No Place Like Home

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She glared at him and his hands tightened on her arms. Then they gentled. Cold then hot, he was as changing as the weather. Mariah shivered; she felt the heat. But she couldn’t help wondering if the scare she’d given him had turned his thoughts to Ann.

The breeze buffeted their bodies against each other and abruptly, he released her.

“Just…stay by me, okay? I need to get some more pictures.”

He didn’t like that he wanted her. And she liked it too much. But he clearly felt responsible for her well-being, if only because he was stuck with her.

Surprisingly, as he resumed shooting, he offered a grudging explanation from behind the camera. “That dark cloud close to the ground, beneath the center of the updraft base, is a wall cloud.”

Updraft base? Wall cloud? Intrigued, she followed him, edging along the roadside in the direction of the storm. “The wide one with the rather jagged looking edges?”

“That’s right.”

“The one kind of…hovering there?”

“Yeah…”

“The one kind of…churning?”

“Rotating…Damn.” Rafe lowered the camera. “It’s started to rotate.”

“That’s what I said. And just feel that cool fresh air.” Standing beside him, Mariah breathed deeply of the rich country scent, the invigorating breeze combining with Rafe’s more cooperative mood to perk up her spirit. She’d never thought of a storm as beautiful, but she’d like to have a picture of this one. Rafe seemed almost a part of it, the wind combing through his crisp hair, his loose shirt whipping from his lean body. His eyes seemed to reflect the electric atmosphere of the storm.

“Here.” He lifted the strap from around his neck and pushed the camera into her hand. Mariah fumbled to catch hold of it, wondering if he’d read her mind. He gave her a nudge toward the truck. “Go on back. I’ll be right there.”

He moved swiftly toward the video camera, apparently ready to leave. She stared after him, exasperated. He did everything in such a hurry. But at least he was talking to her. On that positive note, she started down the slope, inspecting the camera, her head bent to the wind.

It looked a lot like her own 35mm at home. Mariah glanced up the knoll as Rafe hoisted the tripod to his shoulder. She caught her lip, then faced the storm, raising the camera and focusing through the viewfinder until she’d framed in the impressive wall cloud. Amazing. The storm appeared perilously closer through the eye of the camera….

“I should have made you sign a waiver,” Rafe muttered from close behind, in the same moment she clicked the shutter.

“I only took one picture. I didn’t break anything.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of liability.”

“What do you mean?” Surely they weren’t in any danger. The storm was miles away, moving east.

“Never mind. Come on.”

He caught her hand and pulled her the last few feet down the slope. The ground was rough along the gravelly edge of the road, and Mariah stumbled, grasping his arm for balance. The muscle beneath her hand was like iron. Tense. She glanced up at him. His jaw was set, his mouth pressed grimly, his mind clearly on the business of packing up.

Mariah moved back as he opened the hatch to store the tripod. She stepped slowly from behind the truck, breeze flowing over her, along with a sense of unreality as she surveyed the storm. The beauty of the massive white clouds seemed suddenly eclipsed by the sinister air of the wall cloud, the blackish-blue mass churning faster, holding her mesmerized. The branches of a nearby cottonwood bowed and cold air rushed over her skin. She should have been frightened. But when the snaky gray funnel dropped from the cloud, she instinctively raised the camera.

“Mariah!”

Rafe’s voice came faintly from behind her, the wind whipping her name away. He wouldn’t like it if she used up his film…. She stared through the viewfinder, entranced as the funnel touched down.

“The Wizard of Oz tornado…” she murmured.

Click. The base darkened—with dust and debris, she realized. And it was coming closer….

She lowered the camera, eyes wide.

“Mariah!” Rafe gripped her arm, hauling her toward the truck door despite the fact that her legs didn’t seem to work. “You’re crazier than Jeremy! Get in!”

He hustled her inside. The wind beat at him as he rounded the truck, dust swirling, making him shield his eyes with his hand. He yanked open the door and shot onto the seat. Firing the engine, he swung the truck in a U-turn, skidding out of it to tear down the road, spraying gravel.

Mariah drew a choked breath at the sight of the churning funnel through the rear window, and her sense of unreality effectively vanished. But Rafe had only to keep heading south and they would drive out of the storm.

“We’ve got a right mover, Jeremy,” Rafe shouted into the CB mike. “I’m on a gravel road, west of 281. Are you in the path of the storm?”

Jeremy’s voice crackled over the airwaves, barely distinguishable as he transmitted. “…road ends…get the hell out—”

For Mariah, the last was clear enough.

“Hang on!”

She gripped the dash as Rafe turned the wheel sharply, heading east on a strip of gravel—straight on a course of interception with the storm.

And he’d called her crazy.

Had he actually made her feel safe from the storm? Had she actually wanted to kiss this madman?

This morning, thirty had felt old. Now it seemed much too young to die.

Mariah flinched, a cottonwood branch skidding across the truck’s hood. Her imagination, never lacking, conjured vivid images of what else the tornado had sucked up and sent spinning—plant life, homes, the people in them.

Ann Taylor.

How could Rafe take these risks after the death of his wife? His daughter depended on him. He was nothing like the responsible family men her father, brother and brother-in-law were. Not at all the kind of man she should want to kiss.

The next gust shrouded the road before them with thick dust, dragging against the truck until it seemed to crawl. A dark wall of rain closed in, slashed with lightning and rimmed with streaks of bright white. Relief left her weak. “The tornado is gone! Vanished! There’s only rain now!”

“It isn’t gone,” Rafe said tersely. “We just can’t see it. And that isn’t just rain. It’s a hailstorm.”

A tornado they couldn’t see. Like some invisible stalker. And hail. Somehow she suspected it wouldn’t be the tiny stones she used to collect from the sidewalk after a summer rain.

The first drops fell, a light rain that grew louder as hailstones littered the road and ricocheted off the hood. They came harder and faster, like her heartbeat.

Rafe dragged a blanket up between the seats. “Cover up, in case the windshield takes a hit.”

How would Rafe protect himself? She’d raised the thick quilt to her shoulders when a large stone struck the glass with a resounding crack. Dropping the blanket, she snatched tape from the dash, ripping off strips and slapping them across the new star in the window, stemming the flow of rain-washed air. Wind rammed the truck, a jarring reminder of the lurking tornado. They could die—and in that moment, all she could think was how she’d never had a child.

“Hang on!”

Rafe swung the truck in a southbound turn onto 281 and floored the gas pedal. Within moments, the hail stopped. The rain let up. A mile later, they’d driven from beneath the dark canopy of clouds, the skies lightening, the wind lessening to a breeze. Mariah searched for the tornado, but there was only the dark storm rotating across the prairie, leaving a broken trail behind.

Rafe stopped the truck, killing the engine. Her heart pounded in the silence. Gold-tipped fields of winter wheat waved gently on the roadsides in soft sunlight.

“You okay?” Rafe gripped her shoulders, his gaze delving into her eyes. A life-affirming awareness pulsed between them. Then he released her, pulling the blanket from her grip, tossing it to the rear. “I’d better survey the damage.”

The closing of the truck door jolted her. A delayed trembling shook her, the nearness of their brush with disaster striking her anew. They’d almost been killed.

And it was all his fault.

Mariah pushed out of the truck, tromping around front in her scarred shoes and tattered stockings. The flow of clean, damp air over dusty ground and dry pavement only heightened her awareness of nature’s unpredictable power. Ignoring the curls that frizzed across her face, she vented her emotions in a shaky voice. “This is all your fault.”

Rafe straightened from the smashed headlight he examined. “We’re safe now. And if I remember right, it was your idea to come along.”

His calm after the storm infuriated her. “You almost got us killed!”

Frowning, he twisted off the remains of a broken antenna. “Another way you might look at it is that I saved both our a—”

Mariah knocked the antenna from his hand. “I think you drove us into that storm just to scare me.”

His angry gaze bore into hers. “I drove us out of that storm the only way I could. We had a close call, but believe me, it could have been worse.”

“All in a day’s work?”

“That’s right.”

The sun burned over them, warming already heated tempers, fueling underlying sparks before Rafe turned away, continuing a post-storm inspection she suspected he made on a regular basis. He was probably already planning his next chase.

And she wanted no part of it. Her near brush with death had come with a revelation. She knew why she wasn’t sleeping at night, why her work was lackluster, why she noticed children everywhere. She wanted a child, and a dependable man to love her.

She strode to the back of the truck. Her gaze blazed over Rafe, who was nothing like her dear old dad or her brother. “Take me back to my car. And don’t worry—I want nothing to do with writing your story.”

She gave him no chance to reply, stomping back to grasp the handle on the passenger door.

Her breath caught in her throat. Rafe stood at the edge of the highway, the incessant breeze tugging his hair, his clothes. He stared after the departing storm, clearly craving to give chase again.

He was crazy.

And she was crazy for wanting him.

Chapter Three

All he could think about was Mariah.

Ordinarily, after a day of chasing, he’d be tired and wired, obsessing over the shots he’d taken. Instead, he was obsessing over Mariah. Over kissing Mariah…

Rafe glanced at her warily. Once again, she slept in the truck’s passenger seat as he drove, deceivingly angelic with the soft evening light shining over her through the windshield. Her wind-tangled hair brought to mind the picture she’d made, framed by the backdrop of stormy sky, her dark curls blowing across her cheeks, her eyes vivid blue through the camera’s viewfinder. He hadn’t even noticed a tornado forming, too caught up in the sight of this woman.

He should have left her at Trixie’s. But while he hadn’t wanted her writing about him, he hadn’t wanted to be the reason she lost her job, either. Although she’d decided not to do the feature, the truth was, he didn’t trust her not to change her mind again once she discovered he was taking her home to Tassel.

How had her job come to be at risk, anyway? Despite her obvious reluctance, she’d tackled her assignment with a curiosity as dogged as that of his eight-year-old daughter. Mariah had a way of making him remember when chasing storms had been new to him, too, of making him forget, for a while, what the chase meant to him now.

As a result, he hadn’t captured a tornado on film for his daughter.

The CB crackled with static. Mariah frowned in her sleep. Rafe snatched up the microphone, not about to let it disturb her. She was less trouble when she was asleep. She’d passed out this second time just after he’d radioed Jeremy to tell him they’d made it out of the storm.

An image of Mariah, her hands curled around the wire fence, bolts shooting from the heavy sky, flashed disturbingly to mind. He shook the chilling vision away as a voice came over the airwaves.

“This is Sunshine. Are you out there, Stormy?”

“That you, sweetheart?” As if he didn’t know.

Storms had swept close to Tassel, too, and his daughter would want him home tonight. So he was going home.

Rafe sensed he was being observed. Sure enough, Mariah leveled her disapproving, judgmental gaze upon him—the same look she’d given him at Trixie’s when he’d talked to Sunny….

Sweetheart. She thought he was talking to a woman. Considering the way he couldn’t take his eyes off her at the cafе, and the kiss he’d stolen, he could see where she might get the wrong idea about him. Kind of like she was getting the wrong idea now.

“Of course it’s me. Are you coming home, Daddy?” Sunny’s aggrieved, now distinctive “kid’s” voice had Mariah straightening in her seat, the judgmental look in her eyes changing to one of surprise. Rafe grimaced. Once she knew he was taking her home, she would either see the advantage of the situation and barrage him—and his family—with questions, or demand again that he drive her back to her car. He should have just wakened her and dropped her off at a roadside motel.