Hell on Wheels: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read online

  Her eyes opened wide and the tears receded. “Not worth it? Not worth it? How can you say that? You risked your life to save a little boy. Roan Cullen, you’re the most—”

  “Exasperating?”

  “That too, but I was going to say you’re the most worthy man I know.”

  “But not the man for you,” he concluded.

  “Why do you say that?”

  Roan took a deep breath. Could it be he was the one jumping to incorrect conclusions? “I just thought you’d probably decided you couldn’t handle me taking the risks I do, good reason or no.”

  “That’s not at all what I decided.” She stared at him, long and hard, and then she took his hand. “But I did reach some significant conclusions today. Do you want to know what they are?”

  He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “First, I learned that no matter how carefully you plan, life can still throw you a curve. And I’m not just talking about the weather.”

  He nodded again, agreeing with her. “Go on. What else did you learn?”

  “I learned to have more faith in the man I love.”

  His breath caught in his throat. “Did you just say …”

  “Oh, yeah, I skipped one. I learned that I’m deeply, irrevocably, in love with you, Roan Cullen. And I don’t have any idea whether you love me back, whether you even want anything to do with me after I was so ready to condemn you for something you didn’t do. But sometimes you have to take risks. So I’m taking one. Because I couldn’t stand another minute of not telling you how I feel.” She stared at him defiantly, waiting for him to respond. And looking like she expected to be shot down.

  “Victoria.” He said it slowly, stretching out every syllable, because her name had become so dear to him, he hated to let it go. He pulled her close and kissed her, softly at first, then more insistently. He buried his face against her hair and, for a moment, just listened to their tandem breathing.

  “I’ve learned a couple of things too,” he finally said. “Want to hear them?”

  “Yes, very much,” she answered breathlessly.

  “First off, I’m an adventurous man, and I’ll never be otherwise. Wait, wait, let me finish,” he said when she started to object. “I like to travel, see new sights, experience new things. But there’s no thrill in the world—not volcanoes or hurricanes or skydiving, or even a mile-wide tornado flying right over me—that compares to the thrill of loving you.”

  “Oh, Roan—”

  “I do love you, Vic,” he said, unwilling to let her interrupt him. He had to get everything out in the open now. “And I want you in my life—now, next week, forever. If that means I have to take a nine-to-five job shooting video for a TV station or … or working at the Sears Portrait Studio, I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to stay inside your comfort zone, I’ll do it. I don’t want to lose you. I want to marry you.”

  Tears spilled out of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

  He cupped her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “Is that ‘yes’ crying, or ‘no’ crying?”

  “Y-yes,” she managed to say. “But, Roan, I don’t want you to work at some boring nine-to-five job. You could never be happy, and I wouldn’t be happy knowing I’d caged you. I want you to continue your freelancing. It’s part of what makes you who you are, part of what made me fall in love with you.”

  “Against your better judgment,” he added.

  She laughed, hiccuped, brushed aside her tears with an impatient swipe.

  “Regardless, I intend to scale down my exploits,” he said. “No more climbing into volcano craters, or jumping canyons with motorcycles—”

  “Oh, dear God, please tell me you haven’t tried that too!”

  He cleared his throat and averted his gaze. “The point is, I won’t be doing it again. Because now I’ll have a reason to stay whole and healthy. I’ll have someone to come home to, maybe even a couple of someones. You want children?” He realized there were still a lot of things he didn’t know about Victoria. But he intended to have the adventure of his life learning about her.

  “A house full of them,” she replied, leaning closer to kiss him again … and again.

  “Mmm, perhaps we should continue this discussion elsewhere?” he suggested.

  She sighed. “Only if I can get the van started again.”

  He shook his head. “Not necessary. The Chasemobile died in a very opportune location.” He pointed out the window to the sign on the closest building: THE DROP-IN MOTOR LODGE. “Romantic, huh? And it even has cable TV.”

  Victoria pulled reluctantly out of his embrace and heaved open her door, which now had a tendency to stick. “Roan, the last thing I want to do right now, and for quite some time, is to watch the Weather Channel.”

  He grinned wickedly. “Me neither. I’ll do my own forecast. I predict some heated kisses and stormy lovemaking, followed by warm afterglow … and maybe a pizza in bed.”

  Victoria blushed, but she didn’t contradict him.

  EPILOGUE

  The tow truck pulled into Amos’s driveway, dragging the crippled Chasemobile behind it. Roan had gotten the van started again, and it had lasted a couple of days, but it had finally given up for good just inside the Texas border.

  “Oh, heaven help us, there he is,” Victoria said from the front seat of the tow truck, where she sat between Roan and the driver. Amos had just come out the front door onto the porch. Neither she nor Roan had worked up the nerve to tell Amos about his van when they’d talked to him on the phone. They’d decided to deliver the news in person, and to couple it with a piece of really good news, so Amos wouldn’t be so crushed.

  They got out of the truck. Amos came toward them, silent, his expression betraying nothing. He walked all the way around the van as the tow truck driver unhitched it. Victoria groped for Roan’s hand, found it, squeezed it.

  Finally Amos stopped, folded his arms, and treated Victoria to a penetrating stare. “I told you not to let Roan drive.”

  Victoria couldn’t help it—she started laughing. “Oh, Professor, if you only knew! Roan wasn’t driving when all this happened. In fact, no one was near it. This is what the Marshall, Missouri, tornado did to the van while it was sitting in a parking lot.”

  Amos’s face paled, and he examined the van more closely. “A tornado did this, huh? Sheesh. Maybe it’s time for me to get out of the storm-chasing business.” He waved an accusing finger at his nephew and his protégé. “Where were you two when this was going on? You told me you’d caught the Marshall tornado, but just exactly how close did you get to it?”

  “A little too close for comfort,” Roan said, all but shuffling his feet.

  “Dammit, Roan, I told you to listen to Victoria and she’d keep you out of trouble. But you didn’t.” He spared one more look at the van. “No, I can see that.”

  “Wait a minute, Amos,” Victoria said. “This wasn’t Roan’s fault. I was the one who didn’t know when to tuck tail and run. Even then, we would have made it out of the way in plenty of time, except there was this church, and all these children …”

  Amos’s outrage ran out of steam at the mention of children. “Oh, no matter,” he said. “The important thing is that you’re both all right. And getting along all right too, it seems.” His gaze locked onto their clasped hands.

  “We’re doing more than getting along,” Victoria said, but she was suddenly nervous about springing their other surprise on an unsuspecting Amos. Would he really be happy about it?

  “We got married,” Roan blurted out.

  Amos’s mouth hung open, and then he said, “You’re joking, right?”

  Victoria shook her head and held out her left hand for Amos’s inspection. Three days after the tornado, she and Roan had wed in the little white church that had symbolized a turning point in their lives.

  “Well, I’ll be dipped,” Amos said. “Married? You two? I mean, I knew there was some chemistry going on, and I figured if you were forced to spe
nd two weeks together you’d start to appreciate each other, but I never imagined … Sounds like y’all have a heckuva story to tell me.” He smiled, and Victoria relaxed.

  “Now, Professor, you don’t honestly expect us to tell you the whole story, do you?”

  “Just the parts that aren’t X-rated,” he said with a wink.

  Victoria paid the tow truck driver, then followed the two men into the house. Roan was already bending Amos’s ear with tales of the road trip, using his flair for the dramatic to make a harrowing story sound even more exciting.

  Still, he was so much more relaxed than he’d been two weeks before. He seemed to finally be at peace with himself and the world. And Victoria felt a new measure of peace herself. She no longer harbored that frantic need for her domain to be so perfectly predictable.

  She sat down on the couch next to Roan and rested her hand possessively on his knee. He was anything but predictable—and she wouldn’t have it any other way. Married to him, every day would be an adventure, one she would cherish.

  THE EDITOR’S CORNER

  Welcome to Loveswept!

  We’re celebrating May Day with two exciting e-originals! Spring and romance come to Star Harbor for one sexy sheriff and the town’s beautiful doctor in Elisabeth Barrett’s scorching third Star Harbor book LONG SIMMERING SPRING. We also have Toni Aleo’s exhilarating debut TAKING SHOTS – the first in a red-hot new series featuring the hockey hunks of the Nashville Assassins. These books will definitely turn up the heat.

  We’re also pleased to offer LADY AND THE UNICORN, a scintillating story from bestselling author Iris Johansen; RUN WILD WITH ME and SCARLET BUTTERFLY, two scorching stories of love and passion from beloved author Sandra Chastain, and HOT AND BOTHERED and DANCING IN THE DARK, celebrated author Linda Cajio’s seductive and tantalizing novels.

  We also have a special treat from bestselling author Virna DePaul – the three novellas of her contemporary Red-Hot Cops series are available together in this eBook anthology: ARRESTED BY LOVE.

  If you love romance … then you’re ready to be Loveswept!

  Gina Wachtel

  Associate Publisher

  P.S. Watch for these terrific Loveswept titles coming soon: In June, we’re excited about Ruthie Knox’s utterly fantastic FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, Toni Aleo’s blazing TRYING TO SCORE, Linda Cajio’s superb DOUBLE DEALING, Iris Johansen’s magnificent FOREVER DREAM and three more red-hot books from Sandra Chastain SINNER AND SAINT, SHOWDOWN AT LIZARD ROCK, and SCARLET LADY. Don’t miss any of these extraordinary reads. July brings Samantha Kane’s sensual new e-original, TEMPTING A DEVIL, Toni Aleo’s third captivating book featuring hockey hunks, EMPTY NET, Ruth Owen’s dazzling AND BABIES MAKE FOUR, Jean Stone’s enthralling SINS OF INNOCENCE, Katie Rose’s utterly irresistible A HINT OF MISCHIEF, Iris Johansen’s seductive TIL THE END OF TIME, and Sandra Chastain’s enticing stories, DANNY’S GIRL and SILVER BRACELETS. I promise that you’ll fall in love and treasure these stories for years to come.…

  Read on for excerpts from more Loveswept titles …

  Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s

  Along Came Trouble

  Chapter One

  “Get out of my yard!” Ellen shouted.

  The weasel-faced photographer ignored her, too busy snapping photos of the house next door to pay her any mind.

  No surprise there. This was the fifth time in as many days that a man with a camera had violated her property lines. By now, she knew the drill.

  They trespassed. She yelled. They pretended she didn’t exist. She called the police.

  Ellen was thoroughly sick of it. She couldn’t carry on this way, watching from the safety of the side porch and clutching her glass of iced tea like an outraged southern belle.

  It was all very well for Jamie to tell her to stay put and let the professionals deal with it. Her pop-star brother was safe at home in California, nursing his wounds. And anyway, this kind of attention was the lot he’d chosen in life. He’d decided to be a celebrity, and then he’d made the choice to get involved with Ellen’s neighbor, Carly. The consequences ought to be his to deal with.

  Ellen hadn’t invited the paparazzi to descend. She’d made different choices, and they’d led her to college, law school, marriage, divorce, motherhood. They’d led her to this quiet cul-de-sac in Camelot, Ohio, surrounded by woods.

  Her choices had also made her the kind of woman who couldn’t easily stand by as some skeevy guy crushed her plants and invaded Carly’s privacy for the umpteenth time since last Friday.

  Enough, she thought. Enough.

  But until Weasel Face crushed the life out of her favorite hosta—her mascot hosta—with his giant brown boot, she didn’t actually intend to act on the thought.

  Raised in Chicago, Ellen had grown up ignorant of perennials. When she first moved to Camelot, a new wife in a strange land, she did her best to adapt to the local ways of lawn-mowing and shade-garden cultivation, but during the three years her marriage lasted, she’d killed every plant she put in the ground.

  It was only after her divorce that things started to grow. In the winter after she kicked Richard out for being a philandering dickhead, their son had sprouted from a pea-sized nothing to a solid presence inside her womb, breathing and alive. That spring, the first furled shoots of the hosta poked through the mulch, proving that Ellen was not incompetent, as Richard had so often implied. She and the baby were, in fact, perfectly capable of surviving, even thriving, without anyone’s help.

  Two more springs had come and gone, and the hosta kept returning, bigger every year. It became her horticultural buddy. Triumph in plant form.

  So Ellen took it personally when Weasel Face stepped on it. Possibly a bit too personally. Swept up in a delicious tide of righteousness, she crossed the lawn and upended her glass of iced tea over the back of his head.

  It felt good. It felt great, actually—the coiled-spring snap of temper, the clean confidence that came with striking a blow for justice. For the few seconds it lasted, she basked in it. It was such an improvement over standing around.

  One more confirmation that powerlessness was for suckers.

  But then it was over, and she wondered why she’d wasted the tea, because Weasel Face didn’t so much as flinch. Seemingly unbothered by the dunking, the ice cubes, or the sludgy sugar on the back of his neck, he aimed his camera at Carly’s house and held down the shutter release, capturing photo after photo as an SUV rolled to a stop in the neighboring driveway.

  “Get out of my yard,” Ellen insisted, shoving the man’s shoulder for emphasis. His only response was to reach up, adjust his lens, and carry on.

  Now what? Assault-by-beverage was unfamiliar territory for her. Usually, she stuck with verbal attack. Always, the people she engaged in battle acknowledged her presence on the field. How infuriating to be ignored by the enemy.

  “The police are on their way.”

  This was a lie, but so what? The man had already been kicked off her property once this week. He didn’t deserve scrupulous honesty. He didn’t even deserve the tea.

  “I’ll leave when they make me,” he said.

  “I’m going to press charges this time.”

  The photographer squinted into his viewfinder. “Go ahead. I’ll have these pictures sold before the cops get here.”

  “I’m not kidding,” she threatened. “I’ll use every single sneaky lawyer trick I can think of to drag out the process. You’ll rot in that jail cell for days before I’m done with you.”

  And now she sounded like a street-corner nut job. Not the kind of behavior she approved of, but what was she supposed to do? It was already too late to give up. If she stopped pushing, he would win. Unacceptable.

  A tall man stepped out of the SUV. One of her cedar trees partially blocked the view, but she caught a glimpse of mirrored sunglasses and broad shoulders.

  “You’re going to be so sorry you didn’t listen to me.”

  Weasel Face didn’t even l
ook at her. “Go away, lady.”

  “I live here!” She hooked her fingers in his elbow and yanked, screwing up his aim.

  The stranger at Carly’s must have heard the escalating argument, because he turned to face them. Ellen’s uninvited guest made an ugly, excited noise low in his throat, edged forward, and smashed a lungwort plant that had been doing really well this year.

  Ellen considered kicking him in the shin, but she hadn’t remembered to put shoes on before she rushed out of the house. She settled for a juvenile trick, walking around behind him and sinking her kneecaps into the back of his legs. His knees buckled, and he lost his balance and staggered forward a few paces, destroying a bleeding-heart bush. Then he shot her an evil glare and went right back to taking pictures.

  “Leave,” she insisted.

  “No.” He snapped frame after frame of the stranger as he sauntered toward them and Ellen fumed with anger, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, fear—all of it swirling around in her chest, making her heart hammer and her stomach clench.

  By the time the SUV driver reached her property line, she recognized him. In a village as small as Camelot, you got to know who everybody was eventually. This guy hadn’t been around long, maybe a few months. She’d seen him at the deli at lunchtime, always dressed for the office. Today, he wore a white dress shirt with charcoal slacks, and he looked crisp despite the damp July heat.

  One time, she’d been chasing after Henry at the Village Market, and she’d turned a corner and almost walked right into this man. They’d done a shuffling sort of dance, trying to evade one another, and for a few seconds, she hadn’t had a single thought in her head except Whoa.

  Big guy. Very whoa, if you went for that kind of thing.

  The two invaders assessed each other for a few beats before whoa took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his pocket. He stepped around the obstructive cedar tree and extended his hand to Ellen. “Hi. Caleb Clark.”