Julie Miller - Riding the Storm

“I know. But I also know how short-staffed you are right now.”

“I recruited help.”

“Right. The California contingency. Sun-babes and surfer dudes.”

Surfer dudes? Nate frowned. Was that a joke or an insult? He hadn’t been on a surfboard since he’d blown out his knee, and phrases like totally rad and gnarly had never been part of his vocabulary.

“You know Dan would only send his best.”

Her ponytail bounced as she nodded. “I know Uncle Dan’s dependable, but you yourself said we were going to be shorthanded. So I’m here to volunteer for whatever job you need. Oh, and I passed Micky Flynn and Doyle Brown on the way in. They should be here soon.”

“I’m glad some of my firefighters are finally showing up, but—”

“Here. Do you mind?” She leaned in and pulled out a large flat box from the passenger seat. Once she handed the package off to her father, she propped her hands against her hips, rolled her shoulders back and stretched, tipping her face to the rain and breathing deeply, as if she found the cool drops a soothing comfort. “Mmm. I love this moisture. My garden’s going to love it, too. Everything’s so dry.”

“Now, honey, you know damn well that…”

The rest of Mitch’s warning got lost in the pounding alarm stopping up Nate’s ears. Her arched posture had pulled her loose clothes taut.

She was pregnant. Maybe four or five months’ worth, judging by the subtle yet distinctive swell of her belly. Mitch was going to be a grandpa. No wonder he wanted her to stay home.

The blue-eyed angel with the nonstop mouth was pregnant.

The attraction humming through Nate’s body braked into regretful silence. He didn’t need to be lusting after somebody else’s woman.

Wait a minute. She was pregnant?

A familiar sense of urgency buzzed his senses back on full alert.

She was Mitch’s idea of a volunteer?

Every doubt that had been temporarily laid to rest resurfaced.

No wonder he’d called Dan Egan for help.

“I figured Aunt Jean’s Café wouldn’t be open this morning.” Mitch’s daughter pulled a second box from the truck, then closed the door with a subtle wiggle of her hip. She was smiling. Beaming like a ray of sunshine, despite the rain, the clouds and her father’s scowl.

“So I got up early and baked some cinnamon rolls for the briefing this morning. If I know you, you didn’t eat any breakfast.” She winked. Nate zeroed in on the movement, fascinated by her animated expression and the spell she seemed to be casting over her father. “And I know you. C’mon. Let’s eat one while they’re still warm. I made them without nuts the way you like them. I’ll brew some fresh coffee to go with them, too.”

She hiked the box higher in her arms and marched across the parking lot, heading straight toward Nate and the front door. Mitch’s big shoulders expanded with a sigh before he fell into step behind her.

“Promise me, all you’ll do is make coffee and then go home?” Mitch asked.

But Nate had a feeling the concession had fallen on deaf ears. Mitch’s daughter glanced up at the sky, arcing the slender column of her throat. “Maybe I’d better get the urn out and fill it up. I imagine we’ll have people in and out all day who’ll be looking for something to warm them up if this rain hangs on.”

Nate barely got the door open for her before she came charging through. She tipped her chin and gave him a smile, which, even at a fraction of the wattage she’d shown Mitch, was still dazzling. “Thanks. I’m Jolene Kannon-Angel. You must be the California boy Dad told me about last night.”

California boy? Surfer dude? “Nate Kellison.”

He was too stunned by her exuberance, which somehow managed to intrigue yet condescend at the same time, to do more than utter his name.

She didn’t give him time to say “pleased to meet you,” set her straight on the whole California misconception, or tell her how good those rolls smelled. She breezed on by, leaving a waft of cinnamon and a void of energy in her wake.

Mitch paused in the open doorway beside Nate, staring after her retreating backside with openmouthed exasperation. “That’s my daughter,” he announced unnecessarily. “She didn’t stay home.” He turned to Nate. “I didn’t really think she would. But I hoped. She does have some medical training. She’s been a volunteer firefighter for eight years now—since she was twenty. She’s as passionate about her hometown as I am. She’s good with people.”

The credentials petered out as Jolene disappeared into the main room. They could hear a chorus of cheerful greetings as she introduced herself to Dana, Cheryl and Amy.

“She’s pregnant.” Nate stated the obvious. “Her volunteerism is commendable, but she doesn’t need to be here.”

Mitch nodded. “Yep.”

“Isn’t her husband worried about her being on the road by herself?”

“She hasn’t got one.” That bit of news finally seemed to shake Mitch free from the lingering effects of Hurricane Jolene. “She’s been a widow four months now.”

A knot of compassion twisted itself in Nate’s gut. He knew more than he wanted to about losing someone he loved. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s probably a good part of why she worries about me so much. She lost her mother years ago. And now Joaquin.” Mitch led the way down the hall. “Probably why I can’t say no to her, either. I don’t want her to lose anything else. I don’t want her to hurt anymore.”

Nate supposed he could understand a father wanting to protect his daughter. Still…“You might not be doing her any favor by letting her work today. Does she have a friend’s house where she can stay to ride out the storm?”

“You don’t know my daughter.” Mitch muttered a frustrated curse that was more of a growl than an actual word. “I’m beginning to think you four might be the only thing standing between us and…oh hell, I’m not even going to say it.”

He didn’t 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.

JOLENE SAT AT THE DESK in the dispatcher’s office, licking the sticky sweetness of her second cinnamon roll from her fingers and drinking her carton of milk.

She’d dashed in to answer the phone twenty minutes ago and wound up with a full-time job. Ruth, their regular dispatcher, hadn’t made it in yet, so Jolene had redirected the inquiry about Hurricane Damon’s projected path to the weather bureau. Then she stayed put to field three more phone calls from volunteers reporting in with their ETA’s, 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 scale—she’d much rather be doing than sitting. But as she’d 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 station’s 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 town’s 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 she’d 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.