Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Karen Leabo

  “Serves you right,” she murmured. When the light turned green, she accelerated with deliberate slowness.

  He spent an undue amount of time in the rental car office—probably trying to explain away the damage. When he came out, he held up one finger, indicating she should wait one minute, and then he sprinted across the parking lot to the convenience store next door. When he joined her a couple of minutes later, he had a big white bag.

  “Fuel,” he explained as he extracted a large coffee and two paper-wrapped sandwiches that appeared to be sausage and cheese. “The bran muffins were great, but I need something a little more substantial. I have a fast metabolism—burn up food as quickly as I can put it away.”

  Victoria didn’t doubt it. He wasn’t a small man, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat evident on his body. All that muscle probably did burn up a lot of calories. That was another reason to dislike him. He could eat all he wanted and never get fat. Not that she had much of a problem in that area, but only because she worked hard at maintaining a healthful diet and getting plenty of exercise.

  He extended one of the sandwiches in her direction. “You can have one if you want.”

  “No, thanks,” she said with a delicate shudder. She appreciated his generosity, but from the looks of them, those sausages would supply a body with a year’s worth of grease. She put the van into gear. “Fasten your seat belt, please.”

  For a moment she thought he was going to argue with her, but then he relented and slid the harness over his shoulder, fastening it with a resounding click. He looked about as comfortable as a lion wearing a leash.

  “You don’t like seat belts?” she asked, amazed that anyone in this day and age would object to wearing one.

  “I don’t like restraints. I’m sort of claustrophobic. Besides, I figure, when my number’s up, it’s up.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” she agreed. “I’m not so worried about dying though. It’s the living that scares me—sustaining a serious head injury and then living. In a nursing home.”

  “I’m wearing the seat belt, okay?” he said a trifle impatiently.

  She actually managed to smile at him. “Sorry. I tend to get a little preachy sometimes. One of my most annoying habits. I’ll try to control myself—oh, please don’t spill any crumbs! The professor is very particular about his van.”

  Roan caught a crumb on the end of his finger before it could hit the upholstery. “I guess that means smoking is out of the question.”

  She bit her tongue to keep from gasping. “You smoke?”

  “Sometimes. I’ll keep it to a minimum if it annoys you.”

  “It annoys me only because I hate to see anyone—” she cut herself off midlecture. Roan Cullen was no child. Unless he lived under a rock, which apparently he didn’t, he knew the dangers of smoking. “Just not in the van, please. Elsewhere you can do as you like.”

  He nodded. “No problem. And your control is admirable. I can tell you’re dying to lecture.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard it all. There’s no need for me to repeat it.” She forced herself to sound serene.

  The first five minutes in the van with Roan were the most difficult. Driving the unfamiliar vehicle hadn’t seemed such a chore until she had to do it with him watching every move she made. Even when his attention was focused innocently out the window, she was uncomfortably aware of his presence, his heat, the smell of shampoo from his still-damp hair. She hopped over a curb as she made too sharp a turn, then almost ran a red light. She wondered if she was even less qualified than Roan to drive Amos’s precious van.

  They had left the city behind them by the time Roan had finished his brunch. “So, where are we heading?” he asked.

  She handed him a much-abused road atlas. “For now, our target is Odessa, maybe Monahans. We’ll stop after noon and get some updated data, see if things are going as Amos predicted. But don’t get your hopes up. I don’t expect any decent storms until Monday or Tuesday.”

  “That’s two or three days from now. What do we do in the meantime?”

  That mischievous gleam in his eye made her nervous. Well, two could play at this game. Did he think she was such a prude, she could do nothing but stammer and blush at his little innuendos? “We drive and hope we get lucky.”

  He didn’t seem to notice her choice of words. “I’m all for that,” he said. Then he nodded toward the row of tuners mounted between the bucket seats. “Why don’t you tell me what all this hardware does? That’s clever, installing a video camera on the dash so you can tape and drive at the same time. But what about all this other stuff? Looks like you wiped out a Radio Shack.”

  She was relieved to change the subject. “These are ham radios. In every area of the country, ham operators are trained as storm spotters. They report hail, high winds, etcetera, to a network controller, who forwards the information to the Weather Service, and we can listen in. I can also pick up weather radio and AM stations. This is a police scanner. And that’s a color TV. I guess you figured that out.”

  “And the computer in the back?” he asked, his eyes alight with interest.

  “With the aid of a cellular phone and a modem, I can hook up to a Weather Service computer on the East Coast and get updated data every two hours. Then I use a software program to analyze the raw numbers and turn them into maps. That’s what Amos and I were doing this morning.”

  Roan said nothing for a while, but he continued to study the equipment. Victoria tensed as he began fiddling with knobs and buttons, but she didn’t stop him. Some men were just natural-born fiddlers. After a long silence he murmured, “Amazing.”

  “We like to take advantage of the latest technology. Some of the purists don’t like it—they say we’re taking all the romance out of the chase. They would rather get a morning weather report, sniff the air, and be off. But I don’t chase for the romance.”

  “Then why do you do it?” he asked.

  The question, accompanied by a penetrating stare, took her off guard. Over the years plenty of people had asked her why she chased, but a pat answer had always sufficed. She sensed that Roan Cullen wouldn’t be satisfied with that.

  “Well … I’m primarily a forecaster. It’s gratifying to me when I make a prediction, then verify it firsthand.”

  “You could verify a prediction by watching the weather on television. And if you were interested merely in your accuracy, you would be just as gratified to predict a blizzard or a … a sunny day and be right. There must be some reason you deliberately seek out tornadoes, and only tornadoes. It couldn’t be that you actually get a thrill from the danger, could it?”

  “No,” she said sharply. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. Tornadoes are rare events, not like sunny days or even blizzards. To be able to predict accurately when and where one will occur—well, no one can do it with any consistency. But we’re getting better at it all the time. My goal is to learn as much as I can, so I can be the best possible forecaster.”

  “And the thrill of the chase has nothing to do with it?” he asked with a skeptical lifting of one eyebrow.

  “Oh, all right. I guess I do like the excitement of being so close to something so powerful. But my first priority is keeping myself and others safe from harm. The more I learn, the safer I am. I’ve witnessed almost thirty twisters, and I’ve never been hurt, or even close to it.”

  Not counting her first tornado.

  If she’d known then what she knew now, she might have been able to change the outcome. But she seldom discussed her first, worst encounter with a twister, and she certainly didn’t know Roan Cullen well enough to trust him with those most personal details of her life. Not even Amos knew about the killer storm that had convinced her to pursue meteorology as a career.

  Roan nodded, seeming to digest her words. It was only afterward that she realized she was doing exactly what Amos had hoped she would do—impress upon Roan that life could be exciting without being dangerous. Whether he would take her advi
ce was anybody’s guess.

  Roan was really curious now. She was hiding more behind those pretty hazel eyes than he could have guessed. Most of the women who’d flitted in and out of his life were the open-book variety—honest, up-front, no secrets, as obvious about their wants and needs as they were about their sexuality.

  Victoria was the complete opposite—subtle, mysterious, her motives deeply hidden. At first he’d thought it would be fun to figure her out, to tease her out of her reticence. But it appeared the task wouldn’t be so simple. She was a woman of layers. Peeling them off, one by one, to find the core would be a fascinating activity, but perhaps an impossible one. She had yet to respond to his attempts at charm, although that little smile she’d awarded him after her seat-belt lecture was enough incentive to make him want to try harder with her.

  He should have asked Amos more about his protégé. Armed with a little information, Roan wouldn’t have felt so out of his depth.

  At half past noon Victoria pulled into a gas station to fill up the van. Roan handed her a twenty, which she accepted gracefully with murmured thanks. He might be a slight inconvenience to her, but at least he would carry his weight. He even pumped the gas while she ran inside to pay.

  “Could you get me a Coke?” he called to her. Although the inside of the van was cool and comfortable, outside it was like a desert, quickly calling up a thirst.

  She nodded before disappearing inside.

  While the gas was pumping, Roan wandered to the edge of the parking lot and lit up his first cigarette of the day. He’d taken only a couple of drags when he heard the gas pump click, indicating the tank was full. He stamped out the cigarette, not wanting to cause a delay, but he wondered when his next chance to have one would be.

  A few minutes later Victoria reappeared with a Coke for Roan and a bottle of mineral water for herself. She pulled the van onto a side street under a shady tree and stopped again. Leaving the motor running, she got out, came around to the sliding side door, and climbed back in.

  Roan moved to the seat next to Victoria’s and watched as her graceful hands flew over the laptop computer keyboard, logging on to the Weather Service computer on the East Coast.

  Streams of numbers and letters flew across the color monitor, and in moments everything was downloaded. Victoria severed the phone connection, printed out the data on a quiet inkjet printer, then began the laborious task of interpretation.

  She was quiet as she worked, giving Roan no indication as to whether the data were good or bad. He soon grew bored with watching the colorful maps she manipulated on the monitor, pretty though they were, and began studying Victoria herself.

  She was oblivious of his inspection, and so he let his gaze wander lingeringly over her, liking what he saw more and more. He liked her delicate ears, graced with understated pearl stud earrings. He liked the little mole at the corner of her mouth. He especially liked how the wind had pulled several wisps of her rich reddish-brown hair free of her braid.

  The door to the van had been left open, and the breeze whipped inside from time to time, causing those free wisps of hair to tickle her cheeks and forehead. She was so intent, her hands so busy, that she couldn’t be bothered to brush the stray wisps aside, but Roan could tell she was annoyed by them.

  If he’d thought for half a second, he never would have done it. The problem was, most of the time he didn’t think before he spoke or moved, which often got him into trouble. This particular time he smoothed the strands of hair off Victoria’s face.

  He’d hardly completed the gesture, when he jerked his hand back, realizing what he’d done. He expected her to buck at the shock of his inappropriate touch, but she didn’t. Instead, her fingers stilled on the keyboard and she turned slowly to look at him, her eyes wary.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice quavered slightly.

  He held both hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Your hair was in your face, and it was bothering you. I didn’t mean anything by it, Vicky, honest. It was making my nose itch, watching those little wispies tickle you like that. I didn’t think about what I was doing. It was instinctual.”

  She continued to stare, her breathing rapid and audible. After a few moments it slowed, and she looked down at her hands, still poised on the keyboard. “My name’s Victoria.”

  He was puzzled by her response until he realized what she was talking about. “Oh, now, you see there? That’s a perfect example. I didn’t mean to call you Vicky, it just popped out of my mouth. I had a teacher once who said I must be missing a part of my brain, the part that edits what I say and do.”

  “You mean like good judgment?”

  He could have sworn he saw just a trace of amusement dancing in her eyes, and he began to believe he might not have to hitchhike back to Lubbock after all. “Well, yeah, maybe that’s it. But I have great judgment as long as I have time to think.” Like now. He suddenly wanted to kiss her, but a little voice of reason told him that might not be such a hot idea at that moment. Definitely good judgment.

  She released a long sigh. “Okay, let’s just forget it. Do you want to see what I’ve been doing here?”

  “Sure.” He dutifully gazed at the computer screen.

  “We’re actually not in as bad a shape as I thought. See how the winds are circulating around these two low pressure areas? That’s where the hot and cool air masses are meeting.”

  Roan studied the map. One area she indicated was northwest of them in New Mexico, a good two hundred miles. The other was southwest, about the same distance—almost in Big Bend country. “Which way do we head?”

  Victoria chewed on her fingernail. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we’d better flip a coin, then.”

  She made no comment as she shut down the computer. She climbed out of the van and looked up at the sky. “See the thin layer of cirrus clouds moving in? That’s good. It means that a warm, moist tongue is moving in from the gulf to feed moisture into the storms.”

  Warm, moist tongue, huh? He bit his own tongue so hard, he drew blood. Did she have any idea what words like that, coming from her, did to him? Obviously not, because she was still expounding on the clouds and upper level wind velocities.

  “… I guess maybe we should head back north, toward Raton,” she said, though she sounded anything but sure of herself. “That way, if nothing comes of it, we’ll at least be in a more central location for tomorrow. Besides, the farther south we go, the more mountains we’ll get into and the worse the visibility will be.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Roan said. He didn’t care which direction they went, so long as they got moving. He wanted to turn on the van’s air conditioner, although he doubted even a blast of arctic air would cool him down anytime soon.

  THREE

  Victoria silently second-guessed herself for the next hour and a half. What if she were wrong? She was strongly tempted to call Amos and ask him, but he’d made it clear that he wanted her to rely on her own forecasting abilities this time. Besides, she didn’t want to wake him if he was resting.

  Roan, apparently oblivious of her dilemma, kept up a running commentary about the West Texas landscape. She had to admit he was pretty entertaining, considering there wasn’t all that much to look at—flat land dotted with pale green sagebrush, a few cattle, windmills, and oil wells. Sometimes the harsh land wrinkled up into little hills and canyons, only to flatten out again. With the exception of the two-lane blacktop highway, few signs of civilization were evident, hardly even a passing car.

  “It’s so deserted out here, we could be the last people on earth,” he said. “Maybe we are. Maybe everyone else got sucked into space by the gravitational pull of a giant meteor.”

  “Oh, that would be terrible,” she said with a melodramatic hand to her forehead. “How will we get our weather reports if everyone else is stuck to a meteor?”

  “Seriously, I’ve flown back and forth between the coasts all my life,” he said, “but other than occasional visits with Amos, I neve
r spent much time in the middle of the country before.”

  “And now you see why,” Victoria added with a knowing grin. “There’s not much here.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that. In fact, I find the emptiness kind of awe-inspiring. It’d be a great place to take pictures. I’ve never seen so much blue sky.”

  “We have great visibility in this part of the country, I’ll give you that. When a tornado comes through, there’s not much for it to hit. I’d much rather follow a storm out here than through a densely populated area.”

  “Damn, look at the size of that hawk. I sure would like to stop and take a few pictures.”

  She shook her head. “We don’t have time to waste. The storms won’t wait for us, you know.”

  “Has anyone ever told you you have a one-track mind?”

  He’d said it with a teasing note in his voice, but Victoria didn’t appreciate the comment. Probably because he was right. But keeping her attention focused firmly on weather matters was better than the alternative—thinking about him. And he was hard not to think about.

  “I’m on this trip for one purpose, yes,” she said in her most businesslike tone, “and that’s to find tornadoes.”

  “Are you always this intense about it?”

  “You haven’t begun to see intense. Anyway, this has been a slow season. I might get only one good shot this trip, and I don’t intend to blow it.”

  “Oh.” He paused, and she sensed he was poising himself for another assault. “Does that mean you actually are capable of carrying on a conversation that doesn’t have something to do with the weather?”

  “I have other interests,” she objected.

  “Really? Like what?”

  He was doing it again, flirting with her—no, seducing her with that voice of his. There was nothing wrong with his question; it was how he said it, the expression on his face.