Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance (7 page)

Lovely. Roan felt suddenly less disgusting, by comparison.

“Our van quit,” Victoria said. “We need a mechanic.”

“That would be me, Leon Hornbostel at your service. Lucky for you it’s a slow day. Seein’ as I’m the only decent mechanic in these parts, sometimes it gets pretty backed up.” He took a long, slow look at the van, then asked suspiciously, “What’s all them antenneys for?”

Victoria clearly was not interested in jawing with Leon about her business. “Weather-sensing equipment,” she said dismissively. “I’m with the Weather Service out of Lubbock. Before you tow the van into the garage, I need to do something. Excuse me.” She climbed into the van through the side door.

Leon stuck his thumbs in his pockets and looked at Roan. “That’s quite a little spitfire you got there. Wouldn’t want to try to get nothin’ past her, no sirree.”

Roan held his hands up defensively. “She’s not my spitfire. I’m just along for the ride.”

Leon’s eyebrows flew up, but he said nothing.

“I’m a photographer,” Roan added. “I’m documenting her work.”

“Is that so?” Leon glanced at the van again. “What’s she doing in there?”

“Playing with her computer,” Roan replied, figuring anything more technical would go right over the old
man’s head. “She won’t be long. Got any cold drinks around here?”

“There’s a machine inside the garage.”

Roan found the ancient machine, bought an orange soda for an unheard of quarter, and leaned against a wall to drink it and smoke a cigarette. He’d smoked a grand total of two cigarettes the day before. At this rate, his current pack would last him the rest of the month. It wasn’t that he was holding himself back around Victoria either. He simply hadn’t felt much of an urge to smoke since embarking on this trip.

When he’d finished the soda and smoke, he dug a clean T-shirt with a picture of a black bear from his bag and washed his face and torso in the bathroom. As he walked back out into the hot sun, feeling much improved, Victoria emerged with a handful of printouts and her laptop computer. Roan retrieved his camera bag from the back of the van before Victoria surrendered her keys to Leon.

“If you folks want to have some lunch while I have a look-see at your engine, you can walk on down to Candy’s Cafe, middle of the next block. I should have an answer for you by the time you’re done eating.”

“Okay,” Victoria said, casting one last, distressed look at the crippled van. Rather than towing it, three young men were attempting to push it into the garage.

“It’ll be all right,” Roan said softly into her ear. “I checked out the garage. It’s clean and neat and appears to have all the necessary tools.”

Victoria nodded miserably. With her laptop clutched
against her chest, she set out in the direction of Candy’s Cafe with Roan right behind.

They sat at a booth by the window. As Victoria typed rapidly on the laptop, she hardly touched the chef’s salad she’d ordered. Roan showed no such concerns. He devoured his hamburger and fries with gusto, and a slice of cherry pie on top of that.

“Look at this,” Victoria said more to herself than to Roan. “I’ve never seen such consistent, clear-cut signs. It’s almost like having a giant arrow pointing right to where the tornadoes will form.” Rather than sounding pleased with her findings, she sounded depressed.

“We can still get there in time,” Roan said with overt optimism. He had an overwhelming urge to cheer her up. “It’s only a little after noon. The van might have just thrown a belt or something. Leon might already have it fixed.”

Clearly Victoria didn’t buy his Little Mary Sunshine routine, so he kept quiet. She continued to fiddle with her computer, and Roan, bored and fidgety, took his camera out and checked the settings. It was a natural extension from there to snap a few shots of Victoria lost in concentration. A beam of sunshine floated in through the window, backlighting her with an unearthly halo.

He got off about three shots before she looked up.

“Stop that,” she said irritably. “You’re supposed to take pictures of tornadoes, not tornado chasers.”

“Unfortunately, there aren’t too many tornadoes in Candy’s Cafe,” he replied. Click. “Besides, I can’t resist taking pictures of you. You look beautiful.”

For a split second she flashed a smile of purely feminine
pleasure, then quickly suppressed it, pinching her lips together.

“You know, Vicky, it wouldn’t kill you to accept a compliment from me,” he teased. “You could even smile. I promise, I wouldn’t automatically take it as an invitation. I wouldn’t even think of it as flirting, heaven forbid.” He shot off two more frames, capturing her reaction of dismay.

“Will you cut that out?” She rolled up a sheaf of papers and thwacked him with it. “I’m glad you find me such a worthy photo subject, but you’re making me nervous. I can’t work.”

Roan would have argued further. He was pleased he’d gotten a rise out of her. And she hadn’t berated him for calling her Vicky. But they were interrupted by one of the young men from Leon’s.

“Ms. Driscoll, ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“Leon says I should tell you it’s your timing chain. If you’ll sign this here estimate, we can order the parts from the dealership in Altus and get to work on it right away.”

“Timing chain? That sounds serious. How long will it take to fix it?”

The young man laid the form on the table in front of her. “If the parts are in stock, we should have it ready by late this afternoon,” he said proudly.

Victoria didn’t give him the reaction he’d been looking for. She frowned, sighed noisily, then looked at the estimate. Roan read it upside down—a couple of hundred dollars plus change.

“If you had it towed to the dealership, you could get the work done under warranty,” Roan pointed out.

“That would take too much time,” she said. “It’s okay, I can cover it.” With a fatalistic shrug she signed her name to the form. The young man tipped his hat and left.

“Well, that blows any chance we had of catching up to the bad weather,” she said dejectedly. “Damn, what luck. What lousy luck. This is the best-looking weather day I’ve seen in a long time, and we’re stranded in Haynie, Oklahoma.”

“Maybe we’re not as stranded as we think we are,” Roan offered. “I’ll bet we could borrow or rent a car from someone around here, just for the afternoon.”

Victoria looked hopeful for a moment before she slumped again in defeat. “No, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Too risky.”

“Risky how? We’ll make sure the car has insurance.”

“Well, of course. But we can’t just take off after tornadoes in some strange car with no communications equipment.”

“It’ll have a radio. And we can bring the phone.”

“Absolutely not.” She looked down at her computer screen again, indicating the subject was closed.

Roan was intrigued with her stubbornness. What was the big deal about borrowing a car and trying to drive to where the action was? It was the kind of thing he did all the time.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little overcautious?” he ventured to ask.

“No.”

“Well, I do. I think you rely on all your electronic gadgetry like a crutch.”

“Humph.” She unwrapped one of the peppermints the waitress had left with their check and popped it into her mouth.

Roan leaned across the table until his chin was almost resting on the top of the computer screen. When Victoria refused to acknowledge him, he reached around the computer and nudged her chin upward with one finger.

She looked up, her hazel eyes snapping with irritation. “What?”

“What about the romance of the sky?” he said in a provocative whisper. “What about the thrill of the chase, the challenge of facing the unknown?”

She stared at him, as if mesmerized by his voice. With their gazes locked and their mouths within inches of touching, Roan had a brief, insane notion that they might actually kiss. Then Victoria abruptly jerked away from his touch, shuttering her eyes.

“The unknown can kill people,” she said curtly.

Her words had a chilling effect on Roan. He immediately backed off and did not mention borrowing a car again. She was right. When people took the elements too lightly, when they casually messed with something they knew nothing about, they could die. He better than anyone understood that.

Victoria’s eyes were crossed and her fingers cramping from so much time at the laptop computer. Roan had long since grown bored. He’d paid their bill and stepped outside to smoke, much to Victoria’s relief. She needed a few minutes to pull herself together.

She hadn’t meant to snap at Roan. But the idea of chasing tornadoes with nothing but a phone and a radio scared the bejeezus out of her. Tornadoes weren’t always visible from a distance. An HP storm—high precipitation—could be wrapped up in rain. Without the benefit of the ham radio storm spotters and the up-to-the-minute Weather Service bulletins, she and Roan could drive right into the middle of a tornado and never see the danger until their car was in the top of a tree.

She shivered at the thought, then reminded herself she had nothing to worry about. She and Roan were going nowhere without the Chasemobile, and that was final.

She couldn’t really blame Roan, she thought as she closed her computer. He probably thought she was an overcautious fussbudget. But until he experienced a twister firsthand, he wouldn’t understand her overriding respect toward storms, or her insistence on caution.

Even then he might not agree with her if he was as devoid of survival instinct as Amos believed.

She gave the map she’d plotted one final, longing look before folding it in half. Better to miss the action than put herself or anyone else at risk.

Roan reentered Candy’s Cafe just as Victoria was
standing and stretching the kinks out of her back. “Hey, they have a pioneer museum here, in the city hall,” he said in the same tone of voice he might have used to announce that he’d struck gold. “Let’s check it out.”

A pioneer museum? Oh, well, what else was there to do? She’d analyzed the data to death, and a little walking would do her good. Besides, his grin was infectious. “All right, you sold me,” Victoria said. “But I think I’ll put my computer back in the van.”

That chore taken care of, they headed down Main Street to the unassuming city hall. Roan opened the door and ushered her inside.

The Pioneer Museum, in the coolness of the basement, was a hodgepodge collection of nineteenth-century farm and ranch implements, moth-eaten clothing, deeds and land grants, and samples of barbed wire. The skulls of long-dead cattle were mounted on the walls at regular intervals, staring down with hollow eyes. Sepia photographs depicted the pioneers’ lives.

Fixating on the distant past wasn’t high on Victoria’s list of interesting things to do. She soon grew weary of the musty museum, but Roan didn’t. He read every single description of every exhibit, sometimes out loud, his astute blue eyes taking in every detail.

She had to smile. His enthusiasm reminded her of a little kid, full of wonder and curiosity. While she tried to stuff her head with weather data, he seemed to have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about everything under the sun. If there was anything pleasurable about hanging around this rusty, moldering stuff, it was watching Roan take it all in.

“You’re not really liking this, are you,” Roan said.

Victoria jumped. Her mind had been on her earlier calculations, and she hadn’t felt Roan come up behind her. Did he have to stand so close? She could feel his breath on her hair and the heat of his body radiating toward hers.

“Uh, well … I guess history isn’t my strongest suit,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say you were bored?” He immediately dragged her upstairs.

Victoria was glad to get out into the fresh air again, even if it was hot. She paused outside the city hall to study the sky. It was clear blue, with just a few flat cumulus clouds.

“Doesn’t look like much of a storm day,” Roan commented.

“Not here,” Victoria agreed. “But a hundred and fifty miles away, those cumulus towers are already forming.” She glanced at her watch, then toward the garage, tempted. New data would be available.…

“Oh, no you don’t,” Roan said, taking her by the hand and practically dragging her in the opposite direction. “You’re better off not knowing what’s happening a hundred and fifty miles away. You’ll only torture yourself. C’mon.”

She sighed and followed him meekly. He was right. She didn’t really want to know what she was missing.

Next thing she knew, he ushered her into an ice cream shop called the Dairy Dilly. His hand at her waist was completely innocent, yet it sent pleasurable shivers through her body. He could be so damned appealing
when he wanted to be. She hadn’t missed the fact that he was trying awfully hard to keep her entertained, thus distracting her from their dismal situation.

And he was doing a pretty good job.

Victoria reveled in the air-conditioning for a few moments as she studied the Dairy Dilly’s twenty-something flavors. “I’d like a small vanilla cone, please,” she said decisively to the clerk.

A strangled noise came from Roan’s direction. “A vanilla cone?”