The Bride Wore Blue Jeans

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” He changed the topic. “Anyway, three weeks, eh? That’s really short notice. You’ve got a lot to do before then.”

  “I know.” She sighed, as if trying to brace herself for what lay ahead. “I can manage—”

  He suddenly knew what to do with himself. At least, for the next three weeks. “Especially with help. I’ll come up early.”

  “How early?”

  Unless he missed his guess, he’d managed to stun Lily twice in the space of two minutes. “I’m not doing anything right now. I’ll be there as soon as possible.” He was already walking toward the cabinet where he kept the phonebooks stashed. “Let me book a flight and then I’ll get back to you.”

  Still very numb, Lily murmured a half-audible “Okay.”

  “Great. Talk to you later. Bye.”

  The line went dead. Lily let the receiver drop slowly as she turned around to face the rest of her family who were gathered in the room around her. Her brother and sister were there with their spouses, as well as Max and June, who absolutely refused to be left out of anything, family oriented or otherwise. Alison and Jimmy looked at her in surprise, clearly disappointed that they didn’t each get a chance to talk to Kevin on the phone.

  Closest to her, Jimmy stared at the medical clinic telephone, one of the few in Hades that didn’t still possess a rotary dial. He raised his eyes to hers in protest. “You hung up.”

  “He hung up first,” Lily muttered, still staring at the receiver and feeling as if a piece of the known world had just disappeared from her life.

  Max came around to face her. “Lily, what’s the matter? Isn’t your brother coming?”

  Slowly she nodded her head. Sold, the business was sold. Gone. Wow. She would have thought that the Space Needle would have wound up on eBay for an auction before Kevin would ever even consider selling the taxicab service.

  “Oh, he’s coming all right.” Raising her eyes, she looked at the others.

  “Then what’s the matter?” Max asked.

  Lily’s eyes met his. “Kevin just told me he’s sold the business.”

  “He did what?” Jimmy’s jaw went slack. He’d put in seven summers driving one of Kevin’s cabs. It was as if a member of the family had died

  Lily turned to look at him. “Sold the business.” Unable to fathom it, she waved her hand vaguely in the air. “Said it seemed like the thing to do.”

  She looked from one face to another as if waiting for one of them to unravel the mystery for her, to make sense of the situation. Why would Kevin do that? He loved the business.

  June Yearling lifted her slender shoulders, wondering what the big deal was all about. People sold businesses every day. She had, just recently. The one-time owner of the only auto-repair shop in over a hundred-mile radius, she’d sold the business that had been passed on to her, because it had felt like the right thing to do at the time.

  “Maybe it was,” she said to her brother’s fiancée. “Maybe he has an itch, and selling his taxicab service is the only way he knows how to scratch it.”

  Lily sighed. It still didn’t make any sense to her. Kevin was acting rashly, especially for Kevin. Why hadn’t he discussed this with any of them? She looked at Jimmy and Alison, but they looked as mystified as she was.

  Lily ran her hands up and down her arms, despite the fact that the day was warm. “But he’s had that business forever.”

  June thought of herself, of her own feelings when she’d made up her mind to sell. “Forever’s a long time. Maybe he needed something new. Maybe he got tired of having things break down on him and—” She bit her lip, realizing that she’d allowed her own experiences to intrude into her interpretation. “Sorry. They always say, stick to what you know.”

  Max laughed shortly, shaking his head. She might have the face of an angel, but June was the wild one in the family, especially now that April had ceased her wandering ways and returned to live in Hades. June had never made noises about moving out of state, the way over three-quarters of the adolescent population had, but she had been a restless pistol in every other way. She was always full of surprises.

  “If that were the case,” he said to her, “you wouldn’t have sold the shop to Walter Haley and announced that you were going to make a go of the family farm.”

  Family farm.

  It was almost a euphemism at this point. In reality, it had been abandoned land for years. They’d left it without any thought when he, Alison and June, along with their mother, had moved in with their grandmother after their father had taken off for parts unknown. The thought of making a go of the property had vaguely crossed his mind, only to be quickly discarded. The town needed a sheriff and he needed to be it. Max knew he was lucky enough to have found his true calling.

  June frowned, looking down at her hands. They were scrubbed clean now, but there were still traces of dark stains on them. She’d never been one to dress up or try to compete with her sister, or any of the other girls in town, but even she had a place where she drew the line.

  “I got tired of trying to get motor oil off my hands,” she retorted. She looked accusingly at the older brother she secretly adored. “A woman’s got a right to want to keep her hands clean.”

  Max gave her an innocent look. “Never said otherwise.”

  Concern creased Alison’s fair features as she looked at her own brother. “Think Kevin’s having a midlife crisis?”

  Luc laughed at his wife’s suggestion, shaking his head. He’d always liked Kevin. “Thirty-seven’s a little young to have a midlife crisis.”

  June looked at him. She might be the youngest in the room, but age to her was not a brittle thing, without rounded edges or flexibility. “Seems to be just about right to me. Unless he’s planning on living until he’s a hundred.”

  Jimmy smiled, remembering the promise Alison had extracted from their brother after their father’s funeral. “Kevin is planning on living forever.”

  “Well, then you’re right,” she said glibly. “Thirty-seven’s too young for a midlife crisis. Maybe he just needed a change.” With the bluntness of the very young, she looked at Kevin’s siblings. “After all, you all picked up and left him.”

  It almost sounded like an accusation. Lily exchanged glances with Jimmy.

  “None of us planned it that way,” Alison protested for all of them.

  June shrugged. She had to be getting back to work. The land wasn’t going to tend itself. And she still had cows to milk and a disabled tractor to curse. “Still, that’s what happened. Maybe he thinks it’s time to start over.”

  Jimmy looked thoughtful. Maybe June had stumbled across something. “In Kevin’s case, it’s starting life in the first place. He’s never had time for a life,” he told his in-laws. “Been there for all of us and never had time to be there for himself.”

  June looked triumphant. “Mystery solved,” she announced. “This is his time for himself.”

  Alison tried to keep the sad feeling at bay, but it insisted on coming. She looked at Jimmy. “Still, it feels kind of weird, knowing the taxi service is gone.”

  Jimmy nodded his agreement. All three of them had taken turns putting in time at the service and driving a cab, even Lily. Driving a cab was how Alison had met Luc in the first place. Luc had come down from Hades, looking for someone to pretend to be his wife in order to cover an inadvertent white lie. He’d wound up saving Alison from a mugger and sustaining a concussion. To pay him back for his trouble, especially after she’d discovered the nursing shortage in Hades, Alison had agreed to the charade and stayed on to play the part in earnest.

  Crossing to the door, June placed her hand on the latch.

  “Probably no weirder than he’s feeling with all of you gone.” She opened the door. “Well, I’ve got to be getting back to work. I’ll see you all later.”

  Max shook his head as June closed the door. He put his arms around Lily, giving her a hug to stave off the bout of guilt he saw in her
eyes. “Always said June was the cheerful one in the family.”

  Jimmy looked after his sister-in-law thoughtfully. The last time Kevin had come up here, it had been to take part in his wedding. At twenty, June had seemed too young at the time. She wasn’t too young now.

  “Maybe that’s what we can do to get Kevin’s mind off whatever’s really bothering him.”

  “Do?” Lily echoed. “Do what? What are you talking about?”

  But Alison was already on Jimmy’s wavelength. “We’ll tell Kevin that June needs cheering up.” She brightened immensely. “Kevin’s at his best when he’s dealing with someone else’s problems.” She looked at the others. “The man is a problem solver. He misses having to deal with all our baggage.”

  Lily sniffed. “We didn’t come with baggage.”

  Jimmy gave his older sister a pointed look. “You had your own luggage store.”

  She laughed shortly. “And Casanova didn’t?”

  Max grinned as he tightened his arms around his wife-to-be. “I’m beginning to understand what Kevin did in the family. He kept the peace.”

  Lily got off her high horse. Turning, she brushed a kiss against her future husband’s cheek.

  “I’d say that gives Kevin something in common with you.”

  Dealing with Lily was where his people-reading skills came in handiest—and were the most challenged. “I’m not flattering myself,” Max told her. “I keep the peace for any one of a number of residents here. I know better than to try to exercise control over you.”

  “This marriage,” Jimmy announced to the others, “should work out just fine.”

  He ducked, but Max was quicker and caught Lily’s hand as she went to throw her cell phone at him.

  “Yes,” Max agreed, looking at Lily meaningfully as he gently pushed her hand down again, “it should.”

  Lily’s eyes sparkled, negating the frown she was attempting to form.

  Chapter Two

  Kevin slowly looked around at the groups of people milling around him at the Anchorage airport. He’d only gotten off the plane from Seattle fifteen minutes ago.

  It seemed longer.

  He felt a little homesick already, which was odd because Seattle had never been anything more to him than steel girders set against an almost continually misting sky.

  He supposed it had to do with his all-too-common need for the familiar. He wasn’t a man who suffered change well, although he wouldn’t have admitted this out loud to anyone, not even one of his siblings.

  The irony of it struck him as he continued to scan the interior of the airport. He might not do change well, but here he was, right smack-dab in the midst of it. Change. Change in his family structure now that they were all up here in Alaska and he was back in Seattle, and change in the very fiber of his life since he’d sold the only business he’d known for the past twenty years. Driving a cab had been his very first job. He’d started out as a driver for the company, saving and working endless hours, until he could manage, with the help of a bank loan and the money in the small trust fund his parents had left him, to buy the cab service when it was put up for sale.

  Back then, it had been only a three-cab company and the venture was decidedly risky, but he felt it was the only way to assure the futures of the three people who were depending on him.

  The thought added another blanket to the sorrow that threatened to smother him these days. There was no one depending on him now. Not his family, not the people who worked for him, because there were no people who worked for him anymore.

  It felt incredibly odd, being this free.

  Freedom, Kevin decided as he took yet another pass around the busy airport, was highly overrated and completely unfulfilling. At least as far as he was concerned.

  Dueling with a feeling of irritability, he glanced at his watch. His plane had been late getting in. His “ride,” otherwise known as the connecting private plane flight that would finally bring him to Hades, was even later. At least, he didn’t see his brother or either of his sisters in the vicinity.

  Maybe something had happened and they weren’t coming. Maybe there’d been another cave-in at the mines and the whole town was involved in a rescue operation. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  He didn’t see why they couldn’t all just move back to Seattle.

  Feeling antsy, Kevin scanned the back walls to see if he could spy a car rental counter. It was the tail end of summer, and snow hadn’t come yet to cut off access to the small town his family had chosen to live in. If worse came to worst and no one showed up for him, he figured he could drive there—as long as someone handed him a map or at least pointed him in the right direction. He’d always prided himself on being able to find any place, given enough time.

  Kevin supposed that made up for the fact that when it came to interacting with people, he’d always found it better just to listen rather than talk. Alison had once said that gave him a wise aura. He thought of himself as shy.

  “Kevin?”

  He didn’t recognize the woman’s voice coming from behind him. Turning around, he didn’t recognize the woman, either. At least, not immediately.

  His eyes washed over a petite, trim woman wearing a work shirt rolled up at the sleeves and a pair of very worn blue jeans that had either originally belonged to someone else, or were a living testimony that she’d lost a goodly amount of weight. Kevin suspected it was the former. The young woman had hair the color of a radiant sunrise and eyes so blue they drew out the last drops of loneliness that were lingering within him. Her hair was pulled back into a single long braid, exposing a face that was kissed by the sun and was as close to heart-shaped as humanly possible.

  And then it came to him.

  Two years ago, when he’d last seen her, she’d been a child. Twenty years old and just finding her way into her features. Two years had obviously done a great deal to show her the right path.

  She was, without benefit of makeup and with absolutely no care whatsoever, one of the loveliest young women he’d ever seen.

  “June?”

  Her grin was quick, like lightning that came and went in a blink. While it was there, it transformed her face from remote to warmingly friendly. Kevin felt something within him quicken.

  He recalled hearing Jimmy tell him that if June Yearling liked you, you had a friend for life, someone to rely on no matter what. But by the same token, she selected the people she was close to very carefully, as if they were slivers of gold to be separated from the seductive but worthless fool’s gold.

  June slipped her hand into his, shaking it before he even realized that he’d offered it to her.

  “Hi, they sent me to get you.” She turned then, looking at the blond woman behind her. “Actually, they sent us,” she amended.

  June cocked her head to look at him, as if to decide whether or not he remembered them, or if reintroductions were in order.

  He recognized the other woman more quickly. Sydney Kerrigan. She was the doctor’s wife. The doctor who had convinced Jimmy to remain here. The one who’d originally enticed his sister to come before that.

  No, he amended, that wasn’t entirely right. Luc had been the one to convince Alison where her place was, and April had been the deciding factor in Jimmy’s life. It had been more for love than for work that they had each remained.

  Love, it seemed, made the world go around. Just not in his case.

  But that boat had been one that had sailed a long time ago. Kevin knew that. He’d made his choice. It had come down to either Dorothy, or his siblings. But that had hardly been a contest. Dorothy had never stood a chance. Anyone who’d asked him to choose between them and his family wasn’t anyone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

  It just got lonely sometimes, that’s all. Especially now with so much of life behind him.

  The young woman in front of him, he thought, had the whole world before her.

  He wondered why she hadn’t left the confines of her Alaskan “prison” t
he way so many of her age had, according to Jimmy. He was the one who’d told him about the penchant most Alaskan teenagers had for fleeing the area the moment they were old enough.

  Jimmy’s own wife, April, June’s sister, had shot out of the region like a bat out of hell the moment she’d turned eighteen. Only her grandmother’s illness had brought her back. Temporarily, she’d thought. She was still here.

  As for him, Kevin couldn’t help wondering what the allure was, what kind of magical pull the region exercised over people like April, Max and June. Why were they still here when there was so much more to be had in the lower forty-nine?

  “Jimmy and Alison couldn’t get away,” June was explaining. “The vaccine they’d been waiting for came in. They needed to get inoculations underway immediately.”

  At least, that was what Jimmy had told her. She still thought the excuse was a little fishy, but she’d needed a break anyway. If it wasn’t for the fact that she hated accepting defeat in any shape or size, she would have begun rethinking the wisdom of her change in occupation. Farming was not the closest thing to her heart, but making a go of the family farm had become a matter of honor to her.

  Getting in front of Sydney, June reached for Kevin’s suitcase. “And Lily’s busy getting ready.”

  The woman looked as solid as a spring breeze. He placed his hand over the handle, stopping her from picking up the luggage. “Ready for what, the wedding?”

  “You,” Sydney told him over June’s head.

  “Me?” That didn’t make any sense. Why would Lily be fussing over his arrival? “I’ve seen her first thing in the morning, stumbling down the stairs wearing an old pair of men’s pajamas and looking like hell on an off day. There’s no need to get ready for me.”

  An enigmatic smile played on Sydney’s, his pilot’s, lips. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Sydney told him. “But I’m sworn to secrecy.” Playfully she held up a hand to stop any further exchange on the subject. “Sorry, you won’t get any more out of me.”

  “Fair enough,” he allowed, then looked at his future sister-in-law. She made another attempt to take the case from him. “I can carry my own suitcase, June. I’m not that old yet.”