Riding the Storm

One of those tender, butterfly flutters stirred beneath the press of her hand. At five months, he was still too small to deliver a real kick, but she could feel him shift inside her. An intuitive connection bonded them already. He’d know what it was like to grow up with only one parent, the way she had. He’d also know what it was like to have that one parent love him more than life itself.

The way she had.

Little Joaquin would never be abandoned. Not by choice. Not by fate. “I’ll always be here for you, sweetie,” she crooned, stroking her belly as if she could caress the baby himself. “Grandpa, too.”

Jolene looked up, intent on finding her father, to tell him she loved him with one of their coded winks.

Though he was engaged in a conversation with Dr. Sherwood, he winked right back and she smiled. His steady reassurance grounded her in a way that nothing else ever had. She was proud of him. Still handsome at fifty with those piercing blue eyes and easy smile, he had a friendly confidence about him that commanded respect, as evidenced by the way Dr. Sherwood nodded her head, then quickly crossed to the supply shelves to do his bidding.

Her father pointed to Jolene and then the outside door, marching his fingers through the air in imitation of someone walking. Subtle hint. Not.

Jolene shook her head and mouthed, “No way.”

He shrugged and moved to the podium at the end of the room, where he picked up the latest printout from the weather bureau. He was such a worrier. A frown creased his brow as he pored over the stats, and she wished there wasn’t a crowd or phone lines to monitor so she could run in and give him a hug.

Jolene knew her father carried the same sadness inside him that she did. A part of him would always love the beautiful woman who’d left them twenty years ago for the bright lights of Hollywood. Of course, April Kannon had never become a star like the L.A. talent agent she’d left with had promised. But she’d found two more husbands willing to provide her with the glitz and glamour and excitement she’d never found in tiny, remote Turning Point.

Mitch Kannon had been a rock when Jolene’s mother had abandoned them. He’d been there for Jolene’s first period, her first driving lesson, her first broken heart when she’d realized boys didn’t date plain, skinny girls who could outrun and outride them.

He’d held her when she announced she was marrying her best friend—when she told him Joaquin was dying of cancer and that she’d agreed to be artificially inseminated with his sperm to create a child whose bone marrow could save his life. Her father was by her side the day Joaquin lost his battle with cancer, the morning she buried him.

How could she not be here for him now that he needed her?

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Mitch Kannon’s booming bass voice rattled the glass. He rapped his knuckles against the podium to get everyone’s attention. “If we could get started. It’s already a few minutes past eight, and I have a feeling we’re going to have a long day. First, I want to brief you on the current weather forecast. Then we’ll review procedure, what we can and should expect as far as casualties, and then I’ll get you to your assignments.”

Nate Kellison reentered with Doyle Brown, but hung back, opting to perch on the corner of a counter near the back of the room while Doyle took a seat in a chair closer to the podium.

There Nate sat, watching again. Friendly enough to get the job done, but not Texas friendly.

“What’s your story, California?” Jolene whispered the rhetorical words to the glass.

What was he doing? Evaluating the acoustics of the room? Looking for a chair beside a pretty woman he could get friendly with? She wondered if it was arrogance or professionalism or something more personal that pushed him to maintain such control over himself and the space around him.

The ringing of the telephone cut short her speculation about the visiting paramedic, and she turned to take the call. It wasn’t a 9-1-1 call through the radio or emergency line. That probably meant it was another lost evacuee.

Jolene snapped up the receiver and grabbed her notepad. “Turning Point Fire Station. This is Jolene. How can I help you?”

“Jolene? Thank God. It’s me—” The sharp catch of a familiar voice, followed by a low-pitched moan, put Jolene on immediate alert.

“Lily? Are you all right?” Jolene checked her watch and jotted down the time. The moan ended with a series of shallow, repetitive breaths. She didn’t need a medical degree to figure out why her friend Lily Browning had called. Nine months pregnant and due any day, the woman had gone into labor. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home.” Home was the Rock-a-Bye Ranch, just a few miles down the road from the Double J spread Jolene had inherited from Joaquin. “If this is what I think it is, I’m about a week early.”

Lily sounded remarkably calm, now that the contraction had passed, giving Jolene a chance to hear the whoop of one of the three Browning boys hollering in the background. Jolene cupped her own belly and grinned, sending up a prayer that her son would be every bit as healthy and happy as Lily’s were.

But she knew her neighbor hadn’t called to share the joys and frustrations of motherhood the way they had so many mornings over herbal tea in one kitchen or the other. Jolene pushed to her feet, shedding her wistful thoughts and becoming the professional caretaker she needed to be. “With Doc Holland gone, the clinic’s still closed. You’ll have to get Gabe to drive you over to the Kingsville hospital. I’ll call ahead and tell them to expect you.”

But this wasn’t going to be as easy as a phone call.

“Gabe isn’t here. He had to go out of town on business. He must have gotten caught in the evac traffic. He was driving back through Dallas to get my mom to come help watch the kids when the baby comes.” A shout for “Mom!” and a stampede of little feet crescendoed in the background. A rustling sound muffled Lily’s stern warning.

“Aaron! Quit chasing Seth. If you want to run around, go outside.”

“But it’s raining.”

“It’s warm enough. Go get wet.”

A chorus of “woo-hoo’s” and various dibs were punctuated by the slamming of a door. Lily’s home echoed with an ominous silence.

Jolene frowned at what that silence meant. “Are you there by yourself?”

“Just me and the boys.” Lily’s oldest was only going into the third grade. Not much help there. “Rocky got out through a downed fence, so I sent Deacon to retrieve him in case the storm blows this way.”

The Brownings’ live-in ranch hand had a hard enough time corraling their stubborn Santa Gertrudis bull when the weather was nice. Rocky had no concept of the phrase, when the cows come home, and seemed to think fences and ropes and rules were for inferior beings like heifers and cowboys. Add rain, mud and a possible hurricane to complicate things, and Rocky would probably keep Deacon away from the house for the rest of the day.

Jolene turned around, trying to get her father’s attention. But he was pointing to a county map on the wall and had his back to her.

“How far apart are your contractions?” she asked, drumming her fingers against the glass window. Adrenaline poured into her veins, charging her body with a restless energy.

“I’m not sure. Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

Jolene hadn’t gotten her father’s attention, but she was suddenly aware of someone else’s probing stare focused on her. Her breath caught in her chest as she met Nate Kellison’s golden brown gaze. His expression could be curiosity, could be concern. Could be contempt, for all she knew. Whatever it was, he seemed to look straight beyond any physical barriers and read what was in her mind and heart.

Her cheeks and other parts of her anatomy suffused with a heat that wasn’t entirely due to self-conscious awareness. Her response was completely unexpected and too damn distracting to deal with at the moment. Needing to concentrate, Jolene quickly turned and showed him her backside.

“Do you have a watch, Lily?” Jolene fought to stay focused on the call. “You need to be sure.”

Hell. If she could read a man’s moods, maybe she’d have found one of her own and fallen in love by now instead of ruling southeast Texas as every man’s best buddy or kid sister. Joaquin didn’t count. She’d been able to read her husband like a book. Of course, there’d never been any real passion between them to muddy up her perception, either.

Not that she was feeling passion toward Nate Kellison. No, sir. That tingling sense of hyper-awareness could be attributed to any number of things.

Like annoyance. Irritation.

Fascination. He was wounded, after all.

Oh, hell.

Fortunately, her personal life wasn’t the issue right now. Ignoring the sensation of whiskey-brown eyes searing holes into her back, she went through the mental checklist of questions she should ask in this type of emergency. “Did your water break?”

“No. But after three kids, I know a contraction when I feel one.” Lily exhaled a deep, stuttering breath. For the first time, Jolene heard the hint of fear in her friend’s voice. “The baby’s coming early. And I think she’s coming fast.”

Jolene checked her watch. Eight-fifteen. The Rock-a-Bye Ranch was a good twenty to thirty minute drive from town. “What do you mean by fast? You know that labors tend to be shorter with successive pregnancies.”

“I guess I mean unexpected. This hit me all of the sudden this morning while I was fixing breakfast. Just before the rain started. With the boys, I had a real urge to cook and clean two or three days before they were born. But not this time. I haven’t got a single casserole in the freezer, and this place is a mess.” Lily tried to sound hopeful, while Jolene’s concern mounted. “That means she’s a girl, right?”

Because the nesting instinct hadn’t kicked in yet? “Um, I can’t tell you that, Lily. What about the radio? Can you call Deacon back to the house to drive you in?”

“That old coot? Deacon keeps the radio turned off because he says it spooks his horse. Unless he calls in again, I won’t hear—”