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
