Thinking of the tall, gawky man who had, until recently, tried to convince her that they were meant to be together, June nearly choked. “Hardly. I sold him the shop a few months ago.”
Kevin recalled his surprise when he’d learned that she owned a shop like that in the first place. But she had seemed very capable at the kind of work she did and as knowledgeable as any of the mechanics he’d employed at the taxi service over the years. More. He’d had the impression, the last time he’d been here, that she was going to work on cars forever.
“Why did you sell it? I thought you liked fixing cars.”
“I did.” June shrugged. She had never liked explaining herself. She liked explaining her feelings even less. “Felt like it. Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
The exact words he’d used to explain the situation to Lily. And to himself, Kevin thought. The coincidence made him smile. Maybe he had more in common with this fledgling woman than he thought.
“Me, too.”
One corner of June’s mouth rose in a half smile. “Yeah, I know. You sold your taxi service.”
She saw that he looked surprised that she knew. Obviously, the man had no inkling of what life was like in a small town. Even a small town that was spread out like Hades was. Any kind of news spread faster than Biblical locusts let loose over Egypt.
June inclined her head toward him so that he could hear her over the roar of the engine.
“I was there when Lily found out.” She still got a kick out of it. “You could have knocked all of them over with a feather.” In a way, she figured it gave them something in common. “Kind of like when I told Max I’d sold the shop to Walter.” She sat back again. “I guess people have an image of you and they don’t feel comfortable changing it.”
Kevin looked at her. She was talking as if she was settled in her ways, on her way to middle age. There was only one of them like that in the plane.
“You’re too young to sustain an image yet,” he told her. “Me, I’m a different story.”
There was that grin again. This time, the lightning came a little closer, singeing a little skin. He wondered if the altitude was getting to him.
“Right.” June nodded her head sagely, a deadpan expression on her lips. “Because you’re an old man. Just a little younger than the hills, right?”
Maybe he’d said too much already. Kevin began to back away. “Well, when you put it that way—”
June cocked her head, studying him. She knew he was Lily’s older brother, but there were no signs of age. He looked no different than Max or Jimmy to her. If she had to make a judgment, she would have said he wasn’t even as old as Sydney’s husband, although she vaguely recalled hearing that he was.
“Just how old do you feel?” she asked.
Her eyes were boring into him, and he blinked to keep from being drawn into the deep light blue pools. “Too old,” was all he’d volunteer.
He wasn’t vain about his age. It was a matter of public record and June could have asked any of his siblings to find out that he was thirty-seven. Thirty-seven when he didn’t even remember ever being twenty-five. How had that happened?
“We’re going to have to do something about that,” June decided. “Hades has a way of equalizing things, making everyone feel more or less the same. The young seem older than their years, the old seem younger. My grandmother and I are the same age, really.” Everyone knew that Ursula Hatcher, the town’s postmistress, was a hellion, given to kicking up her heels and certainly not above taking a lover when the mood hit her. She’d already buried several husbands and had her cap currently set for a man named Yuri, a former miner.
June smiled at him. It was a soft, easy expression that made her seem somehow softer. “That definitely puts us at the same age, old man.”
He laughed, but that was the way he felt at times, like an old man. Old without ever having had the luxury of being young. He didn’t even remember going through the years. They had just gone of their own volition, while he’d been busy working.
He missed that, he thought, missed being young. Thinking young.
But there was something about June’s eyes that made him feel younger.
Feel young.
Watch it, Quintano, that’s one of the first signs of being an old man, having a young woman make you feel like a teenager again.
He shook off the mood before he said something he regretted. “So, what other changes have there been besides you selling the shop and becoming a woman of leisure?”
June was quick to set him straight. “I’m hardly that. I’m working the family farm, now.”
Something else that was news, he thought. “I didn’t know the family had a farm.”
“We did. We do. It belonged to my mother and father.” She didn’t want to launch into a long explanation. “But we left it when he left us.”
This story he was familiar with. Jimmy had told him. Wayne Yearling had had a wanderlust that was legendary. Somehow, it had allowed him to remain in Hades longer than anyone who knew him would have thought possible. But he’d finally succumbed to its call when June had been very young.
She’d grown up without a father. Kevin knew that Max wasn’t that much older than she was. Max hadn’t been able to step in for June the way he had with his own siblings, Kevin thought.
His heart went out to her. “I guess that gives us all something in common.”
She knew his story, too, because it was Lily’s, as well. “Your father didn’t leave you,” she pointed out. “He died.”
“Sometimes it amounted to the same thing.” The loneliness that was the end result was still the same. So was the day-to-day struggle for survival.
But she shook her head stubbornly. “Your father didn’t have a choice—mine did.”
That was where they disagreed. “Mine gave up the will to live when my mother died. He didn’t seem to realize that there were more people than just him affected by her death. Or that those same people would be affected by his if he died. He chose to die.”
His own words echoed back at him. Kevin stopped abruptly and looked at her in surprise. He hadn’t said that out loud to anyone. Ever. Even though it had lingered on his mind all these years. He’d been too busy making things right for the others to deal with his own feelings on the matter.
Well, he wasn’t too busy now. Obviously.
Embarrassed, Kevin laughed shortly. “I’ve never said that to anyone before.”
June pretended not to notice his discomfort. Her tone was glib. “Alaska has a way of drawing confessions out of people. Gives you that kind of intimate feeling when you’re around people. Makes you feel like you’re all friends.”
That was one explanation, he supposed. And now that he considered it, it was the most logical. In any event, it was the one he chose to accept.
“Coming in for a landing,” Sydney announced from the front seat, breaking into his thoughts.
Kevin looked at June and wondered if that was strictly true. It didn’t feel as if he was landing at all. It felt like he was still flying.
Chapter Three
“So, what do you think?”
Trying to contain her excitement, Lily gestured out toward the wide expanse of terrain where she had decided her restaurant would stand. Building would begin after she and Max returned from their honeymoon. Unable to wait to show it off to Kevin, she’d brought him here immediately after June had delivered