And getting warmer. He wasn’t entirely certain that his clothes hadn’t started steaming. “Blame it on the whiskey.” Personally, he was blaming it on her.
“It’s June but the rain still ought to cool things off.” She twisted her hair, managing to tie it into a knot atop her head. She inhaled deeply and Jayden did blame the whiskey then, because he should have looked away from the lush curves pushing against that thin excuse for a shirt, but he didn’t.
And the heat inside his gut just increased.
The only thing that distracted him was the thumping of the cellar door as the storm buffeted against it. It sounded like it was hailing, but in the lantern light, he could see the glimmer of rain dripping through the slats of the wood door.
If he’d met Ariana Lamonte under just about any other circumstance, he wouldn’t hesitate to pursue the attraction. But she was in his storm cellar. Essentially under his protection.
Which changed the rules entirely.
Or should.
“So what do you do in Austin when you’re not chasing around stories for your magazine?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “The usual. I have friends. Parents.” As if she realized the spare details were hardly the way to keep a conversation going, she pushed to her feet and paced the short distance to the shelves, arching her back a little as she stretched. Then she bent over in half, her bracelets jingling softly, and pressed her fingers against the dirt floor.
He damn near swallowed his tongue.
The knot in her hair wasn’t holding up. As he watched, it seemed to uncoil in almost slow motion. Then she straightened again, caught her hands behind her back and stretched once more.
He closed his eyes, stifling an oath. “Grow up there?” He had to raise his voice over the noise from outside.
“In Austin? Born and raised. Same as my mom and dad before me. I love the city. I have an apartment that overlooks the skyline. Ridiculously expensive, so I barely have it furnished, but I can walk or ride my bicycle to work if I want. I can get most anywhere I want, really, without even taking out my car.”
He looked at her again and was both relieved and chagrined that she’d stopped stretching and was pacing once more. “Except here,” he said drily.
Her lips curved. They were full and luscious, like the rest of her. Not overblown. Just...right.
Exactly right.
“Except here,” she agreed. “What about you? Did you grow up in Paseo?”
“Born and raised,” he parroted. “Right here on this very ranch.”
She propped her hands on her hips and looked at him. “And your parents?”
He wasn’t accustomed to telling strangers his business. But she was easy to talk to. And it kept her from turning to see the water that had begun streaming down the steps.
The cellar had stone walls and a dirt floor. He’d never known it to flood more than a foot. Still, if it got worse, he was already figuring they’d have to leave the shelter. In a flood, being inside the house higher up was better than being below ground. If there really were tornadoes in the area, they’d have to take their chances. His mom’s bedroom closet in the house would be the best bet. First floor. Interior room.
There wouldn’t be much space for the two of them. It would definitely be close quarters—
“Never knew my father,” he said, pulling his thoughts away. “My mom was pregnant when she came to Paseo.”
Her expression shifted a little. “So your mom is a Fortune?”
“Not one of those Fortunes,” he reminded her. “The ones you’ve been writing about for your magazine. Like I said. The name’s just a coincidence. So if that’s what brought you to Paseo, you’ve wasted a trip. My mother’s definitely not related to them.”
She tilted her head slightly. “It’s not that common a name.”
“It’s the one my mom decided on when she was making a fresh start here. She wanted a new life. A new identity. Said my brothers and I were the only fortune she needed. Thus the name. I’m pretty sure she was running from the guy who’d gotten her pregnant. She could have chosen any surname she wanted.” He raised his voice over a crack of thunder. “Always figured Fortune was better than Smith.”
Ariana jerked to attention at his words. His mother had been running?
“It’s just thunder.” Jayden’s deep voice was calm. The kind of voice to inspire trust. “It can’t hurt you.”
“The lightning that causes it can.” Much as she disliked thunderstorms, she was glad to blame her reaction on it. “So why do you think she was hiding from him?” she asked casually, concealing her intense interest. Gerald Robinson had a history of being a womanizer. But not a violent one. Even now, in his seventies, he was a compellingly attractive man. She’d only had a few brief encounters with him—he was not a proponent of her magazine articles, to say the least, and had no idea about the book of course—but it wasn’t difficult to understand how women had flocked his way. But none of the women—even his wife—seemed to hold his heart.
Some said that Gerald Robinson didn’t really have one.
But maybe he’d had one and left it in Paseo.
“Was your mother afraid of your father?”
“I probably should have phrased it differently.” He adjusted the rolled sleeping bag behind him, stretching out even more fully on the one spread beneath him. He tore open the sleeve of crackers and fed one to Sugar. “I think she was running from a broken heart. And that’s it.”
Another frequent refrain when it came to the women in Gerald’s past. The only heart that seemed to have not broken along the way belonged to his wife.
Then she realized what else Jayden had said. “You have brothers?”
He’d uncapped the whiskey again and held up two fingers as he took a sip. When he was finished, he held the bottle toward her.
Even though she knew she oughtn’t, she took the bottle again and this time managed not to choke on the alcohol as it burned down her throat.
But she dropped the bottle completely when a loud crash vibrated through the very walls, making even the metal shelving shudder and squeal.
She froze, forgetting entirely her interest in his brothers, and warily looked up at the low ceiling, half-afraid it was getting ready to collapse in on them. It was covered in wood. But above that, she really had no idea what was there. Except earth and that awful, awful howling wind. “That was not thunder.”
He’d sat up, too, and shook his head. He righted the whiskey bottle she’d dropped. “No, it wasn’t.” He went up the stairs and pried the flashlight out of the metal latch where he’d jammed it. Only then did she realize the stairs were flowing with water.
“Are you sure you should go out there?”
“No, but I want to know what the hell that noise was. I’m not worried about the house—nobody is here but us—but I’ve got horses in the barn.” He pushed up on the cellar door and swore.
Her stomach curled in on itself nervously. “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s blocking the door.” He put his shoulder to it and heaved.
The door that had blown open from the wind now stayed stubbornly closed.
She felt like choking on a whole new lump of misgivings. “So we’re trapped?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
She picked up the lantern and carried it with her up a few steps until she was just below him. In the light she couldn’t see the faintest glimmer