Looking at her through the grayish light, he felt a little bit foolish for coming near panic back there, a little bit mad at her for putting them both in that situation and very, very grateful to be out of it and safe.
They weren’t buried under tons of rocks.
They weren’t dying or already dead.
Just in the middle of a nasty storm. Hail or not, it was just a storm.
He shook his head, trying to clear it, then chuckled, then started laughing.
Maybe because it was the last thing he’d expected to be a part of his day. Descending into an old abandoned silver mine shaft chasing a determined, passionate, half-crazy woman, and then seeing his life flash before his eyes for a moment, only to see a moment later that he wasn’t in any danger at all.
He wished he could really see her face. The gloom that had descended was like looking through a thick fog, and she’d clicked off her helmet light, which hadn’t shown them anything but rain, and nearly blinded him every time she turned in his direction. He had more of an impression of her than anything else, but he knew she was grinning, too.
A moment later, she was laughing. “It’s easy to get spooked down there,” she admitted.
“I think I was way past spooked,” Travis admitted. “And at the speed you climbed out of that hellhole, I’d say you were, too.”
“Well,” she shrugged. “Yeah. I guess…I mean, I’m really glad I wasn’t down there alone when the storm hit.”
“Me, too,” he said, thinking, scared or not, it was the most excitement he’d had in his life in months, which was surely a sad commentary on his life right now.
So he couldn’t really say he was sorry to have found her sneaking into his mine today, and he wasn’t sorry he’d gone in after her, either.
Or even that there was a helluva storm raging around them, lightning crackling loud enough that it seemed like it could split the ground wide open in front of them at any moment.
Storms came big in Texas. He used to love storms on the ranch when he was a kid, so wild and loud, like coming over the top of the biggest hill on a roller coaster and then feeling like he was going to come flying out of his seat at any moment.
Feeling like anything could happen in the next instant, and that no one was really safe.
A man needed to feel like that every now and then, no matter how much he loved the solitude and serenity of his land.
He stared at her, again wishing he could really see her, that he had more than those fleeting moments when he’d watched her climb down the rise and disappear into the mine. Unfortunately, then he’d been concentrating on figuring out what she was up to, not what she looked like. He just remembered noticing a tall, slender body and a dark reddish-brown braid of hair hanging down her back. And he wasn’t going to ask her to turn on her helmet light just so he could see her better. They needed to save the batteries, anyway.
She went still, then backed up a bit, and he had to catch her before she went too far.
“You’re gonna bump your head if you take another step backward,” he said, holding her by the arms, and then putting a hand at the back of her head, between her and the rock overhang. “Right there.”
She touched his right temple, her fingers cool and soft against his skin. “You already bumped yours. It’s bleeding.”
He kept hold of her head and leaned into her touch, too, gentle as could be.
She had on a pair of coveralls that hid every bit of her body. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face and tucked inside the coveralls, her face turned up to his, his body shielding hers from the worst of the wind.
“Do you think it’s the hurricane?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“Because it’s not supposed to be here. It’s supposed to stay well north of here—”
“You want to try telling the storm that?” he asked her.
“And it wasn’t supposed to get this far inland until tomorrow. I checked.”
“Yeah. I did, too. But the weather out here isn’t always as predictable as we’d like.”
She pouted a bit, and he tried to ignore how cute that little pout looked to him. “I’m just saying…I was careful about everything, and I was watching the weather to make sure it would be okay, and now…well, I guess we’re not going anywhere fast in this.”
“No, we’re not.”
He couldn’t say he actually regretted that, either.
Chapter Three
Travis tried not to look too eager at the likely prospect of being trapped here all night with her, because he didn’t want to scare her, and a woman caught alone for the night with a man she didn’t know would have to be a little scared.
So he backed up until the rain blowing in on the wind hit his back in a fine spray, then moved to the side, giving her some space to think things through.
A man who spent his life working the land, often long distances from the ranch house, got caught out in the elements. It was just something that happened. If she’d spent any time in the field as a geologist, she’d probably been caught out in storms, too.
No big deal.
They had shelter from the rain and could likely wait out the storm here just fine, at least until morning light.
He gave up studying her as best as he could through the gloom—it wasn’t getting any easier to see—and went with his impressions of her, what he felt she was like. Calm, practical and then…something else.
“You look like you’re up to something,” he said.
She shrugged. “I’m just thinking that…I’m glad we’re out of the rain,” she tried.
“Yes.” He nodded. “And?”
“And…that…I’ve been caught in worse weather than this.”
“Me, too,” he agreed. But that wasn’t it, either.
“My Jeep is just over the ridge, maybe a mile away, just across the boundary into the park. I don’t suppose—”
Lightning crackled across the sky, then landed with a giant boom.
He could swear he saw her flinch as it hit.
Little Ms. No-Fear was actually afraid of lightning? At least a little bit?
“You really don’t want to take a chance on getting hit by lightning,” he said.
“I know,” she said, like a woman who really knew what a lightning strike could do. “I just thought…the Jeep isn’t that far—”
“Even if we didn’t have the lightning to contend with, in a downpour like this, the soil out here turns to the consistency of warm mush.”
She sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
It happened in Texas with its fine, silty soil not accustomed to this kind of rain. It was like trying to walk through quicksand when it suddenly got wet.
“Hey, what happened to your horse?” she asked.
“Long gone. He doesn’t like lightning, either, wouldn’t leave me for anything but that. Wasn’t much around here to tether him to that could actually hold him, if he decided to run, just some scrawny bushes. He would have uprooted the thing by turning his head.”
“Oh, okay… So, for us…What about in the morning? Surely