“I can help you reubild, Maya,” Greg said as they stood amid the destruction of her home.

“You’d do that? For me?” she asked him.

Greg wanted to tell her how impresssed he’d been with her fortitude and unswerving courage in the face of disaster, but he decided it was best to keep his offer simple. “Of course. We’re all going to need to work together to get High Plains back on its feet. I intend to volunteer to help with whatever is necessary.”

“I believe you really mean that,” she said.

Greg nodded. “I’ve never meant anything more.”

After the Storm:

A Kansas community unites to rebuild

Healing the Boss’s Heart—Valerie Hansen

July 2009

Marrying Minister Right—Annie Jones

August 2009

Rekindled Hearts—Brenda Minton

September 2009

The Matchmaking Pact—Carolyne Aarsen

October 2009

A Family for Thanksgiving—Patricia Davids

November 2009

Jingle Bell Babies—Kathryn Springer

December 2009

VALERIE HANSEN

was thirty when she awoke to the presence of the Lord in her life and turned to Jesus. In the years that followed she worked with young children, both in church and secular environments. She also raised a family of her own and played foster mother to a wide assortment of furred and feathered critters.

Married to her high school sweetheart since age seventeen, she now lives in an old farmhouse she and her husband renovated with their own hands. She loves to hike the wooded hills behind the house and reflect on the marvelous turn her life has taken. Not only is she privileged to reside among the loving, accepting folks in the breathtakingly beautiful Ozark mountains of Arkansas, she also gets to share her personal faith by telling the stories of her heart for all of Steeple Hill’s Love Inspired lines.

Life doesn’t get much better than that!

Healing the Boss’s Heart
Valerie Hansen

MILLS & BOON

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Special thanks and acknowledgment to Valerie Hansen for her contribution to the After the Storm miniseries.

The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.

He cares for those who trust in Him.

—Nahum 1:7

Special thanks to the other authors who participated with me in this series, After the Storm: Annie Jones, Brenda Minton, Carolyne Aarsen, Patricia Davids and Kathryn Springer.

Some of us actually live in Tornado Alley, so all those brave folks who have pitched in to restore our neighborhoods after similar disasters are especially dear to our hearts.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

“The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.”

—Nahum 1:7

July 10, 3:54 p.m.

“Unbelievable,” Gregory Garrison muttered under his breath, his mood mirroring the prairie storm that was developing outside his Main Street office.

If there had been an award for Grumpiest Boss of the Month, Maya Logan would have known exactly who to nominate. Accepting the position as Mr. Garrison’s executive assistant had been a step up in her secretarial career but she was beginning to question her decision to start working for his investment firm, no matter how wonderful the wages. The man was obsessive. And when things didn’t go exactly as he’d envisioned, he could be a real bear. Like now.

Turning away to hide her amusement, she busied herself at her desk while her employer paced and continued to mumble to himself.

Tall and broad-shouldered, with hazel eyes and chestnut-brown hair, Gregory Garrison was not only good-looking, as many single women in High Plains had noticed since his recent return, he had the kind of forceful personality that competitors and allies alike admired. It was that same unbending, always-right attitude that was so off-putting to Maya. She’d had her fill of that kind of unreasonable man when…

“Now look what he’s doing,” Gregory said, interrupting her thoughts. He gestured out the plate-glass window at a young boy riding a bicycle in tight, skidding circles.

She looked up. “Oh, that. I thought you were upset over the glitches in the Atkinson merger.”

“I was. I am,” he said. “But that ill-mannered little troublemaker is driving me crazy. Look, he’s trying to splash mud all over my windows.”

Her brown eyes twinkled with repressed mirth. “Sure looks like it. Sorry about that.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“Me? Do?”

“Yes. There wouldn’t be any mud on the sidewalk in the first place if you hadn’t insisted on bringing in those planters along the walkway.”

“I didn’t realize they’d overflow if we got too much rain,” Maya said. “Relax. Tommy’s not hurting anything. He’s just a kid.”

Gregory was adamant. “He has no business riding that bike all over town, let alone being out in this kind of weather by himself. Why don’t his parents look after him?”

She joined her boss in the center of the compact office before answering, “Tommy’s parents are dead. He’s in foster care with Beth and Brandon Otis.”

“Aren’t they responsible for him?”

“Yes, but as far as I know, that’s already his third placement and he can’t be more than six years old. The poor kid must feel pretty lost. My brothers and I really foundered after our parents were killed, and we weren’t children. I was eighteen at the time and my brothers were even older.”

“That’s still no excuse for allowing him to run loose. If he’s this unruly now, what will he be like in his teens?”

Mentally contrasting her wandering brother, Clay, with their other, more stable sibling, Jesse, she said, “Tommy’ll be fine. He just needs to sow a few wild oats, or in this case, run through a few puddles. It’s hot and muggy out there, so he won’t get chilled. And the storm seems to be slacking up. It’s no big deal.”

“It will be when he throws mud on my building or loses his balance and crashes into the window or a parked car,” Gregory insisted.

Just as he finished speaking, thunder boomed in the distance and made Maya jump. “Or gets hit by lightning. Okay. I’ll go shoo him away.” She raked her slim fingers through her feathery, light brown hair and let it fall back into place naturally.

“Will I have to listen to you moaning about your ruined hairdo if you get rained on?”

“You might.” She wanted to add that her short cut was easy enough to dry and style in minutes, but she wanted to make a point. She was a professional business assistant, not Gregory Garrison’s servant or gofer.

“Never mind,” he said flatly. “I’ll send the little pest packing myself.” He slipped off his expensively tailored suit jacket and handed it to her without another word.

Smiling in spite of diligent efforts to keep a straight face, Maya watched Greg stride to the door, jerk it open and step out onto the sidewalk.

The rain was now coming down so hard it nearly obscured her view of the park across the street, but Maya could still see her boss through the plate-glass window. Although he was standing fairly close to the building, his blue silk shirt was plastered to him in seconds and looked every bit as wet as the boy’s striped T-shirt.

“Serves you right,” Maya muttered. “Imagine that. A grown man picking on a poor little kid.”

Her grin widened. If Tommy Jacobs was half as wily and agile as her brother Clay had been at that age, the fastidious Mr. Garrison was in for a big, big surprise. She could hardly wait to see him get his comeuppance.

Greg paused under the carved limestone overhang of his historic building’s facade. The wind-driven water found him with a vengeance just the same, making him wish he’d had the foresight to install a wide awning the way many of the other businesses on Main Street had. He should have known he’d need it. He’d grown up in High Plains and had experienced hundreds of similar Kansas storms.

Then again, he mused, disgusted, anybody with a lick of sense would have stayed inside until the rain had stopped for good—mud or no mud.

He shouted and waved to the boy. “Hey! You. Tommy. Come here.”

The child slid his bike to a stop on the brick-paved roadway, almost overcorrecting and taking a tumble when his front tire bumped the curb.

It amazed him to see that much athletic prowess in one so young. Maybe the boy was older than Maya thought and merely small for his age.

Moderating his tone, Greg tried again. He didn’t know a lot about boys, other than having been one himself. “I just want to talk to you for a second, Tommy. Come here. Please?”

The freckle-faced boy shook his head, sending droplets flying from his hair and the end of his little nose. “No way, Mister.”

“Don’t make me come over there and get you,” Greg warned. “All I want to do is talk. Honest.”

“My dog’ll bite you if you touch me,” Tommy replied. “Charlie takes care of me.”

For the first time, Greg noticed a medium-sized, black-and-white mongrel standing beside the boy. That poor dog looked even more soaked than Tommy. If the dog weren’t panting and looking extremely pleased with its current adventure, he’d have assumed it was suffering.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Greg assured Tommy. “I just wanted to ask you why you were trying to mess up my building?”

“I dunno. ’Cause it’s fun?”

“Not for me, it isn’t.”

“Oh.”

“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

“Guess so.” He straightened the handlebars, put one foot on a pedal and leaned to the side, obviously getting ready to ride off.

“Wait,” Greg said, eyeing the blackening sky and recalling similar unsettled weather conditions from his own childhood. “How far is it to your house?”

“I don’t have a house. I’m an orphan.” The boy’s words were clipped, angry-sounding.

“I mean the place where you live right now.”

“None of your business.” Tommy winced as the first bits of hail began to pelt him. “Ouch!”

“Get in here under cover,” Greg shouted, realizing the danger. “That stuff can get big enough to knock out a full grown cow.”

Ignoring him, Tommy dropped his bike and began swatting uselessly at the pellets of ice that were now falling in far greater numbers. “Ow, ow, ow!”

At the end of his patience, Greg took four long strides and made a grab for Tommy while he was distracted. The wind had picked up and was driving the already nickel-size chunks of hail at them with stinging force. There was no more time to argue.

A siren began to wail. Bending against the wind and struggling to stay on his feet, Greg hunched over the boy to shield him and glanced down Main Street where a distant police car had begun flashing its red-and-blue lights.

Townspeople were scattering right and left. Umbrellas were turning inside out with a quick snap, making them worse than useless. Passersby had pulled jackets and whatever else they had at hand over their heads and were scrambling for cover. In the park across the street, a mother grabbed her toddler and made a wild dash for safety, abandoning his plastic-canopied stroller and the rest of her belongings to the storm.

Trash cans along the street and in the park toppled with a bang and dumped their contents. Some rolled in tight arcs, kept from blowing away by the slim chains that held them to their stanchions, while others tore loose and tumbled toward the High Plains River to the north.

This newer, more powerful wind carried strange odors, as if a freshly plowed field suddenly had become airborne. There was grass and cedar and ozone in the mix, too. That meant the weather was about to become even more perilous.

Freezing for only an instant, Greg strained to listen. Every sense was alert. His pulse was pounding in his ears so loudly he wasn’t sure what he was actually hearing. A dull humming echoed in the distance, then increased in volume.

Frightening memories came flooding back, fears that he had kept buried since childhood.

How could this be happening? The morning had been warm. Balmy. There had been no tornado watches or warnings in effect that he knew of, nor had there been a peep out of the town’s antiquated alarm system.

That didn’t matter now. The hum had grown to a roar and seemed to be coming from the southwest. Unless he was imagining things, High Plains was about to be hit by a twister!

Greg pivoted and peered into the sheeting rain and ice crystals, trying to make out anything definitive. It was hopeless. All he could see was blackness in the distance and a gray pall overhead.

Wind-driven hail had punched holes in the bright red-and-white awning over the front of Elmira’s Pie Shop next door. The canvas was whipping so violently it was beginning to shred and tear away from its frame. Other bits of material were blowing past, too, some large enough to do serious damage to anything or anyone in the way.

“Come on, kid. I’m done arguing,” he shouted, staying bent over and slinging the small child into his arms.

The boy struggled. His loose bicycle went skidding across the pavement and on down the brick street as if it were weightless.

Shrieking, “Charlie!” Tommy reached toward the place where his dog had been. Instead of staying with him, the mutt had tucked its tail and was headed for the park across the street.

He was frantic. “Charlie!”

Greg ducked into the safety of the office door archway just as the police car finally reached them and cruised past, its occupant broadcasting a “take cover” order over the sound of the wailing, pulsing siren.

Tommy was kicking and pounding on him with his tight little fists. “No! I have to get Charlie!”

Struggling to stay balanced while holding the child, Greg paused in the doorway. Using its protruding stone frame as a temporary shelter, he took one last look at the menacing sky.

There was no doubt about it. He couldn’t spot a funnel cloud yet but he was positive trouble was coming—with a vengeance. Straight-line winds were already causing plenty of havoc and a tornado would probably finish the job.

Lush cottonwood trees across the street bent and thrashed about as if they were about to be ripped to shreds. Many small branches and leaves had already torn loose and were flying away like tattered green confetti.

A few foolish people had taken to their cars, apparently hoping to outrun the storm, and were now reduced to peering through shattered and pocked windshields as they crept along the street in newly dented vehicles. At least the cars’ windshields were made of safety glass and didn’t completely fall apart when they were hit. If those cars didn’t end up airborne, their occupants would probably be okay. If a twister caught and lifted them, however, they would be in serious, possibly deadly, trouble.

During the years he’d spent up north, Greg had forgotten how terrifying the forces of nature could be in the plains. Unfortunately, it was all coming back to him. Vividly.

Maya had been watching with growing concern and already had her car keys in hand when she jerked open the door to admit her boss and Tommy. “Get inside. Quick!”

He thrust the squirming child at her. “Here. Take him. I’m going back after his dog.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She clutched his arm and pointed. “You’ll never catch it. Look.”

Debris was swirling through the air in ever-increasing amounts and the hail had begun to pile in lumpy drifts along the curb. It had flattened the flowers she’d so lovingly placed in the planters and buried their stubbly remnants under inches of white, icy crystals.

In the distance, Tommy’s dog was disappearing into the maelstrom. Unless the frightened animal responded to commands to return, there was no chance of anyone catching up to it.

Gregory took a deep breath and hollered, “Charlie,” but Maya could tell he was wasting his breath. The soggy mongrel didn’t even slow.

“Take the boy and head for the basement,” Gregory yelled at her. Ducking inside, he had to put his shoulder to the heavy door and use his full weight to close and latch it.

She shoved Tommy back at him. “No. I have to go get Layla.”

“In this weather? Don’t be an idiot.”

“She’s my daughter. She’s only three. She’ll be scared to death if I’m not there.”

“She’s in the preschool at the church, right? They’ll take care of the kids.”

“No. I’m going after her.”

“Use your head. You can’t help Layla if you get yourself killed.” He grasped her wrist, holding tight.

Maya struggled, twisting her arm till it hurt. “Let me go. I’m going to my baby. She’s all I’ve got.”

“That’s crazy! If the hail doesn’t knock you out cold the tornado’s likely to bury you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I don’t! Let go of me.” To her amazement, he held fast. This was the kind of crude treatment she’d refused to accept in the past and had thought she’d escaped for good. No one, especially a man, was going to treat her this way and get away with it. No one.

“Stop. Think,” he shouted, staring at her as if she were deranged.

She continued to struggle, to refuse to give in to his will, his greater strength. “No. You think. I’m going to my little girl. That’s all there is to it.”

“How? Driving?” He indicated the street, which now looked distorted from the vibrations of the front window. “It’s too late. Look at those cars. Your head isn’t half as hard as that metal is and it’s already full of dents.”

“But…”

She knew in her mind that he was right, yet her heart kept insisting she must do something. Anything. Please, God, help me. Tell me what to do!

“We’re going to take shelter,” Gregory ordered, giving her arm a tug. “Now.”

She couldn’t think and stumbled along as he pulled and half dragged her toward the basement access.

Staring into the storm moments ago she had felt as if the fury of the weather was sucking her into a bottomless black hole. Her emotions were still trapped in those murky, imaginary depths, still sinking, spinning out of control. She pictured Layla, with her silky, long dark hair and beautiful brown eyes.

“If anything happens to my daughter I’ll never forgive you!” she screamed at him.

“I’ll take my chances.”

Maya knew without a doubt that if her precious little girl was hurt she’d never forgive herself for not trying to reach her. To protect her. And she’d never forgive Gregory Garrison for stopping her. Never.

She had to blink to adjust to the dim light of the basement as he shoved her in front of him and forced her down the wooden stairs.

She gasped, coughed. The place smelled musty and sour, totally in character with the advanced age of the building. How long could that strip of brick-and-stone stores and offices stand against a storm like this? If these walls ever started to topple, nothing would stop their total collapse. Then, it wouldn’t matter whether they were outside or down here. They’d be just as dead.

That realization sapped her strength, leaving her almost without sensation. When her boss let go of her wrist and slipped his arm around her shoulders to guide her into a corner, she was too emotionally numb to continue to fight him. All she could do was pray and continue to repeat “Layla, Layla” over and over again.

“We’ll wait it out here,” he said. “This has to be the strongest part of the building.”

Maya didn’t believe a word he said.

Tommy’s quiet sobbing, coupled with her soul-deep concern for her little girl, brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back, hoping she could control her emotions enough to fool the boy into believing they were all going to come through the tornado unhurt.

As for herself, she wasn’t sure. Not even the tiniest bit. All she could think about was her daughter. Dear Lord, are You watching out for Layla? Please, please, please! Take care of my precious little girl.

Chapter Two

Upstairs, the noise of the storm was increasing drastically. Things crashed. Banged. Glass shattered. Dust was shaken from the rafters. Bits of old plaster and goodness knows what else rained down on them. The single overhead bulb swung wildly, flickered, then went out, leaving the basement in total darkness.

Instinctively, Greg pulled Maya closer. She put her arms around both him and Tommy and bowed her head against his shoulder.

He felt her tremble. “Hang on. We’ll be okay.”

“But what’ll happen to my baby? You shouldn’t have stopped me. I shouldn’t have let you.”

He accepted the rancor in her tone because he knew his decision to take shelter had been the right one. “You’ll feel differently once we look upstairs. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the worst tornado outbreak High Plains has seen since the big one in 1860.”

He felt her shudder. “That would be devastating.”

“Exactly.”

Tommy was still sniffling. Greg didn’t have much experience with kids but he supposed the little boy was as concerned about his missing dog as Maya was about her family and friends. He knew he would have been at that age.

He was about to try to encourage Maya by mentioning the short-lived character of such storms when the building suddenly began to shake. Heavy wooden beams creaked and groaned overhead. Furniture, or something just as weighty, was being thrown and skidded across the office and hit the walls directly above their heads!

Maya screamed and pressed her cheek to his chest, holding tight.

The noise increased until it sounded as if a jet plane was taking off and flying right over their heads. The pressure in his eardrums made him feel as if he were rapidly descending a mountain road.

“Tornado!” Greg shouted.

Her shrill “I know!” was muted against his shoulder.

Time slowed to a crawl. Sounds of destruction seemed to echo endlessly.

Maya’s heartfelt pleas for deliverance were barely audible, but Greg could tell she was praying. He was tempted to do the same until his memories stopped him. He had decided long ago that he was in charge of his own destiny and nothing had happened since to change his mind. Let the woman pray if she thought it helped. He knew better.

Maya’s thoughts focused first and foremost on her daughter, then on the rest of her family. Jesse was running the Logan ranch north and west of town. He and Clay were all the blood relations she had besides Layla—and Jesse’s newborn triplets, of course.

If anything good was to come out of this terrible storm, perhaps it would provide enough incentive to draw Clay home again, to cause him to make his peace with Jesse. It tore her up to see her only siblings estranged from each other, especially now that Jesse and his wife, Marie, had three premature babies to worry about, too.

She tried to pray aloud, failed to find words, then resorted to quoting scripture. “The cares of the day are sufficient,” she whispered, hoping that would help relieve her unbelievable distress.

She felt Greg’s muscles tense. He stood very still, barely breathing. “What?”

“It’s from the Bible. In Matthew, I think. My paraphrasing.” She cringed against him again and stifled a whimper as the building gave another shimmy. The roaring was starting to lessen enough that they could hear each other speak without having to actually shout.

“I wouldn’t know if it was verbatim,” he said. “I never went to church much after my mother died.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It didn’t do her much good.”

Touched, Maya gave him a barely perceptible hug. “We won’t know that until we get to Heaven.”

Although he didn’t answer, she was glad she’d spoken her mind. Gregory Garrison might not claim to be a believer at present, but since he’d gone to church in the past, there was a chance he’d eventually come around again. She certainly hoped so because she couldn’t imagine the suffering he might have to go through if he continued to deny his faith. Especially if the destruction from this storm turned out to be as bad as she thought it was going to be.

Everyone had doubts at times, even the most devout Christians. It was those who continued to believe, in spite of outward circumstances, who coped best.

And as far as she was concerned, any man who would risk his own life to save a child he didn’t even like still deserved to share in the Lord’s daily blessings.

Greg held tight to the two he was guarding and listened to the battering on the floor and walls above. He desperately wanted to venture out, yet he wasn’t willing to endanger Maya or the boy merely to satisfy his curiosity.

Tommy had stopped sobbing and was now hugging Greg’s neck as if he never intended to let go, while Maya seemed to be holding her breath.

Finally, as the thudding and banging upstairs lessened perceptibly, his impatience won out. “I’m going to go take a peek. You two wait here. I’ll tell you if it’s safe to follow me upstairs.”

When he pried the child’s arms loose and passed him to Maya, Tommy began to sob again.

“We’ll go up in a few minutes,” Maya said soothingly, patting the little boy’s back through his damp T-shirt. “I promise. We have to let Mr. Garrison look around first to see if it’s safe.”

“I w-want Charlie,” Tommy wailed. “I want my dog.”

“I know you do, honey. Just be a little patient. I’ll help you look for Charlie soon.” She looked in her boss’s direction. “We both will, won’t we?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He had started to cautiously edge his way toward the stairway. “Sounds like the wind is still pretty strong. No telling how much is blowing around up there but I suspect the worst is over.”

“I hope so.”

He put one hand on the railing of the stairway and paused. “So far, so good. You’ll have a little light once I open the door. Are you going to be all right down here by yourself?”

“I won’t be alone,” she replied, sounding more assured than before. “I haven’t had to face anything on my own since I came to Jesus.”

Greg didn’t comment. He’d grown up in a household where his mother had professed Christianity and his father had made light of it every chance he got. There weren’t many things he agreed with his dad about, but that was one of them. Any God who would take his mother from them in the prime of her life, in spite of all the prayers for her healing, was no God for him.

Easing open the door at the top of the stairs, he had to push its leading edge through a pile of refuse on the floor. The office was a shambles, thanks to the wind that was still whistling through the gap left by the shattered plate-glass window. The front door was hanging partly off its hinges, too. Considering the fact that his building was still standing, he figured he was one of the lucky ones. Especially if the upstairs suite where he currently lived still had a roof over it.

Stepping through and around the rubble, he proceeded far enough to peer through the space where the window glass had been. All his breath left him in a whoosh. He’d never seen anything like it. Parked cars had been upended like matchbox toys. Lumber, pink insulation, broken furniture and who knows what lay strewn from one end of Main Street to the other. Some of it was even stuck in trees. What was left of them.

Behind him, he heard Maya call, “Is it okay for us to come up?”

“Not yet.” There was no way he could deny her the eventual right to look, nor was there any way he could soften the blow of seeing their beloved town in such sad shape. He simply wanted to put it off as long as possible and keep her from dashing into the still unsafe street.

“Give me a few seconds to run upstairs and check my apartment first. We need to be sure there’s no real structural damage before you chance it. I don’t want the roof caving in on us.”

“Hurry.” He could hear the barely controlled panic in her voice.

“I will. Stay put till I call you. Promise?”

“I promise.”

Greg dashed up the interior stairway. To his relief the roof seemed intact and he’d had only one small window cracked in his apartment, so the place was relatively dry and undamaged.

Hoping that Maya had obeyed, he quickly returned and found her peeking through the partially ajar cellar door.

“Well?” she asked impatiently.

“It’s safe enough. At least in here. But watch your step and don’t put the boy down unless you have to. There’s broken glass everywhere.”

He braced himself, not sure how Maya would react when she saw everything that had happened. If she got hysterical, the way she had earlier, he’d have to be ready to intervene.

For the first time in the few weeks she’d worked for him, Greg looked—really looked—at his executive assistant. Her dark eyes were wide and expressive, set in a lovely oval face. Her short hair was tousled more than usual. And her cheeks were flushed. She not only impressed him with her natural beauty, she suddenly looked much younger than the twenty-five years he knew her to be. She had an innocence, an appealing naïveté, that made her seem so vulnerable that he wanted to rush to her and once again hold her close for her protection.

Maya’s jaw gaped. Then she began to pick her way carefully across the wet, littered office floor to join him near the window.

“The church?” she said breathlessly. “Can you see if the community church is still standing?”

“Yes. It looks fine,” Greg replied. “But the old town hall that was next to it is gone.”

“Gone? It can’t be gone.”

“I’m sorry.” He stepped aside and took Tommy from her so she could lean far enough to see the area where the old church stood as he said, “The preschool annex looks untouched, too.”

“Praise God! I have to get Layla.”

“You can’t go out there yet.” He made ready to grab and restrain her again if it became necessary. “Look. There are power lines down and the wind is still blowing stuff all over. If you don’t get electrocuted, you’re liable to get your head knocked off.”

“It’s my head. Get out of my way. I’m going.”

“No!” He reached for her arm but she dodged his grip so he resorted to more reasoning. “You’re the only parent your daughter has. Are you really willing to risk making her an orphan?”

“Of course not.”

“Then wait. Think of her.”

“I am thinking of her. She needs me. You can’t force me to stay here.”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything. Be sensible. We can see that the church is okay and that’s where she was. Right?” Greg had placed himself between her and the door in the hopes his presence would be enough added deterrent.

Maya ignored his logical argument and tried to edge around him.

He sidestepped to continue to block her exit.

“Move,” she demanded.

“Okay. Just take a deep breath and listen to me for a second. We’re safe here and Layla is safe there. She needs her mother alive and well, not lying in the street unconscious.”

“I’m calling the preschool.”

“Now, you’re being smart.”

He watched her struggle to pull herself together emotionally and tiptoe cautiously to where her desk had landed, pushed up against the far wall. She found the telephone beside it on the floor and lifted the receiver. It didn’t surprise him when she reported, “No dial tone.”

“Try my cell if you can find it,” Greg said. “It was in my top, center drawer.”

Maya circled his heavier mahogany desk, yanked open the drawer with difficulty, found the cell phone and did as he’d suggested.

Dejected, she grimaced, sighed and shook her head. “No service on that, either.”

“I suppose the relay towers are down.”

“That settles it. I’m going over to the church and nobody’s going to stop me.”

“Then we’ll all go,” he countered.

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t take Tommy out in this awful wind. He’ll get hurt.”

“Point taken. Now, you were saying…?”

“All right, all right.” Maya pressed her lips into a thin line. “You win. For now. But the minute the storm dies down enough that we can safely chance it, I’m going after my little girl. With or without your support.”

Even if Greg had been able to come up with a more valid argument, he wouldn’t have used it. Maya was like a mother tiger protecting her cub, and he was not about to get between her and her daughter.

Still, he knew without a doubt that his instincts were on target. She must be prevented from risking her well-being. He didn’t know why he felt so protective of her all of a sudden but he did. And he was stubborn enough to insist on getting his way. This time.

In the next war of wills they faced, maybe he’d let her win, or at least think she had. In this case, however, he was not about to back down. Lives hung in the balance.

As Maya stood beside her boss and stared at the havoc the storm had wrought, she was speechless. Breathless.

The town gazebo had become a scattered mass of wood that looked like a carelessly tossed handful of splintered matchsticks.

The usually pristine, well-manicured green grass of the park that paralleled Main Street and bordered the High Plains River on the opposite side was strewn with all kinds of materials, including puffy, pink shreds of fiberglass insulation that had apparently been torn from houses nearby. To release that kind of interior construction, Maya knew that roofs and sidewalls of homes had to have been ripped apart.

And the formerly beautiful trees. She was astounded. “What a shame. Look at the poor cottonwoods.”

“All the more proof that you wouldn’t have made it to the church in one piece,” he reminded her.

She hated to agree but he was right. Many of the trees that had lined the riverbank had been toppled, with nearly their entire root balls sticking out of the ground. Those that were still standing had limbs broken away or their whole tops twisted off. The remaining leafless branches were draped with black tar paper and other flexible materials that flapped frantically like ugly, misshapen flags.

Sheets of corrugated tin had been ripped from roofs and bent tightly around the windward side of the more substantial portions of some of the trees, as if squeezed in place by a giant, malevolent hand. If no one in or around High Plains had been killed in this storm it would be a wonder.

Raising her gaze to the horizon across the river, she gasped. Her hand flew to her throat. The danger wasn’t over. Her boss had been right about that, too. A wall cloud lay just above the northern hills. And it looked as if it was located directly over her brother Jesse’s Circle L Ranch!

As she watched, the solid line at the bottom of the black horizontal wall fractured. Dark masses began to drop lower into the lighter sky in several places. At first they just looked like more clouds.

Then, one of them became a finger of spinning chaos and snaked downward, moving as if it were a double-jointed talon with a razor-sharp claw at its base, ready to tear at the land below. To rip everything it touched to shreds. To kill anything—anyone—in its path.

Dear Jesus. Maya prayed, pointing, trembling. “Another tornado!”

“I see it.” He slipped his free arm around her shoulders and gave her a supportive squeeze. “Don’t worry. That one’s a long way from here. Judging by the direction everything is moving, it won’t come anywhere near us.”

“I know,” Maya replied, having to fight the lump in her throat in order to speak. “But my oldest brother and his family live out there.”

“Where?”

She shivered, glad he had hold of her as she took a shaky breath and made herself say, “Right at the base of that funnel cloud.”

Greg wished he could control nature, make the storm go away for good. Fortunately, the overall turbulence didn’t seem as if it was going to last much longer.

As they stood and watched, the snaking cord of the latest funnel cloud thinned, broke into sections, then retreated back into the ominous ebony cloud cover until there was no more sign of it.

The worst of the local wind and rain had tapered off, too, leaving stifling humidity. Greg wasn’t sure whether he was still soggy from his trip outside to rescue Tommy or if he was beginning to perspire, now that there was no electricity to run the air-conditioning. Probably both.

He looked Maya up and down, ending his perusal at her feet. “You’ll need some sensible shoes if we’re going to hike to the church from here. Are those all you have?”

“They’ll be fine. I’m used to wearing heels.”

“I know you are. The problem is the mess in the street, not your shoes.”

“I used to keep an old pair of sneakers in the trunk of my car. Unfortunately, I took them out last week.”

“I doubt it matters. Have you checked our parking lot?” He had not done so, either, yet judging by the damage to Main Street, the area at the rear of nearby stores and offices was probably just as big a disaster. If her car happened to be drivable, which was doubtful, there would still be no safe routes in or around High Plains, at least not for a while.

“You know I haven’t.” She made a face at him. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask? Because if you’re done criticizing me, I want to get started.”

“I wasn’t criticizing you, I was being rational. We obviously can’t drive through all this debris, so we’ll have to walk. And the easiest way to get hurt is to not be sure-footed enough. You may have to climb or jump.” He studied her tailored outfit, making note of her slim skirt. “Do you think you can do that?”

“I can do anything that will get me to my daughter,” Maya said emphatically. “I’m going now, whether you come or not.”

Tommy wiggled in Greg’s arms so he lowered him to the floor, keeping hold of his thin wrist so he wouldn’t run away.

“Let go,” the child whined. “I have to go find Charlie. He might be hurt.”

Lots of people might be, Greg thought. He said, “We’ll all look for your dog while we walk over to the church to get Ms. Logan’s little girl. Maybe Charlie went there to guard all the other kids.” He could tell by Maya’s grim expression that she wasn’t buying his theory but as long as Tommy did, that was good enough for Greg.

“O-okay. But if we see Charlie he gets to come, too.”

“Absolutely,” Maya told him, taking his hand and bending to look him in the eyes. “You have to be really good for Mr. Garrison and me, okay? It’s very dangerous out there and if you got hurt, you couldn’t keep looking for Charlie. Do you understand?”

The child nodded soberly, amazing Greg with his sudden acceptance of adult authority. Apparently, if there was a valid reason to obey, Tommy was capable of controlling himself enough to do so. He just wished Maya had interceded in that sane and practical manner before the wild kid had splashed mud all over the sidewalk.

Realizing how trivial his thoughts were in light of the disaster that had just descended upon High Plains, Greg began to chuckle quietly.

Maya arched her eyebrows and gave him a withering look. “What in the world is so funny?”

“I am,” he said, shaking his head and following with more self-deprecating laughter. “I was just thinking about not wanting mud splashed on my office. Right now, I’d willingly settle for a little mud on the outside if that was all that was wrong.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “But if you keep me standing here wasting time for one more minute I’m going to scream. Are you ready to go?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

He left Tommy in her care as he shouldered the damaged front door to force it partway open. Then he motioned and held out his hand.

When she took it to let him assist her and the boy through the narrow opening, he noticed that her slim fingers were clammy and trembling. Considering how scared she must be, especially in regard to her daughter, she was handling her feelings pretty well.

Greg hadn’t been a praying man for a long, long time, but under the circumstances he was tempted to try it, just this once. All he wanted to ask was that Maya’s bravery be honored by a safe reunion with her child. If her God really existed, really cared, she deserved that much at the very least.

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