Wild West Fortune. Allison Leigh

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       Chapter Two

      Jayden felt Ariana stiffen next to him and wished he’d said just about anything else.

      That was the problem with his propensity for voicing blunt truths.

      He pushed to his feet. He was soaked to the skin but he ignored the annoyance. “If I remember, there ought to be some stuff to eat and drink down here. Interested?”

      She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “If it’s a hundred years old like that cellar door, I don’t think so.”

      He chuckled as he went over to the shelves. They were crammed with everything from tools to packing boxes that had been there since before his mom had ever set foot in Paseo. Which dated them more than thirty-six years, since he and his brothers hadn’t yet been born. In the years he’d been gone in the army, the shelves had only gotten more jumbled.

      “The door’s old,” he allowed. “But not a hundred years old. It’s just the Paseo sun that makes it look that way.” He pushed aside a stack of newspapers. Who kept old newspapers these days? To him it was sort of like saving string.

      Outside, the thunder had settled into a continuous rumble. He hadn’t lied to the lovely, young Ariana Lamonte. Aside from that one sight of the funnel cloud, he hadn’t seen it again when he’d been fighting with the damn cellar door. But he still wasn’t inclined to leave the safety of the cellar just yet, either. Not when the sky had that ominous blackish-green hue. Just because he hadn’t seen a funnel didn’t mean there wasn’t one. And he had no desire to tangle with a tornado.

      As far as storm cellars went, this one was pretty old. Back in the day, it’d been used more as a root cellar than anything. Nowadays, it was the place where old crap—like thirty-plus-year-old newspapers—went to die.

      He didn’t find the box of crackers he’d been hunting for, but he did find an old radio. He switched it on.

      “Is that a radio?”

      He didn’t want to dash the hopefulness in Ariana’s voice, but truth was truth. “There are only a few radio stations with a strong enough signal to reach Paseo. Television’s even worse. Hated it when I was young.”

      “That’s what cable and satellite dishes are for.”

      He chuckled. “No cable out here. And satellite was way too expensive. At least it used to be.” They had satellite television now, primarily so his mom could keep up with Grayson’s rodeoing when she wasn’t traveling with him. But when the weather was bad, the first thing it did was lose its signal. He held up the radio that emitted only static no matter how many times he turned the dial. He turned it off again and stuck it back on the shelf.

      “And no cell phone signal, either,” she said. “Which I discovered for myself already.”

      “Nope. No cell signal.” He shrugged and moved a cardboard box full of toys he vaguely remembered from his childhood. If he was really lucky, he’d find some old towels.

      “Any internet?”

      “The library in town has it. They’re only open on Wednesdays, last time I checked.” Admittedly, that had been a good year ago, when he’d been ironing out leftover details from leaving the service.

      “This is Texas,” she muttered. “Not a third-world country.”

      He smiled faintly. “We are kind of off the grid,” he allowed. “But I’ve traveled the world. Seen the best and more often the worst of people along the way. So I’ve come to appreciate Paseo’s peacefulness.”

      The cellar door shuddered again.

      “Usual peacefulness,” he amended, resuming his search for the crackers. From the corner of his eye, he watched Sugar cuddle up close to Ariana.

      The dog was ordinarily wary as hell around strangers. But he couldn’t exactly blame Sugar.

      The reporter—journalist—had СКАЧАТЬ