Lily and the Lawman

“Welcome back.”

Stunned, her arms pinned to her sides, Lily pulled her head back and looked at Sydney. The other woman made it sound as if she was returning after a long journey rather than visiting for a short while to pull the unraveling ends of her life together.

All things considered, Lily supposed that the hug was appreciated. Awkwardly, she raised her arms and hugged Sydney back, her eyes on Max.

“So, has transportation improved any since the last time I was out here?”

“We’ve replaced some parts in the plane,” Sydney told her amicably. “And since this is summer, there is a road you can use with an all-terrain vehicle. But in the winter, the road becomes impassable and there’s still no way in or out of Hades except by dogsled or plane.”

Lily nodded. She was just making conversation. She knew exactly what to expect, thanks to Alison.

“Sounds perfect,” she answered. “Right now, I could do with a little seclusion and a lot of peace and quiet.”

But even as she said the words, she wasn’t all that sure she meant them. A big-city girl all of her life, Lily was already feeling homesick for the sound of traffic—of blaring horns, impatient drivers and raised voices.

And they hadn’t even left the terminal yet.

Maybe, she thought as Max went to get her luggage, she’d made a mistake in coming here.

Chapter Two

Max smiled to himself. He’d been observing Alison’s older, successful sister since they’d gotten airborne ten minutes ago. Judging by her frozen stare and the way she clutched her left armrest, Max figured that Lily Quintano reacted to flying much the way he did.

“I don’t like it, either.”

Startled, Lily turned her head away from the vast expanse of nothingness right beneath her and almost bumped into the sheriff. He was sitting much too close, but she supposed that wasn’t entirely his fault. The plane was crammed, to say the least.

Right now, he seemed to be using up all her available air.

“Like what?” She wanted to know.

Max nodded around him. “Riding in a small, single-engine plane. I keep waiting for a giant hand to reach right out of the sky and bat the plane to the ground, like in those cartoons they used to have for kids.” He glanced toward Sydney, who was sitting in front in the pilot’s seat. “No offense, Sydney.”

Sydney laughed lightly, knowing exactly how he felt. That had been her reaction once, too. “None taken. I wasn’t thrilled with my first ride to Hades, either. I was sure this plane was going to go down like a stone.”

Eventually, though, she’d changed her mind and managed to talk Shayne into giving her flying lessons. Lucky thing, too, otherwise she would have never been able to fly him to the hospital when he’d come down with appendicitis. She’d gotten him there just as it ruptured. Saving his life was a handy thing to hold over your husband’s head when discussions got a little heated.

“You feel better about it when you’re at the controls.” Sydney glanced over her shoulder. It wouldn’t hurt to have a few more pilots in Hades. Or a few more planes, for that matter. God knew, there were enough demands on her time these days. What Hades needed was a professional pilot who did nothing else, not like the rest of them. “Maybe you should take lessons, Max. I’d be happy to—”

He was already shaking his head. Air was not what he considered to be his natural environment.

“Thanks just the same,” Max told her. “I like having my feet firmly planted on the ground. I only fly when it’s absolutely unavoidable.”

Lily looked at him. That didn’t make sense to her. “So why did you volunteer to come meet my plane?”

“I didn’t come to meet your plane, I came to meet you.” He had no idea why it tickled him to correct her. Maybe because he could see that it irritated her, and he had a feeling that Ms. Lily Quintano was far too uptight for her own good. “And it wasn’t so much a case of volunteering as being volunteered.”

“Oh.”

Well, that was putting her in her place, Lily thought. Nothing like being regarded as a burden. Maybe she would have been better off staying home. She could have made a dartboard of Allen’s photograph and cleared her head that way. It would have been a lot less complicated than what she’d had to go through to make arrangements to spend two weeks away from the restaurant.

“I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you.”

The woman was blunt and she could be chillier than an Alaskan January night, Max thought. He was beginning to see why the wedding had been called off. Took a hell of a man to commit himself to the likes of Lily Quintano.

He made no apologies for her assumption. “Just part of being a sheriff,” he told her carelessly.

Her eyes narrowed. Now he was lumping her in with chores? Why had Alison and Jimmy sent this character? “I thought being a sheriff was catching bad guys and keeping the peace.”

He’d wondered when she’d get around to being sarcastic. “The peace more or less keeps itself out here and our bad guy supply has pretty much dwindled out.”

Max didn’t bother telling her about how Sam Jeffords’s traps kept being broken into and destroyed. Coming from where she did, he figured Lily would probably laugh at that being thought of as a crime. He knew it didn’t occur to people who lived in a city that some people’s livelihoods were still being made from setting traps and bringing in furs.

Personally, he knew he couldn’t do that himself—trap an animal so that someone could wear its pelt around their shoulders—but he wasn’t about to impose his own values on anyone else. Took all kinds to make the world go around. Faux fur notwithstanding, there was still a large market for animal skins. And, he supposed, on the plus side, it did keep the beaver population from multiplying and overwhelming the township.

“Then what is it that you do do?” The bright noonday sun was highlighting everything within the small cabin. The nose of the weapon he had tied to his thigh peered out of its holster, gleaming. It caught Lily’s attention. “Besides polish your gun?”

He wondered if she sharpened her tongue daily on a miller’s wheel or if it just maintained its edge naturally.

“A little of this, a little of that.” He looked at her pointedly. “Hunt for lost tourists.”

She never flinched. “Get many of those?”

“Even one is too many,” he told her honestly.

It was easy to get lost out here if you weren’t careful. Even people native to the area got lost on occasion. It wasn’t unusual to have to organize the town into a search party. He supposed that was what he liked best about living in a place like Hades, knowing that he could rely on his neighbor if he had to.

“Your brother got lost when he first came out here. He went to the Inuit village to inoculate the children against the flu that was going around that year. It was the beginning of June, but a freak snowstorm hit when he was on his way back. My sister was guiding him. If Jimmy and April hadn’t found their way to the cabin, they would have died from exposure.” He didn’t mention that, ironically, it was the cabin where he and his sisters had lived before their mother had retreated from reality. “This can be a very unforgiving land, Lily.”

There was something almost unsettlingly intimate about having him address her by her first name. Maybe the altitude was making her giddy, she thought, dismissing the odd feeling.

“If it’s so unforgiving, why do you and my sister stay?”

She wasn’t even going to mention Jimmy. When she first heard that her playboy brother had decided to take up residence in a place that was less than a fly speck on the map, she was rendered utterly speechless for one of the few times in her life. She knew that Jimmy had a good heart, and that he also liked to have a good time. From what Alison had told her, there was no nightlife in Hades other than the Salty Dog Saloon and a couple of movie theaters.

“Why does anyone stay?”

Max smiled to himself. If he had to explain, then she missed the point. But since she was waiting for some kind of answer, and he had a feeling she was the type who wouldn’t just let something go, he said, “Like a beautiful woman, it has its allure.”

She had another take on why he, at least, remained here. From the way he spoke and conducted himself, she had a feeling that he wasn’t exactly a go-getter. She wouldn’t have given him two minutes in her world.

“Or maybe it’s easier being a sheriff here than in, say—” she looked at him pointedly “—Seattle.”

If she was trying to put him on the defensive, he thought, she was going to be disappointed. “Maybe. But I wouldn’t know everyone in Seattle the way I do here.” He made himself comfortable in his seat, knowing they’d be landing soon. “I like knowing who I’m protecting.”

The plane suddenly dipped and without thinking, Lily grabbed onto Max, jerking him toward her.

“Sorry about that.” Sydney tossed the words over her shoulder. “We hit an air pocket.”