Carousel Nights (18 page)

Ross darted out of the room.

“We have thirty seconds,” Mel said. He pulled June close and kissed her until they heard voices and footsteps approaching. She remembered him being a good kisser, but time had improved Mel in more ways than one. When he kissed her now, it was deeper, more meaningful. Less experiment, more experience. “It's even better when I don't have to wait seven years,” he said, his voice deep and husky.

June loved the children who were fast approaching, but if they'd taken several minutes to get there, she wouldn't have complained. Being in Mel's arms, his lips on hers, his scent still fresh from the shower but with a touch of maintenance garage, made her wish dancing could wait. Just for a while.

He pressed one more quick kiss to her lips and released her just before the first child burst into the room. A dozen kids ran around the perimeter just as Ross had done.

“I don't get it,” June said.

“I told you. Kids love big empty spaces. Soccer fields, empty swimming pools, unfinished basements. They all have the same magic. Maybe adults should learn to be so easily satisfied.”

“Big empty stages,” June said, suddenly realizing she
did
understand. “I love it when there are no props or sets, just dancers. I like the empty theaters, too, before everyone gets there.”

“But you also love the crowds,” Mel said.

She nodded. “Of course. If it weren't for all those people buying a ticket, I'd be out of a job.”

“We better get them started before they burn off all their energy,” Mrs. Nelson said.

“Not much chance of that,” Mel replied. “I swear Ross is like a battery-operated toy sometimes. Just keeps going.”

June smiled at Mel and turned to the room. “Dancers!” she yelled. “Find a partner and line up.”

Mel leaned against the wall in the musty hotel room. June felt him watching her every move.

“Ross,” she said, motioning for him to join her. “Will you take your dad back to the other room and show him where I keep the CD player? Have him unplug it so you can bring it back here. Okay?”

Ross, happy to have an important responsibility, grabbed his dad's hand. “Come on, Dad, we have to get the music.”

They were only gone two minutes, but June missed them. When Mel had nodded a goodbye while she was putting the dancers through a grand right and left, a devastating realization washed over her.

She was going to miss all of this when the Starlight Point season ended and her time under the Broadway lights began.
If only she could have them both
.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

S
TORM
CLOUDS
GATHERED
and dispersed before the afternoon parade, defying the prediction of thunderstorms. But it was only temporary. The heavy dark clouds moved back in with surprising speed as soon as the parade ended. With a Saturday crowd spilling out of every queue line, souvenir shop, restaurant and show, Starlight Point was no place for a thunderstorm. Its position on a peninsula thrust into the lake made it especially vulnerable to wind and lightning. Growing up, June had once seen a waterspout, a tornado over the lake spinning viciously. It had dissipated before touching the Lake Breeze Hotel, but she'd never forgotten it and its remembrance fueled her healthy respect for summer storms.

It was the middle of July, and they'd been lucky so far. Good weather had brought record crowds. But June knew from experience they were overdue for a major summer storm. The kind that would rearrange the sand on the beach, close the rides and wash over the docks in the marina. Depending on the time of day, major storms caused traffic jams on the Point Bridge as a mass of vehicles tried to escape the peninsula. Because it was only midafternoon and guests would likely want to salvage their ticket price, June expected them to wait out the storm indoors in restaurants, shows and the hotel lobby.

The air held the tension of coming rain, but it had been like that off and on all day, and the thirty-minute parade rolled out as scheduled. She'd already texted Mel and offered to return Ross to the hotel day care after the parade. June grabbed a scooter so she could get Ross settled and drive Megan straight to her car instead of making her walk on swollen feet in bad weather. Ross climbed in the open back and sat on the floor as instructed. Keeping a close eye on the weather, June drummed her fingers on the wheel and waited for Megan to finish talking to one of the dancers from the Western show.

The hotel wasn't far, just a quarter mile down the outer loop, across an access road and a parking lot punctuated by rows of young trees and a few huge old cottonwoods no one had the heart to cut down. Not a lengthy trip by scooter or car, but it was a long way in wind and lightning.

The breeze off the lake shifted again, swaying the trees and casting shadows with the clouds and branches. June shivered in the sudden shade. And she felt an awareness of another kind, signaled by a pickup truck sliding up next to her scooter. She was not at all surprised to see Mel only five minutes after her text reached him.

He got out of his truck and jogged over to the scooter.

“Hi,” he said, running his fingers down her bare arm. June's pulse responded, electricity sizzling in the air. Mel was thrilling, confusing, questioning—a present she'd finally opened that would never go back in the box, even if she wanted to put it there.

“Your son is in the back,” June said.

“Hey, Ross.”

Ross smiled. “Hi, Dad.”

Thunder rumbled across the lake and Mel turned his head, listening.

“The storm's coming for real this time,” June said.

“I'm hoping it goes out over the lake,” Mel answered, watching the wind whip the trees along the road, “but I think it's coming our way.”

June's phone beeped and she dug it out of the small shoulder bag on the seat next to her.

“Weather alert,” she said, scrolling with her finger. “Severe storms, damaging wind, possible hail.” She held up the small screen so Mel could see the radar. He cleared his throat and looked again at the darkening sky over the lake.

“Better batten down the hatches,” he said.

Lightning crackled and a raindrop splashed on the dashboard of the open scooter. Megan waddled over and hoisted herself onto the seat next to June.

“The sky's ugly. I don't like it,” Mel said. “You take my truck. I'll take the scooter.”

Raindrops—huge ones—bounced off Mel's head as he leaned over June.

“You'll get soaked.”

“Don't care. Get in the truck, Ross,” Mel said, raising his voice over the noise of the wind. “You, too,” he added, nodding to June and Megan.

June swung her legs out of the scooter and climbed into Mel's truck. The keys were already in the ignition. Mel shut the door, but the window was rolled down.

“This is your personal truck,” June said. “Where's your work truck?”

“Dead battery. No big deal. You better go.”

He ducked out but was back a second later, shoving her purse through the window before she could roll it up against the wind and the steadily increasing rain.

From inside the truck, June watched Mel race down the access road in the open scooter, shoulders hunched against the pounding rain. He disappeared around a curve in the road, heading for the maintenance garage. She felt guilty taking his truck, but as far as she knew, Mel had been thinking of Megan and his son as much as her when he shoved her into the dry truck.

When he did gentlemanly things like this, it made her never want to leave him. The men on Broadway, her friends in the dancing troupe, didn't even hold open doors. It was a dog-eat-dog world. June sighed, putting the truck in gear.

* * *

T
HE
CELL
PHONE
deep in his pants pocket rang mercilessly, but Mel ignored it. One thing at a time. In the fifteen minutes since he'd sacrificed his dry pickup truck, he'd reset electric breakers at three locations in the Wonderful West and gotten so wet his socks were sponges.

“You look like a drowned cat,” Jack said.

“And you look just as pretty as the day I met you,” Mel grumbled.

Jack, his suit coat gone and white dress shirt soaked and sticking transparently to his skin, slugged Mel. He leaned out the open garage door, getting rain in his face and eyeing the dark greenish-gray sky.

“Think we ought to shut down? Use our emergency weather plan?” he asked.

Mel shrugged and pulled out his phone. “June had an app for weather on her phone. I swear I used to have that, but this is a newish phone. Forgot to have Ross update all my stuff on it. Kids,” he added.

“I'll call Evie. She's up front in the office,” Jack said.

Mel nodded. “Maybe it's sunny up there and we're crying over nothing.”

A loud crackling across the sky interrupted him and he and Jack both took a step backward into the garage.

“Crap,” Jack said, pushing a button on his smartphone.

The speakers mounted in the ceiling hissed. They were tied into the Starlight Point Police Department's radio traffic, occasionally alerting the maintenance department to a hazard or situation requiring tools. Maintenance guys were used to listening with half an ear, usually only being called into service when guests returned to dead batteries or lock-outs in the parking lot. On a day like today, anything could come over the radio and it would be all hands on deck.

“Tree down in hotel lot, possibly on a vehicle,” the dispatcher intoned. “Possible wires down. Fire service, you copy?”

Mel swore. “Tell me you have a car of some kind back here.”

“Bicycle,” Jack said.

“You're an idiot.”

“Where's your truck?”

“Gave it to June,” Mel said.

“Who's the idiot now?”

“Still you.”

Mel grabbed a chain saw from an equipment locker and hoisted a bag over his shoulder while Jack talked to Evie on his cell phone. He stowed the gear in the back of an open scooter and got in the driver's seat as Jack slid his phone in his wet pocket.

“Well?”

“One ugly band coming off the lake and then just rain, according to the radar,” Jack said.

“How ugly?”

“Tornado ugly. Shutting down all rides and having the ride operators scuttle guests into storm shelters.” Jack's expression was dark, serious. “Heading to the hotel lot?”

“Uh-huh,” Mel said. “Got to see about that power line. Get in. You can secure the hotel. Tornado off the lake will hit there first.”

“Major crap,” Jack said.

Wind lashed the scooter as Mel tore down the brief stretch of road leading to the hotel lot.

“Hope security already got there,” Jack shouted over the rain. “And no one's hurt.”

“Power lines, rain, wind...” Mel commented, not bothering to finish his thought.

They edged the parking lot of the Lake Breeze Hotel. A massive cottonwood at least a century old hadn't fallen on one vehicle. It was on at least three. And its long branches reached out, raking a half dozen more.

The rain kept onlookers inside the hotel but several Starlight Point police officers formed a perimeter around the scene, an arcing power line keeping them several yards away from the only vehicle clearly visible.

Mel's pickup truck.

His heart dove down to his belly and his chest tightened. One heavy branch lay across the hood, crushing it, while another imprisoned the bed. Although the cab was untouched, the power line lay over it.

Jack gripped Mel's shoulder wordlessly as they barreled out of the scooter and breached the line of police officers.

“Anyone hurt?” Jack asked, his voice shaky even over the wind and rain.

“Don't think so,” a local cop who worked part-time at the Point said. “But we've got two people trapped.”

Mel didn't need to hear his next words. He was close enough to see for himself.

“Your sister and a boy,” the officer finished, unnecessarily because both Jack and Mel were an arm's length from the truck.

Mel leaned close, peering through the rain and the water-streaked glass. June, Ross on her lap, sat in the middle of the truck's only seat. She stroked Ross's hair, not noticing Mel until he shouted her name.

Immediately, she scooted behind the wheel and reached for the door handle.

“No!” Mel shouted. “Don't open the door!”

She sunk back and snaked both arms around Ross, holding him tight. Mel's throat was so thick he didn't think he could speak. But he had to.

“Power company's on the way,” Jack said. “What do we do?”

Mel ignored him, focusing on June and his son. He was never so afraid in his life but never so glad he knew what to do. If the wind and swaying trees didn't throw any more chaos his way.

“June, do
not
step out of the truck,” he shouted, clearly chipping off the words. “Do
not
get out,” he repeated. “Understand?”

June nodded once, twice, to say she heard him, but her expression was strained with fear.

“Trust me,” Mel yelled. “Where's Megan?”

“I dropped her off at her car before this happened.” June pointed across the hotel lot.

Wind whipped branches overhead and lightning struck close enough to raise the hair on the back of Mel's neck. He couldn't even think about what might have happened if he hadn't traded vehicles with June.

“You know what you're doing?” Jack asked. “We gotta get them out of there.”

“Not yet.”

“Are you crazy?” Jack yelled.

“Right now, the truck tires are grounding that line. As soon as anyone touches that truck—or steps out of it—they'll be the ground,” Mel said grimly.

“We can't just leave them,” Jack protested. “Who knows how long the power company will be?”

Mel nodded, his eyes following the power line as it snaked through the wreckage. It was still attached to the pole several rows over, a massive transformer clinging to the top.

“Are you listening to me?” Jack shouted. “This storm could get worse. And my sister's in there.”

Mel turned on Jack. “My son is in there,” he said.

Jack squeegeed water off his face with both hands, exasperation in every movement.

“Tell me what to do,” he said.

Mel pulled him as close to the truck as he dared and motioned for June to unroll the window a crack. She obeyed, her whole face a question mark.

“Jack's going to stay right here and talk to you,” Mel said. “Hey, Ross.”

At his dad's voice, Ross uncovered his eyes and almost jumped off June's lap.

“Don't move!” Mel shouted. “Stay right there with June. Listen to everything she tells you.”

“Are you gonna get us out of here?” he asked, his face puckered and tear-stained. Mel's heart clenched at the sight of his son. He needed to focus.
Stay calm
.

“Daddy will get you out. You have to be very brave and stay still. Understand?”

Ross nodded. Mel locked eyes with him and tried to smile, but he couldn't. He moved his gaze to June, willing her to be okay, hoping he wouldn't let them down. In a flash of raw honesty and emotion, he realized he wished June was his wife. The mother of his son. What if he had waited for her years ago...?

“What are you going to do?” June shouted through the wind and rain coming through her open window.

“Shut off the power.”

Worry and relief flooded her face.

Jack held his position near June's door, but he didn't touch it.

“Be careful,” he said. “You sure you know what you're doing?”

“Yep,” Mel said. “Just need some equipment. What I really need is in my work truck, but—”

A blue Starlight Point maintenance truck pulled up right by his scooter.

“There's what I need,” Mel finished.

Galway jumped out of the truck and speed-walked over. “Nuts,” he said. “Radio traffic says the bridge's tied up with an accident. No power trucks from the city are getting through unless they drive all the way around and come in the Old Road. Who knows how jammed up that is.”

Mel shoved past him and stepped into the bed of the newly arrived truck. He rummaged through the bins, making a racket even over the rising wind. He finally jumped down, wearing heavy protective gloves and holding spikes and a long pole.

“Bad idea, Boss,” Galway said. “In this wind and rain, you'll kill yourself.”