Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance (11 page)

As Roan was pulling his camera bag out of the back of the van, a jumper made the plunge. Victoria let out a little squeak of distress, followed by a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness, he’s not hurt.”

“Victoria, very few people have been injured on these things. They wouldn’t keep doing it if it weren’t
relatively safe. Hell, it’s probably safer than driving on the highway.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said, shaking her head.

They moved in closer. “My gosh, parents have brought their children here,” she said in amazement. “Would you ever let your child do this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have any children.”

“Well, I can tell you, no child of mine would get within a hundred feet of this thing.” Before the words were even out of her mouth, a youngster of about twelve approached them, staring in awe at Roan’s display of photographic equipment. “You from the newspaper?”

“No, just a freelance photographer. Have you done this before?” Roan asked, nodding toward the platform.

“Oh, sure, twice already. I spent all last summer’s grass-mowing money, and it was worth every penny.”

Roan smiled. “Tell her what it’s like,” he said, looking at Victoria.

The boy focused his attention on her. “Oh, lady, you should give it a try. It’s like flying. And it’s not dangerous or anything, because my mom wouldn’t let me do it if it was. Heck, she’s gonna try it tomorrow when she’s off work.”

At that moment another body took a nosedive from the platform, careening toward earth at a heart-stopping speed, then stopped gently as the huge elastic cable checked the fall. Roan snapped off several shots. The woman on the end of the line, squealing delightedly, had to be at least sixty. Maybe he could sell a feature shot to one of those magazines for senior citizens.

“Oh, my God, look at that old woman!” Victoria said. “What if she had a heart attack?”

The boy, still hanging around, clapped his hands and whistled through his teeth. “Way to go, Granny,” he said. Then he turned back to Victoria and Roan. “That’s my grandmother. And she doesn’t have a heart condition. They won’t let anybody jump who’s sick or feeble or anything. They got strict rules, you know?”

Roan smiled smugly at Victoria, who merely looked bewildered.

Roan approached the woman who’d just finished her jump and asked her if she would provide some information about herself and sign a model’s release form. Still breathing rapidly from the excitement, she was happy to oblige.

Victoria came up beside them. “Excuse me, but weren’t you scared to death?”

“Oh, my, yes, of course I was scared,” the older woman said, laughing. “That’s the whole point, don’t you think? But it was like landing in a mountain of feathers. Not a scratch on me, not even a strained muscle. Just a sore throat from screaming. You should try it, honey.”

“But how can you be sure it’s safe?” Victoria persisted.

“Ain’t nothin’ a hundred percent safe,” the woman said. “But if you’re really worried, there’s an inspection certificate by the ticket booth. The whole setup is looked over by an engineer at least once a day. Why, if you just look at the thing yourself, you can tell it’s
sturdy. I bet a hundred people have jumped today alone, and not a one’s had a single complaint.”

Victoria stuck her thumbs in her pockets, gazing pensively at the scaffolding that supported the platform.

Roan had promised her he wouldn’t jump, and he couldn’t change his mind now, or she would never trust him again. But if she changed her mind about it first …

“You know,” she said slowly, thoughtfully, “maybe this thing’s not so crazy after all.”

Yes! he said silently.

“If a twelve-year-old kid and a grandmother can do it with hardly a blink, it couldn’t be all that bad. And it’s inspected by an engineer.…”

“Then you don’t mind if I give it a whirl?” he ventured to ask. “It’s up to you. If you really don’t want me to, I won’t.”

“Well, actually … I was thinking maybe I would try it.”

“What?”

“Well, why not? Aside from chasing tornadoes, which really isn’t all that dangerous, I’ve never done anything very exciting. I’ll bet Amos would get a kick out of hearing about—”

Roan couldn’t describe the horror he felt at the realization that he’d convinced Victoria Driscoll to do something so crazy. She was an intelligent, cautious woman, and after spending a couple of days with him she was talking about plunging hundreds of feet with nothing to protect her but a rubber band. Was he that rotten an influence?

Abruptly he looked at his watch. “I don’t think we have time,” he said, suddenly all business. “That waiting line at the bottom of the platform is pretty long, and we don’t want to miss those tornadoes. I have enough shots of this.” He started packing up his cameras and lenses.

“But, Roan …”

“Anyway, it doesn’t look like that much fun. And did you see how much it costs? Thirty bucks for thirty seconds worth of terror. Big deal.” He practically dragged her back to the van and stuffed her in.

As soon as they were on the road again, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

“I don’t get it,” Victoria said, shaking her head. “One minute you’re itching to try bungee jumping, and the next you’re convinced it’s all a big bore. What gives?”

“Nothing gives. It’s just that, after watching it for a few minutes, I decided it didn’t look all that great.” And he would not, could not be responsible for causing another human being to take a risk with her life, even a small one. Accidents did happen. People had been killed bungee jumping. If anything were to happen to Victoria …

He’d already caused the death of one innocent young woman. And not just any woman, but one whose safety he’d sworn to protect. After it was all over and the numbness had worn off, he’d barely found the will to live. And sometimes, when he lay in his bed in the dark of night, he still wished he’d died instead of her.

As Victoria concentrated on her driving, Roan studied her at leisure. Friends? That was pure delusion. He
felt far more than mere friendship for Victoria Driscoll. What a tragedy that he was so utterly wrong for her.

There were all sorts of reasons she was beyond his reach. For one, Amos would freak if Roan took advantage of the situation. And two, he could not possibly give Victoria the time and attention she deserved beyond the next twelve days. As soon as this trip was over, he was scheduled to travel to Switzerland to make a documentary on the Olympic training program there, and maybe get in some skiing. From there it was on to Guatemala, where they were digging up a Mayan city, and then, who could tell?

If he were honest with himself, though, all of Uncle Amos’s objections, and all of the logistical problems in the world couldn’t have stopped him from pursuing Victoria. Not even his promise to behave himself would hold him back for long.

But one thing stopped him cold. He knew beyond a doubt that if she were to fall in love with him, he would hurt her. There was a good chance he would get himself killed one of these days. He had no intention of leaving behind a grieving lover.

Victoria puzzled for some time about Roan’s peculiar behavior. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he’d chickened out of bungee jumping at the last minute. But she couldn’t imagine that Roan Cullen, a man who had faced hurricanes and volcanoes, a man who’d almost gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel, could be afraid of anything, much less something as relatively tame as jumping off a platform attached to a giant rubber band.

But she’d seen something in his eyes, something she could easily interpret as fear, even panic.

After a while, however, she consciously dismissed the incident from her mind. What business was it of hers if he’d changed his mind about bungee jumping? Anyway, the weather needed her full attention.

The expected focal point of violent storms had moved north and east. Victoria headed for a small hill—more of a rise, really, since they were in central
Kansas. But it afforded them a good vantage point from which to watch the sky. She pulled off the highway, cut the engine, and opened her door, grateful for the warming temperature.

Roan followed her example, but he had nothing to say. He lit another cigarette, took a couple of drags, made a face, and threw the rest away.

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you finish a cigarette since we started this trip,” she commented as she donned a baseball cap to shield her eyes from the sun.

“They haven’t really tasted good lately,” he said with a shrug. And then he wandered away to fiddle with his camera equipment. Victoria got the distinct impression he wasn’t in a chatty mood, and so she kept quiet herself. One of the things Amos had always praised her about was her ability to enjoy a period of quiet, and not constantly try to fill silence with inane conversation.

But all the same, she had to bite her tongue to keep from asking Roan what was on his mind.

Victoria forced herself to concentrate on the magnificent view, allowing the warm sun and the breeze to wash away her tension. Because of the flatness of the land, she could see for miles in every direction. The gently undulating fields formed an endless palate of greens, yellows, and browns, dotted with an occasional white farmhouse. The understated beauty of this countryside apparently wasn’t lost on Roan. He was framing shots with his camera, trying out different lenses and filters. His results might not be the sort of dramatic nature shots found in
National Geographic
, but if he could capture the subtleties of light and color …

Victoria’s gaze strayed far too often in Roan’s direction. She couldn’t deny he was easy on her eyes, more interesting than the drifting clouds and lengthening afternoon shadows. Unaware of her scrutiny, he moved with the grace and agility of a natural athlete, sometimes dropping to one knee to steady his shot, or just gazing at the horizon, his expression reflecting an inner turmoil Victoria couldn’t begin to understand.

Her heart ached for him, and she didn’t even know why. Her body ached for him, too, in a much more insistent way. Now
that
needed no explanation. She still couldn’t get his kiss completely off her mind. She recalled in exquisite detail the insistence of his mouth against hers, the feel of his warm, sure hands seeking out her softness.

Her body reacted as if the kiss were more than a memory, and she made a heroic effort to turn her thoughts elsewhere. It served no purpose to fantasize about Roan. She’d made her decision not to get involved with him, and she was sticking by it. She had no hope of understanding the man. She had no chance of controlling his self-destructive behavior, despite Amos’s hopes. And she had never felt comfortable around things she couldn’t understand and control—at least to some degree. Life offered too many risks already without a person looking for them.

Victoria scanned the sky and smiled with self-satisfaction. The clouds were cooperating nicely, churning and merging and building into huge cumulus towers that seemed to reach into infinity. An occasional flash of
lightning could be seen in the distance. Her forecast couldn’t have been more accurate.

She liked one storm in particular, which was forming all by itself without any neighbors to suck away its energy, and she kept a careful eye on it.

Roan, too, was watching it, she noticed. “What do you think of that one?” he asked with a degree of enthusiasm she hadn’t heard since they’d left Barricklow.

“It’s promising,” she replied. “See how the tops of the clouds have nice, crisp edges? And how they look kind of like cauliflower florets? That’s a good sign. As a matter of fact, we ought to get in the van and get closer to it.”

“Let’s do it.” Roan stowed his gear in the back of the van, then climbed into the passenger seat. His step had seemed a little quicker, his gestures more animated. Victoria was hopeful that he’d forgotten whatever had made him so preoccupied earlier. She didn’t like to see him so serious.

Funny, when she’d first met him, she’d have given anything to see him a little more serious. But now, of all things, she missed his teasing. He’d been keeping his promise about being a gentleman—keeping it too well.

She pulled the Kansas map out from behind her seat and handed it to Roan. “I’d like to position ourselves north and east of the storm, so it’s coming toward us.”

“You want it to chase us instead of the other way around?”

“Exactly. There’s more to see in front of a storm than behind it. But don’t worry. As long as we know what direction it’s traveling, we can get out of the way.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he said with a crooked grin. “How far are we from the action?”

“I’d say about ten, maybe fifteen miles.”

He consulted the map. “Let’s see … there should be a turnoff to the right for K-22 a couple of miles farther. Then, if we take this YY road … yeah, that should work.”

“What kind of a road is YY?” Victoria asked.

“Solid black line. Turns into a dotted line farther north, but I don’t think we’ll be going that far.”

“Does it have some cross streets? I don’t like to get myself cornered.”

“Mmm, not many. The roads are pretty few and far between out here.”

She had to agree with him. The wide-open spaces of the rural Midwest made for great visibility, but that same emptiness meant sparse roads. She’d lost more than one promising storm out there when it went one direction and the road went another. And she liked to keep her options open.

Well, they’d just have to do the best they could.

When they turned off onto K-22, Victoria saw that she was not the only chaser on the trail of this particular storm. A van from a Wichita television station was up ahead of her. And within moments she saw Jeff Hobbs’s Blazer behind her.

“Looks like we’re not alone,” Roan observed.

“I didn’t figure we would be,” Victoria said wistfully. “Any yo-yo watching the Weather Channel knew enough to be in the vicinity. And once here, there was
no question about which storm to watch. This one’s going to be a dilly.”

In the last few minutes as they’d neared the storm, the skies had grown progressively darker. Victoria switched on the video camera mounted on the dashboard. Excited voices flew thick and fast over the ham radio as spotters reported the location of the storm cell, the velocity and direction of its movement, and the pea-sized hail falling in its wake.