Wild West Fortune

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  He secured the latch again and jammed the flashlight through it as well.

  “Is that going to hold it?”

  “It’ll hold the latch.” He came back down the stairs. “Whether the door holds together is another matter.”

  Sugar whined.

  Ariana wished she could, too.

  “Hey.” He crouched down next to them both. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  The door blew again, metal and wood seeming to scream against the pressure.

  “You don’t know that,” she told him.

  “You’re too pretty to be so pessimistic.” He put his arm around her and his dog.

  She didn’t move away. Because, whether she wanted to admit it or not, just like Sugar obviously did, she felt safer with him right there even though the wetness of his clothes seeped through hers.

  Still... “There’s a tornado out there,” she said, as if she needed to point that out to him.

  “Not yet. At least I didn’t see the funnel cloud again. Hopefully, it’s just one hellacious storm.”

  Right on cue, thunder shook the very walls. She couldn’t help flinching. “I never liked thunderstorms, either,” she admitted.

  His hand squeezed her shoulder. “I don’t know. This one’s not so bad.”

  She huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “Right.”

  “It brought you, didn’t it?”

  Chapter Two

  Jayden felt Ariana stiffen next to him and wished he’d said just about anything else.

  That was the problem with his propensity for voicing blunt truths.

  He pushed to his feet. He was soaked to the skin but he ignored the annoyance. “If I remember, there ought to be some stuff to eat and drink down here. Interested?”

  She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “If it’s a hundred years old like that cellar door, I don’t think so.”

  He chuckled as he went over to the shelves. They were crammed with everything from tools to packing boxes that had been there since before his mom had ever set foot in Paseo. Which dated them more than thirty-six years, since he and his brothers hadn’t yet been born. In the years he’d been gone in the army, the shelves had only gotten more jumbled.

  “The door’s old,” he allowed. “But not a hundred years old. It’s just the Paseo sun that makes it look that way.” He pushed aside a stack of newspapers. Who kept old newspapers these days? To him it was sort of like saving string.

  Outside, the thunder had settled into a continuous rumble. He hadn’t lied to the lovely, young Ariana Lamonte. Aside from that one sight of the funnel cloud, he hadn’t seen it again when he’d been fighting with the damn cellar door. But he still wasn’t inclined to leave the safety of the cellar just yet, either. Not when the sky had that ominous blackish-green hue. Just because he hadn’t seen a funnel didn’t mean there wasn’t one. And he had no desire to tangle with a tornado.

  As far as storm cellars went, this one was pretty old. Back in the day, it’d been used more as a root cellar than anything. Nowadays, it was the place where old crap—like thirty-plus-year-old newspapers—went to die.

  He didn’t find the box of crackers he’d been hunting for, but he did find an old radio. He switched it on.

  “Is that a radio?”

  He didn’t want to dash the hopefulness in Ariana’s voice, but truth was truth. “There are only a few radio stations with a strong enough signal to reach Paseo. Television’s even worse. Hated it when I was young.”

  “That’s what cable and satellite dishes are for.”

  He chuckled. “No cable out here. And satellite was way too expensive. At least it used to be.” They had satellite television now, primarily so his mom could keep up with Grayson’s rodeoing when she wasn’t traveling with him. But when the weather was bad, the first thing it did was lose its signal. He held up the radio that emitted only static no matter how many times he turned the dial. He turned it off again and stuck it back on the shelf.

  “And no cell phone signal, either,” she said. “Which I discovered for myself already.”

  “Nope. No cell signal.” He shrugged and moved a cardboard box full of toys he vaguely remembered from his childhood. If he was really lucky, he’d find some old towels.

  “Any internet?”

  “The library in town has it. They’re only open on Wednesdays, last time I checked.” Admittedly, that had been a good year ago, when he’d been ironing out leftover details from leaving the service.

  “This is Texas,” she muttered. “Not a third-world country.”

  He smiled faintly. “We are kind of off the grid,” he allowed. “But I’ve traveled the world. Seen the best and more often the worst of people along the way. So I’ve come to appreciate Paseo’s peacefulness.”

  The cellar door shuddered again.

  “Usual peacefulness,” he amended, resuming his search for the crackers. From the corner of his eye, he watched Sugar cuddle up close to Ariana.

  The dog was ordinarily wary as hell around strangers. But he couldn’t exactly blame Sugar.

  The reporter—journalist—had curves just meant to be cuddled up close against. She had rich brown hair that reached halfway down the back of the artsy black-and-white sweater she wore open over a clinging gray top. Her snug jeans showed off shapely thighs before they tucked in impractical knee-high red boots. They ought to have looked ridiculous, those boots. Like they belonged on a fashion runway. On her, though, they were just plain sexy. Combined with darkly lashed brown eyes that had sucked him in the second she’d turned them his way out on the highway, Ariana Lamonte definitely made an impact.

  And her presence now was only serving to remind him just how long it had been since he’d enjoyed an attractive woman’s company.

  He’d hooked up a time or two right after things ended with Tess in Germany, but that was it. Grayson had told him he was turning into a hermit and suggested he meet some of the buckle bunnies always following him around. Jayden had bluntly told his brother to stuff it.

  He finally spotted the old-fashioned metal container that held a sealed box of saltine crackers. “Ah. Success.”

  For all he knew, they were the same ones he’d put there when he was eighteen, but he was hoping they’d been refreshed somewhere along the way. He pulled the tin off the shelf, as well as the dusty bottle sitting behind it—definitely not his doing when he’d been eighteen. He’d been a hell-raiser, but even he hadn’t had the nerve to keep a bottle of whiskey in the cellar right under his mom’s nose. She’d have tanned his hide, regardless of his age. He’d never met a fight he didn’t like—except when it was against his mom.

  Carrying both the tin and the bottle, he went back to sit on the sleeping bag.

  Sugar lifted her head and shuffled over to him, curling up against his thigh and going back to sleep.

  “How old is she?”

  He rubbed the dog’s ruff. “About three. I brought her back from Germany with me when I got out of the army.” He left out the part that he’d basically stolen her from his master sergeant. The man had gotten Tess. As far as Jayden was concerned, he hadn’t deserved to have the dog, too.

  “Was she born blind?”

  “No.” He ignored her curious expression and peeled open the cracker box. Fortunately, it looked relatively new. And the outer metal box had done a good job keeping bugs from getting at the cardboard inside.

  The storm was howling worse than ever outside. Rain had started lashing against the door and he hoped to keep Ariana distracted from it as much as he could. “Here.” He set a sleeve of crackers on the sleeping bag between them and wiped off the dusty bottle with his wet shirttail. “No glasses, I’m afraid.” He held the bottle closer to the lantern so she could see the label he’d exposed. “You are legal, right?” For al
l he knew, she could be a twenty-year-old journalism student.

  She let out a soft, sexy laugh and leaned forward to take the bottle. Her fingertips brushed his. He wasn’t sure if that made more of an impression on him than the way her long, tangled hair formed a curtain around her. “More than legal,” she assured him. “I’m twenty-seven.”

  Older than she looked, which was a relief. “I’ve got nine years on you.”

  “Not exactly a generation gap,” she offered drily. She twisted off the cap from the bottle of whiskey, took a sip and promptly coughed. “Potent,” she finally managed. She set the bottle next to the crackers and peeled off her sweater.

  The clinging shirt beneath possessed no sleeves. Just two narrow straps over shoulders that gleamed ivory-smooth in the lantern’s light. His gaze started to drift over the shadowy cleavage also on display beneath her collection of thin gold necklaces, and he grabbed the whiskey bottle for himself.

  Hell of a time for that dead feeling inside him to be shocked back to life.

  “Potent,” he agreed after he took a healthy swig. The liquor burned all the way down, joining the heat already pooled inside him.

  Fortunately, she seemed to take his comment at face value and fiddled with her cell phone. “I couldn’t function without the internet,” she said. “How do you stand it?”

  “Just fine,” he drawled. “What do I need it for?”

  “Keeping up with the world?”

  He smiled slightly. “Hear everything I need to know at the feed store in town.” It was an exaggeration, but not that much of one since he, personally, wasn’t all that inclined to ever turn on the television. Not when every time he did, all he saw were politicians arguing and neighbors shooting neighbors. He’d seen enough of that in the service. “What do you need the internet for?”

  She’d been sitting cross-legged and she shifted, straightening out her legs, too. “My job, for one thing. Research. Filing stories.” Her lips twitched. “Keeping up with the world.”

  “I kept up with the world plenty thanks to fifteen years with the army.”

  She set aside her phone and lifted her hair off her neck with both hands. “It’s warm down here.”

  And getting warmer. He wasn’t entirely certain that his clothes hadn’t started steaming. “Blame it on the whiskey.” Personally, he was blaming it on her.

  “It’s June but the rain still ought to cool things off.” She twisted her hair, managing to tie it into a knot atop her head. She inhaled deeply and Jayden did blame the whiskey then, because he should have looked away from the lush curves pushing against that thin excuse for a shirt, but he didn’t.

  And the heat inside his gut just increased.

  The only thing that distracted him was the thumping of the cellar door as the storm buffeted against it. It sounded like it was hailing, but in the lantern light, he could see the glimmer of rain dripping through the slats of the wood door.

  If he’d met Ariana Lamonte under just about any other circumstance, he wouldn’t hesitate to pursue the attraction. But she was in his storm cellar. Essentially under his protection.

  Which changed the rules entirely.

  Or should.

  “So what do you do in Austin when you’re not chasing around stories for your magazine?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “The usual. I have friends. Parents.” As if she realized the spare details were hardly the way to keep a conversation going, she pushed to her feet and paced the short distance to the shelves, arching her back a little as she stretched. Then she bent over in half, her bracelets jingling softly, and pressed her fingers against the dirt floor.

  He damn near swallowed his tongue.

  The knot in her hair wasn’t holding up. As he watched, it seemed to uncoil in almost slow motion. Then she straightened again, caught her hands behind her back and stretched once more.

  He closed his eyes, stifling an oath. “Grow up there?” He had to raise his voice over the noise from outside.

  “In Austin? Born and raised. Same as my mom and dad before me. I love the city. I have an apartment that overlooks the skyline. Ridiculously expensive, so I barely have it furnished, but I can walk or ride my bicycle to work if I want. I can get most anywhere I want, really, without even taking out my car.”

  He looked at her again and was both relieved and chagrined that she’d stopped stretching and was pacing once more. “Except here,” he said drily.

  Her lips curved. They were full and luscious, like the rest of her. Not overblown. Just...right.

  Exactly right.

  “Except here,” she agreed. “What about you? Did you grow up in Paseo?”

  “Born and raised,” he parroted. “Right here on this very ranch.”

  She propped her hands on her hips and looked at him. “And your parents?”

  He wasn’t accustomed to telling strangers his business. But she was easy to talk to. And it kept her from turning to see the water that had begun streaming down the steps.

  The cellar had stone walls and a dirt floor. He’d never known it to flood more than a foot. Still, if it got worse, he was already figuring they’d have to leave the shelter. In a flood, being inside the house higher up was better than being below ground. If there really were tornadoes in the area, they’d have to take their chances. His mom’s bedroom closet in the house would be the best bet. First floor. Interior room.

  There wouldn’t be much space for the two of them. It would definitely be close quarters—

  “Never knew my father,” he said, pulling his thoughts away. “My mom was pregnant when she came to Paseo.”

  Her expression shifted a little. “So your mom is a Fortune?”

  “Not one of those Fortunes,” he reminded her. “The ones you’ve been writing about for your magazine. Like I said. The name’s just a coincidence. So if that’s what brought you to Paseo, you’ve wasted a trip. My mother’s definitely not related to them.”

  She tilted her head slightly. “It’s not that common a name.”

  “It’s the one my mom decided on when she was making a fresh start here. She wanted a new life. A new identity. Said my brothers and I were the only fortune she needed. Thus the name. I’m pretty sure she was running from the guy who’d gotten her pregnant. She could have chosen any surname she wanted.” He raised his voice over a crack of thunder. “Always figured Fortune was better than Smith.”

  Ariana jerked to attention at his words. His mother had been running?

  “It’s just thunder.” Jayden’s deep voice was calm. The kind of voice to inspire trust. “It can’t hurt you.”

  “The lightning that causes it can.” Much as she disliked thunderstorms, she was glad to blame her reaction on it. “So why do you think she was hiding from him?” she asked casually, concealing her intense interest. Gerald Robinson had a history of being a womanizer. But not a violent one. Even now, in his seventies, he was a compellingly attractive man. She’d only had a few brief encounters with him—he was not a proponent of her magazine articles, to say the least, and had no idea about the book of course—but it wasn’t difficult to understand how women had flocked his way. But none of the women—even his wife—seemed to hold his heart.

  Some said that Gerald Robinson didn’t really have one.

  But maybe he’d had one and left it in Paseo.

  “Was your mother afraid of your father?”

  “I probably should have phrased it differently.” He adjusted the rolled sleeping bag behind him, stretching out even more fully on the one spread beneath him. He tore open the sleeve of crackers and fed one to Sugar. “I think she was running from a broken heart. And that’s it.”

  Another frequent refrain when it came to the women in Gerald’s past. The only heart that seemed to have not broken along the way belonged to his wife.

&nbs
p; Then she realized what else Jayden had said. “You have brothers?”

  He’d uncapped the whiskey again and held up two fingers as he took a sip. When he was finished, he held the bottle toward her.

  Even though she knew she oughtn’t, she took the bottle again and this time managed not to choke on the alcohol as it burned down her throat.

  But she dropped the bottle completely when a loud crash vibrated through the very walls, making even the metal shelving shudder and squeal.

  She froze, forgetting entirely her interest in his brothers, and warily looked up at the low ceiling, half-afraid it was getting ready to collapse in on them. It was covered in wood. But above that, she really had no idea what was there. Except earth and that awful, awful howling wind. “That was not thunder.”

  He’d sat up, too, and shook his head. He righted the whiskey bottle she’d dropped. “No, it wasn’t.” He went up the stairs and pried the flashlight out of the metal latch where he’d jammed it. Only then did she realize the stairs were flowing with water.

  “Are you sure you should go out there?”

  “No, but I want to know what the hell that noise was. I’m not worried about the house—nobody is here but us—but I’ve got horses in the barn.” He pushed up on the cellar door and swore.

  Her stomach curled in on itself nervously. “What’s wrong?”

  “Something’s blocking the door.” He put his shoulder to it and heaved.

  The door that had blown open from the wind now stayed stubbornly closed.

  She felt like choking on a whole new lump of misgivings. “So we’re trapped?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  She picked up the lantern and carried it with her up a few steps until she was just below him. In the light she couldn’t see the faintest glimmer of anything between the wood slats. She could, however, see the muscles standing out in his arms as he pushed futilely against the door. And she could also see the stream of water pouring steadily down the stone steps. How it was getting around whatever blocked the door was a mystery.