The Bride Wore Blue Jeans. Marie Ferrarella

for the entrance, her voice incredibly nonchalant. “Your loss.”

      Yes, he thought with a deep pang, his loss. But you couldn’t miss what you’d never had, right? And he had a very odd feeling that kissing June would make him acutely aware of all that he had missed in his life. And would continue missing.

      This way was better.

      So he watched her thread her way back into the Salty and then entered himself, going in search of a familiar face to talk to.

      Lily stepped away from the window and frowned deeply. “Well, that didn’t exactly go brilliantly,” she muttered, acutely disappointed. She’d been watching Kevin and June since the moment of their arrival, waiting for the sparks to come. That they hadn’t left an abysmal feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wanted Kevin to be happy, the way she was happy. And since love had done it for her, she felt it was only fair to assume that it would do it for him as well. It was time her brother found a little happiness. He’d been in charge of theirs all these years.

      Max looked down at the surface of his beer, as if contemplating a deep philosophy. He took a sip, then raised his eyes to Lily’s face.

      “Wars aren’t won and lost on the first encounter, Lil, or even the second. This kind of thing takes a while. Don’t give up.”

      “A while,” she echoed with a deep sigh. “How long a while? The North and South went to fight the Civil War over the weekend and that lasted four years,” she lamented. The most impatient in the family, she always wanted things to happen yesterday.

      Max understood where she was coming from and why she felt the way she did. He’d harbored the same feelings about June, worried that his little sister was more interested in resurrecting defunct engines than having a home and family. But unlike Lily, he knew the worth of patience and exercised it every day.

      “There’ve been records of wars ending in under a month,” he told her. She looked at him, petulant. He kissed her temple, loving her more. “I’ve spent a lot of time studying people. Not much else to do up here when you’re isolated from the rest of the world,” he qualified. “Your brother’s been in a deep freeze for the past twenty years, Lily. Give him time. Give them both time. June hasn’t exactly had it easy herself. It’s going to take a while for them to realize that they just might be the best thing for each other. Or not,” he threw in, then laughed as Lily’s eyebrows rose so high they almost disappeared into her hairline.