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.
“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 him to the house. They’d only stopped long enough to swing by the medical clinic so that he could quickly say hello to Alison and Jimmy. They were just closing up after an extralong day. With Max in tow, Lily had whisked her brother here with all the unsuppressed enthusiasm of a child unwrapping a long-anticipated gift on Christmas morning.
She looked at Kevin, holding her breath.
Kevin was far more taken with Lily’s joy than he was with the future site of Hades’s first official restaurant. She was fairly dancing from foot to foot.
“What I think is that I’ve never seen you this excited before.”
“I don’t think I ever have been.” She grinned broadly as Max, standing behind her, threaded his arms around her waist.
They looked like a set, Kevin thought. As if they’d always been meant to be together.
“Maybe it’s the land, or the people.” Tilting her head, she cast a glance at the broad-shouldered sheriff at her back.
“Or maybe the fact that you don’t sleep properly,” Kevin said glibly. This giddiness was really unlike Lily. He glanced around. Daylight was permeating everything. Kevin looked at his watch. It was past seven. “When does it get dark around here?”
“It doesn’t.” It had taken her some getting used to. Now she didn’t think she could revert to conventional days and nights easily. “At least, not this time of year. Not so you’d really notice. Sun goes down at around ten, comes up at three.”
Kevin frowned. “And you find this appealing?”
“Hey, lots of daylight makes you happy,” Lily told him.
Max leaned his head down. “Lots of darkness makes you something else,” he whispered against her hair.
But Kevin heard him. “Depressed comes to mind.” The words had popped out almost of their own volition.
“Not if you have the right company.” And then she frowned as she turned and looked at her older brother. “Kev, is anything wrong? I’m sensing some very unhappy vibes coming from you.”
That settled it. She had definitely changed since she’d come up here. The old Lily never even had the word vibes in her vocabulary. He almost laughed out loud, catching himself at the last moment.
“Since when do you sound like