Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(29)

“Where is it, Lizzy?” Toby’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a vacuum.

She kicked a bag of feed to one side and grabbed an iron ring on the floor. One second the wind was stone-cold still, the next it sounded like a freight train in the distance and a roll of barbed wire tumbled across the floor.

“I’ve got to shut the overhead doors, Toby.”

He took the ring from her hand and opened the hatch, shaking his head the whole time. “You don’t have time. Just get down in the cellar.”

“You have to throw the bolt once it’s shut. I haven’t been down here since before Daddy died.” Her hand closed around an old wooden thread spool when she reached up. When she pulled it, a bulb hanging in the middle of the cellar lit the room long enough to let her find the matches to light the oil lamp sitting on a dusty orange crate. Once they had a dim light from that, she pulled the string again, turning the bulb off.

“Why did you do that?” Toby eased his tall frame down into a metal folding chair.

“Because it’s what Daddy told me to do if I had to come down here. I didn’t ask why,” she said.

The cellar was exactly like she remembered. Two folding chairs and an olive green military cot filled up the six-by-eight-foot space. Even through the thick concrete walls, the noise above them sounded like two semi-trucks had smashed together.

The crashing sound of metal against metal made her jump back as a length of barbed wire dangled down from the air vent. Toby grabbed her, sat down with a thud on one of the chairs, and hugged her tightly against his chest.

“Don’t touch that thing. Lightning might have electrified it,” he said above the din.

“I wasn’t going to,” she gasped. “My store is blowing away, isn’t it?”

The next crash sounded like monsters were beating on the hatch door with hammers. She flipped around and buried her face in his chest. “I’m not going to have a thing left. We’ll be lucky if they get us out from under the rubble.”

“Blake and Deke will rescue us. Don’t worry about that or the store. That’s why you have insurance,” Toby said.

One minute Toby and Lizzy were yelling as loud as they did in the bar. The next everything went so quiet that they could have heard another spider inching its way up the concrete walls. Lizzy shivered and his arms tightened.

“It’s over, isn’t it? Just like that, it’s over,” she whispered.

“I think so. I’ll unbolt the hatch and see if I can push it open.”

She didn’t want to see the damage and she damn sure did not want to leave the security of his lap. “Hold me one more minute, Toby. I don’t want to face what’s out there when we go out.”

He kissed her on the top of her head and then the rain started—hard, driving rain that dripped off the end of the barbed wire hanging through the vent, making a puddle on the floor. Hail followed, beating against the hatch door. The wind roared angrily through Dry Creek as if showing the tornado who was the real boss.

“Sounds like you might have lost the roof to your feed shed,” he said.

“I’ll be grateful if that’s all,” she murmured.

Lizzy hated cellars or any small, enclosed spaces for that matter. Thinking about crawling under a house like Allie did gave her an acute case of hives. But she felt safe and secure in the tiny underground space with Toby’s arms around her. Someday in the distant future she wanted a man like Toby who would…

Whoa, girl! The voice in her head made a screeching sound like tires leaving twenty feet of rubber on a dry pavement. You are the one who broke this thing off with him because it was only sex. Now you are letting thoughts of a future with him into your head? There is no future with Toby.

She frowned and argued with the voice. I said like Toby, not Toby. One with strong arms and who will hold me when I’m afraid and not belittle me.

Why had she ever had that mindless fling with him anyway? It had ruined any chance that they might have of anything beyond friendship or this new fake relationship they’d entered into. She liked him. There, she’d admitted it. She liked Toby Dawson as a man, as a friend, and as a pseudo-boyfriend. And there was a tiny little bit of her heart that really would like for him to be more. But it would never happen, because she’d destroyed any hope with a three-week sex fling.

She stood up and started up the narrow stairs. “I’ll help you. Maybe whatever we heard fall on the hatch blew off and with two of us pushing against the wind, we can open it.”

“You made of salt or sugar, either one?” He grinned.

“Not this old feed store woman.” She smiled back at him.

Together they pushed against the flat door but it did not budge a quarter of an inch. Lizzy took a step back and slapped the concrete. “Aggravating son of a bitch.”

Toby took a deep breath and gave it all he had but nothing, nada, zilch.

“If cussin’ won’t work, do you think sweet-talkin’ might?” she asked, and then groaned. “What if we have to stay down here for hours? No food, no potty.”

He pointed to the vent. “We’ve got water and air and trust me, as soon as Allie and Blake can get here, they will get us out.”

“Oh, no!” The cellar walls started closing in on Lizzy. She sat down and put her head between her knees. “Oh, Toby, I’ve been selfish. I wasn’t thinkin’ of anyone but me. What if Allie and Blake are…” She could barely think the words much less say them out loud.