Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance (8 page)

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You are sorely lacking in dietary imagination, Vicky.” He stepped in front of her. “We’ll have a triple-decker hot fudge sundae with pistachio mint, peanut-butter banana, and, ummm, mocha fudge. And two spoons.” He turned triumphantly toward Victoria. “Now, doesn’t that sound adventurous?”

“It sounds nauseating. And my name’s Victoria.” She crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

“Oops, sorry. I slipped.”

“You do that a lot.”

“C’mon, Vic-TOR-ee-ah,” he said, enunciating her name until it sounded like it had ten syllables instead of four. “Try the sundae. If you don’t like it, I’ll buy you that plain ol’ vanilla cone. Deal?”

She couldn’t imagine why her choice of ice cream made any difference to him, but to keep the peace, she agreed. A few minutes later she found herself sitting across from him, skeptically contemplating the quivering mound of ice cream.

Roan handed her a spoon. “Dig in.”

She took a small sample. It was good—very good, in fact. She took a second, larger bite, and then a third. Roan joined her, mixing all three flavors on his spoon at the same time.

“You want the cherry?” he asked.

“Do you?” she countered.

“I asked first.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, we’re acting like a couple of teenagers at the malt shop. Please, eat the cherry. I won’t be able to sleep tonight knowing I deprived you of it.”

He laughed, dangled the fruit enticingly in front of her, then snatched it away and popped it into his own mouth, pulling it off the stem with his teeth. Victoria watched, fascinated despite herself. He had a sexy mouth.

“What’s wrong with acting like kids?” he asked when he’d thoroughly chewed and swallowed the morsel. “I get the feeling maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to just relax and enjoy something for its own sake, without analyzing it to death.”

She narrowed her gaze. Was that really how she impressed him? An uptight scientist utterly incapable of having fun?

“I told you before, I’m very focused when it comes to a chase trip,” she said, trying hard not to be offended. “If you got to know me under other circumstances, you would have a different impression of me.”

“Indeed. I’d like to test that theory.”

The suggestive look in his eyes left no doubt as to what “other circumstances” he had in mind. Her heart
flipped over and she felt heat rushing to her face. What in the world was she to make of him? And what was she to do about her response to him? If he pressed his advantage even a little, she would melt into a whimpering pool of sexual acquiescence.

She shook her head to dispel the unwelcome images taking shape in her head, then took another bite of ice cream. A click and a whirl caused her to look up again.

“Will you stop that?” she said testily. She did not particularly want to be captured on film in her present state. She was sweaty and out of sorts, and she probably had ice cream on her nose or something just as bad.

“I like taking your picture, especially when you don’t know I’m watching you. Your every thought is expressed right in your face, did you realize that?”

“I certainly hope not!” she sputtered. If that was true, she was in deep trouble.

After the ice cream, Roan found more distractions in Haynie, Oklahoma, than Victoria had thought possible in such a dinky town. First they walked to the local high school and watched the baseball team practice. They ambled through a residential neighborhood where one of the fenced yards housed a Shetland pony, which they petted and fed handfuls of grass. Roan took more pictures. By then Victoria was getting used to it, so she didn’t object.

Next they found a park, where Roan played Tarzan on the jungle gym and Victoria rocked gently to and fro on a swing, letting the breeze cool her. As he hung upside down from his knees, his T-shirt rode up, revealing rippling stomach muscles and more smooth, tanned skin than she needed to see.

When he decided to walk the highest bar like a tightrope, Victoria’s pleasure turned to panic. God, he
was going to break his neck. “Cut it out, Roan. You’re scaring me.”

He rolled his eyes, but he did climb down and came over to where she was sitting. “Want me to push you?”

“No,” she answered, wary.

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll push me too high, even when I tell you to slow down, and you won’t stop until I scream and threaten to kill you.”

He flashed a guilty grin. “You sound like you’ve had your share of experience with mean little boys on the playground.”

“You got it.” She looked at her watch. “It’s after four. Let’s get back to the garage and see if Leon is finished yet.”

“Okay,” Roan said agreeably. He’d been nothing today if not agreeable. Taking her hand and pulling her up from the swing, he said, “Now, answer truthfully. Breaking down in this little town hasn’t turned out to be so god-awful bad, has it?”

She smiled. “It could have been worse. And thank you for keeping me … distracted. But I warn you, when I find out just exactly what we missed, my mood will go downhill in a hurry.”

“Then I’ll have to find some new way to, er, distract you.”

The man was incorrigible, and he was getting bolder with his sexual innuendoes. But something deep inside her, something she couldn’t name or explain or rationalize, let him get away with it. Perhaps it was because she
suspected he wasn’t serious, that he was only trying to get a reaction out of her.

Victoria already had her credit card in her hand as Leon totaled up the bill. When he gave her the charge slip, she barely even registered the amount before scrawling her normally neat signature. She was eager to check the data again.

Moments later she was staring at the computer screen and sighing. Oswego, Oklahoma. That’s where the action would break, and they were three hours away. But if they hurried, they might make it.

Roan was leaning against a wall, chatting with one of the gas jockeys.

“Move it or lose it, Cullen. We’ve got a lot of time to make up,” she called to him as she unlocked the passenger door, then walked around to the driver’s side.

Roan jumped at the sound of her voice and quickly bid the other man good-bye. “Ever consider a career in the military?” he asked as he climbed into the van.

“What?”

“You’ve got a bit of the drill sergeant in you.”

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. But there’s a chance we’ll still make it.” She reached behind her and retrieved a handful of maps from the seat pocket. “Here,” she said, handing them to Roan. “There’s an Oklahoma map in there somewhere. Find a highway that leads to Oswego.”

“Ma’am, yes,
ma’am
!”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Cut it out.”

Roan quickly plotted their shortest route to the small eastern Oklahoma town, and Victoria drove as fast
as she dared. Two hours later she was encouraged by the darkening sky. The temperature outside had dropped considerably, and intermittent reports of high winds and pea-sized hail came over the ham radio. She jumped when a “beep beep beep” sounded from the weather station, followed by the announcement that the Weather Service had issued a T-box.

“All right, now we’re cooking,” Roan said in response to the tornado watch.

“We’re still seventy-five miles away from it,” Victoria said gloomily. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

“Do we have to stop when it gets dark?”

“Absolutely. I don’t chase what I can’t see.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased with her answer.

The ham radio spotters kept up a consistent chatter as the van approached Oswego. One reported a rotating wall cloud—the precursor to a tornado—about four miles north of town. Although visibility wasn’t as good in this part of the state because of the trees, Victoria could see the supercell off in the distance. Adrenaline surged through her veins, and the air seemed to be charged with the power of the storm as the atmospheric pressure dropped.

“Find a good road north,” she said, tapping the map Roan had spread out against his thigh.

“I’m looking,” he said impatiently.

Another “beep beep beep” grabbed their attention. This time it was a tornado warning—a funnel cloud had been sighted.

Victoria let out a string of curses.

“Vicky!”

She turned on him. “You call me Vicky one more time and you’re walking.”

Roan’s hurt expression made her want to bite her tongue out. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t do it on purpose.”

She eased her foot off the gas and took a deep breath. “No, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s stupid for me to let the stress get to me like that. But this is very frustrating! If we just had another fifteen minutes—”

“Highway 64A,” Roan interrupted. “That should be the intersection just ahead.”

Victoria made a kamikaze turn onto rural route 64A, which turned out to be a twisting two-lane blacktop. “Are you sure about this?”

“It’s the only decent road leading north.”

Excited voices came thick and fast over the radio now, describing the tornado. According to their eyewitness accounts, the twister was long and spindly, churning across open pastures. Then abruptly the voices stopped. One man finally reported, “It’s gone back up. Show’s over.”

“That’s it,” Victoria said, expelling a long breath. “It’s over, and we missed it.”

Sure enough, when they crested the next hill they met up with several vehicles parked haphazardly along the roadway, including TV station vans. Some of the cars she recognized as belonging to fellow storm chasers. Most were quickly packing up their video cameras and tripods, ready to zoom off to the next likely cloud in hopes of catching another storm.

She pulled up next to Eddie and Marilyn Dunne, a couple from Dallas who were amateur weather enthusiasts and regulars on the chase scene for several years.

“Victoria!” Eddie greeted her, looking surprised. “We were wondering where you’d gotten to. Jeff Hobbs said you were out and about, and I couldn’t believe you weren’t here. Everybody’s here,” he said, gesturing toward the dozen or so cars. “Did you see it?”

“I’m afraid not.” She quickly introduced Roan to the couple, then asked, “What did I miss?”

“Just a little ol’ rope of a storm, that’s all,” Marilyn said, assessing Roan with lazy green eyes. “Wasn’t on the ground more than a couple of minutes. But it was kind of pretty, backlit by the sun and all. I think I got some nice stills.” She patted the camera dangling from her neck.

“No damage or injuries, I hope?” That was always the first thing Victoria wanted to know about any tornado.

“No, I’m sure not,” Marilyn said.

Eddie signaled for her to hurry up. “There’s another wall cloud on the other side of town,” he announced.

“And I suppose we’re going after it,” Marilyn said with a soft laugh. “You know how Eddie is. He wants to chase to the bitter end.”

By that time most of the chasers were hopping into their vehicles and taking off with some urgency.

“You mean there might be another one?” Roan asked.

“Could be. These things often occur in clusters.”

“Well, hell, let’s go, then!”

Victoria pulled back onto the highway, working her way into the queue of cars driving like maniacs. “Shoot, we’re in a lot more danger from these crazy drivers than we are from any storm,” she said as someone came within inches of rear-ending the van.

“Is it always this crowded?” Roan asked.

“Lately it seems that way. Several years ago, when I first got into this business, you would never see this many chasers on the road at one time. Chasing has gotten to be a very popular pastime. I really miss the days of just me and Amos and the sky. I don’t know how long it’s been since we witnessed a tornado by ourselves.”

“You miss him, don’t you.”

“Of course I do. But I must say, you’ve been … well …”

“A pain in the butt?”

“No, that isn’t what I was going to say.” What had she been going to say? That he was fun? A good sport? A helluva lot sexier than his uncle? She finally settled on “You’ve been quite good company.” She covertly glanced in his direction to gauge his reaction.

To her surprise, a slow smile spread across his face. “You’re not so bad yourself, Vic—Victoria,” he said, correcting himself before he committed another nickname sin. Just when she was about to respond with a pleasant rejoinder, he added, “And you’re real pretty when you’re mad.”

“Oh, Roan, how trite. Can’t you think of anything more original?”

He just grinned maddeningly.

Even so, his silly observation sent a chill of pleasure
wiggling along her spine. Her attraction to this man was growing by leaps and bounds with every passing hour—and this was only the end of their second day together.

Victoria followed the caravan of cars, trucks, and vans as it pursued another likely-looking cloud, but her instincts told her it wouldn’t pan out, and it didn’t. Before long, the cacophony of voices on the radio were making dinner plans.

“Are you hungry?” Victoria asked.

“Do you even have to ask?”

“Good point. I guess we can join the others for dinner, although we’ll be the only ones there not eating steak.”

As they pulled into the parking lot of a little restaurant in Oswego, the cellular phone rang and Victoria answered it. “Chase II.”

“Where are you?” a scratchy voice on the other end of the line asked.

“Professor! Oh, it’s good to talk to you. How are you feeling?”

“Never mind me. Did you see it?”

“Um, no. We were delayed with car trouble—”

“Oh, don’t tell me. You let Roan drive and he had a wreck.”

“No, nothing that serious,” she said. “The Chasemobile is just fine. But we missed the tornado by about ten minutes.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, missy. But you’ll catch one tomorrow.”

“Will there be any action tomorrow?”

“Mmm, I’m not saying. It’s your gig this time.”

“Not even a clue?” she wheedled.

“Okay, one clue. Kansas.”

“Boy, that really narrows it down.”

Roan nudged her. “Let me talk to him.”

“Roan wants to talk to you,” she said, then handed over the phone.

“Hi, Unc.… Yeah, she’s taking real good care of me—except for those temper tantrums. You never told me she could curse like a stevedore.”