Fortune's Cinderella

“Is she … is she all right?”

“She’s fine. Her ankle’s a little messed up, but you know our Em—can’t keep a good girl down—”

“And Jordana?”

Figuring whatever they’d given her, combined with the trauma, was playing tricks with their mother’s head, Scott said quietly, “Jordana didn’t come, remember? She stayed at the resort—”

“No, no—she called me on my cell about ten minutes before the tornado hit, said she’d changed her mind and was getting a ride to the airport with that Tanner person.” She grasped Scott’s wrist with her good hand, her eyes wide with fear. “Oh, God, Scott—if she was on the road—”

“I’m sure she’s fine, Mom,” Scott said evenly, even if his stomach didn’t agree.

“All righty, Mrs. Fortune, we need to get going,” the attendant said, adding, as another pair of EMTs wheeled Emily toward them, “Your daughter’s going to ride with you, how’s that?”

“Emily, sweetheart …!”

As the last ambulance finally pulled away with his mother and sister inside, Scott stood with his hands in his pants pockets, a light, chilly breeze ruffling his hair as he surveyed the decimated landscape—fences gone, trees uprooted or snapped in two, entire windbreaks felled like bowling pins. Oddly, the storm seemed to have inflicted far less damage to the flight school building behind him—it was still standing, at least—but Scott had overheard some of the rescuers saying that this tornado was only one of a series. That others—although not as devastating, thankfully—had also touched down in Red Rock itself, causing even more damage.

Blake came up beside him, one hand on his hip, the other cuffing the back of his neck. “Holy crap.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Think this is what’s known as one of those life-altering events.”

A lot more than you know, Scott mused, his thoughts drifting back to Christina—the heat of her hand gripping his, her trusting weight against his chest … the lingering buzz from that sweetly electric kiss. Still. Even in the clear light of day.

Crazy.

But damn if he didn’t feel as though somebody’d flipped a switch in his brain … a switch he hadn’t even known had been in the “off” position.

He looked back over Blake’s shoulder to see their cousin picking through the debris, wobbling on her high-heeled boots like a tipsy mountain goat. “What on earth is Victoria doing?”

“Looking for her luggage, she said. I suppose it’s giving her something to focus on so she won’t freak out.” Blake met Scott’s gaze. “She keeps talking about some dude in a cowboy hat pulling her out of the rubble then disappearing. Got any clue who she’s talking about?”

“None,” Scott said, thinking he had far more pressing things on his mind than Victoria’s mystery cowboy in shining armor. Like the woman who, in one night, had twisted him far more inside out than a tornado ever could. Not knowing how badly she was hurt …

Pulling the rental’s keys from his pocket, Scott called to his cousin. “Vicki! We need to get to the hospital.”

She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. The wind caught in her hair, whipping it around her smudged face. “But … my things …”

“Now, Victoria,” Scott said sharply, walking to the SUV, his brother and muttering cousin following suit.

“Sorry,” she mumbled after she got into the back. “I’m just hungry. And exhausted. And …” She let out a muffled sob. “And when I think—”

“It’s okay, honey,” Scott said as they slowly pulled away, the car’s shocks working overtime as they drove over the chewed up ground. “We’ve all had a rough time.”

And yet, he mused as they reached the highway, where it became much smoother going except for the occasional jagged branch or chunk of somebody’s shed, not once during their ordeal had Christina complained. Even though she had to have been in pain. And frightened out of her wits.

If anything happened to her …

He stepped on the gas.

Not surprisingly, the E.R. was borderline chaos, all the exam rooms filled, a pair of obviously harried nurses doing triage on the dozens of walking wounded flooding the waiting room.

“Scott! Over here!”

Emily was in a far corner, between a resigned-looking older man pressing a bloodstained towel to a gash in his head and a mother with worried eyes holding a sleeping toddler. His sister’s foot, wrapped in an ice pack, was elevated on a pillow on the glass table in front of her. Blake scanned the crowd. “Wow. Did San Antonio get hit, too?”

Emily shook her head, her pinched brow the only clue she’d been through hell. “No, just Red Rock. This is overflow from the Medical Center. Look,” she said, nodding toward the TV mounted high on the opposite wall, where a camera panned parts of the town, showing the damage. Considering what might have been, though, things could have been much worse.

For all of them.

He turned back to his sister. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

“In treatment rooms. Mike’s been toggling between the two of them. I’d bug the desk for more information, except, one, I can’t exactly move and, two, I’m afraid of that nurse. Yeah, that one, in the pink scrubs. Don’t let the teddy bears fool you—she’s fierce.” The man with the bleeding head was called to see the doctor. With a heavy sigh, Victoria plopped into his vacated seat, laid her head on Emily’s shoulder. She smiled for her cousin, then said, “Eventually I’ll get into the inner sanctum and find out what’s going on, but …”

She glanced across the room, then whispered, “It’s Javier I’m most worried about, if the look on Miguel’s face is anything to go by.”

Scott twisted around to see Javier’s and Marcos’s brother, who’d come from New York for the wedding, sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, his head in his hands.

“Go on, talk to him,” Blake said. “I’ll check on Mom and Dad.”

Looking far more bedraggled than the rest of them, Miguel shakily stood at Scott’s approach. A small, tight smile strained his mouth. “Your family—is everybody okay?”

“More or less. Miguel—for God’s sake, sit, you look like you’re about to keel over. How is he?”

“It’s bad, man,” Miguel said, sinking onto the seat, strangling his still wet ball cap in his hands. “Real bad.” Terrified brown eyes lifted to Scott’s. “He’s … he’s unconscious, they don’t even know yet what needs fixing. His head, his legs …” The young man swallowed hard, obviously fighting for control.

“Damn …” Scott felt as though someone had put a stake through his chest. “You need me to make any calls—?”

“No, I already talked to Marcos. He’ll get in touch with everybody else.” He looked at Scott, obviously fighting tears. “I found him, right after the twister hit. I could tell he was in bad shape, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do—couldn’t call 911 because the cell service was down, couldn’t go get help because the roads were trashed. Best I could do was keep the worst of the rain off him, but …” Shaking his head, he looked away, a tear tracking down his filthy, stubbled cheek.

“Hey …” Scott laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. He made it through the night. That’s got to count for something—”

“I can’t stop thinking,” Miguel went on, his left leg bouncing, clearly not hearing any voices except the nasty ones in his own head, “what if he didn’t get help in time—?”

“And you’re only going to make yourself crazy, worrying like that,” Scott said, even though his own voices, making him worry and wonder about Christina, weren’t doing him any favors, either. When he spotted Blake, he waved him over. “I need to go check on my folks, but Blake will stay with you until your family arrives. And listen,” he added as he stood, “you know we’ll help in any way we can. Whatever Javier needs, it’s his. Got that?”

Miguel looked up, hope and terror fighting for purchase in red-rimmed eyes. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Despite Emily’s warning, Scott had no choice but to confront the obviously frazzled nurse at the desk. “Yes?” she snapped, not looking at him.

“I’d like to see my parents. Virginia Alice and John Michael Fortune?”

“Rooms 1B and 1A,” she said, jabbing a pen over her shoulder, “right on the other side of the door—”

“And you have another patient who came in by ambulance around the same time, Christina Hastings? Can you tell me which room she’s in?”