Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Karen Leabo

  “I have a lot of interests—cooking, and … and gardening. I belong to a garden club.”

  His mellow laugh didn’t irk her as much as it should have. “Is that where a bunch of little old ladies in hats and white gloves get together for tea and to show off their prize roses?”

  “Not at all. It’s an organic gardening club, and a lot of members are men.”

  His expression grew thoughtful. “I see. You must meet a lot of men, then.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Amos told me you’re one of the few women who chase storms—one of the few in meteorology, for that matter. I was just thinking that between your career and your hobbies, you must meet a lot of men. Haven’t you found one to marry yet?”

  Her cheeks grew warm as one caustic retort after another came to mind. Intellectually, she knew Roan was only trying to get a rise out of her. He was bored, and he obviously liked to entertain himself by getting her dander up. But the emotional part of her resented his implication that she was merely fooling around with this weather stuff because it was a great way to meet men.

  “I’m only trying to figure out why you chase tornadoes,” he continued cheerfully.

  “I have my reasons, and they’re none of your business, so I’d appreciate it if you would stop speculating.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said, unperturbed. “You ever been married?”

  She threw him a murderous look.

  “What? There’s nothing wrong with asking that. Jeez, if we’re going to be cooped up in a car for two weeks straight, I’d like to be able at least to talk to you. You know, brush up on my conversational skills.”

  She took a deep breath. Really, there wasn’t anything wrong with the question. She was just more accustomed to Amos’s less-demanding company. And perhaps she was being a bit of a poor sport because things hadn’t gone exactly as she’d wished. She resolved to try to be more pleasant. “I’ve never been married,” she said. “And before you ask why, I don’t know. I’ve never met the right person. And you?” She intended to meet him question for question.

  “Me, married? Not a chance. I never stay in one place long enough to establish a relationship. I was raised as an army brat and I’ve just kept moving.”

  She started to argue that sometimes it didn’t take all that long to fall in love, if she could believe some of the stories she’d heard. Her own parents had fallen in love on their first date and were married two weeks later. But since two weeks was the unfortunate span of time she and Roan would be together, she kept her mouth shut. With his ego, he might think she was hinting around.

  “You really think we’ll see a tornado today?” He leaned forward and peered at the sky through the windshield.

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about weather.”

  “Just not all the time. But I don’t see any of those cirrus clouds. Does that mean the, uh, warm, moist tongue is gone?”

  Warm, moist tongue. Coming from him, that phrase didn’t sound the least bit scientific.

  “It’s early yet,” she said. “In another hour or so we’ll stop and get more data.”

  “And lunch? You do stop for lunch, don’t you?”

  “I won’t let you starve, but we can’t indulge in a leisurely …” Her words trailed off as a silver Blazer, bristling with antennas, passed them going the opposite direction. She stared after the other car in her rearview mirror. “Damn,” she murmured.

  Roan’s eyebrows sprang up. “Vicky! I didn’t think you knew words like that.”

  She didn’t bother to respond. If he wasn’t going to address her by her correct name, he could just talk to the dashboard all day for all she cared.

  “I mean Victoria,” he corrected himself. “Sorry. But Victoria is such a long name. Four syllables. It takes a long time to say it. Vicky is quicker, more efficient, you know? Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked when she didn’t respond.

  “That car that passed us? That was Jeff Hobbs. He works out of the Weather Service in Amarillo.”

  “Another chaser, I take it.”

  “Yeah, and a good one too, much to everyone’s grief. Anytime he gets a storm that other people miss, he loves to rub it in our faces. He must have a pretty good reason for heading south. Raton would be a lot closer for him.”

  “You aren’t thinking of changing your mind, are you?”

  “Well … you see, Jeff is usually right.”

  “And you aren’t?”

  “Amos and I together have a pretty good track record. But by myself …”

  “You aren’t by yourself, you have me. And I say we continue north. We’re halfway there already.”

  “That’s not a good basis on which to make a decision. We could still get south in time for the show.”

  “Is there going to be a show? You didn’t sound too optimistic an hour ago.” Again he leaned forward and peered at the sky, as if it could give him the answer.

  Abruptly Victoria pulled off on the shoulder, then made a U-turn in the middle of the highway.

  Roan gave a hopeless sigh.

  He was already getting impatient with her, she realized. But storm chasing was a lot more tedious than most people thought—hours and hours of driving, planning, figuring, consulting, and if she were really lucky, a rip-roaring, ten-minute payoff. How would Roan feel after two weeks of this?

  He would probably bail out after two days. Either that, or she would get so fed up with him that she would drive back to Lubbock and dump him off.

  The journey back south was quiet and tense. Victoria listened to ham radio, CB radio, an AM station out of Albuquerque, and weather radio all at the same time, trying to get a picture of how the skies were shaping up. The afternoon was getting away from them, and she still had no clear idea of where the severe weather would hit, if anywhere. Roan, alternately dozing and gazing out the window, cast a dubious look at her every so often, obviously bored and irritated by the cacophony of voices.

  Toward four o’clock, Victoria saw what she was looking for—huge towers of cumulus clouds building on the horizon. She stopped the van again for gas, then pulled into a Dairy Queen.

  “It’s about time,” Roan grumbled. But after snarfing two hamburgers, a large order of french fries, and a chocolate milk shake, his mood improved. He began to take an interest in the clouds as the van closed in on them, and even asked her to explain what the various cloud formations meant.

  At five o’clock the National Weather Service issued a “T-box”—a tornado watch box—over Victoria’s target area. They were still an hour away.

  “Are we going to make it?” Roan asked casually.

  “We’ll try.”

  “Why don’t you let me drive? I’ll get us there in time.”

  “I’d like to get there alive, if you don’t mind.”

  “Now, why would you—oh, I know. Unc must have warned you about my driving. All right, so when I was sixteen I smashed his pickup truck. He’s been holding it against me for fifteen years.”

  “It’s not just Amos. I saw what you did to your rental car.”

  “That’s because I drove it off-road. I’m a good driver, really.”

  “How many speeding tickets have you had lately?”

  “Um, how lately?”

  “In the past six months?”

  He fell silent. Victoria nodded, vindicated. He would touch this steering wheel over her dead body.

  As they neared the town of Rhoden, the flat landscape gave way to small mountains and the clouds had formed into a definite line of storms. She picked the biggest, most well-defined one and, with Roan navigating, made use of the sparse roads to get into position ahead of it. But the storm system was not a very strong one, and disorganized at that. The winds died, the clouds broke up, and the T-box was canceled. As dusk began to fall, there was nothing left to chase.

  “That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Victoria said, trying not to show her disappointment. It was only their first day out, after all. They would probably
have plenty of chances. “Are you hungry?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. No wonder you’re so little. Are meals always such a low priority for you?”

  Victoria was ridiculously pleased. At five foot eight, she wasn’t often referred to as “little.” Then again, any woman except an Amazon would be small to Roan. “If I have to choose between a hamburger and a tornado, I’ll take the tornado every time,” she said. “I saw one of those family-style steak houses back in Rhoden. Sound okay?”

  “Yeah, sounds great. Then again, a bale of hay would sound great.”

  “You ate two hamburgers at four o’clock,” she pointed out.

  “Almost four hours ago.”

  She felt a small twinge of guilt. He was her guest, after all, and it wasn’t very nice of her to make him uncomfortable, even if his dietary demands were a bit excessive. Tomorrow she would load up on some snacks to keep in the van.

  Gus’s Family Steakhouse appeared to be the social center of the town of Rhoden, and they had to wait in line. By the time they were seated, even Victoria’s stomach was grumbling.

  She ordered her usual from the perky waitress, a grilled chicken fillet with salad.

  “I’ll have a T-bone steak, medium rare,” Roan said with relish when the teenage waitress batted her eyelashes in his direction. “With a baked—”

  “Wait a minute,” Victoria interrupted. “You can’t order steak.”

  Roan stared at her. “Excuse me? Don’t tell me you’re going to make me eat health food just because you do.”

  “No, no, you can have anything you want except steak. You see, it’s a storm-chasing tradition. We get to eat steak only if we see a tornado.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You can call Amos and ask him. Really.”

  He considered her through narrowed eyes. Suddenly his face broke into an indulgent smile. “Well, if it’s that important, I guess I’ll have the seafood platter.”

  The perplexed waitress dutifully noted his order and disappeared.

  “It’s silly, I know,” Victoria said. “But if you want to savor the full storm-chasing experience …”

  “Oh, I do. The full experience.”

  She took a long sip of her iced tea and kept her gaze averted. He was going to drive her crazy if he kept flirting with her that way.

  She wasn’t sure why he had such a strong effect on her. She was not an unattractive woman, and she had her share of attention from men, especially given the fact that she did, as Roan had pointed out, meet a lot of men in her line of work. But usually she found it was easy to parry suggestive remarks, ignore unwanted come-ons. She could also deliver a sizzling retort or a razor-sharp put-down if any man’s comments got out of hand. But Roan’s misbehavior left her tongue-tied and warm in the face.

  Maybe that’s because you welcome his flirtations, an impudent inner voice suggested. Maybe you’d like to flirt right back.

  All right, so he was good-looking, a sort of modern-day Indiana Jones with a camera instead of a bullwhip. But he wasn’t her type. She wasn’t sure exactly what her type was, but she couldn’t possibly be compatible with someone so aggravatingly sure of his own charm. To respond to that charisma would only encourage him in the wrong direction.

  Her thoughts were interrupted when someone called out her name. She looked toward the entrance to the restaurant. “Oh, no,” she muttered under her breath even as she forced a smile and a wave.

  “Who’s that?” Roan asked.

  “Jeff Hobbs. I should have known he would show up here. It’s probably the only decent restaurant for a hundred miles.” Please don’t let him come over here, she pleaded silently. But even as she prayed, he headed through the crowded dining room toward their table, sliding his paunch between chairs.

  “What are you doing here?” Jeff asked, swiveling one of the extra chairs around and straddling it. “Didn’t I pass you about two o’clock heading north?”

  “Mmm, possibly,” Victoria hedged. She introduced the two men, who exchanged a perfunctory handshake.

  “I even tried to call you a while ago on the cellular phone,” Jeff continued, “to find out if you got any good video.”

  “Good video? Of what?” she asked crisply.

  “You didn’t hear?” Jeff stroked his bushy black beard, clearly relishing the prospect of breaking the news to her. “There were two tornadoes up on the Colorado–New Mexico border, near Raton. One of them was a quarter-mile wide, and stayed on the ground for almost twenty minutes.”

  “Raton?” she said weakly. Damn, they could have been there! “Was anyone killed?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. I almost went that way myself,” Jeff continued. “But I thought the prospects looked better down here. What made Amos change his mind?” He looked around, puzzled. “Where is Amos anyway?”

  “Home sick with a cold.”

  Jeff nodded his understanding. She could almost hear what he was thinking: No wonder you screwed up.

  “I thought it looked better down here too,” she fibbed, seeking to fill the awkward silence. She wasn’t willing to admit she’d followed him rather than trust her own instincts.

  The waitress arrived with their dinners. Jeff looked down at the plates of chicken and seafood, clicking his tongue. “Could have been steak. Too bad.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t in the mood for beef anyway,” she groused. She knew she should have invited Jeff to join them, but she didn’t. He soon took the hint and, after trying unsuccessfully to extract her game plan for the following day, he left to find his own table.

  Roan looked at her reprovingly, although, to his credit, he said nothing.

  “I know, I know,” she said. “I should have listened to you and gone with my own forecast instead of following Jeff.”

  “I didn’t say a thing.”

  “But you were thinking it, and you’re right. Amos is going to be disappointed in me.”

  Roan dipped one of his shrimp into the cocktail sauce and popped it into his mouth. Judging from his expression, it wasn’t the tastiest morsel in the world, and she regretted not letting him have his steak after starving him all day. “You don’t have to tell Amos the whole story,” he said.

  “Yes, I do. Maybe if he gives me a good scolding, I won’t be tempted to make the same mistake again.”

  Roan frowned. “Amos isn’t your father.”

  But he was the closest thing she’d had to a father since she was twelve, she thought. “He’s my mentor,” she said. “Mentors are allowed to scold. I guess I knew someday I’d have to chase without him, but it’s harder than I thought it would be.”

  Roan reached across the table and touched her hand. “You’re doing fine. There’s obviously nothing wrong with your forecasting skills—we were heading straight for Raton before you pulled that U-turn. You just need to have more faith in yourself, Victoria. We’ll get ’em tomorrow, or the next day.”

  She heard no teasing note in his voice this time, and she saw only sincerity in those vibrant blue eyes. His hand was warm and reassuring against hers as he absently rubbed her knuckle with his callused thumb. She suppressed a pleasurable shiver that tried to wiggle down her spine.

  Before she could start to enjoy herself too much, she withdrew her hand. “How’s your dinner?”

  He shrugged. “It’ll do. I’d ask how yours is, but you haven’t taken a bite.”

  “I will,” she said, her appetite returning. She cut off a generous portion of the chicken breast and traded it to Roan for some of his shrimp, and the meal passed with surprising cordiality. By the time she finished the slice of apple pie he’d talked her into ordering just so he could steal bites from her plate, she found she was actually liking him.

  And that, she decided, was probably not wise, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.

  The shrimp tasted like they’d been frozen since the last ice age, but Roan enjoyed the meal anyway. He was glad he’d been able to offer Victoria some comfort. He was really glad she
hadn’t invited that creep, Jeff What’s-His-Face, to join them, although perhaps in the future he shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss a third party. He was relishing Victoria’s solo company a bit too much.

  He sat in the front seat of the parked van, twisted up like a pretzel so he could watch her in the back as she once again pulled up weather data from the computer. He’d seldom witnessed such single-minded concentration, and he was unbearably tempted to distract her—tickle the back of her neck with the end of her braid, or lean over and blow in her ear. He forced himself to resist the urge.

  He knew better than to get too friendly with her. He wasn’t unaware of the effect he had on women. On some women anyway. They were fascinated with his work, his thirst for adventure, his devil-may-care lifestyle. But they never stuck around long enough to really get to know him, the man inside. Or, more accurately, maybe he was the one who didn’t stick around.

  He wasn’t a healthy influence on people who got close to him. He’d broken a few women’s hearts—not intentionally, but it just seemed to happen. And then there was Kim—sweet, innocent Kim, who’d trusted him so completely. That trust had been tragically misplaced. As always, Roan swallowed back a lump in his throat when he thought about his vivacious little sister. He knew he dwelled on her, on his loss, far too much, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself, especially when all these idle hours in the car gave him too much time to think.

  He forced his thoughts back to his current companion, which wasn’t too difficult. She occupied his mind quite a bit too.

  He hardened his resolve. Best not to let pretty, proper Victoria get too fond of him—or him too fond of her. From now on, if she needed comforting or reassurance, she could find someone else to provide it. No more pep rallies courtesy of Roan Cullen. And certainly no more hand-holding. Feeling that soft skin beneath his palm, the pulse of life that beat there, had touched him at some elemental level.

  As she printed up yet another map, he pretended impatience, though truthfully he was starting to find the forecasting end of storm chasing kind of interesting now that he understood the basics. And when she announced that they needed to drive north and put a couple of hundred miles behind them before seeking shelter for the night, he groaned, although he could cheerfully have ridden in the seat next to hers all night long, just watching her profile illuminated by the moon.