Nate supposed he could understand a father wanting to protect his daughter. StillYou might not be doing her any favor by letting her work today. Does she have a friends house where she can stay to ride out the storm?
You dont know my daughter. Mitch muttered a frustrated curse that was more of a growl than an actual word. Im beginning to think you four might be the only thing standing between us andoh hell, Im not even going to say it.
He didnt have to.
No doctor. No EMT. Not enough supplies. No volunteers except for one pregnant, widowed woman with more energy than sense.
And one powerful, unpredictable storm that could turn a routine evacuation into disaster.
CHAPTER TWO
JOLENE SAT AT THE DESK in the dispatchers office, licking the sticky sweetness of her second cinnamon roll from her fingers and drinking her carton of milk.
Shed dashed in to answer the phone twenty minutes ago and wound up with a full-time job. Ruth, their regular dispatcher, hadnt made it in yet, so Jolene had redirected the inquiry about Hurricane Damons projected path to the weather bureau. Then she stayed put to field three more phone calls from volunteers reporting in with their ETAs, and one from a Corpus Christi resident asking for directions to the high school evac site.
Answering phones rated at about a negative two on the excitement scaleshed much rather be doing than sitting. But as shed told her father, she was here to do whatever needed to be done. The people of Turning Point were her family as much as Mitch was.
Needing to fill the temporary lull, she swiveled the chair around to watch the gathering meeting through the glass window that separated the dispatch office from the stations commons area. A handful of locals had arrived for the briefing and had quickly dug into rolls and coffee, greeting their out-of-state guests.
The towns resident hot-shot pilot and fellow volunteer firefighter, Micky Flynn, had swaggered in a few minutes ago and was already trying to make time with the three female medical personnel from California. Jolene was slowly revising her opinion of the sun-in-the-fun crowd shed expected her Dutch uncle, Dan Egan, to send from the Golden State. Cheryl, Amy and Dana were definitely babes, she supposed. Each woman was pretty in her own way. But they seemed friendly and competent and unafraid of hard work.
The man whod flown in with them, Nate Kellison, was definitely more standoffish. Taking a swallow of milk, she searched the perimeter of the commons area. As she peered over the rim of the carton, she spotted him on the far side of the room, discussing something with short and squatty Doyle Brown.
Or rather, Doyle was talking and Kellison was nodding his head.
He didnt have a handsome facethe nose was a little too crooked, the jaw a little too squarebut it was undeniably compelling.
A smile would help ease the tension bracketing his mouth. But she got the feeling Nate Kellison didnt smile much. Not recently, at any rate. A sprinkling of lines beside his eyes indicated smiles and laughter had once come easily to him. But there was something almost Atlas-like in the gravity surrounding him. For a man who couldnt be more than thirty, he seemed to carry a heavy weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
Whats your secret, Kellison? she mused out loud.
Hed taken off his ball cap, giving her a better view of his ultrashort crop of coffee-dark hair and a chance to gauge the color of those unsmiling eyes. They were a dark, golden-brown, reminiscent of the fine sippin whiskey her father liked to drink from time to time.
Those brown eyes blinked. When they opened again, they were focused on her. Dead on. Staring with an almost psychic intensity that said hed known shed been watching him. Startled at being caught, Jolene swallowed an entire mouthful of milk, forcing the liquid down her throat in one gulp.
There was something coiled and canny and downright unsettling in those whiskey-colored eyes.
But she couldnt look away.
Why was California Boy staring at her?
Jolene defiantly tipped her chin and held his gaze, ignoring the inexplicable clutch of nervous energy tightening her chest. She knew she didnt turn the heads of too many menthey were more likely to call her to set them up with a friend or bemoan their woman troubles than to ask her out herself. And she was okay with that. She had plenty of friends of both sexes to fill up her time. She had other people to give her heart toher father, her baby, her hometown. They would always need her.
Joaquin had needed her. In some ways, he was the only man who ever had. And even with his big, generous heart, her husband had never given her more than his trademark bear hug or a platonic kiss.
Of course, hed been so sick.
They hadnt even made their baby in the traditional way.
Automatically Jolene slid her hand down to cup the gentle swell of her belly, protecting that most precious part of her from any hurts the world tried to throw at them. Kellisons brown gaze dropped to follow the movement of her hand. Jolene flattened her spine into the back of the chair, instinctively putting distance between her baby and those probing eyes.
He blinked again and turned his attention back to something Doyle had said. Freed from the mesmerizing spell, Jolene expelled a sigh of unexpected relief.
What the heck had just happened? She didnt think Kellison had been scoping her out as a pretty woman or potential conquest. He was judging her for some reason. Judging her and deciding shed come up short, even though theyd done nothing more than exchange names.
And some seriously intense eye contact.
With a grunt of exasperation, she turned and tossed her empty milk carton into the trash. Nate Kellisons Im-here-to-work-not-make-friends attitude pricked at her sense of fair play, that was all. When she looked through the window again, he was following Doyle out the back hallway to the three bays where the Turning Point ambulance and engines were parked.
The views better from this side, buddy, she muttered as he turned his back to her. It was a silly, defensive retort, but one she realized was halfway true.
Without the intensity of those amber eyes to make her feel like a specimen beneath a microscope, she could relax and enjoy the scenery. From this vantage point, she could almost envision the laid-back surfer dude shed expected to meet and share a few laughs with. Almost.
Laid-back didnt fit Nate Kellison. Not in any way, shape or form. Like his sparsity of words, there was something tightly controlled about the way he moved. His dark blue shirt clung to the rolling flex of his shoulders and his tapering back. Even lower, his glutes bunched and released beneath the drape of his uniform slacks, creating a taut, lean silhouette.
But something was off.
Before he disappeared around the corner, she lowered her gaze past the squared-off hips, the powerful thighs, and spied a subtle unevenness to his gait. The glitch in his bodys disciplined perfection was nearly undetectable. But it was there.
Surprising.
Curious.
All that muscle and control, and the man walked with a limp.
Wounded.
Oh, no. That chink in his armor humanized him. Stoic and grumpy she could handle. She could even get used to those all-seeing eyes. She could ignore his perfect tush and forgive his California roots.
But if he was in pain, she was in trouble.