“That we’ve got a solid week of rain and possible thunderstorms. Sissy said she’s so glad that God gave us a sunny day for the graveside services. Even though it’s nippy and there’s a wind, at least we didn’t have to shiver under umbrellas today.”

“Amen to that.” Diana caught her first glimpse of the storm clouds rolling in from somewhere down around Paris. A bolt of lightning flashed, and thunder followed it in a few seconds.

Tootsie leaned out the door of the motor home and motioned them to hurry. “We’ve got to get home,” she yelled when they were close. “That thing’s coming on fast. Sissy just heard that there’s a tornado on the ground in Paris, and we’re right in line for it. I don’t want to be in this tin can or stuck on the road, either, when it gets here.”

Diana and Carmen jogged the rest of the way and had just gotten inside when the first big drops of rain hit the windshield. The twenty-minute drive to the house took twice that long, but the rain had slackened off slightly when they arrived. The four ladies dashed inside, leaving Luke to get things leveled and the extension cord plugged in to the electrical outlet on the side of the house.

Was this an omen? Diana wondered as she climbed the stairs to change clothes. Did it mean that the kiss she’d shared with Luke would only bring on a storm in their lives if she let it go any further?

There you go, overthinking everything. Her mother’s voice was back in her head. Why don’t you just move forward?

Diana hurried up to her room and stripped off her wet clothing, hung it over the back of a ladder-back chair to dry, and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants and an oversize T-shirt with Minnie Mouse on the front. Mama, he’s rich, and I barely make it from one paycheck to the next.

What’s that got to do with anything? her mother continued to argue.

“Hey, you decent?” Joanie asked, knocking on the bedroom door.

“Come on in.” Diana was glad for the interruption so she could get her mother out of her head. “Sounds like the storm is over.”

“Look out your window,” Joanie said.

Diana crossed the floor and drew back the floral curtains. “Good grief! That is one eerie look out there.”

“Tootsie says it’s the color of a tornado, and everything has gone all still and weird. She sent me up to bring you downstairs so we can get into the cellar until it’s passed through,” Joanie told her.

“Where is this cellar?” Diana asked.

“Cellar is right out the back door. The noise that sounds like a freight train off in the distance is the storm coming at us. We’ve seen our share of tornadoes in Sugar Run, so you should remember the sound,” Joanie said as she darted out of the room.

“I wasn’t thinking of a tornado at this time of year.” Diana ran down the stairs to find Luke waiting for her in the kitchen.

“Come on.” He grabbed Diana’s hand and held it tightly when the wind tried to force them back into the house as they rushed to the cellar. He sent her down before him and then closed the door behind in a hurry.

“I hope either the house or the motor home is still standing when this is over,” Tootsie yelled above the turmoil. “If they’re both gone, I guess we’ll hitch us a ride to town and catch a bus back to Sugar Run.”

“That is a lot of noise out there,” Diana hollered. “Wouldn’t you be sad if you lost everything?”

“Sure I would, but I’ve got you four kids, so I haven’t lost everything even if the storm takes the house and motor home with it,” Tootsie replied.

Diana’s hand still tingled from Luke’s touch. Maybe her mother was right about analyzing everything to death. But when Gerald announced that he’d been seeing another woman and wanted a divorce, it had shocked the hell out of her. She’d vowed nothing would ever sneak up on her like that again. So far she’d managed to avoid any more heartbreaking surprises.

Old wooden benches lined two sides of the cellar. Shelves, probably built when Tootsie’s mama or grandmother canned vegetables and fruit in the summer, covered the third wall. Tootsie, Carmen, and Joanie sat across from Diana and Luke. The noise got louder and louder, and then suddenly everything became so quiet that it was creepy.

Rain and hail began to pelt the metal can over the vent on top of the cellar. Luke took a deep breath and climbed the steps. “Uncle Smokey always said that when it starts to rain, the bad part is over, so we can go back to the house now.”

“If we’ve got a house,” Tootsie said.

“I’m going to think positive.” Luke put his back against the door and pushed. “Y’all get ready to run from here to the house, soon as I open the door. It sounds like that hail is pretty good sized.”

Bigger than a pecan thrown from a tree limb, Diana thought as she hung back to let Tootsie go first. If any of her friends slipped and fell or got knocked out by a hailstone, she could at least pick them up and carry them to safety. That was one of the benefits of being almost six feet tall.

“What are you waiting for?” Luke asked her as hailstones the size of Ping-Pong balls bounced off the cellar door.

“Are they all inside?” she asked.

He nodded.

She took the steps two at a time, made it halfway across the short distance, slipped on a pile of hail, and fell flat on her back. Hail and rain beat down on her for a full ten seconds before Luke scooped her up in his arms, slung her over his shoulder like a bag of chicken feed, and carried her into the kitchen.

“What happened?” Carmen blinked several times before she could believe what she was really seeing. “Why are you carrying Diana like that?”

Luke bent slightly forward and set Diana on her feet, then put his hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay? Is anything broken?”

“Only my pride.” She rubbed her hip.

“You’ve got red dots on your face,” Joanie said.

“Hail coming down at about fifty miles an hour will do that to you.” Diana put her hands over Luke’s. “Thanks for the lift into the house. It was like I flew.”

His grin brightened the whole room. “Picking you up was nothing after working out with weights in the gym.”

“I thought you were a computer geek.” Carmen cocked her head to one side. There was something between them—vibes, sparks, whatever it was called these days—and she hoped that Diana thought long and hard before she got involved with another man. A heart couldn’t stand two hurts like what Gerald had dealt her, or like Eli was pushing off on her, herself, these days.