Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Karen Leabo

  “But, Roan …”

  “Anyway, it doesn’t look like that much fun. And did you see how much it costs? Thirty bucks for thirty seconds worth of terror. Big deal.” He practically dragged her back to the van and stuffed her in.

  As soon as they were on the road again, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

  “I don’t get it,” Victoria said, shaking her head. “One minute you’re itching to try bungee jumping, and the next you’re convinced it’s all a big bore. What gives?”

  “Nothing gives. It’s just that, after watching it for a few minutes, I decided it didn’t look all that great.” And he would not, could not be responsible for causing another human being to take a risk with her life, even a small one. Accidents did happen. People had been killed bungee jumping. If anything were to happen to Victoria …

  He’d already caused the death of one innocent young woman. And not just any woman, but one whose safety he’d sworn to protect. After it was all over and the numbness had worn off, he’d barely found the will to live. And sometimes, when he lay in his bed in the dark of night, he still wished he’d died instead of her.

  As Victoria concentrated on her driving, Roan studied her at leisure. Friends? That was pure delusion. He felt far more than mere friendship for Victoria Driscoll. What a tragedy that he was so utterly wrong for her.

  There were all sorts of reasons she was beyond his reach. For one, Amos would freak if Roan took advantage of the situation. And two, he could not possibly give Victoria the time and attention she deserved beyond the next twelve days. As soon as this trip was over, he was scheduled to travel to Switzerland to make a documentary on the Olympic training program there, and maybe get in some skiing. From there it was on to Guatemala, where they were digging up a Mayan city, and then, who could tell?

  If he were honest with himself, though, all of Uncle Amos’s objections, and all of the logistical problems in the world couldn’t have stopped him from pursuing Victoria. Not even his promise to behave himself would hold him back for long.

  But one thing stopped him cold. He knew beyond a doubt that if she were to fall in love with him, he would hurt her. There was a good chance he would get himself killed one of these days. He had no intention of leaving behind a grieving lover.

  SEVEN

  Victoria puzzled for some time about Roan’s peculiar behavior. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he’d chickened out of bungee jumping at the last minute. But she couldn’t imagine that Roan Cullen, a man who had faced hurricanes and volcanoes, a man who’d almost gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel, could be afraid of anything, much less something as relatively tame as jumping off a platform attached to a giant rubber band.

  But she’d seen something in his eyes, something she could easily interpret as fear, even panic.

  After a while, however, she consciously dismissed the incident from her mind. What business was it of hers if he’d changed his mind about bungee jumping? Anyway, the weather needed her full attention.

  The expected focal point of violent storms had moved north and east. Victoria headed for a small hill—more of a rise, really, since they were in central Kansas. But it afforded them a good vantage point from which to watch the sky. She pulled off the highway, cut the engine, and opened her door, grateful for the warming temperature.

  Roan followed her example, but he had nothing to say. He lit another cigarette, took a couple of drags, made a face, and threw the rest away.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen you finish a cigarette since we started this trip,” she commented as she donned a baseball cap to shield her eyes from the sun.

  “They haven’t really tasted good lately,” he said with a shrug. And then he wandered away to fiddle with his camera equipment. Victoria got the distinct impression he wasn’t in a chatty mood, and so she kept quiet herself. One of the things Amos had always praised her about was her ability to enjoy a period of quiet, and not constantly try to fill silence with inane conversation.

  But all the same, she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking Roan what was on his mind.

  Victoria forced herself to concentrate on the magnificent view, allowing the warm sun and the breeze to wash away her tension. Because of the flatness of the land, she could see for miles in every direction. The gently undulating fields formed an endless palate of greens, yellows, and browns, dotted with an occasional white farmhouse. The understated beauty of this countryside apparently wasn’t lost on Roan. He was framing shots with his camera, trying out different lenses and filters. His results might not be the sort of dramatic nature shots found in National Geographic, but if he could capture the subtleties of light and color …

  Victoria’s gaze strayed far too often in Roan’s direction. She couldn’t deny he was easy on her eyes, more interesting than the drifting clouds and lengthening afternoon shadows. Unaware of her scrutiny, he moved with the grace and agility of a natural athlete, sometimes dropping to one knee to steady his shot, or just gazing at the horizon, his expression reflecting an inner turmoil Victoria couldn’t begin to understand.

  Her heart ached for him, and she didn’t even know why. Her body ached for him, too, in a much more insistent way. Now that needed no explanation. She still couldn’t get his kiss completely off her mind. She recalled in exquisite detail the insistence of his mouth against hers, the feel of his warm, sure hands seeking out her softness.

  Her body reacted as if the kiss were more than a memory, and she made a heroic effort to turn her thoughts elsewhere. It served no purpose to fantasize about Roan. She’d made her decision not to get involved with him, and she was sticking by it. She had no hope of understanding the man. She had no chance of controlling his self-destructive behavior, despite Amos’s hopes. And she had never felt comfortable around things she couldn’t understand and control—at least to some degree. Life offered too many risks already without a person looking for them.

  Victoria scanned the sky and smiled with self-satisfaction. The clouds were cooperating nicely, churning and merging and building into huge cumulus towers that seemed to reach into infinity. An occasional flash of lightning could be seen in the distance. Her forecast couldn’t have been more accurate.

  She liked one storm in particular, which was forming all by itself without any neighbors to suck away its energy, and she kept a careful eye on it.

  Roan, too, was watching it, she noticed. “What do you think of that one?” he asked with a degree of enthusiasm she hadn’t heard since they’d left Barricklow.

  “It’s promising,” she replied. “See how the tops of the clouds have nice, crisp edges? And how they look kind of like cauliflower florets? That’s a good sign. As a matter of fact, we ought to get in the van and get closer to it.”

  “Let’s do it.” Roan stowed his gear in the back of the van, then climbed into the passenger seat. His step had seemed a little quicker, his gestures more animated. Victoria was hopeful that he’d forgotten whatever had made him so preoccupied earlier. She didn’t like to see him so serious.

  Funny, when she’d first met him, she’d have given anything to see him a little more serious. But now, of all things, she missed his teasing. He’d been keeping his promise about being a gentleman—keeping it too well.

  She pulled the Kansas map out from behind her seat and handed it to Roan. “I’d like to position ourselves north and east of the storm, so it’s coming toward us.”

  “You want it to chase us instead of the other way around?”

  “Exactly. There’s more to see in front of a storm than behind it. But don’t worry. As long as we know what direction it’s traveling, we can get out of the way.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” he said with a crooked grin. “How far are we from the action?”

  “I’d say about ten, maybe fifteen miles.”

  He consulted the map. “Let’s see … there should be a turnoff to the right for K-22 a couple of miles farther. Then, if we take this YY road … yeah, that should work.�
��

  “What kind of a road is YY?” Victoria asked.

  “Solid black line. Turns into a dotted line farther north, but I don’t think we’ll be going that far.”

  “Does it have some cross streets? I don’t like to get myself cornered.”

  “Mmm, not many. The roads are pretty few and far between out here.”

  She had to agree with him. The wide-open spaces of the rural Midwest made for great visibility, but that same emptiness meant sparse roads. She’d lost more than one promising storm out there when it went one direction and the road went another. And she liked to keep her options open.

  Well, they’d just have to do the best they could.

  When they turned off onto K-22, Victoria saw that she was not the only chaser on the trail of this particular storm. A van from a Wichita television station was up ahead of her. And within moments she saw Jeff Hobbs’s Blazer behind her.

  “Looks like we’re not alone,” Roan observed.

  “I didn’t figure we would be,” Victoria said wistfully. “Any yo-yo watching the Weather Channel knew enough to be in the vicinity. And once here, there was no question about which storm to watch. This one’s going to be a dilly.”

  In the last few minutes as they’d neared the storm, the skies had grown progressively darker. Victoria switched on the video camera mounted on the dashboard. Excited voices flew thick and fast over the ham radio as spotters reported the location of the storm cell, the velocity and direction of its movement, and the pea-sized hail falling in its wake.

  Victoria herself could see that the storm in question churned violently. An ominous lowering looked suspiciously as if it were rotating, and Victoria’s every instinct told her they were about to see the birth of a tornado.

  “I need a road north,” she said, trying to keep her nerves under wraps. This was the real test. Could she keep cool during this kind of stress without Amos’s calming presence? She’d never witnessed a tornado without her able mentor by her side.

  “YY,” Roan said, equally calm but with an underlying excitement in his voice. “It’s coming up. See where the TV van is turning?”

  “Oh, right. YY. You told me that before, didn’t you.”

  Roan was too busy staring out the window at the wall cloud to answer. He was obviously transfixed by the awesome sight. “It’s gonna happen.” He barely breathed the words.

  “I think it is. This many chasers couldn’t be wrong.” Finding a parking space along the roadside proved to be a challenge, but Victoria finally wedged the van between two crookedly parked cars. Wasting no time, she unfastened the video camera, grabbed a tripod from the floor behind her seat, and jumped out of the van. Following her cue, Roan was making similar preparations. In fact, everywhere she looked, people were scurrying around trying to get cameras set up. The man from the TV station was attempting to find someone to interview while his camerawoman filmed the storm, but there were no takers. Everyone was too busy.

  Victoria set up her camera in front of the van, where she had a clear shot of the picturesque storm. Roan set up his a few feet away, turned it on, and left it. He then concentrated on still shots with his Nikon and an incredibly long lens. A lone Guernsey cow watched curiously from the other side of a fence.

  Just when the chasers were beginning to grumble that it might not happen after all, a funnel dropped out of the wall cloud. Thin and hesitant at first, the spindly twister reached for the ground, touched down, and kicked up a small puff of debris.

  Even though Victoria had seen dozens of tornadoes, her heart beat wildly with each, this one included. She estimated it was a couple of miles away and moving almost due north, while the chasers had gathered well to the east. Their position couldn’t have been better.

  The narrow, cone-shaped funnel seemed to have an ethereal glow all its own, and it pulsated from top to bottom. An eerie hush fell over the participants as the tornado moved along, kicking up fence posts like toothpicks and uprooting the few scraggly trees in its path.

  All at once the twister seemed to stop moving. Bothered by this, Victoria leaned into the van’s open window to listen to the radio. The spotters reported that the storm was no longer moving due north, but had taken an abrupt turn eastward—which meant it was heading straight for them.

  Other chasers had apparently learned the same thing, for a concerned murmur moved among them. Almost as one the group seemed to decide it was time to beat a hasty retreat, and Victoria agreed. While the twister was still a safe distance away, she wasn’t going to take any chances. She grabbed her camera and quickly mounted it back on the dash.

  Roan was now behind his videocamera, describing aloud what was going on for the benefit of the video soundtrack.

  “Roan, we have to go now,” Victoria announced. Already, car engines were starting as the fastest of the group prepared to make an escape.

  Roan turned to look at her, clearly baffled. “Go? Why?”

  “Because we’re in the path of the storm.”

  “I thought it was moving north.”

  “That’s changed. Come on, grab your camera and let’s go.”

  Roan looked around at the exodus in progress. Then he focused on one car in particular, a beat-up Volkswagen Rabbit that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Those guys are staying,” he said, pointing.

  “John Higgenbotham and Dave Devors,” Victoria said, her voice thick with disapproval. “Meteorology students from Texas Tech. They have no idea what they’re doing. Take a look at the hail dents in their car. That should tell you something.”

  “Mmm,” Roan said noncommittally as he returned his attention to his camera and the spectacle taking place before them. “Just a few more minutes. We’re not in any imminent danger.”

  “If we aren’t now, we will be soon. C’mon, Roan, I don’t like cutting it this close.”

  “Relax, we have plenty of time,” he said distractedly.

  There were now only a few cars remaining. Even the TV van had hightailed it to a safer vantage point. The wind was kicking into high gear, blowing dust and dried grass. A chill came over Victoria as she remembered another time when she’d stood in the face of such a wind.

  “Roan, that’s enough already.” She was getting mad now that he wasn’t listening to her. “We have to go, or we’re going to get ourselves killed.”

  “Just another minute.”

  Victoria watched as the two students packed it in, whooping and hollering in high spirits. That did it. Perhaps Roan didn’t understand the danger, but she did.

  “Roan!” She stepped in front of his camera and put her hand over the lens. “You get your butt into that van this second, or I’m leaving without you!” She had to shout to be heard over the roaring wind, but she would have shouted anyway. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so angry at anyone.

  Without another word he grabbed the camera, tripod and all, and jumped into the van, barely ahead of the first barrage of rain.

  Victoria was already behind the steering wheel. She fumbled with the key, finally managing to insert it into the ignition. But in her anxiety she cranked it too hard, gave it too much gas.

  “Easy, Vic, you’re gonna flood the engine.”

  “Just shut up,” she snapped. “I know how to drive.” But she was so flustered, she repeated her mistake. The engine caught, gave a mighty roar, then died. “Dammit!” She was shaking now, but she forced herself to take her foot off the gas and slowly, gently, turn the key. The engine coughed, caught again, died.

  After three more attempts, the van finally started. But it was too late. Except for the cow, who was now pacing back and forth behind the fence, they were the only ones left on the deserted stretch of road. Everyone else had fled south, but the tornado was poised to move across the road, cutting off that particular escape route. No place to go but north, and Victoria remembered something about a dirt road in that direction.

  She backed onto the pavement, threw the van in forward gear, and floored it. Roan put on his
seat belt without a reminder, and Victoria realized she’d forgotten hers. To hell with it. If the tornado squashed the van flat, a seat belt wouldn’t do her much good anyway.

  The paved road soon deteriorated to gravel, then dirt. Then it disappeared altogether, petering out at the edge of a creek.

  Roan looked out the back window. “Oh, hell. It’s heading right for us.” Rather than sounding worried, he sounded excited.

  “No kidding!”

  “Well, what do we do?”

  She switched off the engine. “Nothing. The van is the only cover we have, so we huddle here and pray the twister doesn’t kill us.” Small hail was now pelting the van.

  “Maybe it would be safer if we got in back, away from the windows,” Roan suggested, for the first time sounding slightly apprehensive.

  He ought to be downright terrified, Victoria thought. The wind roared around the van, shaking it violently, and the rain and hail made it sound as though they were sitting under a waterfall. They would be lucky if all they suffered was broken windows. He did have a point, though, about moving into the back of the van.

  Roan reclined his seat and crawled over it with no more trouble than a cat would have had, then helped Victoria perform the same maneuver. Unfortunately she was less graceful, very nearly sliding into his lap. He grabbed her around the waist and steadied her until she found her footing. As angry as she was with him, she found the warmth of his touch reassuring in the face of danger, and she wished he didn’t have to let her go.

  The hail was larger now, at least quarter-sized. It looked like popcorn bouncing around, but it sounded more like a machine gun as it hit the van with sharp staccato cracks. The combined rain and hail had become so thick that Victoria could no longer see the tornado when she looked out the back window, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  A loud boom of thunder rattled the van, and Victoria couldn’t contain her fear any longer. She began to shiver and couldn’t stop, no matter how tightly she wrapped her arms around herself, and her breathing came in quick, irregular gasps. She felt like that twelve-year-old girl again, terrified and helpless.