The Bride Wore Blue Jeans Read online

  “I was born old,” June said.

  Wasn’t that always the mantra with people who were too young? Kevin mused. His eyes swept over her beautiful face. Her perfect, smooth heart-shaped face. “You don’t look all that old to me.”

  “I could say the same about you.” Her smile flashed, casting a spectrum like the northern lights. Mostly within him.

  “Of course, you might need to take a little closer look at me. Sometimes your eyes play tricks on you.” June stepped closer to him, raising her face up for his inspection.

  Kevin doubted if he’d ever seen a complexion so flawless. Or compelling. “No, no tricks,” he murmured. Other than the one his own pulse executed by vibrating faster than he could ever remember.

  The grin entered her eyes and then slowly, enticingly, faded as she looked up into his face. It took her a second to find her voice.

  “So, do I kiss you or do you kiss me?”

  The Bride Wore Blue Jeans

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  To Michael,

  who never gives up.

  Love,

  Marysia

  Books by Marie Ferrarella in Miniseries

  ChildFinders, Inc.

  A Hero for All Seasons IM #932

  A Forever Kind of Hero IM #943

  Hero in the Nick of Time IM #956

  Hero for Hire IM #1042

  An Uncommon Hero Silhouette Books

  A Hero in Her Eyes IM #1059

  Heart of a Hero IM #1105

  Baby’s Choice

  Caution: Baby Ahead SR #1007

  Mother on the Wing SR #1026

  Baby Times Two SR #1037

  The Baby of the Month Club

  Baby’s First Christmas SE #997

  Happy New Year—Baby! IM #686

  The 7lb., 2oz. Valentine Yours Truly

  Husband: Optional SD #988

  Do You Take This Child? SR #1145

  Detective Dad World’s Most Eligible Bachelors

  The Once and Future Father IM #1017

  In the Family Way Silhouette Books

  Baby Talk Silhouette Books

  An Abundance of Babies SE #1422

  Like Mother, Like Daughter

  One Plus One Makes Marriage SR #1328

  Never Too Late for Love SR #1351

  The Bachelors of Blair Memorial

  In Graywolf’s Hands IM #1155

  M.D. Most Wanted IM #1167

  Mac’s Bedside Manner SE #1492

  Undercover M.D. IM #1191

  Two Halves of a Whole

  The Baby Came C.O.D. SR #1264

  Desperately Seeking Twin Yours Truly

  Those Sinclairs

  Holding Out for a Hero IM #496

  Heroes Great and Small IM #501

  Christmas Every Day IM #538

  Caitlin’s Guardian Angel IM #661

  The Cutlers of the Shady Lady Ranch

  (Yours Truly titles)

  Fiona and the Sexy Stranger

  Cowboys Are for Loving

  Will and the Headstrong Female

  The Law and Ginny Marlow

  A Match for Morgan

  A Triple Threat to Bachelorhood SR #1564

  *The Reeds

  Callaghan’s Way IM #601

  Serena McKee’s Back in Town IM #808

  *McClellans & Marinos

  Man Trouble SR #815

  The Taming of the Teen SR #839

  Babies on His Mind SR #920

  The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe SR #1408

  *The Alaskans

  Wife in the Mail SE #1217

  Stand-In Mom SE #1294

  Found: His Perfect Wife SE #1310

  The M.D. Meets His Match SE #1401

  Lily and the Lawman SE #1467

  The Bride Wore Blue Jeans SE #1565

  *The Pendletons

  Baby in the Middle SE #892

  Husband: Some Assembly Required SE #931

  The Mom Squad

  A Billionaire and a Baby SE #1528

  A Bachelor and a Baby SD #1503

  The Baby Mission IM #1220

  Beauty and the Baby SR #1668

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

  Dear Reader,

  Well, here we are, at the end of the line for this miniseries. Who would have ever thought we’d come so far? The very first story of The Alaskans was inspired by a TV series I watched aeons ago, a turn-of-the-last-century tale that was set in Alaska. Wife in the Mail was only supposed to be a single story about a lady who wanted to find a fresh start in a pristine part of our beloved country. But while telling her story, I fell in love with the hero’s best friend, Ike, the guy who ran the old-fashioned saloon in Hades. And well, he had a cousin, whose future wife had two brothers and a sister and…well, you know how it goes. I’ve always been a little long-winded.

  But now it’s time to tie up the tales with a bow by giving you Kevin and June’s story. I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, and if this does strike a chord or two, maybe you’ll find the time and the urge to go revisit some of the other citizens of Hades. When you do, say hi for me. I miss them already.

  I wish you love and happiness.

  Best,

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  He missed them.

  Kevin Quintano carefully placed the framed eight-by-ten photograph he’d been looking at for the past ten minutes back on his coffee table and sighed. He could almost hear the laughter in that photograph, taken at Jimmy’s graduation from medical school. It was of the four of them. Alison, Lily, Jimmy and him.

  He truly missed them.

  Missed the sound of their voices, missed the good-natured bickering between his younger siblings that he’d once thought would send him up a wall. Missed life the way it used to be.

  There were times when the silence became overwhelming. To get away from it, he’d turned on a radio or a television set in every room of the house, just to hear people talking, just to see images.

  But the silence wasn’t the worst of it. The loneliness was.

  You’d think now, at thirty-seven, with no debts and more money than he knew what to do with, for the very first time in his life he’d kick back and enjoy himself.

  “Damn, Kevin, you can live the high life now,” Nathan had said enviously at his recent farewell party. The big, strapping black man and the other cab drivers who used to work for him had come together and thrown a party just for him.

  Trouble was, Kevin mused, moving into the kitchen to prepare a lunch he had no desire to eat, he had neither wanted the high life, nor known what to do with it should he ever wind up stumbling across it.

  What he wanted was the busy life. The life that barely gave him enough time to draw two breaths together in succession.

  Kevin stared into the refrigerator. It was nearly em
pty. He’d forgotten to go grocery shopping. Again. Lily used to take care of that for him because he was always too busy to do it himself.

  Too busy.

  That’s the way it had been ever since he’d turned seventeen and, through some creative doctoring of his birth certificate, had gotten himself placed in charge of his orphaned brother and sisters. Overnight he’d become both mother and father to three kids without the comforting benefit of having a spouse or ever having procreated.

  And now, he thought, he was experiencing the empty-nest syndrome under the same set of circumstances.

  Big time.

  That was probably why, in a moment of weakness—because Nathan and Joe had talked him into thinking that perhaps a huge change might shake him out of his doldrums—he’d sold his taxicab service. The very same service that had seen his fledgling family through the hard times. The same service that had allowed him to put food on the table and take out a loan so that Jimmy could go to medical school and graduate as something more than a pauper with an incredible debt to repay.

  It was Kevin who had shouldered the debt. And he who’d been so damn proud of his brother at graduation.

  In its time, the taxicab service had also allowed him to put Alison, the baby of the family, through nursing school and to set Lily up in her very first restaurant when they’d all decided that she had an incredible gift for creating meals but no capacity for taking orders.

  And where had all that loan-incurring finally gotten him?

  Alone, that’s where.

  Alone while the rest of them, the three people who mattered most in his life, had gone off, one by one, to live in Alaska, in some godforsaken place aptly labeled Hades.

  Hell.

  Wandering back into the living room, Kevin dropped down into the sofa and stared blankly at a woman trying vainly to escape a horde of rampaging twelve-foot spiders. Midday programs were hellish, too.

  That was where he felt he was right now. In hell. And he’d discovered something these past few weeks. It wasn’t fire and brimstone that created a hell, it was bare-bones loneliness. Loneliness comprised of slick, glasslike walls that sent him sliding back to the ground no matter how quickly he tried to scale them.

  He knew he should be proud of his siblings and the selflessness they’d exhibited to varying degrees. Alison had gone first, because Hades needed a nurse and she needed to get certified as a nurse-practitioner by putting time in a place like that.

  Only problem was, she’d put in her heart as well and so had remained.

  When Jimmy had gone to visit her, he’d lost his heart as well. Not to the region, but to April Yearling, the granddaughter of Hades’s postmistress. Hades and the surrounding region badly needed another doctor and Jimmy had found his true calling.

  Lily’s broken engagement had brought her to the same place to recover, Alaska being the only place that could withstand the heat of her anger without frying to a crisp. Intending to stay only two weeks, Lily found solace for her wounded pride and chipped heart with Hades sheriff, Max Yearling, who just happened to be April’s brother.

  It was as if the Fates were conspiring to bring his family to a place that spent six months of every year in a deep freeze, cut off from civilization except by air travel.

  Kevin had thought—hoped—that Alaska might be a passing phase with Lily. Lily had always been the mercurial one, the one who never invested her emotions for fear of being hurt. But this time, she apparently was sticking it out, and the last time he’d spoken to her, she’d said something about bringing real food to the residents of Hades and had her eye on opening a restaurant there. He knew the signs by now. Lily, like Alison and Jimmy before her, was settling in for good.

  Unable to watch the giant spiders destroy yet another campsite and assorted campers, Kevin flipped the channel. The afternoon news looked no less disconcerting. He dropped the remote on the table, giving up.

  The restlessness refused to abate.

  It was this restlessness that had made him so susceptible to Nathan and Joe’s suggestion about selling the cab service. He’d done it on a lark, put the business up for sale. His heart hadn’t really been in it. And then that offer had come in. The one he couldn’t refuse without submitting himself to a sanity hearing because it was so incredibly lucrative.

  So here he was, a man of leisure who knew absolutely nothing about taking it easy except what he’d learned lately, which was that he hated it. That he wasn’t cut out for it in any manner, shape or form.

  Which was why he’d been searching through the Seattle classifieds this Sunday morning, looking at the section that listed businesses for sale and trying to figure out what to do with himself other than making the electric company rich by pumping electricity through every room of the empty house. The house where he and his brother and sisters had grown up in.

  “What you need, boy, is a fine-looking woman to take your mind off everything.” That had been Nathan’s solution, delivered sagely over a mug of ale.

  Fine-looking women were Nathan’s solution to everything, up to and including global warming and the threat of an alien invasion. However, that wasn’t his solution, Kevin thought. Not even remotely.

  He got up and shut off the television set and picked up the classifieds again. Maybe there was something he’d missed the first time.

  Looks had never meant anything to him. Heart did. Heart and soul and patience. But all the women he’d known possessing those qualities had been taken long before now.

  Besides, there wasn’t much chance of a woman like that showing up at his door, and that would be the only way he’d run into one. He didn’t believe in any of the conventional ways of “hooking up” with members of the fairer sex. That had never been his way. And now that he no longer occasionally drove a cab, there was absolutely no chance of his meeting anyone.

  Kevin paused, trying to remember the last time he’d actually gone out on a date. Nothing came to him.

  But dating, or finding a lifelong partner wasn’t why he was looking to put his newfound fortune into another business. He just wanted to be doing something. Something productive.

  Anything productive.

  He’d been out of the taxicab business for exactly five days and was going stir-crazy.

  The phone rang and he grabbed the receiver like a drowning man grabbing at a twig floating by him in the river.

  If it was a telemarketer on the other end, he thought, this was their lucky day. He was buying, as long as buying meant he could hear the sound of another person’s voice responding to his own.

  “Hello?”

  “Kev?”

  Kevin could feel himself lighting up inside like a Christmas tree the instant he heard his sister’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Lily, how are you?” He bit back the desire to ask the next question that loomed in his mind in twenty-four-foot neon letters: Are you coming home? He already knew the answer to that. Asking wasn’t going to change it.

  “I’m terrific, Kev. Better than terrific, I’m spectacular.”

  He didn’t have to see her to know that she was positively glowing. So much for her throwing in the towel and deciding to move back to Seattle.

  There was something else in her voice he recognized as well. “You’re getting married, aren’t you?”

  There was a slight pause on the other end of the line. “God, but you’re good. How did you—?”

  A small laugh escaped him. “I’ve had this conversation before. Twice,” he reminded her. “When Alison called to say she was marrying Luc and when Jimmy called to say he was staying on as a doctor in Hades and, oh, by the way, yes, he was getting married.”

  If Jimmy, a guy known to his friends as the eternal happy bachelor could succumb to the charms of a homegrown native, Kevin had known in his heart that Lily wasn’t far behind. Especially when she’d called before to give him a detailed description of Max Yearling right down to his worn, size-ten boots. It was only a matter of waiting for the sh
oe to finally drop, that’s all.

  Kevin knew he was happy for her, even as he was sad for himself. He did his best to sound cheerful. “So the sheriff makes you happy, does he?”

  Lily sighed, contentment of a caliber he didn’t ever recall hearing before in her voice. “The way you wouldn’t believe.”

  Kevin felt his mouth curving in a grin. “I don’t need details, Lily.”

  “And you’re not getting any,” she informed him with a laugh. “But I want you to come up here. For the wedding. It’s in three weeks and I wouldn’t feel as if it’s official unless you’re here to give me away.”

  He refrained from saying that no one had ever held on to her long enough to pretend that she was his to give away. Lily had been her own person from a very early age.

  Yes, he thought, he really was going to miss her.

  “I’d be proud to, Lily.”

  He heard her clear her throat. Lily hated to get sentimental. “Now I know how you feel about getting away from the business, but maybe Nathan or Joe could take over while—”

  He cut her off briskly. “Not a problem. I sold the business.” In response, he heard nothing but silence on the other end. Everything had happened so quickly he hadn’t even had time to tell any of them that he was thinking about selling, much less that he’d signed on the dotted line and made Quintano Cabs a thing of the past. “Lily, are you there?”

  He heard her take in a sharp breath. “Yes, I guess the connection just went weird for a second. I thought I heard you say—”

  He didn’t want to hear her say it. He couldn’t exactly explain why hearing one of his siblings give voice to what he’d done would make it that much more difficult to bear, but it did. “You did. I did.”

  “But, Kevin, why?”

  The last thing he wanted to do now was discuss what he’d impulsively done over the telephone. He needed to reconcile himself to today’s wrinkle first, then think about his late business.