Marie Ferrarella: The Bride Wore Blue Jeans

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?”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Michael,

who never gives up.

Love,

Marysia

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,

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

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 empty. 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.