Alison had waited as patiently as she could for Lily to broach the subject. It occurred to her, as Lily went about her business in the kitchen, preparing dinner, that hell had a better chance of freezing over than Lily had of bringing up the subject of this afternoon.
Shifting on the stool where she was perched, shelling the peas that Lily had handed her—a task she knew she’d been given just to keep her occupied and out of the way—Alison looked at her sister.
“I saw you coming back with Max.” Although she had to admit she thought it rather strange that the two were in separate vehicles. “Why didn’t you tell me you were spending the day with him?”
Lily continued moving around her sister’s kitchen, where she’d been for the past two hours, trying to channel the energy she was feeling into something productive. It was either that or take an ax to the woodpile still waiting to be chopped into kindling at the side of the shed.
She didn’t trust herself with an ax in her hands right now.
Pressing her lips together, she didn’t even spare Alison a look, afraid of what her sister might see in her eyes.
“I wasn’t spending the day with him. We ran into each other.”
“In the woods?” Alison asked incredulously. “What are the odds of that?”
With a suppressed sigh, Lily looked over her shoulder at Alison. Her sister was the picture of innocence. She wasn’t being taken in for a second. “Astronomical I imagine. He followed me.”
“Followed you?” Alison forgot about the peas she was supposed to be shelling and leaned closer. “Tell me more, this is getting to sound interesting.”
“Not interesting,” Lily retorted tersely, “just in the line of duty.” She recited the reason he’d given her. “He said he saw me leaving town and thought I might get lost, so he followed me.”
Alison nodded, resuming her appointed task. “That sounds like Max.”
Was Alison referring to the part about his following her? “He’s a stalker?”
“The word is protector, Lily my love.” Alison’s heart ached that Lily looked at things so harshly, so uncompromisingly. There was so much of life you missed that way. “You know, I think you’ve been in the big city so long, it’s colored your perspective about things, Lily.”
Lily placed the ladle down on the counter and turned around to look at her sister. What was she talking about? “Aly, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re all from the ‘big city.’ You, me, Jimmy, we were all born and raised in Seattle. You make it sound like you were born and bred here.”
Alison shrugged. She knew this was hard for Lily to understand. She gave it a shot.
“Maybe I was.” She saw Lily stare at her. “In a way. I feel at peace here, Lily. Like I belong. Like I really make a difference. I never made a difference back in Seattle.”
Lily abandoned what she was doing to cross to the counter and her sister. Did she actually believe what she was saying? “Of course you did.”
But Alison knew better. “Not like here. Here every single person is important, necessary. We all depend on one another, need one another.” It was as if they comprised one long, interconnected human chain. Or, she amended, as if they were one big, extended family.
Lily shook her head. “Sounds much too confining to me.”
“It’s all in the way you look at it.” Alison waited. But Lily said nothing, only turned back to the stew she was creating. Slipping off the stool, Alison came up behind her. “So, how do you look at it?”
Lily reached for the carrots she’d peeled a few minutes ago and began slicing them into quarter-inch pieces. “‘It’?”
“Him,” Alison finally said with a touch of exasperation. Was Lily deliberately being coy? “Max,” she added for good measure before her sister could turn her eyes innocently up at her and ask who. “How do you find Max?”
That was an easy one. Lily brought the knife down a little harder on the chopping block. “I find him insufferable.”
Alison watched Lily chop for a few seconds and had her answer. She smiled to herself. “I see.”
Lily looked up, alerted by something in her sister’s voice.
“No, you don’t ‘see.”’ Frowning, she put down the knife. She wanted this to be perfectly clear to Alison. “I know that tone, Alison Anne Quintano…LeBlanc,” she remembered to add after a beat. “There’s nothing to see beyond what I just said. Your wonderful sheriff’s a self-centered, self-serving, annoying martinet who thinks he’s God, or at least Wyatt Earp with a little Kit Carson thrown in.”
“Kit Carson?”
“Daniel Boone, Jim Bridger, some mountain man, I don’t remember their names,” she said in disgust. Eighth-grade history seemed a long time ago.
Alison studied her sister intently as Lily spoke, becoming more and more convinced that something was going on, something Lily didn’t want to admit. Something, perhaps, that her sister didn’t even recognize might be for her own good. She began to believe that Lily was fighting an attraction to Max.
“Just what happened out there while he was ‘stalking’ you?” Alison asked, using the term that Lily had flung out so carelessly.
Lily picked up the chopping knife again and began mincing onions. “He saved me from a bear.”
Had she still been sitting on the stool, Alison was certain she would have slid off. “He what?”
Lily shrugged, depositing the first batch of minced onions into the pot. “No big deal, I’m not even sure Max was the one who fired the shot. He said it was someone named Victor.”
This was getting more confusing, not less. “Shot? What shot?”
Lily reached for more onions, debating the correct number for the pot size she was using. “The one that scared away the bear.”
Flabbergasted, Alison cried, “What are you doing roaming around without—” Grabbing Lily’s shoulder, she spun her around to face her. “You’re not leaving town again on your own, understand?”
She was too old to have someone take that tone with her. “Stop sounding like Kevin,” Lily told her sister. “You’re not old enough to do that, or to order me around. You never were.”
Age had nothing to do with it. It was a matter of the heart. “I’m old enough to not want you mauled by a bear and to worry about you,” Alison insisted. “Now tell me what happened. I don’t want sound bites,” she warned before Lily got started. “I want the full six o’clock news version.”
Lily’s eyes met her sister’s. A smile curved her mouth ever so slightly. She supposed, in a way, it was nice to have someone worry about her. She’d been independent so long, she’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone really care. She’d bitten Kevin’s head off so many times in the past, he’d just given her her lead lately. Besides, since there were only the two of them left in Seattle, she knew he didn’t want to antagonize her any more than he had to.
“Film at eleven.”
Exasperation seized Alison. “Lily!”
Taking pity on her, Lily launched into the narrative. “I drove to the lake just to be by myself for a while.” She thought it prudent to skip the part about taking off her clothes and going swimming. The fewer people who knew about that, the better. If Max said anything to anyone about it, she’d just deny it, she thought vehemently, convinced that he probably would. Men liked to brag. He’d probably embellish it, as well. “There was this brown bear trying to catch fish.”
“A grizzly?”
“I guess.” She shrugged as she went on working. She didn’t know one bear from another, except that a polar bear was white. “I must have screamed when I saw him because the next thing I knew, he forgot about lunch and was running toward me.”
Lily tried to sound nonchalant, but just the retelling of it made her heart beat faster. The whole thing felt almost surreal. As did what happened afterward. She banked down the stray feelings that were trying to break through.
“I ran into the forest and climbed the highest tree I could find. I heard a shot a couple of minutes later
and then Max came up to the tree. He said someone named Victor scared the bear away.”
That sounded plausible. Alison had met the old man. He’d looked right through her.
“Victor’s a local. Half Native American, half Inuit. He’s kind of like a shadowy figure around here. Comes into town occasionally. Keeps to himself mostly. Max thinks he’s the one freeing the animals out of Jeffords’s traps.” She stopped, replaying something Lily had just said. “How’d you get down from the tree?”
A blush began to work its way up her neck, fast and furious. Lily hoped that if Alison saw it, she’d think it was the heat in the kitchen. She turned back to the chopping block.
“What do you mean, how did I get down?” she asked self-consciously. “I climbed down.”
Suspicious, Alison circled her, but Lily kept her back to her, working. “Lily, I grew up with you. You never wanted to climb into the treehouse Dad made for us. You were afraid of heights, remember?” And then the answer came to her. “Did Max get you down?”
She knew she could lie, but it would probably backfire on her somehow. Besides, she didn’t like lying to her family, beyond trying to convince them that she was doing fine.
“Yes.”
The pieces were beginning to come together. “So he rescued you.”
Lily lifted a shoulder, letting it drop noncommittally. “In a manner of speaking.”
Yes, there was definitely something going on here. “And what is it that you’re not speaking?”
Annoyed, Lily put down the knife and turned to face her sister. “Alison, I work better alone in the kitchen.”
“Since when?” Alison hooted. “There are at least four other people milling around in the kitchen at any one given time at Lily’s. Don’t give me that ‘alone’ garbage, you work best under pressure and in the middle of chaos.” She moved closer, as if her nearness could drag the truth out of Lily. “So? What happened after he rescued you? Did he kiss you?”
“Why?” Lily demanded defensively. “Does he kiss everyone?”
Okay, she had her answer, Alison thought. “No, that’s just the point.”
Lily didn’t remember Alison being this intrusive. It had to be living here in this nothing of a town that was responsible. “Then what makes you think he kissed me?”
Alison began clearing away the mess that was piling up in Lily’s wake. “Because you’re acting weird, even for you.”
“Never say that to a woman wielding a knife, Aly.” She raised it for emphasis, then began working again. “Yes,” she finally said, knowing that Alison wasn’t going to give up until she had her answer. “He kissed me.”
Alison leaned over so that her face was not all that far away from the chopping block. It was the only way to get Lily’s attention. “And?”
“And,” Lily said, her hand splayed across Alison’s face, pushing her back the way she used to do when they were children. “He stopped.” She moved the chopping block to a more inaccessible place on the counter. “End of story.”
But it wasn’t, Alison thought. It wasn’t the end of the story, and that was just the point. Perhaps the trouble. Lily was very vulnerable right now and though she knew Max would never force himself on someone, maybe something had gone further in the woods than her sister had wanted it to.
Or, Alison suddenly realized, and this was the more likely event of the two, it hadn’t gone further at all. And Lily had felt cheated. Maybe even undermined, especially after finding that Allen had turned to someone else to satisfy his appetites.
Lily could feel Alison’s eyes all but boring little holes in her. With a sigh, she looked up. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Nothing.” She knew better than to give voice to her suspicions. At least, not yet. Lily would have her head. “Just thinking.”
Lily had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what Alison was thinking. God, she hoped that her sister wasn’t planning on setting her up with Max. Or anyone, for that matter. She should have lied about the whole thing. Too late now.
“If it’s not about setting the table, stop thinking right now.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Alison. “That’s an order.”
Alison smiled, saluting. “Yes, ma’am.” But she went on thinking nonetheless.
Evening had long since turned to night and there was a long day waiting for them tomorrow. Leaving Lily out on the porch, Alison and Luc said their goodnights and went upstairs to their room.
Getting into bed shortly thereafter, Luc commented again on the meal that his sister-in-law had served. “Too bad there’s no way to keep her in Hades. She could certainly make a fortune if she ever opened her own restaurant up here. The men haven’t stopped asking when she’s coming back to whip up another batch of barbecue sauce.”
The men who frequented the Salty were not exactly connoisseurs, but Alison appreciated the compliment on her sister’s behalf.
“Who knows? Maybe she might.”
He watched his wife as she slipped in beside him. He loved watching her. Watching Alison was one of his favorite pastimes.
“Has she said anything?” Though she’d been gracious, his impression was that Lily was just marking time until she left again.
Alison turned toward him in the bed, her eyes smiling. “I think Lily likes Max.”
Matchmaking. He might have known. Ever since April had asked her brother to go with Sydney to pick Lily up at the airport, he knew Alison was hoping that romance would take root between the two. But he’d been around to witness the interaction between them and knew that Alison’s dream was not to be.
“What was your first clue? The daggers she sends his way every time they talk, or the way she frowned when you brought up his name at dinner tonight?”
Sighing, Alison turned away and lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. “You’re a man, you don’t understand these things.”
He wasn’t crazy about being summarily dismissed. Especially by Alison. She knew better. “You’re right, I’m a man and I understand them from a man’s point of view.”
He’d caught her attention. She turned toward him again, her body brushing his beneath the light sheet. “Which is?”
“That your sister’s a very attractive woman who seems determined to keep men away from her.” Although, he had to admit, it wasn’t easy in a place like Hades. Men were willing to overlook a lot in exchange for a permanent bed partner and someone to talk to during the long nights. “Ever read The Taming of the Shrew?”
She’d read the play in high school once and hardly remembered it. But Luc’s inference was unmistakable. “Are you saying Lily’s a shrew?”
He raised a brow. Alison was nothing if not fair and honest. “Are you saying she’s not?”
She laughed, surrendering. “Well, maybe a little. But she has a good heart.”
He liked the way Alison stood up for the people she loved. It was part of what made her so appealing to him. “Nobody ever said she didn’t. But it is going to take a rare man to tame her,” he pointed out. “Preferably one with an iron hide.”
Alison snuggled against him, glad he saw things her way. “That would describe our local sheriff to a T, don’t you think?”
Luc kissed the top of her head. He knew that all she wanted was for her sister to be happy, but he felt compelled to warn her anyway. “Alison, don’t matchmake. If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen naturally.”
She thought of what Lily had told her. And what she hadn’t. “I think it already has.”
Maybe he was missing something. Now that he thought of it, Alison did look like the cat that ate the canary. “And you’re basing this assumption on…?”
“Max rescued Lily from a bear.”
No one had said anything to him at dinner. He held her at arm’s length, looking at her. “When did this happen?”
“Today,” she said matter-of-factly. And then her grin gave her away. “She went off by herself in my car. Max, bless him, followed her, and when she got in over her he
ad, he saved her.” She sighed, hugging her husband. “Sounds like the perfect start to a romance to me.”
He didn’t want Alison getting her hopes up unnecessarily. “Except that she’s leaving in little more than a week.”
Her eyes danced as she looked up at him. “I wasn’t supposed to stay, either, remember?”
He remembered every single minute of their courtship, especially when she didn’t want to be courted. “Yeah, but then you found me irresistibly charming.”
She sniffed. “Max is charming.”
He pretended to be slighted. “As charming as me?”
The grin worked its way into her eyes where it became mischievous. “Well, I wouldn’t know, firsthand.”
“And it’s going to stay that way.”
She laughed, hugging him. “I love it when you talk forceful.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He shifted so that he was over her. Luc began toying with the strap of her nightgown, slowly sending it down the slope of her shoulder. “Right now, though, I’d rather not talk at all.”
“Oh?” she asked innocently. “And what would you rather do?”
He nipped her lower lip between his teeth, driving her crazy. “Guess.”
She moved beneath him, stirring him. “I’d rather you showed me.”
He slipped the other strap off her shoulders and then tugged at it beneath the sheet.
“With pleasure.” Luc brought his mouth down to hers.
Chapter Nine
Ike looked up as the outer door opened, ushering the late morning light into the saloon’s dim interior. If he was surprised to see Alison’s sister coming in alone, he didn’t show it.
He polished a small area on the already-clean counter and indicated that she should come forward and park herself there if she were so inclined.
Ike winked at her. “Well, darlin’, nice to see you again. If you’re looking for Luc, he’s not here.”
Lily, wearing a new pair of jeans she’d bought at the general store and a white tank top that did more than an admirable job of showing off her curves, remained for a moment in the doorway. She shook her head in response. “No, I’m not looking for Luc.”
Lily and the Lawman Page 10