Lily and the Lawman. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

      Lily’s heart was pounding so hard that she felt as though someone was doing a drumroll in her chest. “Felt more like the pocket hit us.” With effort, Lily pulled herself together. Realizing that she was still clutching Max’s forearm, she flushed and released him. It was then she saw that her nails had dug into his wrist, leaving a long, red mark. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

      “Nice to know.” He glanced at the scratch. A small red line of blood was forming along its length, making it look angry. Digging into his pocket, he took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the line. Max raised his eyes to hers. Amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth as he deadpanned, “I guess I can always tell people you drew first blood.”

      Lily shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She hated acting weak. It detracted from the image she had of herself, the one she liked to project.

      “I’m not usually this jumpy.” Lily slid forward, her hand on the back of Sydney’s seat. “How much farther is it?”

      The comparison to her own children’s “are we there yet?” was unavoidable, but Sydney kept that to herself. She had a feeling that Alison’s sister wouldn’t take kindly to being compared to a ten-year-old girl and a fourteen-year-old boy, not to mention her two-year-old toddler. But she said what every good parent who hadn’t yet lost their temper said in similar circumstances.

      “Almost there.”

      Couldn’t СКАЧАТЬ