Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Karen Leabo

“No,” Victoria said at once. “This is an F-5 or F-6 tornado,” she said, then, realizing the scale would mean nothing to a layperson, added, “It’s a killer, and a wooden church with all those windows would be worse than nothing.” Even as she spoke, rain began to fall in big, hard drops.

  “Come on, kids,” Roan said, trying to round up the children, who were wandering around like restless sheep. “We’re going to play hide-and-seek, and I know just the place to hide.”

  Most of the children responded immediately to him, following obediently. They didn’t know enough to be frightened. Victoria picked up two of the littler ones who were lagging behind, while Debbie took the hysterical Martha by the hand.

  The double doors to the storm shelter were set at a forty-five-degree angle into the side of a hillock. Roan flung them open, and a musty smell escaped. Concrete steps led down to blackness.

  “I’ll go first,” Debbie volunteered. Some of the older, more adventurous children followed right behind her, but the rest balked and some of them began to cry. It became a test of wills to get them all inside the shelter, which was dark as a crypt and twice as scary. Martha was worse than some of the children, and Victoria had to threaten her with bodily harm before she would go down the stairs.

  Victoria followed, descended four steps, then waited for Roan, in case he needed help with the doors.

  He didn’t come.

  She turned to look back questioningly at him. Their gazes locked long and hard.

  “Stay put,” he said. “I’ll be back.” He remained outside, closing the shelter doors and plunging her and the others into blackness.

  Pandemonium reigned inside the shelter as Debbie attempted to get a head count of the children, no small task when half of them were crying and no one could see. Martha had calmed somewhat and was trying to help.

  But Victoria felt removed from the situation, insulated by a cocoon of raw pain. How could Roan have so little respect for his own life that he would deliberately stand in the path of a killer tornado? But why else would he have denied himself the safety of this shelter? She remembered those videotapes where he’d stood out on a beach in the midst of a hurricane, opening his arms wide to the wind, exultant, excited by the storm’s violence.

  A few minutes ago, when he’d been so set on getting them out of danger, she’d thought things were different, that he’d learned—that she’d taught him—to value his own life. But obviously the concern he’d shown had been for her life, not his. Now that she was stashed in a safe place, he was just as determined as always to throw himself into peril.

  He hadn’t changed. He still had a death wish. And she couldn’t, wouldn’t, remain involved with a man who was set on self-destruction. She would have to break things off with him immediately. The longer she delayed, the more painful it would be. She would tell him the minute she saw him again.

  If she saw him again.

  She brushed an errant tear off her cheek with the back of her hand. Telling Roan good-bye would be the hardest thing she’d ever done; not being able to tell him would be much, much worse. He could so easily be killed.

  The storm outside intensified until the roar of the wind sounded like a laboring freight train. Debbie had given up trying to count the children and had simply gathered as many of them around her as she could, holding them tightly against her.

  Two warm little bodies clung to Victoria’s legs. She leaned down and hugged them close. “We’ll be okay,” she said, though she doubted they could understand her above the noise. Hail bombarded the storm-shelter doors, cracking like gunfire against the wood, which started the children crying again.

  The assault seemed to last forever, though it was probably only three or four minutes. Then the roar abated, the hail turned to pattering rain, and the storm retreated abruptly. The sudden quiet was eerie.

  “When can we leave the shelter?” Debbie asked, deferring to Victoria’s authority.

  Victoria took a deep breath. “I’ll have a look outside. Sometimes these things come in twos and threes … but it sounds as if the worst is over.”

  Debbie reached out across the darkness and touched Victoria’s arm. “Your friend … why did he stay outside?”

  Because my love wasn’t enough to save him? Victoria’s voice cracked when she answered. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  She felt her way up the steps and heaved the doors open. All was quiet. Even the rain had stopped. She poked her head out, then stepped outside. “Oh, dear God.”

  The destruction was so vast as to be almost incomprehensible. Trees were uprooted, cars overturned, and debris slung everywhere—planks of wood ripped from buildings three counties away, probably. She identified telephone poles, twisted bits of metal that were once road signs, a garbage can, a stray shutter, bricks, a dead bird.

  She was afraid to turn and look at the church. When she did, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was missing a few shingles from the roof, and one of the stained-glass windows was broken, but it was largely intact. And it was about the only thing left standing.

  “Your friend probably took shelter in the church,” Debbie said. She’d emerged from the storm cellar behind Victoria, and was taking in the devastation with a grim face.

  “Yes, I’m sure he did,” Victoria replied, though she wasn’t at all sure. “Let’s take the children inside, away from all this debris where they could get hurt.”

  Even as she helped herd the children toward the church, Victoria scanned the landscape for some sign of Roan. He could be anywhere. He could be in Oz.

  A little boy of six or seven—the birthday boy, she realized—grabbed hold of her hand. His face was pale, his eyes huge. “Come this way.”

  “But we have to go into the—”

  “No, come this way. It’s Mr. Roan. He’s hurt.”

  Oh, no. Oh, please, God, no. She let the little boy lead her across the debris-strewn yard, skirting a wad of barbed wire, climbing over a white picket fence that was miraculously still upright.

  He directed her toward a stand of trees. She gasped when she saw Roan, stretched out prone on the ground, all but covered by a huge tree limb that had fallen on top of him.

  Victoria had never moved so fast. She heaved the limb off Roan, though it probably weighed more than a hundred pounds. “Roan?” she said, kneeling beside him, feeling around his neck for a pulse.

  One of his hands twitched, and she knew he was alive, at least.

  The little boy, all but forgotten by Victoria, started to sniffle. “I didn’t mean for nobody to get hurt,” he said.

  Victoria knew the child was frightened, but she couldn’t spare him much in the way of comfort or sympathy. She had to direct all her energy to Roan. What she did in the next few moments might mean the difference between life and death.

  She wished she knew the boy’s name. “Run back to the church and ask your teacher to call for an ambulance. Can you do that?”

  “No ambulance,” came Roan’s muffled objection.

  Oh, thank God. “Roan, don’t try to move,” she cautioned. “You could be badly injured—”

  As she might have expected, he ignored her warning and pushed himself up on his elbows, then his hands and knees, and finally into a sitting position.

  “Roan, you shouldn’t—”

  “I’m okay,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. Then he looked up, noticing the chaotic state of the churchyard for the first time. “Holy … was anyone else hurt?”

  “Everyone else was in the storm shelter, where you should have been,” she replied curtly. “Now you probably have a concussion and who knows what else.”

  He looked up at her and flashed that roguish half-smile that had always made her knees go weak. “Well, aren’t you Little Mary Sunshine. How about some TLC for the wounded?”

  She wanted to give in to his charm. Every nurturing bone in her body urged her to touch him, soothe his obvious pain. But she’d made a decision, and she was going to stick with it. The sooner he unde
rstood how things were going to be, the better.

  “I’m sure they must have a first aid kit at the church,” she said briskly. “Can you stand up?” She offered her hand for support. He was a little shaky, but he made it to his feet. She immediately released his hand.

  He reached up and touched the camera that was still hanging from his neck by a leather strap. It was smashed almost beyond recognition. “Oh, damm—ah, darn,” he said, since the birthday boy was still standing there, watching Roan intently. “That was my favorite camera too, my old Nikon.”

  Victoria picked off a weed that was clinging to the camera. “I sure hope the pictures were worth it,” she said frostily before turning and stalking back toward the church, leaving Roan to his own devices. She was torn between anger and grief for the love they’d so recently discovered, for the relationship that might have been. Right now it was easier to hide behind the anger.

  Roan couldn’t blame Victoria for what she was no doubt thinking. She obviously didn’t understand why he’d chosen to remain outside the shelter. She’d automatically assumed that he would blithely throw himself into danger for the sake of a photograph, for the sake of a thrill. She hadn’t even asked him to explain.

  The fact that she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion crushed him, worse than that tree branch had.

  Ah, hell, he had no right to expect her to trust him or believe in him. After all, what had he done to deserve her faith, to prove he’d changed? He’d quit smoking, and for all he knew, she hadn’t even noticed. He’d tried like hell to get them away from the tornado when she would have sat there all day punching numbers into a computer.

  He’d talked about a future with her.

  But, of course, she had no way of knowing what a departure from the norm that had been.

  Now the question was, could he set things right again? Or was it possible that Victoria would never believe in his sincere desire to have a future with her, a long future? A forever kind of future?

  “Are you really okay?” the little boy asked in a small voice.

  “Sure. Just a little bump on the head.” He rubbed the back of his throbbing head again, gingerly probing the knot that had formed. “How ’bout you? I didn’t hurt you when I fell on you, did I?”

  The boy inspected a minor scrape on his elbow. “I’m okay. I’m really sorry, Mr. Roan. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. It’s just that I never seen a t’nado before.”

  He wanted to let the kid off the hook. In the boy, Roan saw himself at that age, always getting into trouble, climbing things he shouldn’t, taking chances, sometimes getting hurt in the process, though never seriously. But he gritted his teeth and said what needed to be said.

  “You disobeyed your teacher, and you could have easily been killed. Not only that, you could have gotten someone else killed, namely me. And trust me, that’s something you don’t want on your conscience the rest of your life.”

  The boy’s eyes filled with tears. “Okay. I won’t do it again, I promise. Next time Miss Debbie or Miss Martha tells me to go somewhere, I’ll go.”

  That was good enough for Roan. The kid would probably catch hell from his teachers anyway. He ruffled the boy’s dark hair. “All right. Think you could tell me where to find some ice, and maybe a couple of aspirin? I’ve got a heckuva headache.”

  The kid smiled up at Roan with a look of pure adoration. “Sure, no problem.” He grabbed Roan’s hand, and they headed back to the church.

  When Roan limped into the church, he was immediately surrounded by the children and the two teachers, who lavished attention on him. Was he hurt? Did he need to sit down? What was it like out in the tornado?

  Victoria couldn’t stomach it, so she went outside through a side door. No wonder Roan was such a daredevil, if that was the kind of treatment he was used to. He got a lot of positive reinforcement for his death-defying nonsense.

  Well, not from her.

  The cars in the parking lot were a sorry sight, pocked by hail, windows broken. Victoria had seen worse. She’d once seen a tornado pick up a truck and hurl it several hundred feet. But that still didn’t prepare her for the sight of the Chasemobile—which was not exactly where Roan had parked it.

  She walked around what was left of Amos’s cherished van. How in the world was she going to explain this? One side of the vehicle was completely caved in, the window glass shattered. The computer and printer had obviously been tossed around like dice in a cup. They lay smashed and useless in a back corner of the van. And everything that wasn’t smashed was soaking wet.

  Amos was going to kill her!

  She sighed. Amos would do no such thing. His only concern would be for the safety of the van’s occupants. But it was easier to worry about Amos than to think about Roan.

  “Ma’am?”

  Victoria turned. It was the birthday boy again. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I have to tell ya something.”

  Although she wasn’t in the mood for little boys’ games, she forced herself to be patient. “Yes, what is it?”

  “It’s about Mr. Roan.” The boy lowered his voice to a reverent whisper. “He saved my life.”

  “Now, how do you figure that?” she asked. If this was some trick, some feeble attempt by Roan to get back into her good graces, it was going to backfire—big-time. He might think himself a big, brave, macho kind of guy, but to have a cute little boy plead his case for him was worse than cowardly.

  “When you said there was a t’nado coming, I ran and hid behind a tree,” the boy explained earnestly. “I didn’t want to go in that old shelter. I wanted to stay outside and see the storm.”

  Victoria felt a niggling doubt creep into her mind. The boy’s story had the ring of truth to it. And, come to think of it, she didn’t specifically remember ushering him into the shelter or hearing his voice in there. She didn’t remember Debbie or Martha speaking to him.

  “But Mr. Roan saw where I’d hid, and he came to get me,” the boy continued. “But by then it was too late, and the t’nado was right there, and the trees were blowing all the way to the ground. Mr. Roan threw me down and fell on top of me. And then the tree fell on us, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just stayed there until it was all over.” He paused to wipe away tears with one grubby hand. “I thought Mr. Roan was dead ’cause he didn’t move. So I crawled out, and that’s when I came to get you.”

  Victoria was stunned to silence. She would never in a million years have guessed the true story behind the risk Roan had taken. To stand out in a tornado because he wanted to take pictures was one thing. But to try and save a little boy’s life …!

  “Are you mad at me?” the repentant child asked, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

  She leaned down and gave him a hug. “No, honey, I’m not mad. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Are you mad at Mr. Roan?”

  She straightened, giving him one last pat on the shoulder. “No, I’m not mad at anyone.”

  “Chris!” Debbie stood in the church doorway, her hands on her hips. “Christopher Walker, you get your … you get in here right now!”

  “Yes, ma’am!” He took off at a run.

  Victoria hugged herself. She’d really messed things up by automatically thinking the worst of Roan. How was she ever going to make it up to him?

  She all but ran back to the church herself, eager to see him again, touch him, hold him, reassure herself that he was really all right. And then she was going to get him someplace private, and throw herself on his mercy.

  Roan was surprised Victoria was able to start the van, much less that it went anywhere. They had said their good-byes to the church group. Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were starting to flock to the area, apparently the hardest hit by the tornado. And that meant television news crews weren’t far behind. Roan, at least, wanted to get the heck out of there before the reporters arrived. He didn’t want any accolades for his act of heroism. No one had to know what he’d done. There was only
one person whose opinion mattered to him—and the jury was still out.

  He had to face the fact that Victoria might never forgive him for staying outside in the storm, even if she understood why he’d done it. He’d risked his life for a noble cause, but he’d risked it all the same.

  Victoria liked things predictably safe, and he wasn’t sure she could ever deal with someone like him on a long-term basis. True, she had helped him to put some things into perspective, but he would never be the kind of man who always played it safe.

  “How’s your head feeling?” Victoria asked as she aimed the limping van out of the parking lot.

  “Not bad.” Not as bad as his heart. “Victoria …”

  “Roan …” she said at the same time. They both laughed self-consciously. “Roan,” she tried again. “Why didn’t you tell me why you were staying out in the storm? I could have helped you find Chris and bring him back to the shelter.”

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to panic Debbie and Martha by pointing out that he was missing, and I certainly didn’t want you outside with me. I knew right where he was hiding. All I had to do was run over, grab him, and bring him back. I wasn’t counting on getting knocked flat by a flying tree branch.”

  “Then why didn’t you explain when I found you?”

  “You didn’t exactly ask for explanations.”

  Victoria was silent for a few moments. She bit her lip, apparently concentrating on her driving. They were coming into the little town of Marshall, where Debbie had said there was a motel. “No, I didn’t ask you to explain. I thought I knew exactly what had happened. And I was so damned hurt and disappointed … well, maybe I wanted to hurt you back.”

  “You succeeded,” he said simply.

  She pulled into the first parking lot they came to, and just in time. The van’s engine stalled and died. She didn’t even try to start it again. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t know if she was apologizing for hurting him, or for the fact that things weren’t going to work out between them. Either way, he couldn’t stand to see her so upset. He reached over and stroked her cheek. “Please don’t cry, Vic. I’m not worth it.”