by Julie Miller
“She’s pregnant.” Nate stated the obvious. “Her volunteerism is commendable, but she doesn’t need to be here.”
Mitch nodded. “Yep.”
“Isn’t her husband worried about her being on the road by herself?”
“She hasn’t got one.” That bit of news finally seemed to shake Mitch free from the lingering effects of Hurricane Jolene. “She’s been a widow four months now.”
A knot of compassion twisted itself in Nate’s gut. He knew more than he wanted to about losing someone he loved. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s probably a good part of why she worries about me so much. She lost her mother years ago. And now Joaquin.” Mitch led the way down the hall. “Probably why I can’t say no to her, either. I don’t want her to lose anything else. I don’t want her to hurt anymore.”
Nate supposed he could understand a father wanting to protect his daughter. Still…“You might not be doing her any favor by letting her work today. Does she have a friend’s house where she can stay to ride out the storm?”
“You don’t know my daughter.” Mitch muttered a frustrated curse that was more of a growl than an actual word. “I’m beginning to think you four might be the only thing standing between us and…oh hell, I’m not even going to say it.”
He didn’t have to.
No doctor. No EMT. Not enough supplies. No volunteers except for one pregnant, widowed woman with more energy than sense.
And one powerful, unpredictable storm that could turn a routine evacuation into disaster.
CHAPTER TWO
JOLENE SAT AT THE DESK in the dispatcher’s office, licking the sticky sweetness of her second cinnamon roll from her fingers and drinking her carton of milk.
She’d dashed in to answer the phone twenty minutes ago and wound up with a full-time job. Ruth, their regular dispatcher, hadn’t made it in yet, so Jolene had redirected the inquiry about Hurricane Damon’s projected path to the weather bureau. Then she stayed put to field three more phone calls from volunteers reporting in with their ETA’s, and one from a Corpus Christi resident asking for directions to the high school evac site.
Answering phones rated at about a negative two on the excitement scale—she’d much rather be doing than sitting. But as she’d told her father, she was here to do whatever needed to be done. The people of Turning Point were her family as much as Mitch was.
Needing to fill the temporary lull, she swiveled the chair around to watch the gathering meeting through the glass window that separated the dispatch office from the station’s commons area. A handful of locals had arrived for the briefing and had quickly dug into rolls and coffee, greeting their out-of-state guests.
The town’s resident hot-shot pilot and fellow volunteer firefighter, Micky Flynn, had swaggered in a few minutes ago and was already trying to make time with the three female medical personnel from California. Jolene was slowly revising her opinion of the sun-in-the-fun crowd she’d expected her Dutch uncle, Dan Egan, to send from the Golden State. Cheryl, Amy and Dana were definitely babes, she supposed. Each woman was pretty in her own way. But they seemed friendly and competent and unafraid of hard work.
The man who’d flown in with them, Nate Kellison, was definitely more standoffish. Taking a swallow of milk, she searched the perimeter of the commons area. As she peered over the rim of the carton, she spotted him on the far side of the room, discussing something with short and squatty Doyle Brown.
Or rather, Doyle was talking and Kellison was nodding his head.
He didn’t have a handsome face—the nose was a little too crooked, the jaw a little too square—but it was undeniably compelling.
A smile would help ease the tension bracketing his mouth. But she got the feeling Nate Kellison didn’t smile much. Not recently, at any rate. A sprinkling of lines beside his eyes indicated smiles and laughter had once come easily to him. But there was something almost Atlas-like in the gravity surrounding him. For a man who couldn’t be more than thirty, he seemed to carry a heavy weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
“What’s your secret, Kellison?” she mused out loud.
He’d taken off his ball cap, giving her a better view of his ultrashort crop of coffee-dark hair and a chance to gauge the color of those unsmiling eyes. They were a dark, golden-brown, reminiscent of the fine sippin’ whiskey her father liked to drink from time to time.
Those brown eyes blinked. When they opened again, they were focused on her. Dead on. Staring with an almost psychic intensity that said he’d known she’d been watching him. Startled at being caught, Jolene swallowed an entire mouthful of milk, forcing the liquid down her throat in one gulp.
There was something coiled and canny and downright unsettling in those whiskey-colored eyes.
But she couldn’t look away.
Why was California Boy staring at her?
Jolene defiantly tipped her chin and held his gaze, ignoring the inexplicable clutch of nervous energy tightening her chest. She knew she didn’t turn the heads of too many men—they were more likely to call her to set them up with a friend or bemoan their woman troubles than to ask her out herself. And she was okay with that. She had plenty of friends of both sexes to fill up her time. She had other people to give her heart to—her father, her baby, her hometown. They would always need her.
Joaquin had needed her. In some ways, he was the only man who ever had. And even with his big, generous heart, her husband had never given her more than his trademark bear hug or a platonic kiss.
Of course, he’d been so sick.
They hadn’t even made their baby in the traditional way.
Automatically Jolene slid her hand down to cup the gentle swell of her belly, protecting that most precious part of her from any hurts the world tried to throw at them. Kellison’s brown gaze dropped to follow the movement of her hand. Jolene flattened her spine into the back of the chair, instinctively putting distance between her baby and those probing eyes.
He blinked again and turned his attention back to something Doyle had said. Freed from the mesmerizing spell, Jolene expelled a sigh of unexpected relief.
What the heck had just happened? She didn’t think Kellison had been scoping her out as a pretty woman or potential conquest. He was judging her for some reason. Judging her and deciding she’d come up short, even though they’d done nothing more than exchange names.
And some seriously intense eye contact.
With a grunt of exasperation, she turned and tossed her empty milk carton into the trash. Nate Kellison’s I’m-here-to-work-not-make-friends attitude pricked at her sense of fair play, that was all. When she looked through the window again, he was following Doyle out the back hallway to the three bays where the Turning Point ambulance and engines were parked.
“The view’s better from this side, buddy,” she muttered as he turned his back to her. It was a silly, defensive retort, but one she realized was halfway true.
Without the intensity of those amber eyes to make her feel like a specimen beneath a microscope, she could relax and enjoy the scenery. From this vantage point, she could almost envision the laid-back surfer dude she’d expected to meet and share a few laughs with. Almost.
Laid-back didn’t fit Nate Kellison. Not in any way, shape or form. Like his sparsity of words, there was something tightly controlled about the way he moved. His dark blue shirt clung to the rolling flex of his shoulders and his tapering back. Even lower, his glutes bunched and released beneath the drape of his uniform slacks, creating a taut, lean silhouette.
But something was off.
Before he disappeared around the corner, she lowered her gaze past the squared-off hips, the powerful thighs, and spied a subtle unevenness to his gait. The glitch in his body’s disciplined perfection was nearly undetectable. But it was there.
Surprising.
Curious.
All that muscle and control, and the man walked with a limp.
Wounded.
“Oh, no.”
That chink in his armor humanized him. Stoic and grumpy she could handle. She could even get used to those all-seeing eyes. She could ignore his perfect tush and forgive his California roots.
But if he was in pain, she was in trouble.
Stray puppy syndrome, her father called it. Orphaned pets. Abandoned fathers. Wounded men. She was a sucker for them every damn time.
Jolene clenched her fists as the familiar emotion sparked inside her. No, she warned herself. Don’t do it. But despite his less than friendly response to her, Nate Kellison’s secrets were already tugging at more than her curiosity. How had he hurt himself? When did it happen? Was he in pain right now?
Thankfully a loud eruption of male laughter diverted her attention and gave her an excuse to squelch that dangerous rise of compassion.
Jolene shifted her focus, grateful for the distraction.
Micky Flynn, the tall, flirtatious pilot, doffed her a salute and a handsome smile. Grinning, Jolene waved in return and watched him turn back to the new female volunteers. Unlike the ultra-intense Kellison, Micky was easy for most women to lust after. With his handsome face and daredevil personality, he was a natural-born lady-killer. But Micky and Jolene had never been more than friends. Maybe that was because she was the boss’s daughter, a co-worker. Or maybe she was just too tied to the land to have much in common with a man who loved the sky.
She was all about home. Stability. Community. Taking care of her ranch. Taking care of her friends. Taking care of her family.
No matter how small that family might be.
Jolene flattened her hand against the blossoming curve of her belly and tried to picture the precious little boy growing inside her. Joaquin Angel, Jr., was a tiny miracle of modern science and answered prayers.
The science hadn’t saved her husband, and the prayers had changed over the past few months. But she loved her little guy. He was hers alone now. And she cherished pending motherhood in a way her own mother never had.
One of those tender, butterfly flutters stirred beneath the press of her hand. At five months, he was still too small to deliver a real kick, but she could feel him shift inside her. An intuitive connection bonded them already. He’d know what it was like to grow up with only one parent, the way she had. He’d also know what it was like to have that one parent love him more than life itself.
The way she had.
Little Joaquin would never be abandoned. Not by choice. Not by fate. “I’ll always be here for you, sweetie,” she crooned, stroking her belly as if she could caress the baby himself. “Grandpa, too.”
Jolene looked up, intent on finding her father, to tell him she loved him with one of their coded winks.
Though he was engaged in a conversation with Dr. Sherwood, he winked right back and she smiled. His steady reassurance grounded her in a way that nothing else ever had. She was proud of him. Still handsome at fifty with those piercing blue eyes and easy smile, he had a friendly confidence about him that commanded respect, as evidenced by the way Dr. Sherwood nodded her head, then quickly crossed to the supply shelves to do his bidding.
Her father pointed to Jolene and then the outside door, marching his fingers through the air in imitation of someone walking. Subtle hint. Not.
Jolene shook her head and mouthed, “No way.”
He shrugged and moved to the podium at the end of the room, where he picked up the latest printout from the weather bureau. He was such a worrier. A frown creased his brow as he pored over the stats, and she wished there wasn’t a crowd or phone lines to monitor so she could run in and give him a hug.
Jolene knew her father carried the same sadness inside him that she did. A part of him would always love the beautiful woman who’d left them twenty years ago for the bright lights of Hollywood. Of course, April Kannon had never become a star like the L.A. talent agent she’d left with had promised. But she’d found two more husbands willing to provide her with the glitz and glamour and excitement she’d never found in tiny, remote Turning Point.
Mitch Kannon had been a rock when Jolene’s mother had abandoned them. He’d been there for Jolene’s first period, her first driving lesson, her first broken heart when she’d realized boys didn’t date plain, skinny girls who could outrun and outride them.
He’d held her when she announced she was marrying her best friend—when she told him Joaquin was dying of cancer and that she’d agreed to be artificially inseminated with his sperm to create a child whose bone marrow could save his life. Her father was by her side the day Joaquin lost his battle with cancer, the morning she buried him.
How could she not be here for him now that he needed her?
“Ladies and gentlemen.” Mitch Kannon’s booming bass voice rattled the glass. He rapped his knuckles against the podium to get everyone’s attention. “If we could get started. It’s already a few minutes past eight, and I have a feeling we’re going to have a long day. First, I want to brief you on the current weather forecast. Then we’ll review procedure, what we can and should expect as far as casualties, and then I’ll get you to your assignments.”
Nate Kellison reentered with Doyle Brown, but hung back, opting to perch on the corner of a counter near the back of the room while Doyle took a seat in a chair closer to the podium.
There Nate sat, watching again. Friendly enough to get the job done, but not Texas friendly.
“What’s your story, California?” Jolene whispered the rhetorical words to the glass.
What was he doing? Evaluating the acoustics of the room? Looking for a chair beside a pretty woman he could get friendly with? She wondered if it was arrogance or professionalism or something more personal that pushed him to maintain such control over himself and the space around him.
The ringing of the telephone cut short her speculation about the visiting paramedic, and she turned to take the call. It wasn’t a 9-1-1 call through the radio or emergency line. That probably meant it was another lost evacuee.
Jolene snapped up the receiver and grabbed her notepad. “Turning Point Fire Station. This is Jolene. How can I help you?”
“Jolene? Thank God. It’s me—” The sharp catch of a familiar voice, followed by a low-pitched moan, put Jolene on immediate alert.
“Lily? Are you all right?” Jolene checked her watch and jotted down the time. The moan ended with a series of shallow, repetitive breaths. She didn’t need a medical degree to figure out why her friend Lily Browning had called. Nine months pregnant and due any day, the woman had gone into labor. “Where are you?”
“I’m at home.” Home was the Rock-a-Bye Ranch, just a few miles down the road from the Double J spread Jolene had inherited from Joaquin. “If this is what I think it is, I’m about a week early.”
Lily sounded remarkably calm, now that the contraction had passed, giving Jolene a chance to hear the whoop of one of the three Browning boys hollering in the background. Jolene cupped her own belly and grinned, sending up a prayer that her son would be every bit as healthy and happy as Lily’s were.
But she knew her neighbor hadn’t called to share the joys and frustrations of motherhood the way they had so many mornings over herbal tea in one kitchen or the other. Jolene pushed to her feet, shedding her wistful thoughts and becoming the professional caretaker she needed to be. “With Doc Holland gone, the clinic’s still closed. You’ll have to get Gabe to drive you over to the Kingsville hospital. I’ll call ahead and tell them to expect you.”
But this wasn’t going to be as easy as a phone call.
“Gabe isn’t here. He had to go out of town on business. He must have gotten caught in the evac traffic. He was driving back through Dallas to get my mom to come help watch the kids when the baby comes.” A shout for “Mom!” and a stampede of little feet crescendoed in the background. A rustling sound muffled Lily’s stern warning.
“Aaron! Quit chasing Seth. If you want to run around, go outside.”
“But it’s raining.”
“It’s warm enough. Go get wet.”
Jolene frowned at what that silence meant. “Are you there by yourself?”
“Just me and the boys.” Lily’s oldest was only going into the third grade. Not much help there. “Rocky got out through a downed fence, so I sent Deacon to retrieve him in case the storm blows this way.”
The Brownings’ live-in ranch hand had a hard enough time corraling their stubborn Santa Gertrudis bull when the weather was nice. Rocky had no concept of the phrase, when the cows come home, and seemed to think fences and ropes and rules were for inferior beings like heifers and cowboys. Add rain, mud and a possible hurricane to complicate things, and Rocky would probably keep Deacon away from the house for the rest of the day.
Jolene turned around, trying to get her father’s attention. But he was pointing to a county map on the wall and had his back to her.
“How far apart are your contractions?” she asked, drumming her fingers against the glass window. Adrenaline poured into her veins, charging her body with a restless energy.
“I’m not sure. Fifteen minutes, maybe.”
Jolene hadn’t gotten her father’s attention, but she was suddenly aware of someone else’s probing stare focused on her. Her breath caught in her chest as she met Nate Kellison’s golden brown gaze. His expression could be curiosity, could be concern. Could be contempt, for all she knew. Whatever it was, he seemed to look straight beyond any physical barriers and read what was in her mind and heart.
Her cheeks and other parts of her anatomy suffused with a heat that wasn’t entirely due to self-conscious awareness. Her response was completely unexpected and too damn distracting to deal with at the moment. Needing to concentrate, Jolene quickly turned and showed him her backside.
“Do you have a watch, Lily?” Jolene fought to stay focused on the call. “You need to be sure.”
