Greg shouted.
Her shrill “I know!” was muted against his shoulder.
Time slowed to a crawl. Sounds of destruction seemed to echo endlessly.
Maya’s heartfelt pleas for deliverance were barely audible, but Greg could tell she was praying. He was tempted to do the same until his memories stopped him. He had decided long ago that he was in charge of his own destiny and nothing had happened since to change his mind. Let the woman pray if she thought it helped. He knew better.
Maya’s thoughts focused first and foremost on her daughter, then on the rest of her family. Jesse was running the Logan ranch north and west of town. He and Clay were all the blood relations she had besides Layla—and Jesse’s newborn triplets, of course.
If anything good was to come out of this terrible storm, perhaps it would provide enough incentive to draw Clay home again, to cause him to make his peace with Jesse. It tore her up to see her only siblings estranged from each other, especially now that Jesse and his wife, Marie, had three premature babies to worry about, too.
She tried to pray aloud, failed to find words, then resorted to quoting scripture. “The cares of the day are sufficient,” she whispered, hoping that would help relieve her unbelievable distress.
She felt Greg’s muscles tense. He stood very still, barely breathing. “What?”
“It’s from the Bible. In Matthew, I think. My paraphrasing.” She cringed against him again and stifled a whimper as the building gave another shimmy. The roaring was starting to lessen enough that they could hear each other speak without having to actually shout.
“I wouldn’t know if it was verbatim,” he said. “I never went to church much after my mother died.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It didn’t do her much good.”
Touched, Maya gave him a barely perceptible hug. “We won’t know that until we get to Heaven.”
Although he didn’t answer, she was glad she’d spoken her mind. Gregory Garrison might not claim to be a believer at present, but since he’d gone to church in the past, there was a chance he’d eventually come around again. She certainly hoped so because she couldn’t imagine the suffering he might have to go through if he continued to deny his faith. Especially if the destruction from this storm turned out to be as bad as she thought it was going to be.
Everyone had doubts at times, even the most devout Christians. It was those who continued to believe, in spite of outward circumstances, who coped best.
And as far as she was concerned, any man who would risk his own life to save a child he didn’t even like still deserved to share in the Lord’s daily blessings.
Greg held tight to the two he was guarding and listened to the battering on the floor and walls above. He desperately wanted to venture out, yet he wasn’t willing to endanger Maya or the boy merely to satisfy his curiosity.
Tommy had stopped sobbing and was now hugging Greg’s neck as if he never intended to let go, while Maya seemed to be holding her breath.
Finally, as the thudding and banging upstairs lessened perceptibly, his impatience won out. “I’m going to go take a peek. You two wait here. I’ll tell you if it’s safe to follow me upstairs.”
When he pried the child’s arms loose and passed him to Maya, Tommy began to sob again.
“We’ll go up in a few minutes,” Maya said soothingly, patting the little boy’s back through his damp T-shirt. “I promise. We have to let Mr. Garrison look around first to see if it’s safe.”
“I w-want Charlie,” Tommy wailed. “I want my dog.”
“I know you do, honey. Just be a little patient. I’ll help you look for Charlie soon.” She looked in her boss’s direction. “We both will, won’t we?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He had started to cautiously edge his way toward the stairway. “Sounds like the wind is still pretty strong. No telling how much is blowing around up there but I suspect the worst is over.”
“I hope so.”
He put one hand on the railing of the stairway and paused. “So far, so good. You’ll have a little light once I open the door. Are you going to be all right down here by yourself?”
“I won’t be alone,” she replied, sounding more assured than before. “I haven’t had to face anything on my own since I came to Jesus.”
Greg didn’t comment. He’d grown up in a household where his mother had professed Christianity and his father had made light of it every chance he got. There weren’t many things he agreed with his dad about, but that was one of them. Any God who would take his mother from them in the prime of her life, in spite of all the prayers for her healing, was no God for him.
Easing open the door at the top of the stairs, he had to push its leading edge through a pile of refuse on the floor. The office was a shambles, thanks to the wind that was still whistling through the gap left by the shattered plate-glass window. The front door was hanging partly off its hinges, too. Considering the fact that his building was still standing, he figured he was one of the lucky ones. Especially if the upstairs suite where he currently lived still had a roof over it.
Stepping through and around the rubble, he proceeded far enough to peer through the space where the window glass had been. All his breath left him in a whoosh. He’d never seen anything like it. Parked cars had been upended like matchbox toys. Lumber, pink insulation, broken furniture and who knows what lay strewn from one end of Main Street to the other. Some of it was even stuck in trees. What was left of them.
Behind him, he heard Maya call, “Is it okay for us to come up?”
“Not yet.” There was no way he could deny her the eventual right to look, nor was there any way he could soften the blow of seeing their beloved town in such sad shape. He simply wanted to put it off as long as possible and keep her from dashing into the still unsafe street.
“Give me a few seconds to run upstairs and check my apartment first. We need to be sure there’s no real structural damage before you chance it. I don’t want the roof caving in on us.”
“Hurry.” He could hear the barely controlled panic in her voice.
“I will. Stay put till I call you. Promise?”
“I promise.”
Greg dashed up the interior stairway. To his relief the roof seemed intact and he’d had only one small window cracked in his apartment, so the place was relatively dry and undamaged.
Hoping that Maya had obeyed, he quickly returned and found her peeking through the partially ajar cellar door.
“Well?” she asked impatiently.
“It’s safe enough. At least in here. But watch your step and don’t put the boy down unless you have to. There’s broken glass everywhere.”
He braced himself, not sure how Maya would react when she saw everything that had happened. If she got hysterical, the way she had earlier, he’d have to be ready to intervene.
For the first time in the few weeks she’d worked for him, Greg looked—really looked—at his executive assistant. Her dark eyes were wide and expressive, set in a lovely oval face. Her short hair was tousled more than usual. And her cheeks were flushed. She not only impressed him with her natural beauty, she suddenly looked much younger than the twenty-five years he knew her to be. She had an innocence, an appealing naïveté, that made her seem so vulnerable that he wanted to rush to her and once again hold her close for her protection.
Maya’s jaw gaped. Then she began to pick her way carefully across the wet, littered office floor to join him near the window.
“The church?” she said breathlessly. “Can you see if the community