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Ariana jerked to attention at his words. His mother had been running?
“It’s just thunder.” Jayden’s deep voice was calm. The kind of voice to inspire trust. “It can’t hurt you.”
“The lightning that causes it can.” Much as she disliked thunderstorms, she was glad to blame her reaction on it. “So why do you think she was hiding from him?” she asked casually, concealing her intense interest. Gerald Robinson had a history of being a womanizer. But not a violent one. Even now, in his seventies, he was a compellingly attractive man. She’d only had a few brief encounters with him—he was not a proponent of her magazine articles, to say the least, and had no idea about the book of course—but it wasn’t difficult to understand how women had flocked his way. But none of the women—even his wife—seemed to hold his heart.
Some said that Gerald Robinson didn’t really have one.
But maybe he’d had one and left it in Paseo.
“Was your mother afraid of your father?”
“I probably should have phrased it differently.” He adjusted the rolled sleeping bag behind him, stretching out even more fully on the one spread beneath him. He tore open the sleeve of crackers and fed one to Sugar. “I think she was running from a broken heart. And that’s it.”
Another frequent refrain when it came to the women in Gerald’s past. The only heart that seemed to have not broken along the way belonged to his wife.
Then she realized what else Jayden had said. “You have brothers?”
He’d uncapped the whiskey again and held up two fingers as he took a sip. When he was finished, he held the bottle toward her.
Even though she knew she oughtn’t, she took the bottle again and this time managed not to choke on the alcohol as it burned down her throat.
But she dropped the bottle completely when a loud crash vibrated through the very walls, making even the metal shelving shudder and squeal.
She froze, forgetting entirely her interest in his brothers, and warily looked up at the low ceiling, half-afraid it was getting ready to collapse in on them. It was covered in wood. But above that, she really had no idea what was there. Except earth and that awful, awful howling wind. “That was not thunder.”
He’d sat up, too, and shook his head. He righted the whiskey bottle she’d dropped. “No, it wasn’t.” He went up the stairs and pried the flashlight out of the metal latch where he’d jammed it. Only then did she realize the stairs were flowing with water.
“Are you sure you should go out there?”
“No, but I want to know what the hell that noise was. I’m not worried about the house—nobody is here but us—but I’ve got horses in the barn.” He pushed up on the cellar door and swore.
Her stomach curled in on itself nervously. “What’s wrong?”
“Something’s blocking the door.” He put his shoulder to it and heaved.
The door that had blown open from the wind now stayed stubbornly closed.
She felt like choking on a whole new lump of misgivings. “So we’re trapped?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
She picked up the lantern and carried it with her up a few steps until she was just below him. In the light she couldn’t see the faintest glimmer of anything between the wood slats. She could, however, see the muscles standing out in his arms as he pushed futilely against the door. And she could also see the stream of water pouring steadily down the stone steps. How it was getting around whatever blocked the door was a mystery.
But water had a way of going where it wanted.
Take the Grand Canyon, for example.
“What would you say, then?”
His answer was curt. And unprintable.
Her mouth went dry. She backed down the wet steps.
He followed her and took the lantern from her fingers that had gone numb. “Don’t look like that.”
“Like what?” She wrapped her arms around herself. It was humid and warm in the cellar but she suddenly felt cold. How much water would the dirt absorb before it started to fill the cellar? “You just said nobody was here but us.”
“Not for a few days.”
She gaped. “A few days? So someone will find our bodies sooner or later?”
He set the lantern on the ground and put his arms around her. “You do have an imagination, don’t you?”
She nodded against his shoulder, breathing in the warm, comforting scent of him. “My teachers always told me that was a good thing. But this is not at all how I expected this day to go.”
“Me, either.” His hands slid down her spine. “We’ll get out of here before we’re reduced to bodies. The cellar has never flooded much more than ten, twelve inches before.”
The details were not a comfort. “I don’t know how to swim.”
“You’re not going to need to,” he promised.
She tilted her head back, looking up into his face. It really was a cussedly handsome one. From the cleft in his chin to the straight brows over his level gaze. “My mother will never forgive me for not giving her grandchildren.” Karen Lamonte had been going on about it ever since Ariana had broken off with Steven.
His eyebrows shot up and the corner of his lips lifted. “Pretty sure that’s not going to be decided here and now, sweetheart.”
She really didn’t know what was wrong with her. She’d never particularly been prone to panic before. But she’d also never found herself stuck in a storm cellar in a town nobody could seem to find except for those who actually lived there, in the company of a man who might or might not be another son of Gerald Robinson, but who definitely had an overwhelming appeal for her personally.
And focusing on Jayden was far preferable to thinking about what could happen if that water kept coming down the stairs.
“You have a scar,” she murmured inconsequentially and touched the faint white line above his eyebrow. “Right there.”
“Bar fight.” His lashes drooped and she knew instinctively that he was looking at her lips.
Without conscious thought, she moistened them. His fingertips were tracing her spine, setting off all manner of sensations inside her. “Are you, ah, in a lot of bar fights?”
“One or two. I stopped more of them.” He shifted slightly, pulling her in closer till her breasts were pressed against his chest. “I was an MP in the army.”
Her breasts were pressed against his chest. “MP?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“Military Police.” His head dropped toward hers. “Former badass Sergeant First Class Fortune at your service.” As he said the words his head lowered toward hers. His breath fanned her mouth as he said, “I’m going to kiss you, you know.”
Heat flushed through her veins, collecting in her center. Her head felt heavy as she looked up at him. Any hope of maintaining a professional distance had gotten washed away. “Former Sergeant, I sure hope so,” she breathed.
One of his hands left her back to slide along her jaw.
Her lips parted and she drew in a deep breath. She felt the way he went still when she slid her hands around his neck. His thumb brushed over her lower lip and she couldn’t help the soft sound that rose in her throat.
“Damn,” he murmured. And then his mouth found hers.
His kiss didn’t feel damned. If anything, his kiss felt glorious.
And if she was going to go in a storm cellar, at least she was going to go like this.
He lifted his head way too soon. His eyes were dark and unreadable in the dim lantern light, but the searching in them felt as real as the moisture leaching from his clothes into hers.
She pulled his head down. “If you’re going to kiss me,” she said as she caught his lower lip between hers and lightly tugged, “kiss me.”
He groaned, kissing her even more deeply. His hands traveled down her back, down her hips, her rear, pulling her up and into him. He was hard and her head whirled even more. All she wanted to do right then and there was twine herself around him and he seemed to know it because he yanked his mouth away from her and lifted her right off her feet.
“Put your legs around me.”
She didn’t need the request. She was already linking her boots behind him and wishing there weren’t two layers of denim between them. She couldn’t do anything about that at the moment, but she could do something about his shirt. She yanked it upward, hearing a few buttons scatter before he let out a low, groaning laugh and managed to pull it off his head.
She pressed her open mouth against his collarbone, tasting the moist, salty heat of his skin. He cradled her backside as he crouched down, finally lowering her onto the sleeping bag. One corner of her mind wondered if the thing was floating in water yet, but that didn’t stop her from reaching greedily between them for his belt.
He jerked and caught her hands in his, pinning them above her head against the sleeping bag.
“Don’t tell me you want me to stop.” In any other world, she’d have been shocked by her own boldness. But this wasn’t any other world. The only world that existed was contained in a flooding dirt cellar from which they had no way out. She angled her hips against his. “I can feel what you want.”
“Yeah?” His hair brushed her cheek as he kissed the side of her neck. “Does that mean I have to hurry?” His mouth burned along the curve of her shoulder. Over the thin strap of her camisole and down to where her achingly tight nipples pushed against the cotton fabric. “You’re not wearing a bra.”
Was there any point in explaining the built-in shelf bra? “Maybe you do need to hurry, if we’re going to be flooded in this cellar.”
“We’re not getting flooded,” he said again.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know.” Still holding her wrists above her head with one hand, he peeled down the top of her camisole with the other, until she felt his breath on her bare breasts. She was coming positively unglued, anticipating the brush of his mouth, the slide of his tongue—
But instead of tasting her, he lifted his head a little. “What is that?” He reached for the lantern, pulling it near so he could look more closely at her exposed breasts. “A butterfly?”
She groaned, twisting beneath him. “Yes, it’s a butterfly.” All of an inch big in pale pink and black, tattooed on the upper curve of her right breast when she’d been twenty-one. She still couldn’t free her hands, so she arched her back, rubbing her rigid nipples and the tattoo against his hard chest. “You were in the army, Sergeant Fortune. Surely you’ve seen tattoos before.” In the scheme of things, her little butterfly was hardly a record breaker. Neither was the floral curlicue on her left shoulder blade.
His teeth flashed. “Sweetheart, I’ve seen things that would turn your hair white.” He ducked his head and kissed the point of her shoulder. Then the butterfly.
Heat flowed under the surface of her tingling skin and she bit back a moan when his lips finally surrounded her nipple. Even though she twisted her wrists, halfheartedly trying to free them, he kept them bracketed. She pressed her face against the top of his head. “Jayden, please,” she breathed.
In answer, he pushed his thigh between her legs and palmed her other breast.
Pleasure rocketed through her and she cried out.
Jayden made a low sound. Utterly male. Utterly triumphant. Then his mouth was on hers again, and her wrists were finally free, and he rolled over, pulling her over him.
Noise seemed to rage beyond the storm cellar, but she was far more aware of her heart pounding loudly inside her head, of the low sounds coming from Jayden, of the clink of his belt when he finally loosened it. Breathless, she braced one hand on the floor, reaching to undo her own jeans with the other. But instead of dirt, her hand sank into mud. “Jayden, the water—”
“I know.” He cursed and kissed her hard again while the pounding outside the cellar door got even louder.
Then suddenly, he went still. “Wait.” He sat up, dumping her somewhat unceremoniously onto her butt as he stood. Instead of finishing the job of undressing, though, he fastened his belt and headed up the stairs. He pounded on the door. “Nate,” he yelled. “That you?”
Ariana hoped she wasn’t hearing things when she heard a faint, indecipherable response.
“Yeah, we’re stuck,” Jayden yelled, pressing his head close to the wood.
Once again, her adrenaline seemed to want to blow the top of her head right off. She wiped off her muddy hand and scrambled up the few steps behind him. “Who’s out there?”
“My brother Nathan. So you, uh, might—” He gestured and she flushed, realizing her camisole was bunched around her waist.
Suddenly embarrassed, she turned and tugged the stretchy fabric back where it belonged, hiding her still-tight nipples and the butterfly tattoo. She would have put on her sweater for good measure, except when she picked it up from where she’d left it bunched by the base of the stairs, it was soaking wet.
As was her cell phone.
She grimaced. It was supposed to be waterproof, but she wasn’t sure that meant it could withstand sitting in several inches of water. She was drying it off the best she could against her jeans when Sugar started barking, pacing back and forth across the sleeping bag, leaving muddy paw prints all over it.
“Sugar, come here.” Ariana reached out so the dog could sniff her hand and then closed her fingers around the bandanna to hold her still. “Good girl.” She tucked the phone in her back pocket and looked back at Jayden. “I can’t hear what your brother is saying. What’s blocking the door?”
“Your car.”
“What?”
“It’s on its side.” He pressed his ear against the door again. “Yeah,” he shouted. Then he looked back at her. “He’s hooked up the winch from my truck to drag it off.”
She hadn’t even had the car for three months yet. She’d bought it outright with her book advance. Her savings account wasn’t quite sucking air, but it was close. What if she had to pay for car repairs? “Is it going to be damaged very badly?”
“I doubt the winch will do anything worse to it than the wind that turned it on its side in the first place.”
She grimaced, knowing it had been a foolish question.
Jayden was listening again at the wood panels, and then he backed down the steps, sliding his arm around her waist to pull her away as well. “Sugar, come on.” The dog moved also, sitting against his leg, thumping her tail and looking up at him with an adoring expression on her pointed face. “Just to be safe,” he told Ariana and brushed his lips over her temple.
She closed her eyes for a moment, fighting the strong urge to put her arm around him, too.
“Relax,” Jayden said. His long fingers squeezed her hip. “Everything’s going to be fine. We’re getting out.”
She smiled weakly. She was relieved about that. More than she could say. But it also meant that getting carried away like she had with Jayden Fortune could not happen again. Not when she was far from convinced his name was merely a coincidence. Getting personally involved with someone she was writing about was out of the question.
“I thought you never had any doubt about us getting out.”
“I didn’t.” He gave her a quick wink, and then they both went silent as they heard what could only be the sound of her car being dragged away from the cellar door.
A few moments later, the door was opened from the outside. Rain pounded through the opening and then a drenched man appeared, shining a heavy-duty light down on them. “Well, well, bro. Glad to see you still like bringing the pretty girls to see your underground bachelor pad.”
Ariana flushed. She had no right to feel jealous of what Jayden had done in the past or would do in the future with anyone. But that didn’t stop her from feeling it anyway.
Jayden grabbed her hand and started up the stairs. “Be careful,” he warned her. “The stones are slippery as hell.”
She found that out quickly enough when Sugar slipped and lost her footing. Jayden immediately let go of Ariana to pick up the dog and carry her up the rest of the stairs.
Grabbing hold of the handrail, Ariana followed. She was soaked even before she accepted the hand that Jayden’s brother offered when she reached the top of the stairs.
“Out you go,” Nathan said, practically lifting her right out onto the ground. “You guys all right?”
Ariana nodded. Even though it was pouring buckets and it was nearly dark, the sky no longer had that terrible, angry black look, as if it were ready to explode. “Thank you.” He’d set the big flashlight on the top of her car—make that the side of her car, because she saw right away that it was, indeed, lying on its side. “How could this happen? Was it a tornado after all?” She looked up into Nathan’s face, and now that the flashlight wasn’t shining in her face, she nearly did a double take. “You’re twins?”
Nathan grinned. “Triplets, actually. But I’m the best-looking one of the lot.”
Jayden let Sugar jump to the ground. The dog, mostly blind or not, raced immediately across the muddy ground toward the house. “I’ll disagree with that,” he said, reaching out to give his brother’s hand a pump. “But I’m glad as hell that you’re the most unpredictable of us. Thought you were still in Oklahoma City.”
Nathan shrugged, offering no explanation.
Ariana took the flashlight to shine it over her car.
Not only was it sitting on its side, but half the windows were broken out. The copy of the magazine was gone. Worst of all, though, her thick notebook was nowhere in sight.
She’d had nearly a year’s worth of research packed in that notebook. It had contained everything that her laptop—which was sitting safely in her apartment back home—did not. And the thought of losing it was almost overwhelming.
“It’s not so bad,” Jayden said. “We’ll get it turned right side up and replace the windshield—”
She nodded and blinked her eyes hard.
“Hey.” Nathan took the flashlight from her nerveless hand. “I’m used to being waterlogged, but maybe we could get out of the rain and take this inside the house.”
“Getting out of the rain sounds good,” she agreed.
She followed the two men who were so alike that they were two peas in a pod. And evidently, there was a third pea from that pod as well.
Multiple births ran in Gerald Robinson’s family. His two eldest sons with Charlotte were twins.
Ariana didn’t need her notes to know that.
She didn’t need her notes to know a lot of things.
But she honestly couldn’t recall from her biology classes whether multiples happened from the mother’s side or the father’s. Which meant she needed to do a little research.
The very thought of it energized her.
Her car would get fixed. And her notes could be re-created. When it came to some things, she had an excellent memory for detail.
Maybe Paseo wasn’t turning out to be a wild-goose chase after all. She’d just found three more sons of Gerald Robinson. Possibly three more sons.
That in itself was huge.
But Jayden and his brothers were also thirty-six. Which meant if Gerald was their father, they were his eldest heirs.
Was that the reason Charlotte Robinson had shown her fangs to Ariana?
Because she knew?
Chapter Three
“Still dead?”
Jayden nodded as he hung up the wall phone. The dead line wasn’t surprising, considering the weather. He didn’t particularly care, except it meant if their mom heard about the storm, she might be concerned.
He pulled a mug from the cabinet and tossed Sugar a treat that she snagged when it landed on her bed, then sat down at the kitchen table across from his brother.
From over their heads, they could hear the sound of a shower running.
“She’s a looker,” Nathan said.
It took no effort at all to imagine Ariana standing beneath the running water.
It took considerable effort to squelch the inevitable result of that image. He grabbed the coffeepot his brother had set in the center of the table and filled his cup. “True enough.” He considered warning Nathan off, but decided against it. His brother would probably make something of it.
“Didn’t mention you were having company when I talked to you last week.”
“Didn’t know I was going to have company.”
“Sure about that? You guys were looking pretty cozy down in the cellar. Makes me wonder if my timing couldn’t have been a little better.”
Jayden ignored the devilry in his brother’s eyes. What he and Ariana had been doing in the cellar was none of Nathan’s business. “She’s a journalist from Austin,” he said. “She came to Paseo for some magazine she works for.”
Nathan gave a bark of laughter. “Paseo? What the hell is interesting around here?”
“She’s writing about the Fortune family. The real one. With all the money over in Austin.”
Nathan made a face. “Only one in the money around here is Grayson and he doesn’t even use our last name. Disappointing for her, I guess. What’s she been doing? Going through all the Texas phone books looking up anyone with the last name Fortune?”
Jayden sipped the coffee. Grimacing, he got up to get some milk from the refrigerator. Usually, he liked his coffee black, but Nathan made the worst coffee in the world. “I don’t know how she knew about us. Doesn’t matter, anyway. I told her the truth. Mom made up the name when she had us.” He dumped milk into the mug, then added a spoonful of sugar. “When did you get back from OK City?”
“Ten minutes before I saw that dinky red car sitting on its side.”
Jayden was the eldest of his brothers by a matter of minutes. “You shouldn’t have been driving in this weather.”
Nathan gave him a look. “Dude.”
“I don’t care if you used to be a SEAL or not. It was stupid.” He glanced up at the ceiling when the sound of the shower cut off.
He’d put a clean towel in the bathroom for Ariana to use. About now, she’d be running the pale blue terry cloth over that sexy little butterfly. Then, when she was all nice and dry, she’d be pulling on a pair of his sweatpants and one of his T-shirts.
He buried his nose in his coffee mug, taking a big swig of the nasty stuff. He choked it down and it was almost enough to overpower the images in his head. He should have found something for her to wear from his mother’s closet. It would have made more sense. And he wouldn’t be thinking about her skin, bare and soft, beneath his own clothes.
Banishing the image, he asked his brother, “Did you notice any other damage around the place?”
“Barn’s damaged on the north side, but the roof’s intact. Horses were restless, but okay. Haven’t checked anywhere else. I saw your truck. When I realized you weren’t in the barn or the house—” His brother didn’t finish. Just shrugged.
He didn’t need to finish. Nathan had come looking for Jayden. Period. Everything else could wait.
Through the window over the sink, he could see Ariana’s car. The wind was finally gone, but the rain showed no sign of slowing. Rivers of water had formed, crisscrossing the saturated ground around the storm cellar.
Well beyond the cellar was the barn. Only the corner of it was visible from where he stood. He was glad the barn roof was okay. But even gladder that the horses were okay. Property damage was bad enough without adding damage to their livestock.
“We’ll need to check the rest of the stock,” he said.
“I’ve spent enough time in the water for today. I never saw any cows flying through the air, so I figure it can wait until the rain lets up.”
His brother hadn’t been joking. Still, Jayden found himself smiling a little. “Weird, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You went to the navy. I went to the army. Neither one of us wanted to be here.”
“And we both came back,” Nathan finished the thought.
Jayden knew why he’d come back. So far, though, Nathan wasn’t saying much about his reasons. Since he himself didn’t feel inclined to talk about his military separation, his brother’s similar silence didn’t strike him as particularly unusual.
“We should check and make sure there are no broken windows in the house.”