Twisted Up (Taking Chances #1) - Erin Nicholas Page 0,18

She shivered again, but for a very different reason.

Busy. One word. But it was enough to send every detail of how busy they’d been whirling through her mind. Her stomach flipped and tightened, then a part lower than her stomach tightened.

It wasn’t hard to believe that when they were actually doing all the things she was remembering that she’d been so caught up that she’d missed the pounding of a hailstorm. When she was with Jake, she swore the entire town could fall down around her and she wouldn’t notice.

She really hoped the entire town wasn’t falling down around them now.

“You didn’t say anything about hail.” Her voice was husky. Dammit.

“There were bare breasts. Hail didn’t seem important.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I would think it would take something pretty major to distract an expert such as yourself from a potentially dangerous storm.”

The building shook with a suddenly huge gust of wind, and the hail clanging on the roof got louder.

“It would, indeed.” Jake tightened his hold on her.

She always felt like her mind was whirling during a storm. It was hard to remember details during the tornado. She was always so involved in the preparations and alerts, then had to jump immediately into action afterward, that she didn’t dwell on the time during as much.

But she knew this one would be memorable.

Sitting enfolded in Jake’s arms while the world went crazy outside.

Yep, she’d remember this.

She decided to concentrate on Jake rather than the fact that her friends and home were outside at the mercy of yet another twisting monster. She could do nothing at the moment but pray. As soon as the storm passed, she’d be all in, doing anything and everything she could.

But right now all she could do was hold on.

Jake was warm. Almost hot. His body behind and under her was solid and strong, and his big hands covered the backs of hers entirely. He was stroking his thumbs rhythmically across her knuckles. His mouth still rested near her ear, his chin on her shoulder, but he wasn’t saying anything. She could feel his breath against her neck, faster than normal, and his heartbeat against her shoulder blade—also faster than it should be. Otherwise, there was no sound except the growling and groaning of the wind, and the banging of things hitting the building and the rattling of the hail on the roof.

Then it went quiet.

“Here we go.” Jake laced his fingers with hers.

The poets who talked about the calm before the storm hadn’t made that shit up. It got completely quiet at times right before the big one hit—there were no birds or insects making noise, the rain and hail let up, the wind died down, the lightning resisted.

Citizens of Chance knew that well. The sickly greenish sky, the eerie silence along with the lonely whine of the siren, the feeling of being stalked and cornered . . .

Right before all hell broke loose.

People often said a tornado sounded like a freight train or the sound of a thousand huge boulders rolling down a mountain, but she’d never thought either of those descriptions quite captured the sound. It was almost impossible to describe. Maybe it was like an oncoming train—the rumbling that grew louder and louder—but there was a wailing that went with it and a crazy whooshing . . . but that wasn’t even a strong enough word.

It was a sound you never forgot. There was nothing else quite like it.

She hunched forward instinctively as the growling and rumbling outside grew, the rhythm of the thumps and bangs against the building built, and the floor and walls shook. Avery felt Jake’s arms tighten around her. He, too, leaned forward, his chest to her back.

There was a horrible bang followed by the screeching of metal over concrete. There was a loud creaking, then a pop from overhead. She heard the crashes of things hitting the floor from the shelves and a loud thunk on the tabletop right overhead. Avery swore she could feel the force of the wind pulling at her like a vacuum, and she gripped Jake hard.

Please, please, please.

That was as much of a prayer as she could utter. She couldn’t put more words together than that. She had to trust that the Almighty would know what she needed.

Take the buildings, take the cars, just don’t take any people, she silently begged the tornado.

A tornado thirty-some years ago had killed four and injured six. The tornado twelve years ago had seriously injured