âWeâre not kids any more.â
âI know,â Brody replied quietly. âDoesnât mean we canât talk.â
âNo.â Irena couldnât seem to pull her eyes away from his lips. âIt doesnât.â
She was standing as close to him as a heartbeat. She could feel his breath on her face when he spoke. The feel of his breath on her skin stirred her.
Was she just being needy again?
Was she missing Ryan, struggling to put his memory to rest?
No, it wasnât that. Sheâd made peace with all that. This was something else, something different.
All she knew was that she was very, very attracted to the man she had always considered her best friend.
Had it been there all along, waiting to be discovered?
There was wilderness everywhere she looked. For all intents and purposes, civilization had vanished since sheâd left Anchorage.
Nothingâs changed. Except for me.
After all this time, it seemed odd to return to a place sheâd sworn sheâd never set foot in again. A place that she had spent the first eighteen years of her life dreaming about leaving. And when she finally had, thereâd been tears. Tears that had nothing to do with anticipated nostalgia.
They were the kind of tears generated by a broken heart.
In a way, it was a little like trying on an old sweater you knew you no longer wanted. Even so, the familiar feel of it against your skin evoked bittersweet memories you were heretofore certain you had either forgotten or at least successfully blocked out of your mind.
She didnât want to remember.
But wasnât that why she was coming back? Because she remembered?
Irena Yovich stared out the window, watching Hades, Alaska, growing from a speck to a 500-citizen town as one of the several âtaxiplanesâ owned by Kevin Quintano and his wife, June, drew closer.
The young woman piloting the small passenger plane was June Yearling, the best damn mechanic for two hundred miles the year that Irene had left Hades for Seattle and college. Everyone in Hades knew that if it had an engine, June could fix it. And now, according to what June was saying on this hundred-mile run from Anchorage to Hades, she was not only a successful businesswoman but she was a wife and a mother of two, to be expanded to three in the not-too-distant future.
June had been her best friend once. Sheâd been one of the very few who hadnât gone behind her back to betray her. Possibly the only one, Irena thought with a trace of cynicism born in the wake of her rude awakening ten years ago.
âBut when I heard you needed a ride from the airport, I told Kevin there was no way anyone else but me was flying the plane to bring you to Hades. He likes to give me a hard time because he doesnât think a woman in my condition should be piloting a plane, but I got him to give in.â June ended with a gleeful, triumphant laugh. Her voice swelled with affection as she added, âKevinâs really a good guy.â
Undoubtedly the last of a dying, if not dead, breed, Irena thought.
Since, as far as she could see, her friend wasnât showing and, more to the point, when June had thrown her arms around her and hugged her, Juneâs stomach hadnât made contact first, she couldnât help asking, âJust how far along are you?â
âOnly three months,â June tossed over her shoulder, then added, in a somewhat quieter voice, âand four weeks.â
Irena felt just the slightest bit of a smile touch her lips. June always had a way of twisting things in her favor. âUnless my mathâs totally off, thatâs actually four months.â
June sighed dramatically. âI know, I know, but I just had to see if it was you or someone else with the same name.â
Irena laughed out loud for the first time since she had gotten her grandfatherâs phone call yesterday morning, telling her that Ryan Hayes was dead by his own hand. Thanks to June, some of the tension drained from her.
Temporarily.
âAnd just how many Irena Yoviches could there be?â she asked her old friend.
She saw Juneâs shoulders rise and fall beneath her fur-lined parka. âIn Alaska, maybe not all that many, but in Russia, who knows? Thereâs no telling, but one of them might have wanted to check out a place that was named after hell and is frozen over for six months out of the year, cut off from the rest of the world except for our little passenger service. And the doctorsâ planes, of course. Did I tell you that Aprilâs married to a doctor?â June said, referring to her older sister. âJimmyâs Kevinâs younger brother,â she added quickly. âHe came to Hades to visit their sister Alison. Sheâs a nurse hereâand married to Jean Luc. Max married their sister Lily. They met when she came up here to visit, too. Come for a visit and stay forever. Weâre thinking of making it a city motto,â June teased.