“I’ll try to open the door, but I can tell you right now that we’re here until someone rescues us.” Jackson got to his feet and put his shoulder and both hands against the door, but it didn’t budge. “I just hope the house and shop are still standing when we get out of here. That still sounds pretty fierce out there. Uncle D. J. and I had to come down here a few times, but we never saw anything like that funnel.”

The idea of the tornado and wind blowing Nanny Lucy’s house away hit Nessa harder than the idea of being stuck in a cellar until someone came to rescue them. A lump formed in her throat when she thought of Flynn and April being covered up with the debris from the house with no way to get out of the cellar under the garage floor. She pulled her phone from her hip pocket and groaned when a message popped up saying she had a low battery. She sent a quick text asking Flynn if they were all right, and got one back saying they were safe and about to survey the damage at Nanny Lucy’s.

We’re stuck in Jackson’s cellar. Send hell..p

She started to correct the spelling but hit send instead.

“Did you bring your phone?” she asked Jackson.

“It’s in the house, if it’s still standing,” he groaned. “Did you get a message out?”

She nodded. “But it’s misspelled. I hope they know I meant for them to send help and not hell.”

Jackson’s chuckle relieved some of Nessa’s tension. “I’d take a little hell if it could remove whatever is laying on the door. I sure hope it’s a tree and not my table saw. But the important thing is that we’re safe.” He draped an arm around her shoulders. “Another minute and you would have been caught right in the middle of the thing.”

Nessa shivered from her neck to her toes.

“Cold?” Jackson asked again as he pulled her closer to his side.

She shook her head. “I saw that funnel tear a tree out of the ground like it was a toothpick and swallow it whole just before we got into the cellar. I thought we would both be sucked up into that thing and never get to have our talk.”

“We’re a couple of lucky people,” Jackson said, “but what were you doing out in this weather, anyway? Not that I’m complaining. It would be lonely down here with just Tex to talk to. I’d thought maybe I’d call you and ask if we could meet at the waterfall.”

Nessa drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know how to approach this without sounding like a jealous fishwife. The day after our third date, when we . . .” She paused.