Weddings Collection. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ sighed, not wanting to let go of the moment. Feeling it slip away nonetheless. “Kevin, can’t you just do something without debating it? It happened, so it was supposed to happen. And I’m not sorry it did.” She looked down at the paint can by his feet. “Is that your last one?”

      “What?”

      She grinned. “I meant paint can, not kiss.” She jerked her thumb in the direction of her vehicle. “Because I can run into town and get more. Paint,” she clarified.

      He’d already decided to go into town. And now the need was more urgent than before. He needed to put space between them. A whole lot of space. “I’ll get the paint. I could use a break right now.”

      “From the work, or from something else?” She looked at him knowingly. For a brave man, he certainly didn’t act it all the time.

      His expression was the soul of innocence. “You’re the one who told me not to overcomplicate things, remember?” Kevin picked up his shirt from the railing he’d painted two days ago. Despite the humidity that hung oppressively all around them, the railing had eventually dried.

      She knew she shouldn’t stare at him like that, but she couldn’t help herself. He was one magnificent specimen of manhood. “If you go to the emporium without your shirt on, I guarantee you that Mrs. Kellogg will sell you the paint at cost. Maybe even make you a present of it.”

      He slipped on the shirt and began rebuttoning it. “And why would she do that?”

      “Have you seen Mr. Kellogg?”

      He laughed, tucking his shirt in. “You really are good for a man’s ego.”

      “I don’t say that to every man,” she informed him. I don’t say that to any man. Only you.

      He wanted to kiss her again before he left. But if he did, he knew he wasn’t going to leave. Not for a very long time.

      So, in self-preservation, Kevin merely nodded at her and walked to Alison’s Jeep. “I’ll be back in a little while,” he promised.

      She pressed her lips together. Maybe he was right, maybe they needed some space, some perspective. Every time she was around him, she lost it.

      “I might not be here when you get back.” June pointed toward the horizon, to where the property continued. “I’ve got some work waiting for me in the south field.”

      “I could do that when I come back.”

      She shook her head. “You’re doing too much as it is. I don’t want to be accused of wearing you out before the wedding.”

      “You’ve got a point.” He turned the key in the ignition. Lily’s wedding was a little more than a week away. His ticket home was for the day after that.

      Time was growing shorter.

      The thought filled him with a melancholy that he ordinarily associated with moving through life without his siblings. Which only proved to him that at bottom he viewed June in the same light as he did Alison, Lily and Jimmy. Just another sibling.

      And then he shook his head as he turned the Jeep toward Hades. Funny the lies people told themselves just to continue.

      There were times when she liked to come to the grave site by herself and just talk things out with her mother. That there was no audible response never troubled her too much. If she was very quiet, she could feel the response in her heart.

      This was one of those times.

      She bit her lip, debating. She really did have work to do. Hay didn’t take care of itself.

      The debate was short-lived.

      On impulse, June abandoned her work and stopped to pick a handful of wildflowers that seemed to have grown expressly for the purpose of decorating her mother’s grave. They were wild roses. Her mother had always loved wild roses.

      It was what her father had called her. Wild Rose.

      June placed the freshly plucked bouquet on the seat beside her and drove toward the town’s small cemetery. She needed to be near her mother. To share a moment in time the way she hadn’t been able to in life.

      The cemetery contained the remains of all the past citizens of Hades who had come here in search of something, or to flee something. The former had been the case for the two oldest bodies buried on the hill, that of two miners. They had been the original founders of the small town, one of whom had given the town its name in a fit of despair and desperation. He’d thought of it as hell, but society being what it had been in those days, he’d called it by the only acceptable label that could have been given then: Hades. It had stuck and aroused a kind of dry humor when referred to in the dead of bone-chilling winter.

      She’d always been amused by that story, June thought as she approached the small wrought-iron-gated area.

      Her smile faded a little as she saw that she wasn’t going to be alone here, the way she’d hoped. There was someone else there at the cemetery already. His back to her, he stood over a grave.

      She didn’t recognize the coat.

      The town’s population was still small enough for her to be able to recognize not only all the inhabitants of Hades, but also the clothing they wore.

      Maybe Mr. Kellogg was carrying a new line of winter apparel at the emporium. The coat looked too warm for this time of year.

      She stopped the car and took measure of the person she deemed a stranger.

      The man was tall, with flowing iron-gray hair. Though he was broad shouldered, his shoulders seemed to be slumped, as if life had beaten him down year by year, inch by inch.

      A relative? A curious stranger absorbing the names of past citizens for some unknown reason of his own? They had a few tourists here in the summer, but this wasn’t exactly a tourist draw.

      Taking her key from the ignition, June got out of the vehicle.

      Strangers were supposed to invite caution, but she had never been the cautious type. Especially since, she realized, the man stood over the very grave she wanted to put her flowers on.

      What was he doing here?

      There were flowers on the grave already. Fresh ones. The wilt of even a day’s separation from the soil hadn’t begun to penetrate the blooms. Had Max or April had the same inclination today? Neither one had mentioned intending to come here.

      Maybe her grandmother had passed by. She tried to remember if today had some sort of significance. And then she remembered.

      It was her mother’s wedding anniversary.

      She stared at the stranger’s back. Had he put the flowers there?

      Why?

      The word echoed in her head as her stomach tightened instinctively in anticipation. A strange numbness descended over her.

      She strode forward. “That’s my mother’s grave,” she announced crisply. The man’s head jerked up in response, as if he СКАЧАТЬ