Teresa Southwick - That Touch of Pink

He stopped studying the clouds and met her gaze. “Yeah?”

“What happens if things get worse?”

“These blow up suddenly and are gone just as fast. But I’d feel better if we had camp set up. We can bandage those blisters and she’ll be good to go.”

Kimmie clung to her and started sniffling. “Mommy, I’m scared.”

“It’s okay, honey. We’ll be all right. Riley knows what he’s doing.”

“But he can’t make the storm go away,” her daughter pointed out.

As if to give her statement an exclamation point, the echo of rumbling thunder drifted to them.

“Mommy?”

“I know, sweetie.” Abby patted her daughter’s back as the child buried her face in her shirt. “Riley, do you think this is a good idea? Do you think we should stay out in the open?”

He squatted down in front of them, his forearm resting on his thigh. In spite of her mounting anxiety, Abby noticed the way the denim pulled across the muscles in his leg.

“That storm is at least ten miles away. Unless the wind changes, it will miss us by a lot.” He looked at Kimmie. “In frontier days, they didn’t have houses as strong as we do now,” he pointed out. “And they survived. Isn’t that what The Bluebonnets is all about? Seeing how the pioneers lived? Survival under adverse conditions?”

“Yeah. Survival is the key thing here,” Abby agreed. “And that wind is making me question survival. What if there is a t-o-r-n-a-d-o?”

Kimmie was pretty bright, but Abby didn’t think she could spell that yet. Deliberately, she kept her voice neutral instead of letting it shoot up an octave into a shriek the way she wanted. Kimmie was quivering against her and Abby didn’t want to lose her composure and scare her daughter even more than she already was.

Riley smiled. The man had the audacity—or maybe it was the insanity—to look completely unconcerned. “The last time I checked, Texas is pretty big. The odds of a t-o-r-n-a-d-o landing on us are slim to none.”

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.