing it.” Max stopped rocking back in his chair and leaned forward, peering at his future brother-in-law’s face. “You are, aren’t you?”

      “I don’t know yet. I like having all the information in before I decide to make a move.”

      There was a lot to be said for that method. And even more for flying by the seat of your pants, Max thought. He turned to the small desk against the wall behind him and poured two glasses of lemonade.

      “That kind of thing might make a man move slower than molasses,” Max pointed out. He looked into the older man’s eyes. “Sometimes you can’t wait for all the information, because it doesn’t always come in. Sometimes, you’ve got to make a move without it.”

      The

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