Hard Rain. Darlene Scalera

clouds were denser and darker. The winds that had come were rougher, quicker, their hard edges hitting a person dead on. Rain broke through the sky with a furor that laid the field grass flat.

      “Wait here,” Jesse told Amy beneath the shelter of the diner’s metal awning. “I’ll get the Bronco and pick you up.”

      He was gone before Amy could protest. She watched him weave his way among the other vehicles in the parking lot. The drop in barometric pressure could cause joints to swell, deepen aches from past injuries. If that was the case, there was no indication in Jesse’s movements.

      When the Bronco pulled up in front of the diner, Amy hurried to meet it even as Jesse jumped out the driver’s side and was rounding the vehicle to open the door for her.

      True Texas-sheriff fashion, she thought as he swung open the door. She turned to thank him and found him close. She pushed back the hair the wind whipped across her face and gathered it in one hand. Her other hand clung to the side of the vehicle, steadying her while the wind and the rain and something equally elemental and powerful seemed to push her toward this man.

      Jesse stepped back. He shut the door on her as she climbed inside. Her face turned to his, its questioning stare now blurred by the rivulets of rain across the window. The breath he released was a long shudder as he rounded to the driver’s door.

      Inside the vehicle, the dark sky and rain pounding hard on the roof created an intimacy, closing them off from the outside world.

      “Jesse?”

      He felt her hand on his forearm, a thousand longings in the feel of her fingertips alone. She’d said his name too softly and with too much question. He feared to turn and look into those blue-green eyes that he had dreamt about for fourteen years, afraid that if she asked, he would not lie. He would tell her the truth and damn the consequences.

      He looked down at her small hand on his arm. The ripple of a scar on his own flesh returned him to his senses. If she asked, he could say he was not the Jesse Boone she had known fourteen years ago. Nor was she the young girl he’d taken in his arms and loved with every ounce of his soul. Too many years had passed, too much time and too many changes had come between them, conspired to keep them apart.

      He raised his gaze to her. She searched his face.

      A dispatcher’s voice over the radio interrupted.

      “Fire reported in the old fertilizer warehouse over by the railroad station. Pickup truck traveling at high speed skidded off the highway. The truck was carrying kerosene and exploded on impact. County emergency vehicles en route.”

      Jesse switched on the lights, the siren and punched the gas pedal.

      Disaster had begun.