Men of Courage II (11 page)

His heart still beating a tattoo inside his chest, he asked himself why in the hell, after he had figured it out, he’d let her walk away? Why had he let her pretend that the tornado had been the only important event that had happened between them that day? Or why, despite all those times he’d thought about her since then, he’d never once bothered to contact her? And he was almost physically sick at the thought that now…now maybe it was too late.

He scraped a hand over his face, swearing beneath his breath, hating how absolutely useless and impotent he felt at that moment. It wasn’t until he turned back toward his truck, that he looked across the field on the opposite side of the road…and noticed two things. First, there was an old barn on the far side of the field. And second, funnels were dipping down from the black ceil
ing of clouds that had moved far closer, far faster, than he’d realized.

He’d been so caught up in worrying about Marty he hadn’t paid any attention to the shift in the developing storm.

He stood, riveted, watching as the funnels grew longer, stronger, then began to join up. He swore under his breath, gauging the distance back to his truck and the distance to the barn. Neither were smart choices in a tornado, but he might be able to outrun the thing in his truck, or at least get to a place where the roadside gully wasn’t full of rushing water. As to the barn, well, there was no other shelter, but he wasn’t going to trust it to hold up.

Then he saw it. The zigzag pattern of tramped down grass leading from the opposite side of the road, across the field, directly toward the barn.
Marty!

He took off running, stumbling over the rutted ground, staggering through the waist-high grass and weeds, as he made his way across the field toward the barn. All he kept thinking was
Marty’s in there.
Possibly hurt. Or worse.

He beat at the tall grass with his hands, using his arms like machetes, trying to clear a path. But the sky was darkening by the minute, making it harder and harder to see what he was running through. Several times he hit divots that almost face-planted him in God-
knows-what kind of muck and mire. But he kept moving forward.

The wind picked up, making forward progress even harder. It was so loud now, shouting for her would be a useless endeavor. He was about twenty yards away when he noticed the burned-out ruins of a farmhouse about fifty yards past the barn. There was little more than a charred foundation left, overgrown with weeds to the point that it was barely noticeable. He immediately slowed down, though, squinting through the growing gloom.

One thing he knew was that farmhouses out on the plains usually came equipped with underground storm shelters. He stumbled closer, angling himself between the barn and the charred ruins, until…There! Another ten or so yards back behind the remaining foundation was a raised cement box, only noticeable now because the wind was flattening the overgrowth around it.
Hallelujah! A storm shelter.

He looked back at the barn, at the trample pattern in the grass. She must not have seen the shelter. Maybe she hadn’t thought she’d need it. A quick glance over his shoulder had him stumbling momentarily to a complete halt. Four funnels were now one. “Holy mother of—” He stood transfixed by the display, as he always was when confronted with one of Mother Nature’s twisters. His first instinctive thought was that he’d left his camera, all his equipment in his car.

And then he snapped out of it, swinging his attention back to the trail to the barn, then over, past the ruined farmhouse, toward the shelter. He probably wouldn’t have time to make it to both. But no way was he leaving her in that weather-beaten barn.

Another glance at the twister showed it pulling down and making landfall. “Christ almighty,” he swore, then took off toward the barn. He spied the chain and lock on the wide double doors and veered toward a gap in the barn wall. The wind gusts were almost too much to withstand, and he was forced to grip the planks on either side of the gap, just to keep upright. He was too big to squeeze through, but there wasn’t time to find a bigger opening. He stuck his head in and wedged his shoulder and upper body into the open space for leverage.

The sky was almost black now, so despite that half the roof was gone, it was still too dim to see much of anything. “Marty!” He had to shout at the top of his lungs just to be heard over the noise of the wind. “Marty, are you in here?”

He heard a scrambling sound from the near corner, then a shout. “Cooper?”

Hearing her voice gave him a moment of almost light-headed relief, but they weren’t out of this yet. “Are you hurt?”

An instant later she popped out of the gloom in front
of him. She was muddy, her face and arms were all scraped up and her hair was a plastered mess against her skull. He hardly recognized her. But he recognized those wide blue eyes. He’d never forgotten those.

“Come on,” he shouted, reaching his hand in for her. “It’s coming right at us. We have to get out of here.”

“For where? The ditches are full of water and the ruts in the field—”

“There’s a storm shelter about fifty yards west of the barn. Behind the burned-out remains of a house.”

“What? I didn’t see—”

“Don’t worry about it. Come on.” She got close enough for him to grab her wrist. He didn’t waste any time and tugged her through the narrow gap in the planks.

The rough wood caught at her wet clothes and scraped off more of her skin, but she didn’t say anything, just worked as fast as she could to get herself free. “Where is it?” she shouted, the wind making conversation almost impossible, even though they were less than a foot apart.

He kept his grip on her forearm as she finally freed herself and pointed with his free hand. “That way. Run!”

And yet instead of taking off, they both turned, almost in unison, still clinging to one another as they fought the wind, but needing to take a look at what was bearing down on them.

“My God,” Marty mouthed.

“I know,” Cooper said, more in awe than anything else.

Then Marty turned to him, her bruised face and wide eyes lit with a wild excitement that only someone who chased down these bastards could understand. “You know, we really have to stop meeting like this.”

Cooper found himself grinning. This was the Marty McKenna he knew. “Yeah, I’m beginning to detect a pattern.”

The wind was picking up hail and gravel from the ground, along with stray tree branches. Marty put her arm up to deflect the debris from her face as she looked back one last time. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a camera on you.”

“Back in the truck. I got a little preoccupied when I saw your car belly-up in the ditch.”

“You’ve gotten rusty on me.”

It struck him then, standing in the middle of a cow field, being pummeled with debris, with what looked like a solid F4 gunning straight for them…that she’d summed up with one word exactly what it was he’d been feeling lately, but hadn’t been able to define. Rusty. Huge chunks of his life had been put on hold for the sake of advancing the cause of severe weather research. And with neglect and disuse comes dormancy.

The wind slammed them both back against the barn
wall. With a shared glance, he knew she’d heard what he had. The wood planks were making a new groaning sound as the air pressure inside the structure and out increased and shifted. An instant later, still gripping each other’s arms, they were racing hell-bent for the shelter. One glance at her as they stumbled and fought the wind showed her expression to be anything but tense. In fact, she was grinning. Come to think of it, so was he.

And suddenly life didn’t feel so dormant anymore. Of course, that was probably a normal reaction given the potentially deadly situation they were in at the moment. But he’d faced down Mother Nature before. More than once he’d felt just like this, heart pounding its way out of his chest, adrenaline spiking off the chart.

But as they skidded to a stop in front of the shelter entrance, grabbing each other around the waist for balance as they slid in the mud puddles and piled-up hail, he knew it was more than the danger making him feel so alive. Maybe it was the mix of danger and Marty McKenna that did strange things to him. God knows it had the last time he’d mixed himself up with that combination. And looking at the grin on her face, he couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking the same thing.

That might explain why they were laughing like lunatics as they disentangled themselves and began tugging open the flat double doors. They struggled against
the wind to open the doors, barely getting them open enough to shove themselves inside, plunging headlong into the total darkness of the shelter, using gravity and the weight of their bodies to pull the doors closed behind them.

But not before seeing the remainder of the barn roof fly overhead like it was nothing more than a child’s kite.

T
HE WIND SCREAMED AND GROANED
through the wooden doors of the shelter. Marty literally hung from the handles, feet dangling over the cement steps leading down into the shelter, barely managing to keep the doors shut as Cooper grappled with the metal beam that slid through the braces put on the doors to keep them from being ripped off. The ground above them shuddered as the barn roof landed somewhere close by.

It wasn’t until Cooper gripped her by the waist and ordered her to let go that she realized she was no longer laughing. In fact, she was shaking. Hard.

He tugged her down the stairs and turned her into his
arms. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, she clung to him. He pulled her farther into the shelter, away from the doors and they both stumbled over something on the floor, unable to see what it was in the pitch blackness. They managed to stay upright, barely, but didn’t let go of each other.

“Are you okay?”

Even though his mouth was near her ear, she could just hear him over the noise generated by the tornado. She managed a nod, though it was far from the truth. She was anything but okay. And she was afraid if she allowed herself to think on it for more than a moment, she’d realize it was more than the storm shaking her up.

She’d known she was going to see Cooper again. Hell, she was going to be working for him if the interview went well. But even with the wedding looming, knowing he was going to be a guest there, too, she’d never imagined their reunion would be like this.

She’d thought more than once of what it had been like to be in his arms, but never let herself dream she’d get that chance again. Okay, okay, so she’d spent maybe a night or two (or twenty) with sheets twisting around her feverish body, dreaming about that afternoon in the back of his truck. But hell, what red-blooded female wouldn’t?

She could recall with crystal clarity how he’d taken her. How she’d given herself to him so completely.
She’d been so in love with him by then, having fallen hard for the sexy grad student shortly after getting the chance to work with him. But his focus had been so exclusively on his work, he’d had no clue, never noticed her in any way but as a crew member. He hadn’t seemed to notice women, period, his focus was so intense. But that hadn’t cooled her desire for him. Hardly. She’d been young and hungry to learn and she’d so admired his dedication and his genius.

She’d contented herself with working with him, being around him, telling herself it was enough. He hadn’t given her a single signal he’d even noticed her that way, and no way, at twenty-two, did she have enough moxie to come out and tell him how she felt. And then that fateful afternoon had happened. Hours away from graduating and leaving him forever to take a job back home in Kansas, the storm of the century had sprung to life. Even then she’d been thrilled just to spend her last day with him. Never in her wildest dreams could she have predicted what they were about to see. Much less what they were about to do.

A large dose of fear and adrenaline had driven them into each other’s arms, a fantasy come true for her. Beyond a fantasy. It had been so much more than she could have ever hoped for. And, afterward, with her departure imminent, and knowing what had happened had been a matter of circumstance and couldn’t have
meant anything to him, she’d made the decision to keep her feelings to herself. What purpose would it have served to blurt out she loved him? Other than to very possibly ruin what had been a stunningly perfect end to her first serious—if one-sided—love affair.

So she’d chickened out—telling herself she was being mature—and pretended that it was nothing more to her than a spontaneous explosion of frenzied, raw sex.

In the weeks, months and years that had followed, she’d thought of him often, wondered what might have changed if she’d laid her heart bare with the rest of her body. She’d told herself she’d done the right thing. She’d been an hour away from leaving, what purpose could it have served?

As time had passed, she’d convinced herself it hadn’t been that perfect. That explosive. Couldn’t have been. Her wild infatuation with him had simply combined with the fury and power of Mother Nature at her most severe, so of course their coupling had felt cataclysmic.

But here he was, miracle of miracles, in her arms once more. And it was as if nothing had changed. Including her heart beating a thousand times a minute…and a raging Mother Nature, venting her wrath above.

She had to let him go, to regroup. Too much had happened to her today for her to be able to trust her judg
ment. But it sounded like the fury of hell was being unleashed over their heads, and his hands felt too damn good on her. Steadying her, calming her. His body was a welcome shield to her battered defenses, and she couldn’t seem to make her hands unfist themselves from their death grip on his shirt. It was much, much easier to stay right where she was, no matter that she sensed the bigger danger to her wasn’t the storm over her head, but the one stirring up right here between them.

As if he sensed her thoughts, she felt his fingers digging into the flesh of her back. She should simply be grateful, comforted he was letting her know that she wouldn’t have to face this ordeal alone any longer, which was most likely his only intent. And she
was
grateful, she
was
comforted.

But she was also aroused.

It was impossible not to remember this wasn’t the first time she’d felt him tighten his grip on her. Impossible not to remember exactly what they’d been doing, the ferocity of his expression, which had matched the tension and strength of his arms around her.

She swallowed against the moan rising in her throat and forced her eyes open, shoving away visions of the past. But the dark was absolute. Though she could hear the rain, dirt and debris trickling in through the slats of the wooden shelter doors as they
rattled fiercely against the wind, no light penetrated the black depths of the shelter. She had no idea how big the place was, or what else might have been stored down here.

“Are you okay?” he asked again, shifting his mouth next to her ear so his lips just brushed against the tender skin.

She shuddered in pure pleasure, but he misread the reaction and loosened his hold. “I’m sorry, am I hurting you? What happened with your car? Are you sure you didn’t seriously injure yourself?”

She shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see her. “The only thing I banged up was my ego,” she assured him, fighting the need to do something foolish, like clutch him back against her. But she was the one who’d been in love, not him. God, he’d probably be mortified if he knew what she was thinking. “My tire blew and I hit the mud on the side of the road and couldn’t get it back on track. The car didn’t flip entirely until I pushed off the doorframe to leap clear of it.”

He smoothed his hands up and down her arms, his touch gentle in a way he’d never been with her before. Of course the only time he’d ever touched her at all was when they’d been buck naked and going at each other like animals. Not a time that was exactly conducive to gentle caresses and soft whispers.

And now was not a time to be reliving that moment,
either. Had she been able to, she’d have laughed at herself, at just how foolish she’d let herself become with her memories of him. If she got the job with NSWC, her career would definitely progress more smoothly if she could put their shared moment in history firmly in its place. Once and for all.

But then he was tipping up her chin, making her heart trip anew as she wondered how he’d found her face so unerringly in the utter darkness.

“I think you knocked a few years off my lifespan when I saw that rental car in the ditch,” he told her.

“How did you even know it was me? How on earth did you find me?” She sounded breathless, and hoped he attributed it to the storm…and not the effect he was having on her.

“It wasn’t easy,” he said, still stroking her arms.

A fanciful woman would believe that he was just as incapable of not touching her as she was of him. But she was a practical, career-minded woman. The kind of woman who didn’t swoon. Not even when the proverbial man of her dreams ran his hands over her.

Psh.
Yeah. If only.

She took a steadying breath, willed herself to step away from his touch. Because the fact of the matter was, she did want the job with NSWC. Badly. Maybe not as much as she wanted Cooper Harrison right at this very moment, but that was a fleeting need. The career move was long-
term. And most assuredly, sleeping with the boss, while tantalizing personally, was a death wish professionally.

She swallowed a sigh as she stepped out of the protective circle he’d created around them. “They might revoke my feminist membership card for saying so, but I’m glad you found me.” She rubbed her arms, and her knees trembled a little as she pictured the roof of the barn flipping away like it weighed nothing more than a pancake. “A few minutes later and—” She couldn’t finish.

As a chaser she’d seen plenty of severe weather and the oftentimes massive destruction left in its wake. Smart chasers moved around storm cells, not through them. Even that afternoon she and Cooper had seen the supertwister, they’d never intended to put themselves in direct, life-threatening danger, as they had again today. She shook her head. “I could go a long time without ever being that close again.”

“Why were you still in the barn? Didn’t you see it coming?”

“It didn’t form until after I’d taken shelter. I thought I was pretty clear-headed, but I guess the accident rattled me more than I thought because I didn’t see any alternate shelter. And I didn’t realize the shift in the circulation and downdraft. I should have paid closer attention, but at the time I just wanted to get out of the drilling hail. I spotted it right before you stuck your
head in that other opening. I owe you.” Which was the understatement of the century.

Cooper surprised her by letting out a laugh. “I’d say we’re even. If you hadn’t found that drainage tube that last time, we wouldn’t be standing here right now. Maybe it’s our karma, coming full circle.”

Marty smiled at that. “You were always the ultimate pragmatic scientist. Since when did you believe in spiritual things like karma?”

There was a long pause. She thought maybe she’d just missed his response due to the clattering noise of the wind pummeling the shelter doors. But there was a sudden and distinct shift in the air around her. A moment later, he touched her face with the tips of his fingers, and she knew that was why. She stilled at his touch, every one of her senses already on high alert, but now in a different way.

“You must have acute night vision,” she blurted, wanting almost desperately to keep this encounter in some kind of rational perspective. Which was difficult, even without them risking their lives, as the mere thought of him had always caused a reaction in her that was anything but rational.

“I can just sense you,” he said, sounding almost awed. “All those months, almost a whole year, we were working together in the lab and on the road, and I have no idea how I missed it. How I tuned it out. But from
the instant I locked on to you, I haven’t quite been able to figure out how to switch it back off.”

She was either more injured than she realized and officially hallucinating now, or he was telling her he still thought about her. And not just the sex part. But what with the wind and noise, she couldn’t tell if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“We haven’t seen each other in six years,” she responded carefully, when she wanted to be anything but careful. He did that to her, too. Still. Made her feel reckless. Made her want to do things that were uncivilized.

She’d always thought it was the rather uncivilized nature of their studies that made her feel that way. Considering what was going on over their very heads at the moment, perhaps she’d never know the truth of her visceral attraction to him.

“Surely you gave up wondering about that a long time ago.” She made it a statement, as if it didn’t matter whether or not he’d given her a second thought. But her heart was beating way too fast. And hope was rapidly moving in. Foolish, really. Even if he had thought about her over the years, it was highly unlikely that he held that afternoon they’d shared in the same sort of unmitigated, yearning awe that she did.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” There was amusement now in that deep, gravelly voice of his. Self-dep
recating rather than condescending. And endearing as all hell.

The need to touch him as he’d touched her shivered along her skin, skittered down her spine. She curled her fingers inward to keep from reaching for him.

He shifted closer then, ostensibly, she was sure, to make it easier for her to hear him. But his hand was still on her shoulder, the tips of his fingers lightly brushing the back of her neck. All he’d have to do was exert the slightest pressure with his fingertips, urge her the least bit closer, and she’d be full up against him. Their mouths would collide; their lips would connect.

And, as if she’d willed it, she felt that sweet pressure, that blatant invitation to move closer. No longer clinging to one another in the adrenaline-charged aftermath of racing for their lives, if she moved now, it would be deliberate. And would put her directly in the path of a different sort of peril altogether. She should have been thinking about the job opening, about her career, about the professional chance of a lifetime.

But it was a completely different chance of a lifetime she was focused on at the moment. A chance once and for all to put the fantasy to rest…or prove her memories weren’t romanticized after all. And she was shifting forward before she could think clearly about all the reasons why she shouldn’t.

“Do you?” he asked, and she could feel his breath, the heat of him, warming the sensitive skin at the corner of her lips.

“Do I what?” she asked, feeling as if she were standing on the brink of something very precarious.

“Still think about it. That day. Us.” The amused tone was gone. In its place was a tension she couldn’t quite define.

“Yes,” she said, the confession at once harder and easier than she thought it would be. “Yes, I do.”