Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Karen Leabo

  She turned her head and would have kissed him full on the mouth, but he didn’t want that. Not that he wasn’t about to burst with desire for her. But just this once he wanted her to know that his touching her was more than simple lust. He wanted to communicate his affection, and his genuine appreciation for her presence, body and soul.

  She looked at him quizzically, and he smiled. “I hope you will remember me,” he said, “and not just as Amos’s lunatic nephew who nearly got you killed.”

  Victoria’s eyes grew suspiciously shiny. “You’ve given me a lot more to remember than that,” she said, her voice thick.

  He looked away, his own throat feeling uncomfortably tight. “We stopped here to walk, so let’s walk,” he said gruffly. He still held her hand, and he pulled her roughly along with him as he took off at a brisk pace. He knew he was being stupid, afraid to admit he had emotions, even more afraid to express them.

  Wasn’t that what men were supposed to do? Brush aside their feelings and head off bravely to slay that next dragon? He looked down at his chest and the slogan on today’s T-shirt, which commemorated the most recent California earthquake: I’M ALL SHOOK UP.

  That pretty well summed up his current situation.

  “Victoria,” he said before he could stop himself, “have you given any thought to us seeing each other when we get done with this trip?” He didn’t know where the words had come from. He certainly hadn’t thought them out. But they came straight from his soul, he realized. For days now he’d been toying with the idea of continuing something with Victoria, although until that moment he’d always brushed the idea aside as impossible.

  His subconscious must have been chewing on it, though, making decisions without his conscious input.

  She didn’t answer for a moment, and Roan almost regretted the impulsive query. Maybe she hadn’t found their time together as fascinating as he had.

  Finally she said, “I thought that was out of the question. I mean, you’re globe-trotting all over creation, and I’m stuck working in Lubbock—”

  “I’m not on assignment all the time. I do take a few days off every now and then. And there’s always the phone, and mail, and fax machines.” He couldn’t believe he was saying these things. He was actually proposing some sort of continuing … relationship. He, Roan Cullen, restless spirit and all-around jerk when it came to women, the man who could pull a disappearing act faster than David Copperfield when any woman tried to get too close, was having a hard time letting go. It boggled his mind.

  Again Victoria was slow in answering. “Yes, it’s crossed my mind a time or two,” she allowed. “We could always try it.”

  “It might not work,” he said.

  “It might end up more frustrating than it’s worth,” she added.

  “But you’re right, we could try it.” He squeezed her hand. That was enough discussion for now. He needed some time to get used to the idea of a relationship. It sounded so … settled, so middle-aged, so boring. Then why did it feel so wonderful?

  As they came closer to the church, they could hear the sound of children’s laughter. Curious, they veered off the country road and walked around to the back of the church. A party of some sort was in progress, judging from the crepe paper and balloons. About a dozen young children and two women were involved in a spirited game of tag.

  Instinctively Roan lifted his camera and squeezed off a couple of shots. He wasn’t even thinking about where he could sell such a picture. He simply wanted to document the afternoon, the slice in time when he’d reached a crossroads in his thinking about life, about women, about one woman in particular. Now that he knew his time with Victoria wasn’t about to end but was only beginning, everything looked different. The air seemed sweeter, the sun warmer, the colors richer. He felt amazingly content.

  One of the young women supervising the party had noticed them and walked over, waving and smiling. “Hi, I’m Debbie,” she said pleasantly. “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

  “No, we’re just passing through,” Roan answered.

  “And we saw the church—it’s so beautiful,” Victoria added. “We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Oh, nonsense, you’re not interrupting,” the woman said. “We’re just having a birthday party for one of the children in our day care center. Are you a professional photographer?” She pointed toward Roan’s camera.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Freelance.”

  “He takes pictures for Newsweek and National Geographic,” Victoria piped in. It gave Roan an unexpected pleasure for her to brag about him.

  “Well, then, perhaps you’d like to take some pictures of the birthday boy,” the woman said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “I forgot my own camera today. I couldn’t pay you, but we have lots of ice cream and cake.”

  Some of the children, most of whom were under five, had wandered over to listen to the exchange, and they immediately took up a chorus of “Take my picture! Take my picture!”

  “Sure, why not?” Roan replied. He popped a fresh roll of film into his camera and began taking shots of the kids, making sure he included all of them, even the shy ones. He shot the whole roll, then took it out and handed it to Debbie. “Now, where’s my payment? I hope the cake’s chocolate.” He already knew it was.

  Debbie cut him a generous slice and topped it with a mountain of vanilla ice cream. He sat down in a metal folding chair next to Victoria, who was already working on her dessert, and dug in.

  “That was nice of you,” she said.

  “Nice, hell. I was hungry. I’ve been a freelancer long enough to know not to turn down any paying assignment.”

  When he’d eaten as much of the cake as he could manage, he set his plate aside and wandered over to the edge of the clearing to peer through the trees at the sky. A peculiar darkness hovered just above the horizon. It was probably just an optical illusion, a trick caused by heat and atmosphere, but he thought enough of it to motion Victoria over to have a look.

  “Hmm” was all she said.

  “Don’t you think we should check it out?”

  “Well, it couldn’t possibly be anything of consequence,” she reasoned. “There hasn’t been anything in the data all day to indicate storms, or even precipitation.”

  Roan wasn’t as trusting of the data as Victoria. “Let’s go have a look anyway.” Hell, at least it gave them something to do. They bade good-bye to the birthday party and returned to the van. Roan navigated them toward the mysteriously dark horizon, and the chase was on.

  “It couldn’t be anything,” Victoria said more than once as she fiddled with the ham radio, searching for some kind of verification for what her eyes told her.

  “Well, it looks like something,” Roan said. And the closer they got to it, the more ominous it became. Before long, there could be no denying the cumulus cloud formations—tall, crisply defined towers exploding right before their eyes. High winds sheared off the tops of the clouds, forming a classic “anvil.” Roan hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of Victoria’s knowledge of severe weather, but he did remember her telling him that such a cloud was a good indicator of possible tornadoes.

  “It’s a supercell,” she finally declared. “A classic tornadic supercell. But it can’t be! There’s been no indication. No one’s talking about it on any frequency. I mean, something like that has to be showing up on radar!” As they topped a hill, she pulled over onto the shoulder. “We can watch from here. I’m going to pull up some new data.”

  “I don’t see why you’d want data now,” Roan said. “I mean, why would you need to verify what’s in the sky right in front of you?”

  “But there has to be some indication, some warning,” she muttered, ignoring him. “Something I’ve missed.”

  Roan climbed out of the van and began setting up his videocamera on a tripod. If Victoria wanted to play with her computer while this drama was going on, that was her loss. He intended to capture it on film, whatever “it” turned out to be.
The wind had picked up, and the clouds churned wildly. The sky was as black as he’d ever seen it, tinged with green—another forewarning that this was no ordinary storm.

  When he spotted a wall cloud—a rotating wagon-wheel formation that dropped from the base of the storm—he knew something spectacular was about to happen. Victoria had taught him about wall clouds.

  He leaned inside the open door of the van. “Vic, you’d better come look at this. I think we’re about to have a tornado.”

  “That’s impossible,” she said, peering at the map that the computer printer was spitting out. “There’s absolutely no way a tornado could form under these conditions.”

  “Far be it from me to dispute your data,” he said, his sarcasm evident, “but would you please come look at this?”

  “Just a second. I want to check one other thing.” She began punching various buttons on the computer keyboard.

  Roan threw up his hands. The woman was in denial. Well, just because she wanted to insulate herself with her computer analysis, that didn’t mean he had to miss the best atmospheric display he’d ever seen. He checked his video camera to be sure it was recording the show, then began snapping off stills with his Nikon. Lightning flashed in neon forks, arcing from cloud to cloud, and sometimes hitting the ground. The accompanying thunder rumbled menacingly.

  Then he saw it. His heart was in his throat as the wall cloud produced an ominous, twisting tendril that reached for the earth like a rope being dangled before a playful cat. Soon a second twister joined the first, and then a third. They circled around each other in a macabre dance, kicking up dust in their wake, eventually merging and blending until they formed one hellacious-looking tornado.

  Roan was fascinated with the dynamics. This tornado was obviously not like the other one. It was bigger, more powerful, scarier. But it was also a good distance away. He didn’t think they were in any danger, not yet. He didn’t want to be an alarmist, but he wouldn’t make the same mistake as last time. He might be awed by the twister, but not so overwhelmed that he wasn’t going to get the hell out of the way long before he put anyone’s life in peril, including his own.

  The tornado changed in shape and color as it worked its way closer to them. It began as a thin gray column, but as it picked up debris that fueled it, it thickened into a fat wedge and darkened until it looked like the sooty smoke from a raging fire.

  When he could actually hear the tornado’s roar and feel the sting of dust in the wind, Roan judged he’d waited long enough. He quickly packed up his gear and threw it into the back of the van, then checked on Victoria again. She was on the cellular phone, arguing with someone about the fact that no tornado watch had been issued. At the same time, she was shuffling wildly through her stack of maps, apparently still searching for that elusive clue she’d missed.

  Now, finally, Roan had all the pieces of the puzzle that was Victoria. With her radios and her fancy analysis program, she thought she had some degree of control over the weather. The more she understood, the more accurate her forecasts, the more confident she’d felt that nothing could take her by surprise—as the tornado of her childhood had.

  Now she simply couldn’t face the unhappy truth that wind and rain didn’t always follow man’s rules.

  Knowing he had to get her attention, and fast, Roan plucked the phone out of her hand and hung it up.

  “What are you—” she objected.

  He grabbed the stack of computer printouts. “Lady, I don’t give a damn what your data say, you can’t argue with this!” He flung the papers out the door, where the wind whipped them up into the air and scattered them like confetti.

  “Roan, have you lost your mind?”

  He circled her arm with his hand and yanked her out of her chair, then out of the van.

  She stumbled and he caught her. “Roan …” She started to object, but then she saw it. Her face turned the color of oatmeal and her eyes were as big and round as saucers as she stared at the massive, churning wedge of destruction that was now much too close for comfort. “Oh, my God …”

  Roan didn’t wait for anything more. He shoved her back into the van, slid the side door closed with a slam, and raced around to climb into the driver’s seat. She would probably be furious with him for treating her so roughly, but just then all he cared about was getting them the hell out of there—out of danger.

  Thank God she’d left the keys in the ignition. Not bothering with the seat belt, he gunned the engine to life and roared into a sharp U-turn.

  In moments Victoria leaned across the console between the two front seats. “Where are you going?”

  “Away from that thing,” he said, gesturing with his thumb. “You’re the expert. Which way is it going, and how do I get as far away from it as possible?” He knew he sounded gruff and angry, but better that than revealing how he really felt—scared. What if he’d waited too long to alert Victoria to the danger?

  What if they both got killed, just when they were on the brink of stumbling into this fantastic relationship thing?

  The fear—not just for Victoria’s life, but for his own, and for their future—was a new feeling for him, or perhaps only one he’d forgotten. Suddenly he felt intensely alive, like he hadn’t in years.

  And he wanted to stay that way. Badly.

  He came to a crossroads. “Which way, Victoria?” he demanded.

  “Right.” He started to turn, but she laid a hand on his shoulder. “No, wait. The church!”

  “What?”

  “The tornado is heading straight toward that church. I don’t hear any sirens.” She gripped his shoulder, her fingers digging painfully into his flesh. “They weren’t listening to a radio. They won’t have any warning, and they won’t see it coming with all those trees around. Oh, Roan, all those children! They’ll be so frightened. We have to warn them.”

  Roan thought it exceedingly unlikely that the storm would hit the church. They were several miles away from it now, and it seemed a strange thing to turn directly into the path of the deadly storm, when his newly rediscovered survival instinct told him to run like hell. But there was no way he could worry about saving his own butt and leave a churchyard full of children in danger, no matter how remote the danger was.

  With a sinking feeling, he turned left.

  TWELVE

  Victoria climbed over the console and into the passenger seat. The shock of seeing that giant tornado bearing down on them was fading, replaced by a sense of panic. What had come over her? She’d been so absorbed by the fact that the weather wasn’t behaving predictably, so obsessed with finding some warning sign in the data, she’d ignored the threat of danger. She’d been more willing to trust computer printouts and radar reports than what she saw with her own eyes!

  And she hadn’t trusted Roan’s warnings at all. Was it only days before that she’d nearly chewed him to dust for not paying attention to her warnings?

  “I’m sorry, Roan,” she said. “I got crazy there for a minute, but I’m okay now.”

  His gaze never left the road, but he reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s all right, Vic. I know what it’s like to be a little … single-minded.”

  He was being too kind, but she appreciated it.

  “My God, would you look at that thing?” She almost whispered the words in reverence. The surrounding trees obscured her visibility, but every so often she caught a glimpse of the tornado annihilating everything in its path.

  “I’m trying not to look at it. Is it gaining on us?”

  “No, we’re outrunning it. I don’t think it’s moving very fast. At least we’re ahead of the rain and hail.”

  Finally she heard some bewildered-sounding storm spotters reporting the tornado on ham radio. The Weather Service quickly issued a warning. Victoria picked up the microphone and dutifully made a report.

  She watched the tornado out her window when she could. And when the road turned and the twister was no longer in view, she watched Roan. He was driving fast, his
jaw clenched in concentration. Was he enjoying this drama a bit too much? she wondered. But no, he didn’t appear to be enjoying it at all. The road turned again, and they were once again driving into the path of the storm.

  “How far do you think we are from the church?” she asked, seeking reassurance. This was probably the most foolhardy thing she’d ever done. But if anything happened to those children, she could never live with herself. She suspected Roan felt the same way.

  “Too far,” he replied.

  “You’re not wearing your seat belt,” she scolded.

  “Neither are you.”

  “What? Oh, you’re right.” They both clicked their safety belts into place.

  Victoria breathed a sigh of relief when the church’s white steeple came into view. As Roan screeched into the parking lot, the teachers were starting to herd the children inside. Just as Victoria had predicted, they could not see the storm from there. The only warning signs they had were a darkening sky overhead and a moderately brisk wind.

  Victoria jumped out of the van and ran toward Debbie, who looked surprised to see them again.

  “Did you forget something?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Do you have a storm shelter?” Victoria demanded. “Or a basement? There’s a huge tornado headed this way.”

  Debbie appeared confused. “But surely the sirens would—”

  “Please!” Victoria cried. “I’ve just seen it. It’s only a few miles away and it’s coming this direction. We have to get everyone to shelter.”

  “The church doesn’t have a basement,” Debbie said, “but there’s a shelter—Martha!” She called to the other teacher and, when she had her attention, quickly related the news.

  Martha, who was even younger than Debbie, burst into hysterical tears.

  “Oh, hell,” Roan said. “Debbie, where’s the shelter?”

  “It’s over there,” she said, pointing to the other side of the church. “But I don’t think it’s been open in years. Couldn’t we just take shelter in the church?”