“I don’t think so,” Libby said, barely above a whisper, and Mike said something about almost wishing he could go outside and see what was going on and Libby said, “Don’t be an idiot,” and lifted her eyes to the ceiling, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Listen…”
The silence seemed to thicken, until Carly felt as though she couldn’t get her breath. Then it started, that freight-train roar she’d always heard about, as if they were all lying right in its path, tied to the tracks. She heard Libby muffle a scream, saw the older boys inch closer to each other. Now Carly swallowed back a hot-cold sick feeling as sweat beaded on her forehead. Frankie tugged on her shirt; when she looked down, he whispered, “You think this’d be a good time to pray?”
“It sure as hell couldn’t hurt,” she whispered back, and the roar grew louder, and louder still, the howl of a ravenous monster desperate for something to devour, and she shut her eyes and prayed as well as she could, prayed for her father and these children and the farm and everyone in town, and the man she suddenly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she loved with all her heart.
Overhead, threaded through the roar, she heard the faint, almost musical tinkle of shattering glass, then an earsplitting crack she couldn’t identify. She held her breath, anticipating the sense of helpless terror…but it never came. Instead, even in the midst the most out-of-control situation she’d ever been in, a deep sense of peace washed over her. That she could let go and trust in something she couldn’t see, and certainly didn’t understand.
And if that wasn’t weird, she didn’t know what was. But since it felt pretty damn good, she figured maybe this praying stuff was working, so she hugged the boys more tightly to her and got back to it.
“Now it’s over,” Libby said.
Carly opened her eyes, realizing the roar was gone. Seconds later, the all-clear sounded, and they scrambled to their feet and cautiously climbed the cellar steps that led directly outside. For a moment or two, Carly was tempted to think it’d all been a dream: The air was cool and dry, the sun shining serenely in a cloudless blue sky.
Then she did a slow turn, slamming her palm over her mouth to stifle her gasp. Oh, everything major was still standing, thank God, but there was debris and mud and shingles everywhere. She glanced back at the house, saw that the dining room window was missing, broken glass glittering like diamonds on the mud. Shielding her eyes from the ridiculously bright sun, she squinted toward her father’s house, her barn-slash-studio-slash-home, saw they were both still there, too. The worry that had been fisted in her chest for the past half hour eased, but until she knew that Sam and Travis and her father were safe, there was no way she could relax completely.
“Oh, hell,” Libby yelled. “The pigs are out!”
Sure enough, the swamplike yard swarmed with porkers, none of whom were the least bit interested in anyone’s attempts to herd them back into the one pen that hadn’t been damaged—
Carly nearly jumped out of her skin when her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. All five kids went stock-still, their eyes locked on hers while pigs cavorted and squealed with the glee of the newly liberated as she fumbled to get the phone out, nearly dropping it twice before finally getting it to her ear.
“Thank God,” her father said when she answered, and tears stung her eyes.
“It’s Lane,” she told the kids, her heart breaking at their attempts to hide their disappointment.
“Is he okay?” Libby asked, almost as an afterthought, and Carly nodded over her father’s, “Is that Libby? You’re over at Sam’s? Is everything all right?”
“Basically, yeah. A few shingles, a broken window, pigs everywhere…”
“Where’s Sam?”
She turned away, so the kids wouldn’t hear, which is when she noticed there seemed to be a lot more sky from this angle than she remembered. Probably because there was a lot less tree, specifically the huge old oak that had once shaded the far side of the barn. “We don’t…exactly know. He and Trav had gone to Claremore, they’re not…” Her voice caught. “They’re not back yet.”
“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” her father said quietly.
“Yeah. I know. It’s just…” She sucked in a huge breath, shoving her hair off her face. “So. Where are you?”
“In town. I rode it out in the cellar underneath Ruby’s. But right now…” She heard his sigh over the phone. “I’m standing in front of Ivy’s house. What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Ohmigod—is she okay?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know yet.”
“Ivy’s a tough old bird,” Carly said, trying to smile. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“You keep thinking that, sweetheart. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“Me, too,” she said, stuffing her phone back into her pants just in time to be sprayed with mud, courtesy of an amazingly fleet-of-foot hundred and fifty pound pig, a bellowing pair of boys hot on its hooves. Then she looked over and saw that Libby had gone catatonic, hugging herself as she stared toward the road.
Carly sloshed through the muck to take the girl in her arms, where they both held on to each other for dear life in a desperate attempt to keep the dread at bay.
Sprung from the Town Hall basement (which was more than could be said for Hootch Atkins, who was sleeping off a bender in one of the two cells that passed for Haven’s jail), Ivy hauled ass around the corner of her block, only to come to a dead stop. She’d heard about the small twister that had decided to dance around town for five minutes or so; what she hadn’t known was that it had seen fit to uproot the fifty-foot mulberry at the back of her house, which now bore a striking resemblance to Baby Bear’s chair after Goldilocks had planted her big fat butt on it. With a wailed curse that no doubt singed ears clear out to Cal’s place, she sank onto the curb, only vaguely aware of Hazel Dinwiddy wandering onto her porch, a male voice calling her name.
“My house, my house,” was all she could say, and then Lane’s arms closed around her, his masculine scent swirling through her battered senses. Her inclination was to resist, except something inside her said, Don’t be an idiot, especially when she realized, through her shock and grief, how tightly he was holding on.
Like a man who’d had the bejesus scared out of him.
“When I saw the house—” he got out through what Ivy suspected was a convulsing throat “—and thought you might still be inside…”
She heard Hazel mutter something about leaving them to it, then.
“Well, I wasn’t,” she said, wiping her eyes—oh, Lord, she’d been crying?—before daring to peek back across the street. The houses on either side of her were untouched, praise the Lord. But hers… “Everything I own is—was—in that house. My gorgeous refrigerator,” she moaned, and Lane bracketed her face in his hands and forced their eyes to meet, and she thought, Oh, my.
“Refrigerators can be replaced,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “So can houses. You can’t.”
A good three or four seconds floated by before she got up the nerve to ask, “What are you sayin’, Lane Stewart?”
His eyes were like hot ice. “That you’re not a substitute for Dena, and you never have been. You’re the real thing, Ivy Gardner. You started to heal my heart from the moment I laid eyes on you. And if you’ll let me, I intend to love you like nobody’s ever loved you before.” He kissed her, then stroked her hair off her face. “Like nobody’s ever going to love you again. And before you jump to any conclusions about this being a crisis-inspired revelation…” Now he kissed her knuckles, his expression downright beseeching. “It isn’t. I was on my way over when the damn sirens went off.”
“Oh,” she said. “I wasn’t home.”
He smiled. “I know.”
Well. That sure took the edge off of having her house smashed to smithereens. As it apparently took the edge off her, since she realized she couldn’t think of a single smart-assed comeback. In fact, all she said was, “Okay,” which she guessed did the trick, ju
dging from the huge smile Lane gave her in return. Then he helped her to her feet, linked their fingers together, and lead her across the street to face yet another crisis in her life.
Only this one, she didn’t have to face alone.
“Daddy’s back!”
Even the pigs seemed to squeal with glee at the sight of one very dirty pickup bumping up the road to the house. Carly hung back, her chest feeling way too small for her thudding heart as five kids swarmed around the truck before Sam even had a chance to cut the engine. Libby scooped a grinning, filthy Travis out of his booster seat as Sam—as mud-caked as his truck—tried to hug all four boys at once, his deep laugh reverberating over their high-pitched chatter.
“Everybody’s okay?” she heard him ask, his head swiveling to take in the house, the barn, clearly reassuring himself that everything was still more or less intact. Then his gaze landed on her, and held, his brows lifting with questions, his grin somehow softening and expanding at the same time.
“What happened?” somebody said, and Sam steadied himself, as though fully realizing what he’d been through.
“Twister touched down right outside Claremore, only thing to do was get out and throw ourselves in a ditch.” He hitched Travis up into his arms. “And pray like I’ve never prayed before.”
“Yeah,” Travis said, “an’ I couldn’t hardly breathe for Daddy layin’ on top of me,” and they all laughed, nervously, and Mike said, “How close did it get?” and Sam said, “A lot closer than I liked,” and everybody got real quiet.
“We lost that big old oak,” Matt said.
Sam squeezed his shoulder. “Yeah. I saw. Guess we won’t be runnin’ out of firewood for a while, huh?”
That got another round of laughter, stronger this time. Then Sam’s gaze returned to Carly’s, the love in his eyes washing away the last wispy remnants of doubt, leaving her finally free to take this man up on an offer she’d never believed possible. Because apparently her voice did come in the wind.
But it came. And that’s all that counted.
Libby’s dark hair glinted in the sun as she glanced over at Carly, then back at her father.
“Come on, Trav,” she said, “let’s get you in the tub…guys? I think we need to go inside…”
The screen door banged behind her—bam! bam! bambambam!—and then it was just Sam and her and a pig or two, contentedly rooting in the mud at the base of the house. Carly started toward him, her pace quickening in response to his smile, and then she flew into his outstretched arms, crying and laughing with joy and relief and more love than she’d ever thought possible.
“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” she sobbed into his neck when he lifted her, and she never wanted to let him go, evereverever. Except when he eventually set her down, she slugged him in the arm as tears streamed down her cheeks. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”
He smiled.
And kissed her.
For a very long time.
When he finished he bent down to take her mud-splattered face in his hands, his expression full of wonder. “You came over to be with the kids?”
“Yeah, well, when you weren’t here, Libby called…and…and I couldn’t have left them to go through that alone for the world.” She laughed, the sound a little frantic. “I guess that means I love them, huh?”
“That would be my take on it—”
“Which is pretty damned convenient seeing as I’m also head over heels in love with their father. And yes, I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
His grin would be her undoing. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said on shaky sigh. “Go figure.”
“You’re not just sayin’ that ’cause you thought maybe I’d gotten blown into the next county?”
“Don’t say that!” she said, slugging him again, only when he laughed, she added, “And anyway, no. I’m saying that because, somehow, you managed to blow everything I thought I knew about myself all to hell.”
“Hmm,” he said, encircling her waist with his hands, sending a nice little shiver of desire skipping along her skin. “You know, the only other woman who ever told me she loved me ended up being my wife.”
“I see.” Shielding her eyes from the sun, she said, “I don’t suppose there are any other options?”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
Her smile started in the vicinity of her heart and kept on going. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said, and this time, she kissed him, a kiss of promise sweeter than any she’d ever known.
“What’s goin’ on—”
“Move over, dork, I can’t see…”
“Shh,” Libby said, her brothers all crammed around her as they stood at Daddy’s window, overlooking the yard. “They’ll hear you!” Of course, what she really meant was that she wouldn’t be able to hear them, which was the whole point of eavesdropping, after all.
Frankie poked her in her arm. “I couldn’t hear…did Daddy just ask Carly to marry him?”
Libby wrapped an arm around her brother. “He sure did.”
“What’d she say?” asked Wade.
“I said ‘yes’,” Carly shouted up at them, laughing, and Daddy gave them all a thumbs-up, with a special wink for Libby. Who thought her face would crack in two, she was grinning so hard.
And when she looked over at her mother’s photo on her desk, she could have sworn she saw Mama wink, too.
Imagine that.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7110-8
SWEPT AWAY
Copyright © 2005 by Karen Templeton-Berger
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Swept Away Page 25