Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
Reeves glared at Bailey, and the tiny smile that still wreathed her lips told him that she thought she was being really cute.
Still, the playfulness of it sent a zing straight through his heart, and he reminded himself that the last thing he wanted—or needed—was a girlfriend.
He’d deliberately kept Bailey at arm’s length for months now, and it had gotten easier with every encounter they’d had that had ended awkwardly.
Seeing as how he currently sat on her couch in his underwear, he didn’t see this situation finishing up any differently.
“I’m telling the truth,” he said. “I really am a farmer.”
“How long have you lived in Coral Canyon?” she asked as she poured the steaming water into a mug.
The scent of coffee also rode in the air, and Reeves could admit his fingers and toes had chilled, and a hot drink sounded great about now.
“Six or seven years,” he said. “Only the last four full-time.” He kicked himself the moment he finished speaking, and he wondered what about this woman made his tongue so dang loose.
“So you had more than one place for a while?” She stirred the liquid in her mug, the spoon clinking against the ceramic in a calming way.
“For a little bit,” he hedged. “I had some loose ends to tie up up north.”
“Where?” she asked, and Reeves dang near rolled his eyes.
“I didn’t know today was going to be twenty questions,” he said. “I was just trying to get out of the rain.”
Bailey turned and looked out the sliding glass door into her backyard. Reeves followed her gaze, though the edge of the fireplace partially obstructed his view. The rain still came down in sheets and ran in weeping rivers across the windows.
“I can’t believe we have to deal with a flood.” Bailey sighed and flipped over another mug. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Just sugar, please,” he said, able to answer that question without a problem.
She poured him a cup and set it on a tray. Then she added a sugar bowl and got out a carton of cream and brought it all to him. He watched her approach, something sparking hotly inside him.
“Thank you,” he murmured as he took the tray from her. It bore yellow and pink flowers and looked like something Reeves’ grandmother would have owned, and she nodded to him before returning to the kitchen to get her own cup of tea.
“Where’d you get this tray?” he asked, balancing it on his lap and opening the sugar bowl.
“It was my great-grandmother’s,” she said. “I helped clean out her house when she passed away several years ago, and I got to keep it.” She smiled as she rejoined him in the living room and sat down on the other end of the couch.
Reeves finished doctoring up his coffee with only sugar, then stretched the to slide the tray onto the hearth.
A hint of self-consciousness moved through him as he straightened and re-tucked the blanket in around his hips.
Now, holding just his coffee mug, he wrapped his fingers around it, stealing from the warmth of the dark liquid within.
He took a sip and sighed. “Ah, you make good coffee, Bailey.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she seemed a bit surprised at the compliment.
He glanced over to Bailey, and her blue eyes shone like the crystalline depths of a mountain lake. “Have you ever been to Banff?” he asked.
Total surprise crossed her expression for a moment, and she nodded. “Yeah, I went hiking up there with some friends once.” She tilted her head and considered him. “Why?”
Heat filled his face, because there was no way he could tell her that her eyes reminded him of the gorgeous lakes up in Canada.
He cleared his throat and took a too-big drink of his coffee, which scalded his tongue, the roof of his mouth, and his throat as he swallowed.
He coughed a couple of times and shook his head. “No reason.”
Bailey laughed, the sound like twinkling music, and when he looked at her again, those eyes sparkled with all the sunshine he’d ever known.
“You’re really not a great liar,” she said.
“Well, I’ve never aimed to be one,” he said.
She held his gaze for a moment, then ducked her head. She took a breath and opened her mouth as if she’d ask him another question, but the silence was filled with a blaring alarm from his phone. Hers joined it a moment later, and Reeves’ adrenaline kicked into high gear.
With his pulse pounding, he lifted his phone from the armrest of the couch and flipped it over.
This was the annoying alarm of the emergency broadcast system throughout this part of small-town Wyoming, and while he wasn’t quite sure what to expect, it didn’t surprise him to see an emergency weather notification flashing across the top of his screen in all capital letters.
Though the alarm buzzed in an annoying way, he took a few seconds to read the notice, which told him about high rain and winds for the next eight hours along the northern edge of Coral Canyon and southern border of Dog Valley.
The highway in front of his house had been closed, and anyone living in that corridor and along Fisher’s Kill Stream was advised to evacuate.
“We live on Fisher’s Kill Stream,” Bailey said, her voice filled with fear. She tapped to silence the alert, and Reeves did the same. Their eyes met again, and his heart pounded in his chest for a multitude of reasons now.
“Do we need to evacuate?” Bailey asked. “Has that stream flooded before?”
“Yeah,” Reeves said slowly, a frown forming between his eyes. “It has. I mean, a few years ago, but it wasn’t anything dangerous.”
“Did they call for an evacuation?” Bailey asked.
Reeves shook his head. “No.”
Her phone rang in the next moment, and Reeves caught sight of the name on the screen—Bryce—before she swiped on the call and lifted it to her ear.
“Hey,” she said.
Reeves heard the low-pitched rumbling of a man talking for a couple of seconds before Bailey lowered the phone and tapped the speaker button.
“...you’ve got to get out of there,” Bryce finished.
Bailey stared into the fire that Reeves had built. “I don’t know, Bryce. The river hasn’t even flooded yet.”
“It hasn’t? How can you tell?”
Bailey got up, and Reeves should be happy that her attention had focused somewhere else, but he sure didn’t like that the first person to call her wasn’t her momma or daddy, but an unknown male.
It’s probably her boyfriend, he thought, because someone as talented, intelligent, and beautiful as Bailey surely wouldn’t stay single for long.
She moved into the kitchen, past the dining room table to the sliding glass door. “I don’t even see it,” she said. “I can’t see anything through this soup.”
“But they’re advising everyone in this corridor to leave,” Bryce said. “So that’s what Codi and I are going to do. We can stop by and get you if you need us to.”
“Where are you going to go?” Bailey asked.
“We haven’t worked that out yet. Maybe up to Adam’s, or Morris’s.”
More male names, and by Reeves’ count she was up to four.
He shouldn’t be surprised in this small town of cowboys, and he reasoned that they could be her clients.
He honestly wasn’t sure how many clients would call Bailey and express such concern and offer an evacuation route, but while she had her back turned, he shed the blanket and stood.
His jeans weren’t anywhere near dry, but he pulled them on anyway, barely shimmying them up over his hips before Bailey turned around.
Her eyes had widened to the status of full moons, and she said, “I just saw the water, Bryce. It’s creeping up to my patio. ”
“Yeah, you’ve got to get out of there,” he said. “We’re leaving now.”
“You can’t come this way anyway,” she said. “You’ve got to go north.”
“Can you get out right now?” he said. “Codi and I just got in the truck. We can try to come that way.”
“No,” Bailey said, and she swallowed. Reeves watched as she hitched strength and determination into her face.
“My neighbor is here, and he has a second story at his house.” Her eyes searched his, and Reeves remained still and silent as he tried to figure out what she was trying to convey to him silently.
“I think we’ll try to go to his place next door,” she said. “The water surely can’t rise twenty feet.”
“I don’t know, Bay,” Bryce said. “It’s only been raining for a half-hour, and the stream is already flooded where you are.”
“They’ll dig it out,” Bailey said firmly. “They’ll flood the Apple Highway and the orchards, and your place will be flooded before long.”
Bryce didn’t say anything, but Reeves walked his coffee cup into the kitchen, turned off her coffee maker, and made sure the electric kettle was unplugged. He hooked his thumb down the hall, hoping Bailey got the silent message that he was going to get her cats, and she nodded.
“Listen, I’ve got to go,” Bailey said. “Reeves and I are going to go to his house, and I’ll text you or call you when we’re safe.”
“Bailey,” Bryce said, and her name carried a note of helplessness and warning at the same time.
“I’ll be fine, Bryce,” she said. “I need to focus on getting out of here right now.” Her footsteps sounded behind him, and she entered the laundry room right after him.
“You should unplug your computer,” he said. “And maybe put it up on your dresser, just in case it floods.”
She nodded. “If you’ll grab the cats,” she said. “I could carry them in the bin.”
Reeves had no idea how he was going to fit Bailey, a plastic container of two cats, and his pair of canines on his ATV, and he told himself that the dogs could run.
It was a two-seat off-road vehicle, and if the police had really closed the highway in front of their houses, he could go down her driveway and up the road without an issue.
“I’m just gonna grab a few things for the clinic.” She spun and dashed back out of the laundry room.
“And some clothes,” Reeves called after her.
“Right,” she yelled back.
Reeves took the cats out into the living room.
Pansy and Sir looked at him, and he said, “You guys might have to run alongside me.” Sir squinched his eyes closed, as if Reeves had just offered to give him a full-body massage.
He slid the clear bin of cats on the dining room table and went to Bailey’s back door.
He wasn’t exactly sure where she’d seen it, but the water had just started to lap against the edge of the cement part of her patio.
He had sandbags at his place, and if he could get back quick enough, he could probably prevent his basement from flooding.
“No, you can’t,” he told himself, his breath fogging the glass for a moment.
He had enough sandbags to build a barrier, yes, but he would have to do it around the entire house, and there was no time for that.
“Okay,” Bailey said, her voice breathless, as she rushed back into the room. She put one arm through a backpack and swung the bag the rest of the way on. “I’m good for a couple of days. Let’s go.”
She swept the cat container into her arms and slid open the back door before Reeves could so much as move. He admired a woman of action, and he simply added Bailey’s tenaciousness to the list of qualities he already liked about her.
“Come on, fellas,” he said to his canines, and he followed her out of the house and slid the door closed.
He’d parked the ATV under the roof, and he took the cats from Bailey as she got on the ATV first, then he handed them to her, and she lifted them up high while he took his place in front of her.
“Come on, Pansy,” he said, and he patted the tiny patch of seat in front of him. The heeler jumped up, balancing on all fours in a tight, six-inch area, and then turned and sat on his left thigh.
“Sir, you’ll have to run with us, okay? We’re gonna go home.” He looked at the boxer, still on the ground. “Home. Go home, Sir.”
Sir looked at him, and Reeves pointed west, suddenly praying with everything he had that if he sent his dog out into the storm, he’d show up at the back door, wet, but none the worse for the wear.
“Go on,” he said sternly. “Go home.”
He started the ATV and turned it in a slow arc to get out from underneath the overhang. Sir came with him, and he turned and drove in front of Bailey’s garage and down her driveway toward the highway. When he made it there and made the left turn, Sir was no longer with him.
Reeves gripped the ATV and muttered his prayer right out loud. “Bless us that we can make it this half-mile home, Lord. It’s only a half-mile. Bless us that the roads are closed and there’s no traffic. Help Sir to get home.”
He couldn’t see more than a foot or two in front of him, and water ran down his back.
Bailey hooked one hand around his right bicep, and then she touched him right in the middle of his back too.
He wasn’t sure what that was, but he added her to his steady stream of prayers as he kept driving into the unknown.