Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

still poised on the keyboard. “My name’s Victoria.”
    He was puzzled by her response until he realized what she was talking about. “Oh, now, you see there? That’s a perfect example. I didn’t mean to call you Vicky, it just popped out of my mouth. I had a teacher once who said I must be missing a part of my brain, the part that edits what I say and do.”
    “You mean like good judgment?”
    He could have sworn he saw just a trace of amusement dancing in her eyes, and he began to believe he might not have to hitchhike back to Lubbock after all. “Well, yeah, maybe that’s it. But I have great judgment as long as I have time to think.” Like now. He suddenly wanted to kiss her, but a little voice of reason told him that might not be such a hot idea at that moment. Definitely good judgment.
    She released a long sigh. “Okay, let’s just forget it. Do you want to see what I’ve been doing here?”
    “Sure.” He dutifully gazed at the computer screen.
    “We’re actually not in as bad a shape as I thought. See how the winds are circulating around these two low pressure areas? That’s where the hot and cool air masses are meeting.”
    Roan studied the map. One area she indicated was northwest of them in New Mexico, a good two hundred miles. The other was southwest, about the same distance—almost in Big Bend country. “Which way do we head?”
    Victoria chewed on her fingernail. “I don’t know.”
    “Well, we’d better flip a coin, then.”
    She made no comment as she shut down the computer. She climbed out of the van and looked up at the sky. “See the thin layer of cirrus clouds moving in? That’s good. It means that a warm, moist tongue is moving in from the gulf to feed moisture into the storms.”
    Warm, moist tongue, huh? He bit his own tongue so hard, he drew blood. Did she have any idea what wordslike that, coming from her, did to him? Obviously not, because she was still expounding on the clouds and upper level wind velocities.
    “… I guess maybe we should head back north, toward Raton,” she said, though she sounded anything but sure of herself. “That way, if nothing comes of it, we’ll at least be in a more central location for tomorrow. Besides, the farther south we go, the more mountains we’ll get into and the worse the visibility will be.”
    “Sounds good to me,” Roan said. He didn’t care which direction they went, so long as they got moving. He wanted to turn on the van’s air conditioner, although he doubted even a blast of arctic air would cool him down anytime soon.

THREE
    Victoria silently second-guessed herself for the next hour and a half. What if she were wrong? She was strongly tempted to call Amos and ask him, but he’d made it clear that he wanted her to rely on her own forecasting abilities this time. Besides, she didn’t want to wake him if he was resting.
    Roan, apparently oblivious of her dilemma, kept up a running commentary about the West Texas landscape. She had to admit he was pretty entertaining, considering there wasn’t all that much to look at—flat land dotted with pale green sagebrush, a few cattle, windmills, and oil wells. Sometimes the harsh land wrinkled up into little hills and canyons, only to flatten out again. With the exception of the two-lane blacktop highway, few signs of civilization were evident, hardly even a passing car.
    “It’s so deserted out here, we could be the last people on earth,” he said. “Maybe we are. Maybe everyoneelse got sucked into space by the gravitational pull of a giant meteor.”
    “Oh, that would be terrible,” she said with a melodramatic hand to her forehead. “How will we get our weather reports if everyone else is stuck to a meteor?”
    “Seriously, I’ve flown back and forth between the coasts all my life,” he said, “but other than occasional visits with Amos, I never spent much time in the middle of the country before.”
    “And now you see why,” Victoria added with a knowing grin.