Riding the storm - By Julie Miller Page 0,51

body with his as splinters of shattered glass flew across the room. A tidal wave of rain followed in its path, hitting them with the same fury as the flooded arroyo.

“What the hell is going on?” Jolene cried, burying her cheek in the rug beneath him.

Nate got to his feet, locked his arm around her waist and scrambled for cover. In seconds he was closing the thick bathroom door and sinking onto a sleeping bag beside Jolene.

The whole house rattled on its foundation, reminding him of an earthquake. Dishes fell in the kitchen, crashed to the floor. Another window shattered. Nate tucked Jolene beneath his arms and shielded her as bits of plaster crumbled from the ceiling and rained down on top of them.

He had to shout to be heard.

“Damon’s here.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ABSOLUTE QUIET finally woke her.

Jolene shoved her hair off her face and sat up, blinking her eyes against the dim light shining through the open door.

Feeling disoriented, she rubbed her tummy. “How did we sleep through a hurricane, sweetie?”

She was covered in a blanket, sitting on a pallet of open sleeping bags on the floor of the master bathroom. The hazy illumination was coming from a bedroom window. The generator must have kicked in, and the yard light had come on. It was bright enough to cast light, but no warmth. The eye of the storm had come.

And she was alone.

Nate had left her.

A sickeningly familiar feeling of abandonment washed over her, leaving her queasy and cold and fully awake.

Jolene glanced down. The collar of her misbuttoned blouse stuck out above the zipper of her faded jacket. Without a braid or ponytail to control it, her hair was a tangled mess. Of course, she had on no makeup. Her lips felt chapped. And she had to pee like nobody’s business.

With such an attractive lump to wake up next to, no wonder Nate had skipped out.

With a resentful sigh, Jolene grabbed her flashlight, found her shoes and climbed to her feet. She’d bet good money her mother never woke up looking anything but drop-dead gorgeous. She poured a cup of water from one of the bottles and rinsed her mouth, ran a brush through her hair and put her clothes on right. Of course, she could bet equally good money that her mother would never allow herself to be caught in the middle of a hurricane or any other natural disaster.

That’s when she smelled the rich aroma of spices and charcoal in the air. “What the heck?”

Jolene ventured out of the john and followed her nose outside. She swept her light past the devastation in her living room—shattered glass and leaves sprinkled liberally over every piece of soaking wet furniture, splintered frames from the windows gouging out chunks of her prized wood floors, the branch of an old scrub pine, stripped of needles and lying in front of her television console.

The kitchen had been hit, too. Piles of broken dishes had been swept into the corner by the trash can. Her fridge and freezer stood open, empty and dark, while the contents had been packed into a cooler with ice or stacked neatly on her island countertop.

Jolene continued massaging her tummy at the odd sight. “I don’t think the hurricane picked up after itself.”

Nate.

She refused to pay mind to that little flurry of hope that quickened her pulse. Maybe Nate hadn’t left her behind so much as he’d gone on to do something else.

“Nate?” Jolene pushed open the back door and went outside. The ominous silence in the air spooked her more than the constant bombardment of the storm had. After finding a secluded spot to relieve herself, she headed around to the front and stared at disaster. The circle of illumination cast by the yard light revealed a world of chaos in the place she called home. Beyond the fringes of light, there was nothing but blackness and the threat of Mother Nature lying in wait to do even more damage.

“Oh, my God.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Nate’s calm voice called to her from across the yard, where he was pulling out broken limbs and chunks of wood from the corner of Rocky’s pen. She aimed the beam of her flashlight at his reassuring presence.

Jolene’s first thought was that her father’s jeans were too big for Nate’s slim hips, and Joaquin’s white T-shirt was too small for Nate’s more muscular frame. Her second thought, the one that made her swallow hard and say a grateful prayer, was