Before he’d kissed her and redefined the boundaries of the known universe.
June knew that she was young and not all that experienced, but she didn’t need to have led her grandmother’s flamboyant life to know that what had just happened here was something special. If there’d been snow on the ground, she had a feeling it would have melted in a circle around her feet.
Still feeling wobbly, she reached for the car door and held on to it, hoping she wasn’t being obvious. Forcing a smile to her lips, she cleared her throat.
“I’d better be getting back to my place. Jimmy’ll take you home.”
Was she making any sense? she wondered. Her thoughts were assaulting her like pillaging Vikings, coming in from all sides without any uniformity at all.
Why did she feel so wonderful and sad at the same time? Why did she feel like laughing and crying, and staying and fleeing?
What the hell was that?
Kevin took a step back away from her, wanting only to step forward.
Wanting to kiss her again. And again.
He was just lonely, he insisted silently. And she was a beautiful woman, even if she did nothing to bring that out.
He realized that he was supposed to say something here. His mind scrambled for words.
“Right.” He pointed behind him needlessly. “I’ll just go back inside and find him.” Provided I can still walk.
June nodded, then got into her Jeep, suddenly collapsing in her seat as if all the air had just been let out of her. She took a deep breath before starting the vehicle, hoping he wasn’t watching. Hoping no one had been watching. If they had, this was going to wreak havoc with her image. Hard to pretend that she could care less about men and romance when she’d just been hermetically sealed to one.
And wishing she still was.
As if to deny the existence of the thought, June stomped down on the accelerator and roared off into the night.
Kevin sat at the sturdy wooden table, nursing a mug of coffee.
Suddenly, his brother Jimmy stumbled into the kitchen. “What are you doing up?”
“Can’t sleep,” Kevin muttered, and glanced in his direction.
Which was true. He couldn’t. He’d tried to tell himself that it was jet lag, but travel time from Seattle to Anchorage hadn’t been that long and besides, he’d remained in the same time zone, so that wasn’t the culprit for his inability to fall asleep. And neither was the strange habits of the sun, which seemed to barely disappear in the sky before it put in another appearance.
He knew why he couldn’t sleep, but he wasn’t about to put it into words. Formless and unidentified, it might stand a chance of going away.
Kevin nodded toward the coffeemaker sitting on the granite counter. “I made some coffee. Hope you don’t mind.”
Already at the counter, Jimmy laughed as he poured himself a cup. He brought himself over to the table and sank down on the chair opposite his brother. Felt like old times, he thought, taking a long sip of the thick, black liquid. A distant smile curved his mouth. “I remember your coffee. Thick enough to grease the axles of that first taxi you had.”
Kevin thought of the old car. Squat, wide and yellow, there’d been almost a hundred thousand miles on it when he’d inherited it after buying the business from his old boss.
“Damn thing kept breaking down. Almost spent more time trying to fix it than driving it.” He laughed fondly. His feelings hadn’t been quite so fond at the time. Kevin shook his head as he took another sip. “Seems like a million years ago.”
Jimmy wrapped his hands around his mug. He looked up at his brother, studying Kevin’s face. “Why did you sell the business?”
Kevin frowned, shrugging as he looked away. “Seemed like—”
“Don’t give me the same garbage you gave Lily.” Jimmy wanted to know the real reason, not the one his brother was handing out. “You loved that business.”
“No,” Kevin corrected adamantly. “I loved all of you. The taxi service just helped me keep us together, that’s all. Now that we’re all apart…” His voice drifted off. There didn’t seem to be anything to say as he shrugged his shoulders.
Jimmy didn’t have to fill in the blanks. He knew how Kevin felt about them. His older brother had sacrificed having a life of his own so that all of them could pursue their dreams. He’d always felt guilty about that.
Impulse had him leaning in to his brother. “Then move up here,” Jimmy urged. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve exactly got a life back in Seattle.” He stopped suddenly, realizing that maybe he was assuming too much. Maybe Kevin had moved on with his life now that the rest of them were all here. “You don’t, do you? I mean, there’s been no femme fatale to snare you since I left, right? Lily would have said something—” He thought of his older sister as a little bit of a control freak, trying to run everyone’s life while neglecting to put her own in order—until Max had come along.
Kevin laughed softly to himself at his brother’s choice of words. “No, there’s no femme fatale, but it’s not that easy.”
Jimmy believed in seizing opportunities when they came. Falling for April had taught him that. “It’s only as complicated as you make it.”
There was a delayed echo in his head. “Funny, June said the same thing.”
“Did she now?” His voice sounded a wee bit too innocent to be convincing, Jimmy thought, annoyed with himself. He tried hard to keep a straight face, but it wasn’t easy. Ursula had already told the family about what she’d seen last night. Jimmy pretended to be taken with the contents of his mug. “Pretty girl, that June.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” Kevin said.
Frowning, Jimmy set down his cup. Taking his wrist, his brother placed his fingers over his pulse. Kevin pulled his hand away and looked at him. “What are you doing?”
“Checking to see just when you died,” Jimmy responded frankly.
Kevin sighed. “All right, I noticed. I noticed she was very pretty,” he amended. “I also noticed that she’s barely out of her teens.”
“Three years is hardly ‘barely,’ Kev. Mom was nineteen when she married Dad.”
“And Dad was twenty-two. I’m not.” A tiny bit of exasperation entered Kevin’s voice. “So what’s your point?”
Jimmy drained his cup, now fully fortified to do battle with the best of them. “My point is that you’ve spent the last umpteen years of your life working your tail off for us and you never got to be twenty-two—or nineteen for that matter. My way of thinking, since June grew up faster than the average girl, that puts you at about the same age.”
Kevin laughed shortly. “Only if you flunked math.” And then he replayed the last thing Jimmy said. “What do you mean, she grew up faster?”
Jimmy reviewed the highlights. “Abandoned by her father, watching her mother sink into an irreversible depression.” He rose and crossed to the coffeemaker. Maybe one more cup wouldn’t hurt. “Leaves one hell of an impression on a kid.” The smile that played on his lips was enigmatic. “Makes you look at things differently than the average person.” Knowing how resistant Kevin was to the suggestion of romance, he tried a different approach. “Kev, while you’re here, relax, enjoy yourself. Open up your mind to things.”
“I’ve never been closed minded.”
Only when it came to his own life, Jimmy thought. He searched for a tactful way to say that. “No, you’ve actually been too busy all this time to think about things other than providing