The Bride Wore Blue Jeans Read online

  She felt she’d packed a great deal of living into this one day. June glanced at her watch. “Almost five, why?”

  “I was just thinking that dinnertime will be coming up soon.”

  The only schedule she adhered to had to do with working. In her personal life, she was far more lax. She ate when she was hungry, slept when she was tired. She pressed her hand to her stomach, remembering that she’d had very little to eat today. “I really don’t feel like cooking.”

  “That wasn’t going to be the offer,” he told her. “I can either make something for us, or we can go over to Lily’s.” Never one for pretenses, she was staying with Max at his home. She’d reasoned that since she was going to be living there after the wedding, she might as well get a jump on redecorating it now. Max had seen no reason to argue with her. “She’s always game to whip up a meal or twelve.”

  Even though he’d seemed to take the news well enough, Max was going to need Lily tonight, June thought. And while there was a need within her to band together with her siblings, there was also a desire to be alone. To lick wounds that had been freshly ripped open.

  She shook her head at the latter suggestion. “I don’t feel like going out again.”

  It was just as well, he thought. She needed a little time to rebound from this. And, selfishly, he wanted to be with her. “Okay, then I’ll cook.”

  She sighed. “I’m being waspish, short-tempered and surly. Why are you being so nice to me?”

  He lifted her chin and looked down into her eyes. His own smiled softly. He thought of the way she’d been earlier, so pliant, so willing in his arms. He might have been her first, but the way he saw it, she had been his salvation.

  “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.” He brushed a kiss against her lips. “Now, why don’t you just relax and let me do the work?”

  She nodded, then flushed, feeling guilty. She’d had so much planned for today. “I haven’t gotten anything accomplished today.”

  She sounded like him, he thought. Before he’d learned better. “Not every day has to end with a mountain of accomplishments arrived at by exerting muscle power.” He opened a cupboard but didn’t find what he was looking for. “You’ve left your mind open to a possible truce. I’d say that was a great deal of work for one day.”

  June turned to look at him. She’d never met a man like Kevin before. Something stirred within her, but she refused to let it rise. “Did you ever think about putting all these sayings of yours into a book?”

  “Another undertaking to consider.” He laughed as he continued to hunt for a large frying pan. He’d found one pan, but it was small and hopelessly burned along the bottom.

  Two pots fell at his feet as he opened the next cupboard. Apparently her method of putting away cookware was to shove it into a closet and close the door quickly, praying that the laws of gravity would hold it in place.

  The laws took a holiday.

  With a sigh, knowing she had to do something, June crossed to where he was standing and picked up the fallen pots. She thought of the way her grandmother had badgered him earlier.

  “What about that other undertaking?” she asked, leaving the pots on the counter.

  Finding what he was looking for, he took the liberty of rinsing the pan out in the sink first, just in case the pots shared space with small, furry creatures. “Which one?”

  “The one my grandmother sprang on you. The transport service.” Did he want her to spell it out for him? To tell him that even though she’d rescued him from her grandmother’s grilling, part of her hoped he’d say yes to the proposition? “You weren’t serious when you said you’d think about it, were you? I mean, you were just humoring her, right?”

  He dried off his hands on the towel. Unable to read the look in her eyes or to decide which answer she wanted from him, he asked, “Would you want me to be serious?”

  Irritation rose. “Why do you always answer a question with another question?”

  “It’s what we philosophers do.” He laughed when he saw her frowning. “You’re the one who called me that, not me. I asked the question to find out how you felt about it.” He paused before opening her refrigerator, one that he had taken the liberty of stocking on his third day of work. “How would you feel about it?”

  The shrug was a little too deliberate, a little too studied. “We could use a transport service,” she acknowledged, then built on her words. “Hell, as far as I’m concerned, we’re way overdue for one. We could have used it a year ago. Maybe if we had one, I wouldn’t have sold my repair shop.” When he looked at her quizzically, she added, “A lot of business comes in from fixing planes.”

  “You can fix planes?” There was no end to the surprises the woman was hiding in her bag of tricks, was there?

  “I can fix anything that has to move.” She wasn’t bragging—it was a simple fact. “With the possible exception of some of the old men at the Salty.”

  “You had trouble with the tractor,” he reminded her, a grin playing on his lips.

  She ran her tongue along her lower lip, suddenly wanting to kiss him. To keep from giving in to the whim, she took a step away from him.

  “It was just a matter of time,” she hedged. “You figured it out first.”

  He nodded. “I really wasn’t talking about how you felt about having a transport service.”

  “Then what were you talking about?”

  “How you felt about me buying one.”

  She wasn’t about to get pinned down. Not when he didn’t say anything first. “Someone has to. Might as well be you.”

  “And that’s it?”

  Her look was hesitant. Edgy. “Why, what else do you want?”

  He smiled indulgently at her. “Now who’s answering questions with questions?”

  She began to drift around the small area, aimless. She’d never really fit into a kitchen. “I like to think I have an open mind and learn as I go along.”

  He tried another approach. This was not the outspokenness her grandmother had claimed was the hallmark of women out here. He was pulling teeth. “Would it bother you if I were around?”

  “You’re family. Why shouldn’t you be around?” She pressed her lips together. “Are you thinking about being around?”

  He shrugged, afraid to commit himself, especially when she didn’t seem to want his commitment. “Maybe.”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s good for the town.”

  About to slice carrots, he glanced in her direction. “How about for you?”

  “Hey, what’s good for the town is always good for me.”

  She took it no further than that.

  She had no feelings about it one way or another. He didn’t have to be hit on the head to pick up a cue, Kevin thought. He turned his attention back to making supper for them.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kevin climbed down off the ladder to survey his work. His mind wasn’t really on the wall he was painting, except in the most perfunctory of ways.

  They’d been steering clear of each other.

  Not an easy matter since he was still coming over to work on the house.

  Having finished the exterior, he was now busy painting the rooms themselves. Because June hadn’t expressed a preference for any particular color, he’d made the decision for her. He’d painted the walls a light shade of icy-blue, using white as an accent whenever he could. The house was slowly going from oppressively dreary to bright and cheery.

  The same couldn’t be said of their relationship. Whatever conversation might have existed before had now disintegrated into short sentences populated with fleeting, monosyllabic words. Not wanting to press, he’d taken his cue from her, thinking that June had either decided to regret what had happened between them or was trying to work her way through her ambivalent feelings regarding her father’s appearance and Yearling’s desire to make amends any way possible.

  In any case, she was reacting to Kevin as if he were some kind of stranger, not a man s
he’d made love with. He wasn’t sure just how much more he could take in tolerant silence.

  June was gone more than she was there. She was either working in the field, working in the barn or going to town to talk to her relatives.

  The one thing that was clear was that she didn’t want any part of him.

  It put a whole new light on things for him as to his thoughts about actually relocating here and starting up a transport service for Hades. As he’d mulled it over, the latter actually began to sound like a good idea in his opinion.

  But his motives weren’t so grounded in rock.

  With a sigh, he retired his paintbrush, leaving it horizontally perched across the mouth of the paint can. Initially, the idea of investing his time and money in a business here had to do with being close to his family. Lily had been gone from Seattle only a short while, and although they hadn’t exactly lived in each other’s pockets, they had gotten together a couple of times a week. He would either come to her restaurant, or Lily would drop by the house. The fact that lately the only time he heard her voice, or any of their voices, was when he picked up a telephone to call didn’t really sit well with him. He was and always had been, first and foremost, a visual person. Sight figured in quite prominently with his required family hit. That meant relocating here.

  But if he were being honest with himself, the real reason he’d begun to explore this business possibility was June. Running a transport service would give him a good excuse to interact with her. After all, the planes were going to need a regular mechanic and June didn’t seem completely wedded to the idea of the farm. Oh, she was working hard at it for the moment, but he suspected that was because it wasn’t in her to do anything else, even if she wasn’t really committed to the idea of making farming her calling. June wasn’t a woman who believed in half-measures.

  Woman.

  His mouth curved in a smile tinged with surprise as well as a bittersweet feeling. That was the first time he’d referred to her as a woman, not a girl, in his mind. Maybe he was losing his grasp on the age thing as a stumbling block.

  Heaven knows he certainly couldn’t think of her as a girl anymore. Not after the other day. First time or not, she’d been all woman in his arms.

  And he ached for her.

  He wiped his hands on the cloth that was hanging from his back pocket. Without the protective shield of ageism to hide behind, it hit him with the speed of a bolt of lightning. June was, quite frankly, everything he’d ever wanted in a woman.

  In bed and out.

  But it was the out of bed that was now the problem.

  Age might not be a factor, but there were other things in the way now. Predominantly the barriers she was throwing up between them. Maybe he’d been too convincing in his initial arguments about being too old for her and she’d finally decided to believe him.

  Or maybe there were other demons she was wrestling with.

  In either event, he had to decide whether to remain here and try to make her come around, or just leave her be and accept the fact that maybe this was one of those things that wasn’t meant to happen.

  He sighed, wadding the cloth up and pushing it back into his pocket. June had been right about one thing. He did have a tendency to overthink things.

  Surveying the room slowly to see if he’d missed any spots, Kevin decided that he was finished with the living room. Time to call it a day. He’d already done the two bedrooms earlier this week. That only left the kitchen, but that could be for another time.

  Right now, he wanted to get a little more information about the costs of running the kind of venture he’d been toying with. If it turned out to be prohibitive, that could call a halt to his planning right there. He only had as much money to work with as he’d made by selling the taxi service.

  There were other ventures, of course, other things he might be able to do here, but maybe that was just pushing things that weren’t meant to be pushed.

  Pulling off the T-shirt he’d put on before beginning to paint, he slipped on his regular shirt and headed out the door.

  “Have you decided to start that transport service yet?” Max uttered the question by way of a greeting as he stopped by the sheriff’s office later that afternoon.

  Kevin took the seat he indicated on the opposite side of the desk. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know about that.”

  “Know about it?” Max laughed. “People haven’t been talking about anything else since the subject came up.” Thanks to his grandmother, he added silently. “They’ve taken to thinking of you as their second messiah. You’d be opening up a whole new world to them,” he added frankly. There were still citizens, although not too many, who had lived their entire lives within the confines of Hades, never having even ventured out to sample what the rest of the state, much less the country, had to offer.

  Kevin didn’t want people getting ahead of themselves, especially since he was still very much on the fence about the project. “This is only in the planning stage.”

  “Most people are hoping you’re planning on doing it.” Max stopped rocking back in his chair and leaned forward, peering at his future brother-in-law’s face. “You are, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know yet. I like having all the information in before I decide to make a move.”

  There was a lot to be said for that method. And even more for flying by the seat of your pants, Max thought. He turned to the small desk against the wall behind him and poured two glasses of lemonade.

  “That kind of thing might make a man move slower than molasses,” Max pointed out. He looked into the older man’s eyes. “Sometimes you can’t wait for all the information, because it doesn’t always come in. Sometimes, you’ve got to make a move without it.”

  The conversation seemed to be taking place on several levels. “Are we still talking about planes?”

  Max moved the glass of lemonade toward his guest. “We could be.” He raised his eyes to Kevin’s. “We could also be talking about other things.”

  Kevin took a long drag of his drink, not realizing how thirsty he was until he’d started. “June?”

  Max inclined his head. “Among other things, yes. I’ll be the first one to tell you that she’s a handful and she’s got this one mood she gets into that makes storm clouds look cheery, but those she loves, she loves fiercely and she’s got a good heart.”

  He’d already sensed that about her. That and more. “You don’t have to sell me on her.”

  Max studied his face. There was something going on, something he didn’t quite have a handle on. “Then what do I have to sell you on?”

  “Why would you want to sell me on anything?”

  “Because I like you, Kevin,” Max told him quite simply. “Because you’re family in more than just the legal sense of the word. And because Hades needs good people like you.” He paused, studying the bottom of his glass, knowing his younger sister would kill him for this next part if she’d overheard him. “And because June needs a good man.”

  He was flattered. At the same time, he wished that this wasn’t a group operation. What went on between him and June, or didn’t go on, was strictly his business. His and June’s. “Don’t you think it’s up to her to decide about that?”

  Not being in the middle of a relationship allowed Max to see things more clearly than either of the two participants. He’d already learned that from his own affair with Lily.

  “The way I see it—” he wiped away the sweat ring the glass had formed on his desk “—she has. This thing with our father showing up has thrown her for a loop, thrown all of us, really,” he amended, “but more so June because she was the one most deprived of our mother after she died. June adored our mother, and to be shut out that way wounded her more than any of us suspected. Somebody’s got to see to the scars, to helping them finally heal.” He grinned slightly as he looked up at Kevin. “I hear you’ve got some medical training.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Only what I’ve picked up in
books. Jimmy’s the doctor in the family,” he reminded Max.

  “Which he wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t put yourself out there for him. And for Alison and Lily.” Max folded his hands before him as he looked intently at Kevin. “I know exactly the kind of man you are, Kevin. Your reputation, thanks to your brother and sisters, came here long before you did. You’re the kind of man June needs. Don’t give up on her.”

  That said, he switched topics as he leaned back, nursing the lemonade. “Have you talked to the Kellogg boy yet? He worked for Trans-state before he came back here.”

  Grateful for the shift, Kevin nodded. “I saw him and talked to Shayne and Sydney just to get a feel for all this.”

  “And?” He must have arrived at some kind of conclusions, Max thought.

  Nothing had changed from the time he’d walked in. “And I’m still thinking. I need to get a few ballpark figures going before I move on to the next step.”

  Max nodded. He supposed that was only reasonable. It wasn’t so much the transport service that he was concerned with, although that would be, in and of itself, a good thing. It was having Kevin committed to something that forced him to remain here.

  “Take all the time you need—as long as you come up with the right answer.”

  The phone rang just then. Max set aside his glass. “I’m going to have to take this.”

  Kevin was already on his feet. “And I’ve got to get going, anyway. See you in church.” There was a rehearsal set for tomorrow night. The wedding was on Saturday.

  That didn’t leave much time to make up his mind he thought as he left the sheriff’s office.

  Finishing up early, her conscience nagging at her, June aimed her vehicle back toward the house, hoping to catch Kevin before he left.

  She’d been horrible to him these past few days and he didn’t deserve it. But she’d been so confused inside. Having her father turn up this way had brought it all back to her.

  The pain, the sorrow. The determination.

  She’d sworn to herself that she was never going to be like her mother. She was never going to give any man the power of life and death over her heart. Never be weak.