off to get back here.” A shiver went through her. She wrapped her arms around herself again.
“You’re freezing,” he said. It came out sounding like an accusation, though he didn’t mean it that way.
“I am fine.” She shivered some more. Her hair was plastered on her cheeks and down her neck. She swiped at a soggy hunk of it, shoving it back behind her ear. “Just fine.” She scowled at him.
Whoa. For a minute there, she’d almost seemed friendly—but then she must have remembered that she hated his ass. She turned her back on him and started weaving her way through the crush of horses and cattle. The Lab followed her, panting happily, wagging his muddy tail.
It should have been warmer in there, with all the steaming, milling livestock. But it really wasn’t. How could it be, with that far door wide-open and both of them soaking wet? He slapped the bony butt of a little red heifer who’d backed in too close. She let out a cranky “moo,” and ambled away—not far, though. There wasn’t really anywhere to go.
He found a hay bale against the wall and sat on it as he pondered what he ought to do to make things a little more comfortable. He hesitated to go over and shut the other door. The smell of wet livestock and manure would get pretty strong if he did that.
As he considered what to do next, he watched the dripping brown-haired woman who had spent the past four years avoiding him and now happened to be stuck with him until the rain ended and the floodwaters receded.
Willa was keeping busy shivering and ignoring him, wandering from steer to goat to barn cat to bay mare, petting them all and talking to them low and soft, as though she had a personal relationship with each and every four-legged creature on her family’s place. And maybe she did.
She’d always been a fanciful type, even way back when they were kids. He knew this from actual observation.
Collin had run wild as a kid. He was the youngest, sixth of six boys, and his mom was worn-out by the time he came along. She didn’t have the energy to keep after him. He went where he wanted and came home when he felt like it. He wandered far and wide. Often, he found himself on Christensen land. Now and then, he’d run into Willa. She would be singing little songs to herself, or making crowns out of wildflowers, or reading fairy-tale books.
She’d never seemed to like him much, even then. Once she’d yelled at him to stop spying on her.
He hadn’t been spying. A kid wasn’t spying just because he stretched out in the tall grass and watched a neighbor girl talking to herself as she walked her big-haired brunette Barbie doll around in a circle.
Collin tried to get more comfortable on the hay bale. He scooted to the wall, leaned his head back against the rough boards, closed his eyes and tried not to think how cold he was, tried not to wish he’d grabbed a snack to take with him when he’d run out of the house. His stomach grumbled. He ignored it.
It would have been nice if he could drop off to sleep for a little and forget everything. But no such luck. He would just start to doze when a fit of shivering would snap him awake and he would realize anew that they were smack-dab in the middle of one hell of a disaster. He hoped that no one in town had drowned, that the hands and the animals on the Triple T were safe. He couldn’t help wondering how much of both the town or his family’s ranch would be left standing when the floodwaters receded.
And how much of the state was affected? What about Thunder Canyon, where his family had gone? Were they underwater, too?
Eventually, he gave up trying to sleep and opened his eyes. Willa stood at the window that faced southwest, the one not far from where two spotted pigs were snorting over an upturned bucket of feed. With the white Lab at her feet, she stared out through the endless curtain of the rain. He rubbed his arms to try and warm up a little and knew she must be staring at her parents’ place. The Christensen house was about level with the barn, on high ground, atop the next hill over.
He knew he was asking for more rejection to try and talk to her, but he was just tired and dejected enough to do it anyway. “The house should be safe,” he said. He didn’t mention her brother Gage’s house, which was down the slope of the hill behind her parents’ place. It wouldn’t be visible from Willa’s vantage point, which was just as well. As Collin remembered, it was a ways down the hill and probably already below the rising waterline.
She surprised him by replying. “Yes. I can see it. It’s okay, for now….” She sounded strange, he thought. Kind of dreamy and far away. She had a few scratches on her arms. And a bruise on her cheekbone. But like him, no serious injuries. They’d been very fortunate. So far. She added, “It’s all so unbelievable, don’t you think? Like maybe this isn’t even actually happening. Maybe I’m just dreaming it.”
“Sorry, Willa.” He meant that. He was sorry. “I think it’s really happening.”
She sent him a glance. For once, her mouth didn’t pinch up at the sight of him. “I lost my phone.” A shiver went through her and her teeth chattered together. “Do you happen to have yours with you?”
“It’s in my truck, I think. But there must be towers down. I was getting no signal when I tried using it at a little after two.”
Willa sighed and turned back to the window. “Life is so … fragile, really, isn’t it? I mean, you go along, doing what you need to do, thinking you’re taking care of business, that you’re in control. But you’re not in control, not really.” Outside, lightning flared. Thunder rolled out. “Anything could happen,” she said. “It could rain and rain and never stop….” Her lips looked kind of blue, he thought.
He really needed to come up with a way to warm her up a little. Rising, he began to work his way around the barn, looking for a blanket or a tarp or something.
Willa kept talking. “Oh, Collin. I keep thinking of the children in my class last year. And the ones in our summer school program. I can just close my eyes and see each one of their sweet, smiling faces. I hope they’re all safe and dry. Our school, the elementary school? It’s on the south side of town. That’s not good news. And my house is on the south side, too….”
He pushed a goat out of the way as he came to a spot where the wall jogged at a ninety-degree angle. Around that corner was a door. He opened it. “Willa, there’s a tack room here.”
She sighed again. “Yes. That’s right. And a feed room over there.” She put out a hand in the general direction of the other shut door farther down the wall. And then she started in again, about life and the flood and the safety of her friends, her neighbors and her students.
Collin took a look around the tack room. There were the usual rows of hooks holding ropes and bridles and bits. He was a saddle maker by trade and he grinned at the sight of one of his own saddles racked nice and neat, lined up with several others on the wall. There was a window. And another door, allowing outside access.
The floor in there was wood, not mixed clay and sand as it was out in the main part of the barn. And the walls were paneled in pine.
And then he saw the stack of saddle blankets atop a big cedar storage trunk. He went over and grabbed one. Shooing out the goat that had followed him in there, he shut the door and made his way through the milling animals to Willa.
She didn’t even flinch when he wrapped the blanket around her. “Thank you.”
He took her by the shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go….” She
