His sister June walked in, cleaning her hands on a rag that had once been part of a bright red dress. She was wearing her usual navy-blue coveralls with the by-now off-white racing strip running boldly across it. Three years his junior, she ran Hades’s most successful—and only—garage and repair shop.
She closed the door with her elbow and crossed to his desk.
“You’re all set, Max. It was just a leaky valve. This time,” she emphasized. Ordinarily detail-oriented, Max had almost run the vehicle into the ground. It wasn’t like him and she wondered if something was going on that she should know about. “I want to see that car of yours for a regular checkup by the end of next week, so we can get a jump on anything else that might be going wrong.” She studied his face covertly. “It’s not a colt anymore, you know, Max. That stallion’s been around the state a few times.”
Pausing to stick the rag back into her rear pocket, June decided to take her chances and comment on his expression. There was nothing Max hated more than having her meddle in his life. Nevertheless, she did it whenever she thought it prudent.
“All right, what’s on your mind, big brother?”
He waved her question away. “Just woolgathering,” he muttered.
Yeah, right, and she had a hunch she knew just where this particular skein of wool had originated. “Tucking that wool around a certain lady who’s leaving today?”
He looked at her sharply, then willed the tension he felt to leave his shoulders. Funny how he had to keep telling himself to do that. He wasn’t ordinarily uptight at all. But things had changed these past two weeks. And none of it, he thought, for the better.
“No.”
June perched on the edge of his desk, leaning over so that her face was level with his.
“Never lie to your priest, your doctor or your mechanic,” she told him cheerfully. “There’s nothing wrong with caring for somebody.”
He began to shuffle papers on his desk, just to have something to do. He hadn’t a clue what it was he was moving from one spot to the other.
“There is if there’s part of a continent between you. And there will be by tonight.”
But there was a way around this, she thought. Surely he had to see that. “So? Ask her to stay.”
He pushed himself away from his desk with the tip of his boot. The chair rolled backward, stopping at the wall. “It’s not that simple.”
June scooted forward to get closer. “Why? Don’t you have feelings for her?”
He frowned at the crease her movement had made on his blotter. “Don’t you have a timing belt to replace or a battery to jump?”
She sighed, getting off the desk. The man could be so damn stubborn.
“Never was any telling you anything.” Taking a few steps toward the door, June stopped and looked at him. “But if you ask me—”
Max was right behind her. Hands to her back, he pushed her out the door.
“I didn’t.” With that, he closed the door.
“My bill will be in the mail,” he heard her call through the door.
He merely shook his head and went back to his desk. Work was waiting for him, though it would certainly keep. There was nothing urgent to take him away, either physically or mentally.
That was just the trouble.
Part of him wanted to stop at Alison’s to see Lily one last time. To say goodbye. To hold her again, the way he had last night. To remember last night and the time they had spent together, exploring their bodies while trying to leave their souls out of it.
But he knew if he did go to Alison’s house to see Lily before she left, he would probably do something stupid. Such as ask her to stay.
And if she refused, he wasn’t sure how he would handle that.
He wasn’t his mother, but the pain, he knew, would be difficult to deal with. Better to leave the request unspoken.
He glanced at his watch. It was two minutes faster than the clock above the bulletin board. He felt his heart constrict. Sydney would probably be taking off with Lily in a few minutes. The flight from Anchorage wasn’t for another two hours, but Sydney never liked to cut things close. There was no way he could make it to the house now, unless he called.
Looking at the telephone for a long moment, he left the receiver where it was. In its cradle. Instead, he got up out of his chair and walked out of the office, to the Jeep his sister had just been working on.
There was someplace he had to be.
Max drove into the woods. He was going to the lake, the lake where he had first admitted to himself that there were the greenest shoots of feelings within him.
Stopping the vehicle, he quickly got out and went to the clearing. There he stood and waited until he heard the roar of the single-engine Cessna.
When it passed overhead, he took off his hat, shaded his eyes and said his goodbyes.
It was safer that way.
He hadn’t come.
Lily couldn’t believe it, but Max hadn’t come. Hadn’t come to say goodbye. She’d strained her ears, listening for the sound of his car, hoping against hope.
Being stupid.
She’d had an uneasy feeling last night, when he’d brought her home after they’d made love in his cabin, that this was the last time she would ever see him. She’d spent the entire evening battling against the sinking feeling, telling herself it didn’t matter.
Lying to herself.
Because throughout the evening, she’d kept waiting for Max to ask her to stay. Waiting for him to say something, anything, that could be construed as an effort to induce her to change her mind about leaving.
But he hadn’t.
It was as if he’d wanted her to go. Actions spoke louder than words, didn’t they? And he hadn’t come.
They’d talked about nonsense, making small talk, suddenly behaving like two strangers stuck in an elevator together, waiting to be rescued. And all the while, all she’d wanted was for him to sweep her into his arms and make some kind of half statement that he cared about her, even a little, that he’d miss her, even the tiniest bit.
But he hadn’t.
He’d said nothing except to agree that Arthur would be relieved to see her and that her cell phone bill was probably going to rival the national debt by the time she set foot in Seattle. When she’d pointed out that Arthur’s phone calls had become less frequent, Max hadn’t taken the hint, hadn’t said that maybe she could extend her stay a little while now that Arthur was handling things.
Her blood began to boil just thinking about it. How thick could one man be?
Unless, of course, that man didn’t care.
Sadness drenched her as the small plane climbed higher above the clouds. Any doubts she’d had that he didn’t care were just erased when Max failed to come by to tell her goodbye.
Almost everyone else in the town had come. Men she hardly knew, except by sight, had stopped at Alison and Luc’s house this morning, interrupting her packing and wanting to know when she would return.
Gracie Whitherspoon had even come by to give her a shawl she’d just finished making and once again to express her undying gratitude. The woman was almost a complete stranger, but she’d come.
And Max hadn’t, damn him.
The hell with him, Lily thought fiercely, clamping her hands onto the armrests. The hell with all men. She wasn’t about to get caught up in her father’s trap, wasn’t going to care so much that she ceased to function properly. Wasn’t going to care so much that her health suffered.
She was going to be just fine, damn Max Yearling’s insufferable hide.
“You’re going to rip out my armrests,” Sydney commented gently. She glanced at her passenger’s face. “Can’t be my flying, you don’t look petrified. You look angry.”
Lily shrugged, turning her face toward the window. Looking at clouds. “Just thinking.”
Sydney laughed softly to herself. Been there, done that. “Men can be pretty damn soul-wearying at times, can’t they?”
“Yeah
.” She turned to look at the other woman, embarrassed. “I mean, I wouldn’t know.”
Sydney smiled to herself. Lily still seemed unwilling to be open about what the rest of the town knew was happening. That she and Max were in a relationship whether either of them admitted it or not.
“All right,” she said gamely, “take it from me. They can be.” And then she smiled, thinking about Shayne, about how much happier her life was now than it ever had been. She’d found her purpose out here. And her heart. “But they’re the best game in town.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Lily mumbled under her breath.
But she would, Sydney thought. Unless she missed her guess, Lily would. “So,” she began cheerfully, “when are you coming back?”
Lily set her mouth grimly. She wanted to say “never” but this was where Jimmy and Alison lived. The possibility existed that she would return someday. “Not for quite some time.”
Sydney’s smile deepened. She wasn’t about to take any bets on that.
Annoyed, Lily let the phone receiver slip from her fingers and hit the cradle with a thud. She’d just gotten off the line with one of her suppliers over an inventory error. Her error.
That was the third order she’d messed up in two weeks. This morning, when the man at the docks told her that there was going to be an increase in the price this month, she’d almost cried.
Damn it, why couldn’t she get herself back on the track? Why was she letting some Neanderthal lawman mess up her mind so that she couldn’t function right?
Lord knew she certainly hadn’t left any sort of an impression on him.
He hadn’t called her, hadn’t written, nothing. It was as if those two weeks they’d spent together hadn’t happened, as if what they’d had hadn’t even existed.
Well, what had they had? she demanded silently, flipping on the computer on her desk. Great sex, right?
No, it had been more than that. At least, for her. It had been something wonderful.
She waited for the monitor to brighten. It didn’t. Now what? Realizing that she’d failed to turn it on didn’t improve her mood.
And just how did she know it was “something wonderful”? she challenged herself. It wasn’t as if she’d been around the block a few times the way so many other women had. Hell, she hadn’t even opened the damned door, except for this one time.
Still, a little voice whispered within her, a woman just knew.
Or was that a myth, too?
The whole internal debate was getting to be too much for her. Swallowing an oath, she reached for her steadily dwindling supply of aspirin. She needed something to do battle with the raging headache she was getting.
“You know, maybe I should buy stock in that company. The way you pop those aspirins, dry even—” Arthur shivered, standing in the doorway “—you’d think they were going out of style.”
She looked up at him accusingly. Lately, Arthur seemed to be hovering over her like a mother hen rather than a frightened chick. He’d gained confidence. At least her two weeks away had done someone some good, she thought darkly.
It had helped Vanessa, too, she reminded herself. The girl had taken her at her word and shown up at the beginning of this week. She was now working at the restaurant as a waitress and seemed a great deal happier than she had been.
Too bad the same couldn’t be said for her, Lily thought.
“The only things going out of style are manners.” Her tone, like her gaze, left no room for doubt. “Such as invasion of privacy.”
“I’m not invading,” Arthur replied with a proprietary sniff. “I’ve got a beachhead all stacked out here, remember?”
She sat back in her chair, waiting for the aspirin to kick in and kick butt. The headache was a killer. “You’ve certainly gotten cocky since I went on vacation.”
“And you’ve certainly gotten surly,” he countered. As he spoke, he began straightening things on her desk. A poster boy for nervous energy, Arthur’s long, aristocratic fingers were never still for more than a second at a time. “Remind me never to let you leave again.”
He’d been making unwanted observations about her behavior ever since she’d gotten back. Her scowl darkened. “Did you come in here for a reason?”
“Yes, there’s a man out front who says he wants to talk to you about a social event.” He pointed behind him toward the doorway for emphasis.
Lily sighed. The little drummers in her head were starting on their second set and she just wasn’t up to pretending she cared about anyone’s centerpiece arrangements.
She waved him out the door. “You handle it.”
To her surprise, Arthur remained where he was. “Sorry, no can do. I already offered. He says he’ll only talk to you. Besides, he’s kind of cute.” Arthur winked at her slyly. “Might be just what you need.”
She was tired of advice, tired of everything. “What I need is an assistant who doesn’t tell me what I need.” Lily sighed, dropping her head between her hands as she tried to pull herself together. “All right, you win. Send him in.”
She turned her chair toward the wall, taking in a deep cleansing breath and then letting it go again slowly before turning back toward the door.
Consequently, there was no air in her lungs for her to call on.
Her mouth dropped open as the man in her doorway walked into her office.
Max.
“You’re the man with the social function?”
He felt like a man crossing the Grand Canyon on a tightrope. Riding a unicycle. In a strong tail wind. Not at all certain if he was going to live to make it to the other side.
He nodded in response to her question. “That’s me.”
“What kind of a social function?” Lily heard herself asking. It was a stupid question, but she couldn’t seem to find her mind at the moment. It was gone and presumed missing.
His eyes never left her as he searched for some hint that he hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of his life, coming out here like this. For all he knew, she’d patched things up with that bastard she’d been engaged to.
“That depends entirely on you.”
He came. No matter what else was said, what else happened, he came. A sudden surge of joy overwhelmed her. Before she could stop herself, Lily had cleared her desk and was launching herself into his arms.
The kiss could have melted steel and very nearly melted her.
But there were questions to ask, things to be made clear.
Beginning with her brain.
Lily wedged her hands against his chest, creating a small space between them as she looked up at Max.
“What are you doing here? Really,” she emphasized before he said something about the social function again. They both knew he wasn’t here to book a banquet room at Lily’s for an Alaskan party.
He wanted just to be able to look at her. To stand here without saying a word and just look at her. “You might say I’ve run away from home.”
Her brows pulled together in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
He laughed shortly as he shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand, either.” For both their sakes, he voiced his thoughts out loud, trying to sort them out. “I’ve spent all my adult life not looking for a woman. Not letting myself get tangled up in anything but keeping the town safe for everyone in it.” He sighed. “You changed all that.”
Did he think that was a good thing, or a bad one? She couldn’t tell from his expression. “Oh?”
“I didn’t want you to,” he told her honestly. “But you did. You made me want things I didn’t think I wanted.”
Hope began to jump in her stomach like tiny popcorn kernels in a heated pan. “Such as?”
“A home, family,” he enumerated. “Kids. You.”
So far, it all sounded wonderful. “Where does the running away part come in?”
Hands clasped together at the small of her back, Max tightened his hold, pulling her closer.
“Well, I figured we had
a location problem and your commuting here every morning might be a problem, so I thought maybe I’d just come and live in Seattle, see how things went after a while.”
He made it sound as if he’d just walked across the street, rather than flown to Seattle from Anchorage. “‘Things’?”
He nodded. “You and me.”
She pressed her lips together, her eyes never leaving his. Following his lead, she laced her hands behind his back, as well. “How are they supposed to go?”
He didn’t want to talk, he wanted to kiss her again. To make love with her here, in this pristine office of hers. To sweep the computer to the floor with a single swing of his arm and take her here on her desk.
Instead he said, “You tell me.”
“Damn it.” Arthur’s voice came through the open door from the hallway. “Will one of you say I love you to the other and move this along?”
Stunned, Lily looked at Max, then toward the door. “Arthur, you’re eavesdropping.”
The disembodied voice took form as the tall, thin man stepped into the doorway. His hands were on his hips. “And it’s a good thing I am because the way you two are pussyfooting around the subject, they’ll be releasing Jaws 57 before you get around to telling each other how you feel.”
“Arthur,” she ordered, pointing to the doorway behind him, “get out.”
With a huff, the man turned on his heel and left.
“And close the door,” Lily added.
A hand reached out and wrapped itself around the doorknob, pulling it closed.
Max looked at her, secretly happy about Arthur’s prompting. “How do you feel?”
She caught her lip between her teeth, then said, “You first.”
“I think that’s evident by the fact that I was the one who came to you.”
She knew that. And it warmed her heart. But she craved words. Wonderful words to play and replay in her mind for the years to come. When she looked back at all of this and how it had begun. “Tell me anyway. Maybe I need to hear it.”
“I love you,” he said softly. “I don’t want to, but I do.”
She pretended to frown. “Not very romantic.”
“I can do better,” he promised. Mischief glinted in his eyes. “After you have your turn.” When she said nothing, he got just the slightest bit uneasy. “I’m out on a limb here, with my feelings all hanging out.”
Lily and the Lawman Page 18