station.
“I need my phone.” She had to be in touch with her crew and the storm watchers and the mayor. Dammit.
“It’s inside?”
“With my condoms,” she said drily.
Condoms. She’d needed condoms in the shed behind the school at her high school class reunion. Avery shook her head.
“Do you seriously carry condoms around in your purse?” He sounded irritated.
She did not have any condoms in her purse. If she’d gone into that school building, she would not have come back out.
And she would have missed some of the best sex of her life.
Dammit.
Workbench or not, Jake Mitchell knew what he was doing.
She frowned at him. “What?”
“You often find yourself in situations like this where you might need one without warning?” He sounded pissed.
What did he have to be pissed about? Like he cared about her condom use when he wasn’t around. It was so like Jake to think he was the only guy she might need a condom for.
Of course, she hadn’t needed a condom, or any other birth control, for almost two years now.
She stood swiftly. “My condoms are none of your business.”
She turned toward the door and started banging on it with a closed fist. “Hey! Anybody! We’re in here!”
Jake grabbed her from behind with an arm around her waist, lifting her off her feet. He turned and set her down so that he was between her and the door. “Stop it. We can’t go out there, and you know no one else is out there, either. They’d better all be under cover.”
“We have to get out of here!” She felt the panic crawling over her like ants scuttling over her skin, making her jumpy and irritable. She was stuck in here while the rest of the town was out there hunkering down. Did everyone have shelter? Had they found the emergency boxes in the school? Was everyone aware of the approaching storm? She couldn’t just sit in here and wait and wonder. Why couldn’t she have brought her phone out here? At least then she could reach out to her crew. Of course, Jake’s phone wasn’t working, so hers likely wouldn’t, either. It was so frustrating. “There must be another way.” She started in the opposite direction, toward the garage door on the other side of the building where they drove the school’s riding lawn mower and the Bobcat in and out.
Jake grabbed her and turned her, blocking her way again. “You can’t go out there! Are you crazy?”
“Yes! Clearly! I just had sex with you on the workbench in the storage shed at our high school class reunion!”
There was an instant change in his expression, and she knew she was in trouble. She didn’t know exactly what that look on his face meant, but she had the sudden urge to strip her clothes off.
Bad, bad idea.
He reached for her and she stepped back. “Knock it off, Jake! There’s a tornado coming.”
He paused a moment before letting his hand fall to his side. “Damn.” He ran a hand through his hair. “You look at me with soft eyes, all sweet and trusting, and I want you. But you look at me all riled up and spitting fire, and I’m a complete mess.”
She stared at him. He’d admitted to being affected by her. She knew—obviously—that he’d been turned on and able to get all the important parts functioning, but hearing that he was a “mess” and, more, that he’d noticed the emotion in her eyes, for some reason seemed like more than simple chemistry.
She liked messing up Jake. Because he sure messed her up.
“Jake, I—”
The sudden loud bang of something crashing into the side of the metal shed made them both jump. Whatever had hit the building was big. Avery’s heartbeat leaped into overdrive. Between Jake and the storm, she was afraid she could be in serious cardiac crisis soon.
“Fuck,” Jake muttered, and he rummaged in the box again and pulled out two bottles of water. “Come on. We need to get away from the door.”
God, they were stuck. She looked around. The shed was solid, heavy. But it didn’t have a deep foundation or load-bearing walls like the school building did. Plus, it was full of tools. It wasn’t like it was good to have anything flying at you at ninety-plus miles an hour, but avoiding sharp things in particular was a good idea.
As if he’d scripted it, a low rumble shook the building, and something else banged into it. It was surely the fact that the shed was