Free Riding the Storm by Julie Miller Page A

says we’ll be safe, we’ll be safe.” He betrayed his confidence by turning to look at Nate. “Right, sir?”
    “Right.” Nate pressed the talk button again. “Mitch, we’re en route to the Rock-a-Bye again. We’re at…” He looked to Jolene for a location.
    “About five miles out.”
    “We’re about five miles from our destination,” he reported. “Any update on Mrs. Browning’s condition?”
    “Yeah.” More static. Or was that papers rustling? “Ruth! Where’s the…Browning?” There was another pause, then, “Her contractions are about ten minutes apart. You’d better book it…her and the kids.”
    “Did he say ten minutes?” Jolene asked.
    Nate felt the truck picking up speed. “Get us there in one piece, Andretti,” he warned.
    She didn’t slow.
    “We’re on it.” Nate had one more question he neededan answer to, just so he’d know how much worse things were going to get. “When is Damon supposed to make landfall, Mitch?”
    Mitch Kannon’s grave warning filled the cab of the truck. “We’re predicting it’ll hit us around midnight.”
    More static warned them that the storm was building in intensity. Electricity in the atmosphere was already playing havoc with the radio waves.
    “Unless that baby’s already here, y’all might have to hole up and ride out the storm at the ranch.”
    “Roger that, Mitch. We’ll check in when we can. Kellison out.”
    He hung up the radio. The only sounds were the grinding of the truck’s twisted axle, the spray of gravel and mud beneath the tires, and the endless staccato barrage of rain coming at them from every angle.
    Hole up and ride out the storm.
    Crazy Texans.
    They’d be riding out a damn hurricane.

CHAPTER FOUR
    T HUNDER RUMBLED in the distance, mimicking the fusillade of silt and gravel hitting beneath the floorboards of the truck. The rain was steady now. Relentless. Inescapable. The ditches were overflowing and it was only a matter of time before the wind or something worse swept across the flat Texas plains.
    But right now the world outside seemed more inviting than the world inside the cab of Jolene’s truck.
    The humid air swallowed up her pensive sigh.
    He was rubbing his knee again.
    Jolene watched the subtle, yet methodic clench and release of Nate’s hand as he dug into the muscles around the joint. It probably didn’t help that they were wedged in so tightly that his knee banged against the door with every bounce and jolt.
    Not that Nate Kellison had complained.
    Of course, they were less than a mile from the Rock-a-Bye’s front gate and he hadn’t said a word about anything. Not one, despite the chatter among the newlyweds and herself.
    He was watching again, studying the movement of the storm, taking note of the dark sky along the horizon to the north—toward her own ranch. He watched Wesand Cindy, too. He’d even reached over to crank up the heat after noticing how Cindy shivered in her sodden wedding dress.
    Was that stoic silence—interspersed with bouts of bossing her around—the way he dealt with his pain? Did losing control of a situation give his handicap, as he’d called it, a chance to sneak in and take control of him?
    Guilt that her actions might have aggravated his “old injury” flared inside her. In a gesture that had become habit of late, she cradled her left hand against her tummy, soothing the baby when she couldn’t soothe herself.
    She’d lived with guilt all her life. Despite her father’s love, she’d grown up with the irrational notion that she should have been someone different, done something better to make her mother love them enough to want to stay.
    She should have married Joaquin the first time he’d asked her, but she’d been holding out for some mythic ideal of happily-ever-after. When it became clear that Prince Charming was never going to show his face in tiny Turning Point, she’d settled for caring and being cared for.
    If she’d said yes sooner, she might have