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moving.”
    She started to argue that sometimes it didn’t take all that long to fall in love, if she could believe some of the stories she’d heard. Her own parents had fallen in love on their first date and were married two weeks later. But since two weeks was the unfortunate span of time she and Roan would be together, she kept her mouth shut. With his ego, he might think she was hinting around.
    “You really think we’ll see a tornado today?” He leaned forward and peered at the sky through the windshield.
    “I thought you didn’t want to talk about weather.”
    “Just not all the time. But I don’t see any of those cirrus clouds. Does that mean the, uh, warm, moist tongue is gone?”
    Warm, moist tongue
. Coming from him, that phrase didn’t sound the least bit scientific.
    “It’s early yet,” she said. “In another hour or so we’ll stop and get more data.”
    “And lunch? You do stop for lunch, don’t you?”
    “I won’t let you starve, but we can’t indulge in a leisurely …” Her words trailed off as a silver Blazer, bristling with antennas, passed them going the opposite direction. She stared after the other car in her rearview mirror. “Damn,” she murmured.
    Roan’s eyebrows sprang up. “Vicky! I didn’t think you knew words like that.”
    She didn’t bother to respond. If he wasn’t going to address her by her correct name, he could just talk to the dashboard all day for all she cared.
    “I mean Victoria,” he corrected himself. “Sorry. But Victoria is such a long name. Four syllables. It takes a long time to say it. Vicky is quicker, more efficient, you know? Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked when she didn’t respond.
    “That car that passed us? That was Jeff Hobbs. He works out of the Weather Service in Amarillo.”
    “Another chaser, I take it.”
    “Yeah, and a good one too, much to everyone’s grief. Anytime he gets a storm that other people miss, he loves to rub it in our faces. He must have a pretty good reason for heading south. Raton would be a lot closer for him.”
    “You aren’t thinking of changing your mind, are you?”
    “Well … you see, Jeff is usually right.”
    “And you aren’t?”
    “Amos and I together have a pretty good track record. But by myself …”
    “You aren’t by yourself, you have me. And I say we continue north. We’re halfway there already.”
    “That’s not a good basis on which to make a decision. We could still get south in time for the show.”
    “Is there going to be a show? You didn’t sound too optimistic an hour ago.” Again he leaned forward and peered at the sky, as if it could give him the answer.
    Abruptly Victoria pulled off on the shoulder, then made a U-turn in the middle of the highway.
    Roan gave a hopeless sigh.
    He was already getting impatient with her, she realized. But storm chasing was a lot more tedious than most people thought—hours and hours of driving, planning,figuring, consulting, and if she were really lucky, a rip-roaring, ten-minute payoff. How would Roan feel after two weeks of this?
    He would probably bail out after two days. Either that, or she would get so fed up with him that she would drive back to Lubbock and dump him off.
    The journey back south was quiet and tense. Victoria listened to ham radio, CB radio, an AM station out of Albuquerque, and weather radio all at the same time, trying to get a picture of how the skies were shaping up. The afternoon was getting away from them, and she still had no clear idea of where the severe weather would hit, if anywhere. Roan, alternately dozing and gazing out the window, cast a dubious look at her every so often, obviously bored and irritated by the cacophony of voices.
    Toward four o’clock, Victoria saw what she was looking for—huge towers of cumulus clouds building on the horizon. She stopped the van again for gas, then pulled into a Dairy Queen.
    “It’s about time,” Roan grumbled. But after snarfing two hamburgers, a large order