Lily and the Lawman

It wasn’t that she loved Allen with her dying breath, she knew she didn’t. She’d thought they went well together and, on paper, he was all the things she’d thought she wanted in a man. Handsome, successful, intelligent. Somewhere along the line, though, she must have missed the part about being a lying cheat. So she’d cut him loose, her pride smarting somewhat.

It was just that…just that she felt alone. Again. And every so often, being alone had sharp edges to it that hurt.

Enough of this self-pity, Lily upbraided herself, annoyed. She had her restaurant, her reputation and her career. And a family who loved her. Not everyone was nearly so lucky.

Squaring her shoulders, Lily marched over to the piano and the framed photograph of Allen. He’d given it to her on her last birthday with an inscription. The Best For The Best.

Should have been a clue, Lily. Should have been a clue…

Taking the photograph in hand, Lily escorted it to the kitchen where she threw it, frame and all, into the trash. Glass shattered as it hit the side of the metal container on its way to the bottom. It was a satisfying sound.

Lily felt marginally better as she went to pack.

Max Yearling passed his hand over the rim of the tanned hat in his hand as he looked around the vast airport, trying to spot a woman he only vaguely remembered meeting once several years ago.

He wasn’t sure just how he’d gotten roped into this. As a rule, he didn’t like to fly and only did so as a last resort. If God had really meant men to fly, He would have made them with feathers instead of hair.

But April didn’t ask for much and she had asked for this, so he’d said yes.

It wasn’t as though he could hide behind the fact that he was busy. He wasn’t. Being sheriff of Hades and its surrounding territory had its busy times, but today wasn’t one of them. Most times, the job involved a great number of small tasks and duties that most people would find monotonous.

But he didn’t. Not usually. There was comfort in the familiar and he never looked down his nose at any part of his job. Not even looking under the Widow Anderson’s bed to assure her that no one had sneaked into her home, waiting to have their way with her once she was asleep.

All of eighty-one, the widow had a healthy imagination, he thought, smiling to himself. A little like his own grandmother’s, except that Ursula Hatcher, Hades’s postmistress for as long as anyone could remember, would probably have been delighted to have a man stashed under her bed, waiting for the lights to go out. At seventy-two, having buried three husbands and on the lookout for a fourth, his grandmother was the youngest woman he knew.

Not that there were all that many women to know in Hades, he mused, scanning faces as a fresh wave of passengers made its way into the baggage claim area. Men outnumbered women seven to one in the town he was born in. He knew that if he were to ever have that family he occasionally thought about, he was going to have to go to one of the real cities in Alaska to find a wife.

Didn’t seem likely, though. In his heart, he sincerely doubted that any woman from a city larger than a bread box would want to transplant herself to a place like Hades, where people and time seemed to move in slow motion for the most part, barring earthquakes, fires and cave-ins at the local mine, the industry that employed two-thirds of the male population.

Oh, sure, Sydney, Marta, and Alison had all come from outside the state and wound up marrying local men, but they were exceptions. And most of the home-grown women were on their way out the second they reached their eighteenth birthday. Even his own sister hadn’t been able to wait to get away. The only reason April had returned at all was that their grandmother had gotten ill and neither he nor June had been able to give her the full-time attention that April felt she needed. It had been April’s intention to stay for no more than two weeks, the time necessary to talk their grandmother into having heart surgery. Instead, she’d fallen in love and married the visiting heart surgeon, Alison’s brother, Jimmy.

Funny how things arranged themselves, Max thought, shifting from foot to foot as he waited beside Sydney Kerrigan, the wife of Hades’s first resident doctor. Sydney had been one of the women who had come from somewhere else to be here. And, like him, Sydney was happy to remain here for the rest of her life. She’d even learned to fly her husband’s plane to help bring in supplies. For a while there, Dr. Kerrigan’s plane had been the only one making trips in and out. But now there were two planes and three pilots in the immediate vicinity.

Yup, he thought, his lips curving in amusement, Hades was growing up. If not by leaps and bounds, then by hops and skips, but it was happening. Fast enough to suit him.

What wasn’t happening fast enough to suit him was Lily Quintano’s appearance.

“You see her?” he asked Sydney impatiently, glancing down at the photograph Alison had given him of her sister.

He wished Alison or Jimmy were here in his place. Both Alison, who was the only nurse in town, and Jimmy, referred to by the locals as “the doctor who had come on vacation only to remain,” were tied up in an unexpected surgery. Neither had been able to get away to pick up their sister, thus Jimmy’s call to April, who in turn had called him.

His sister was busy working against some deadline or other, snapping pictures of melting snow for some magazine and pretending it was work.

Someday, he thought, he was going to learn how to say no.

Flying out of Hades into Anchorage Airport to be the unofficial welcoming committee for a woman reputed to be a man-hating workaholic wasn’t exactly his idea of a good way to spend an afternoon.

“Someone from the family has to be there,” April had insisted when he’d challenged her as to why Sydney wasn’t sufficient to welcome Lily Quintano and bring her back to town.

“But she doesn’t know me from Adam,” he’d protested fruitlessly. As far as he could remember, he’d only caught a glimpse of her at Alison and Luc’s wedding. If not for the photograph in his hand, he wouldn’t have been able to identify her at all.

“She will as soon as she looks into those beautiful green eyes of yours, little brother,” April had assured him.

He really should have said no, he thought now, but there hadn’t been anything else more pressing to do. His investigation of Jeffords’s broken traplines was going nowhere at the moment and he’d thought, recklessly, that maybe a plane ride in the single-engine Cessna would clear his head. Besides, April, only eleven months his senior, knew how to nag better than any woman he’d ever met. When it came to April, he’d learned a long time ago that it was easier just to say yes.

Sydney shook her head in response to his question. And then suddenly she caught hold of his arm, pointing. “Over there, the woman in the red leather coat next to the baggage carousel. Is that—”

Max looked to where Sydney was pointing, then glanced down at the photograph. It was hard to decide. The woman in the photograph was smiling. The woman in the red leather coat was definitely not. Even at this distance, she reeked of impatience. She was frowning as she scanned the area.

Frown or not, Max had to admit that he’d never seen a finer-looking woman.

“Only one way to find out,” he told Sydney, pocketing the photograph. “Wait here.”

Still holding his hat in his hand, Max made his way through the crowded terminal to the baggage claim area. The closer he got, the finer the dark-haired woman looked. In the absolute sense. Given his preference, he preferred women who smiled.

He noted that, unlike a lot of passengers, the woman was dressed almost formally, wearing a light gray suit beneath her open coat. She had on what appeared to be three-or four-inch heels, which gave her the appearance of height.

She was a slight woman, he realized, with fine features and the greatest set of legs he’d ever seen.

“All the better to grind men into dust,” he’d once heard from Jimmy. Her brother ought to know, Max thought.

There were a lot of men in Hades who could be led around by the nose by someone like Lily Quintano. He was going to have to watch this one—which wouldn’t be all that much of a hardship, he decided as he placed himself in front of her.

“Ms. Quintano?”

Lily spun around, all but colliding with the tall, broad-shouldered man in the sheepskin jacket. As the jacket moved, she caught sight of the badge pinned to his shirt. “Yes?”

The woman knew how to cut people down into tiny pieces, he thought, judging by the way she looked at him. “You might not remember me—”

Lily prided herself on having one hell of a memory. She remembered every single recipe she’d ever read. “Sheriff Max Yearling, April’s brother. Yes, I remember you,” she said in a crisp tone. “You were at Alison’s wedding. So was I.”

It suddenly occurred to her why the sheriff might be here in her sister’s place. Lily looked beyond his shoulder. Alison was nowhere to be seen. Neither was their brother. An uneasiness struck.

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, firing the words at him point-blank. “Has something happened to Alison and Jimmy?”

He could almost see the thoughts ricocheting in her head from one spot to another. She talked like she danced. Quickly. He recalled seeing her dancing at the wedding. At the time, she’d been on the arm of a very self-absorbed-looking male. Her fiancé, he’d been told. The only opinion he’d formed at the time was that she could have done better, but then, it hadn’t been any of his business.

“There was an emergency at the clinic and they couldn’t get away, so they asked me to come and bring you back.”

She wondered if he made it sound as though he were fetching a package on purpose, then decided that she was probably giving the man too much credit.

She took the measure of him now. Handsome. Probably used that to his advantage. She wondered how many women he was stringing along, then remembered that Hades didn’t have that many to string.

“They were afraid I’d get back on the plane?” she finally asked.

She was scrutinizing him. Was she planning on dissecting him? he wondered, half amused. “Something like that.”

The next moment, Sydney came up to join them. Sydney had never been one to stand on ceremony and her years as the doctor’s wife out here had only served to make her more gregarious. She embraced Lily warmly.