Marrying the Cowboy Read online

  “I’ll take you, or you can borrow my car.”

  “Oh, my God.” Verona approached them with another flashlight in hand. “Pete, honey, are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Verona had no reservations about showing Pete how much she cared about him and gathered him into a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re safe.” She planted a kiss on Pete’s cheek.

  Elissa couldn’t tell in the dark, but she’d bet money Pete was blushing.

  Verona finally let him go and turned to look at the destruction. She shook her head. “It’s not fair that we got off so easily while you’ve lost everything.”

  “Tornadoes are like that,” he said. Pete took a couple of steps then sighed. “I need to go to work. Nothing I can do here now anyway.”

  “Let me get my keys,” Elissa said. She hurried back to the house but paused on the porch to look back toward where Pete stood in the dim glow of Verona’s flashlight. Anger welled up in her. Pete didn’t deserve this. The guy deserved a break, and already her mind was churning with ways to help him. Because that’s what friends did, they helped each other.

  * * *

  PETE FELT NUMB all over, as if he’d been dumped back into a nightmare he’d spent the past few months crawling out of. He didn’t think he was a bad guy, but it sure seemed as if fate got a kick out of punching him in the face on a regular basis.

  He sighed and shook his head. At least he was alive, and Verona and Elissa escaped unharmed. He only hoped the rest of the area’s residents had fared as well. Right now he had to put aside his own problems and focus on work.

  “Pete,” Elissa called from in front of her house. “Can you help me get the garage door up?”

  With the power out, the garage door opener wasn’t going to do her any good. He closed the distance and stepped inside the dark interior of the garage. Elissa held a flashlight for him as he opened the door manually.

  “You all be careful,” Verona said as Elissa and Pete got into Elissa’s SUV.

  Elissa started the engine and backed out, steering toward the far edge of her driveway to avoid the back end of his upturned patrol car.

  “I’ll send someone over here to get that out of your yard as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t worry about that now,” she said. “It’s the least of our concerns.”

  He deliberately didn’t look at what little was left of his home as she drove by. When she stopped at the end of the street, Elissa didn’t immediately turn right toward downtown. When he glanced at her, she was staring into the darkness to the left.

  “I didn’t even think about the nursery until just now,” she said. “I need to go check if there’s any damage.”

  “Wait until in the morning. More than likely the power is out there, too.”

  For a moment, he thought she might actually turn that direction. But after a couple of beats, she turned right and drove him to the sheriff’s department. They must have the generator going because lights shone in the windows. Elissa waited until one of the electric co-op’s bucket trucks went by before she turned into the parking lot.

  “Thanks for the ride,” he said as he opened the passenger-side door.

  “Be careful if you have to go out, okay?”

  He nodded, thankful at least that he had good friends if nothing else.

  It wasn’t until he walked through the front door that it dawned on him that he was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and the old sneakers he kept in the storm shelter just in case something like tonight happened. His uniforms were probably scattered over half the county. It was doubtful his boots had ended up in the same place, and for all he knew his Stetson was impaled on some bull’s horn.

  “Been trying to call you.” Sheriff Simon Teague gave Pete an odd look, probably because of what he was wearing. Or not wearing.

  “Pretty sure my phone flew off with the rest of my house.”

  “What?” asked Keri, Simon’s wife, who’d just hung up the phone.

  “My house took a direct hit.”

  “God, Pete, are you okay?” Keri stood, as if she might check him over head to foot for injuries.

  “Yeah. I made it to the storm shelter, barely.” He’d almost not been able to pull the door closed, and as soon as he did he’d heard heavy debris hitting the outside as if trying its best to get inside.

  “How bad is it?” Simon asked.

  “There’s nothing left but the foundation and broken timber.” He ran his hand back through his hair, feeling half-naked without his hat. “And my patrol car is upside down in Elissa and Verona’s front yard.”

  “Are they okay?”

  Pete nodded. “Elissa gave me a ride over here. They’ve got a tree in their living room window, but that was the only thing I could see in the dark.” He glanced toward the 911 dispatch room. Anne Marie Wallace and Sierra Mitchell were answering calls as fast as they could. “How bad is everything else?”

  Simon’s single curse word was enough to let him know they had a long night ahead of them. Which was good because he wasn’t quite ready to think about all he’d lost and where the hell he was going to live now.

  Chapter Two

  It took three tries, but Elissa’s call to India finally went through.

  “Are you all okay?”

  “Yeah,” India said. “Ginny is a bit shaken, but she’s curled up with Liam now. He’s reading her a story to try to get her back to sleep.”

  “What about Skyler and Logan?”

  “They’re fine. They just had rain and a little wind out at the ranch. You and Verona?”

  “Tree through the window. At least that’s all I could see in the dark. But Pete’s house is gone.”

  “Lot of damage?”

  “No, I mean it’s gone as in completely gone.”

  India gasped. “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, I just dropped him off at work. His truck is gone, too. And his cruiser is doing a headstand in my front yard.”

  “I have a feeling this is all going to look so much worse in the morning.”

  “Yeah. Listen, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. The road’s a mess, and I need both hands.” She didn’t tell her friend where she was headed because India would probably spout the same speech Pete had. But the nursery was a huge part of her life. She wasn’t about to sleep until she’d seen with her own eyes that it was intact.

  “Okay, be careful.”

  Five minutes later, Elissa wondered about the wisdom of her decision to drive out to the nursery. She dodged downed limbs and drooping power lines. When a gust of wind shook the SUV, she realized she didn’t even know if she might be in the crosshairs of another storm. She clicked on the radio and listened to weather and damage reports as she maneuvered through the mess the tornado had left in its wake.

  Her heart started hammering well before she reached the nursery, when she came upon the shattered remains of a large cobalt-colored planter in the middle of the road. She tried to drive around the shards, but she’d be lucky if she didn’t end up stranded out here with a flat tire.

  She crept through the obstacle course of detritus, some of which she recognized and some that had obviously come from nearby homes. Leaves were plastered against strips of pink insulation. A soaked cardboard box was wrapped around what looked like half of a dining room chair.

  India was right. This was all going to look ten times worse in the light of day.

  The closer she got to the nursery, the more nervous she became. Her heart hammered against her rib cage, and she kept telling herself over and over that everything would be okay. She hit her brakes when she saw the Paradise Garden Nursery sign twisted and hanging by one corner.

  “No.” She drove the rest of the way and pulled into the parking area, letting her headlights sweep across her life’s work.
/>   Tears pooled in her eyes as she saw the front of the building. It looked as if someone had run into it with a bulldozer.

  She turned off the car but left the lights on. When she stepped outside, a light rain began to fall. Biting her bottom lip, she walked slowly forward, stepping over broken shards of pottery and twisted metal. The building wasn’t completely wiped from the face of the map, but she wasn’t going to be open for business any time soon.

  She stopped walking and simply stood in the rain, hoping that with each blink of her eyes the scene would change. But it didn’t.

  The sound of a vehicle approaching was followed by another set of lights joining hers. A car door opened and closed.

  “Elissa?”

  Even at the familiar sound of Pete’s voice, she couldn’t pull her gaze away from the building.

  Pete stepped up beside her. “You shouldn’t be out here now. There’s another storm heading this way.”

  “Tell me I’m not seeing this.”

  He exhaled. “I’m sorry, Lis.” After a few more seconds, Pete wrapped his arm around her shoulders and steered her toward her vehicle. “I really need for you to go home. I can’t have you wandering around out here in the dark, exposed. There’s nothing you can do now anyway.”

  His words finally sank in, and she realized he could have just as easily been speaking about himself.

  “I’m sorry, Pete. I know this is nothing like losing your home.”

  He opened her driver’s-side door and gripped the top edge. “This isn’t nothing.” He gave her a sad little smile, knowing just how much this nursery meant to her. “There’s time enough for both of us to face reality in the morning. But right now you need to get home safely and I’ve got to get back to work.”

  She nodded. “Be careful.”

  A growing sense of numbness took hold of Elissa as she made her way back home. None of what had happened tonight seemed real, more like a scene from a disaster movie. The next thing she knew, Godzilla was going to step out of the darkness to stomp on what was left of Blue Falls. But as soon as she drove down her street and saw again the empty spot where Pete’s house should be, the horrible reality finally sank in.

  She got out of the car to find her aunt waiting for her in the doorway into the house.

  “Where have you been? I tried calling, but I couldn’t get through.”

  “The lines are probably overloaded.” When Elissa entered the kitchen, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

  “What is it? Is Pete okay?”

  “He’s fine.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “But that’s more than I can say for the nursery.”

  “You went out there?”

  “I had to know.” She met her aunt’s eyes and forced her own not to fill with tears again. “It took a big hit.”

  Verona stepped forward and pulled Elissa into her arms. “I’m so sorry, honey. But we’ll get through this. We’re alive. That’s all that matters right now.”

  Elissa knew she was right, that she should be thankful. She was, especially when she thought about how easily Pete could have died tonight, that there still might be people out there who had died or been injured. But that still didn’t erase the pain of seeing her nursery in shambles.

  Wrung out, Elissa made her way back to bed. But even as tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she listened to the patter of the gentle rain and waited for daylight. Even though she knew the light might show her even more damage, at least she’d be able to tackle it. Sitting around waiting and not doing anything was so not her way. It was torture.

  She heard a distant rumble of thunder once, but the worst of the weather seemed to have moved on, like a bully who’d thrown a punch and left his victim on the ground holding his bloody nose.

  Sirens echoed every now and then through the night, and she wondered what Pete and the rest of the deputies were finding. Once again, Pete was managing to do his job while his personal life fell apart. It made her feel selfish for focusing so much on the nursery, even though she couldn’t help how she felt. That place was her livelihood, her life, her dream come true.

  And now she faced having to clean up the mess and start all over. Sudden exhaustion pressed down on her, and she closed her eyes and begged for the release of sleep.

  * * *

  PETE FELT LIKE crying when he stepped into the barn at R & J Stables and saw Frankie turn to look at him. But then, it’d been that kind of day. He crossed the distance between them to rub his horse between the ears.

  “Hey, boy. Looks like you and I both got lucky, huh?”

  Frankie nuzzled against Pete’s hand as if he could tell Pete had been having a less-than-stellar day. Pete took a moment to lean his forehead against Frankie’s head, grateful that at least he still had this one thing to call his own. And if he’d had to choose which to save, Frankie or his home, he would pick Frankie every time. Named after his grandpa Frankie as a joke, Frankie the horse felt as much a part of his family as his grandpa had, ever since his grandpa had gotten him the horse when he started team roping in high school. Now, the horse was the only family he had left.

  “Hey, Pete.”

  He glanced over as Glory Harris came into the barn, carrying a saddle about half as big as she was. He didn’t insult her by offering to help her, though. Glory had been working at her family’s stables since she’d been in single digits.

  “Not every day I have a sheriff’s department cruiser parked outside,” she said as she hefted the saddle onto a battered wooden table.

  “Only wheels I got at the moment.”

  “Your truck damaged in the storm?”

  “Pretty sure since it blew away along with my house.” He tried to make light of it to keep from really dealing with the brutal fact that he was homeless, but a damn lump formed in his throat anyway.

  “Oh, hell, I’m sorry.”

  “Could have been worse.” He rubbed his hand along the side of Frankie’s neck. “Glad you all were spared.”

  “Me, too. I don’t think I could face losing these animals.”

  Most of them weren’t hers, rather those of boarders, but Glory had never met a horse she didn’t fall madly in love with on first sight.

  “You going to take him out for a ride?” she asked, nodding at Frankie.

  Pete shook his head. “No, too much work to do. I just wanted to make sure he was okay since I was in the area.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Things settle down, you’re more than welcome to come over for a meal or a dozen.”

  “Thanks.” He allowed himself a couple more minutes of the peace he felt with Frankie before he forced himself back to the cruiser and back to dealing with Mother Nature’s path of broken lives and dreams.

  A couple hours later, Pete’s eyes burned from lack of sleep as he pulled into his driveway. Greg Bozeman was hooking his wrecker up to the patrol car to flip it back onto its wheels.

  “You look dog tired, man,” Greg said as Pete got out of the extra patrol car the department had for when one of the others was in the shop for repairs. Or when one got demolished by a tornado.

  “I feel like my eyelids are glued open and I’ve been body-slammed by the Hulk.”

  “Yeah, that’s about how you look.”

  Pete flipped Greg the bird, causing his friend to laugh. Considering all the destruction he’d seen in the past several hours, the laugh seemed out of place and welcome at the same time.

  “Honey, you look as if you could use some strong coffee.” Verona descended her front steps with a coffee cup in one hand and an insulated beverage container in the other.

  “You are my new best friend.” Pete leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

  “New? I thought I was already your best friend.”

  Pete smi
led. That also felt foreign, but he was thankful for her attempt at levity. He glanced toward the house. “I’m guessing Elissa went out to the nursery.”

  A sadness passed over Verona’s face. “I’m not sure she slept a wink last night, and she headed out as soon as it started getting light. Only reason I didn’t go, too, is that Liam is coming over to get the tree out of the living room and put in a new window.”

  “I’ll drive out there later.”

  “You need to get some sleep first.”

  “No time right now.”

  She gave him a scolding look. “Well, whenever you do decide to get some shut-eye, come back here.”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “Don’t be silly. How many times have you cleaned out my gutters or mowed my lawn? I think I can offer you the extra bedroom.”

  He nodded, too tired to argue.

  The patrol car flipped over with the sound of stressed metal and breaking glass.

  “I think this one’s done for,” Greg said with a shake of his head.

  Yeah, it more resembled a pancake now than a patrol car. After watching Greg winch the car up onto the flatbed, Pete thanked Verona for the coffee again and headed out for round two.

  By the time night rolled around again, he still hadn’t found time to drive out to the nursery. Every time he thought about it, something more pressing needed his attention. If he tried to drive anywhere now, he’d more than likely end up in a ditch.

  “Come on, man,” Simon said as he stopped in front of Pete’s desk. “You can crash on our couch.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  Pete nodded, though it felt as if that simple action took the last of his strength. He’d lost count of how many hours he’d been up.

  After Simon headed home, leaving Connor Murphy and Jack Fritz on duty, Pete kept sitting at his desk, unable to work up enough energy to move. It wasn’t far to Verona’s, but it seemed a world away at the moment.

  Sierra walked out into the hallway to the drink machine, her headset still on her head. She spoke with someone about a washed-out bridge while she slipped coins into the machine and retrieved some much-needed caffeine. She and Anne Marie had been working every bit as long as the rest of them.