Hot Cowboy Nights (Lucky Penny Ranch #2)(30)

“Lizzy, Lizzy, are y’all okay? Is Toby with you? Did he make it to the store in time to get underground?” The barbed wire went up as Allie’s voice came down through the vent and filled the room.

“Allie! We’re fine,” Lizzy yelled. “What’s on the hatch door?”

“Half of your back room,” Allie said. “Tell Toby that the tornado didn’t touch down on the Lucky Penny. Looks like your place is all that got hit here in town. Mama and her customers are fine and Audrey’s Place lost a few shingles in the wind but it’s still standing.”

“The rest of my store?” Lizzy asked.

“Got a hole in the roof but I threw a trash can under it to catch the water. We can fix it soon as the rain stops. Blake and Deke are working on getting the lumber off the door. Sit tight. We’ll have you out soon. I’m going inside out of the rain,” Allie said.

Katy’s voice was the next one that came down the vent. “Allie said you were okay but I have to hear it for myself.”

“We’re fine, Mama,” Lizzy said.

“Good, then I’ll go on inside and help Allie mop up the floor where the roof leaked. Blake is hooking a chain up to his truck to drag part of a ceiling truss off the hatch,” Katy said. “Lord, this rain is cold. I’m going inside now that I know you are okay.”

“Well, shit!” Lizzy murmured.

“Cussin’ again?” Toby sat down on the same chair and patted his lap.

“Yes, I am.” She ignored his lap and sat down on the bottom step. With the adrenaline still rushing through her veins she sure didn’t need to feel his body that close to hers.

“Shhh, what if someone still has an ear to that vent?”

Something rattled across the pipe in the ceiling, and all kinds of splintered wood came down with the rain to splash in the puddle on the floor.

“I shouldn’t be cussin’ or complainin’. At least the feed truck doesn’t come until tomorrow and the back room had very little stock in it,” she said.

Toby grinned. “You are a good, positive woman, Lizzy.”

“I hope so,” she said. But Toby didn’t want a good, positive woman to settle down with. Hell, he didn’t want to settle with any woman, and she wanted what Allie had so that left a gap between them as wide as the Grand-damn-Canyon.

“Lizzy, I’ve been thinking…” He hesitated.

She looked up into his blue eyes. “About?”

The hatch popped open.

Light, rain, and voices filled the whole cellar.

“Come on up out of there and let’s get in out of this miserable rain. It’s trickling down my back and it’s cold as ice,” Deke hollered.

“Don’t forget to blow out the lamp. We’ll put a chunk of wood over the vent pipe so it won’t leak and you can get the cleanup done later,” Blake said.

Thirty more seconds! Why couldn’t they have waited another half a minute to raise the hatch? Then Toby might have finished his sentence. Now Lizzy would never know what he’d been thinking about.

Lizzy wasn’t prepared for the sight before her eyes as they climbed out of the hatch. It looked like a bomb had gone off all around her. Feed sacks must have been sucked up and then tossed back to land in among all the debris, because wet corn and cattle feed crunched her feet as she hurried through the door into the rest of the store.

Allie threw the mop on the floor and raced across the room to hug her sister in a fierce embrace. “I’ve never been so worried about you in my life. I couldn’t get you on your cell phone and then the store phone gave a busy signal. Right after that it went dead, too. None of us have cell service, electricity, or phones right now but we’re lucky to be alive.”

Lizzy returned the hug. “I was afraid you and Blake would be blown away. There’s no cellar on the ranch. We’ve got to put one in, Allie. We can put it right outside the back door and extend the porch roof out over it.”

Blake removed his slicker and hung it on a nail right inside the door. “Next thing on the list, I promise. But we could see the tail of that thing and tell it was going to bypass us and Audrey’s Place.”

“You never know about a tornado. It can turn on a dime.” Deke hung his slicker beside Blake’s and shook the water from his light brown hair. “That feels like winter rain, not summer.”

“It’s comin’ off hail.” Katy picked up Allie’s mop and went to work on the rest of the floor. “Would you look at that?” She pointed to the hole in the ceiling at the bright sunshine pouring in.

“Looks like the rain is over,” Blake said.

“Well, shit!” Deke said. “If we would have waited thirty more minutes we could have rescued you two without having to do it under water.”

“Allie, you’re going to have to let me go. I drank a whole pot of coffee before this thing hit and I’ve got to go to the restroom.” Lizzy pushed away from her sister and practically ran the whole way through her office to the small restroom.

She was just reaching for the toilet paper when something furry touched her foot. She wasn’t sure how she got from a sitting position to standing on the toilet seat with her eyes closed, but she managed it without breaking a leg. Her jeans might still have been around her knees, but her boots were planted as firmly on that toilet as if someone had super-glued them there.