A Forever Christmas

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Her Gift Is Her Present

When Gabe Rodriguez took the job of deputy sheriff in the small town of Forever, Texas, he thought he’d be bored. So he’s shocked the morning he discovers a car teetering on the edge of a deep ravine with an unconscious woman at the wheel. Gabe makes a daring rescue, but when the woman awakes, her memory is wiped clean.

Gabe may call her his Christmas “Angel,” but in her eyes, he’s the one who is truly heaven-sent. Gabe’s given her a whole new life, and she is haunted by the feeling that this is the happiest she’s ever been. Though Gabe is trying to help Angel recover her memory, she’s willing to leave it all behind her and start fresh with him at her side. But when her past finally catches up to her, Angel could lose everything, including Gabe.

As she spoke, Angel drew nearer to Gabe.

She was so close that he could feel each breath she took as her chest rose, brushing against his. When she exhaled, he felt her breath along his skin.

His gut tightened in response as he struggled to hold himself in check.

Gabe wanted to believe her. Wanted so badly just to take her into his arms and not fear the ramifications and consequences that were waiting for them just beyond the night.

But there would be ramifications and there would be consequences.

Gabe gave it one more try. “I need to find the light, Angel.”

“It’s right here,” she whispered to him, rising on her toes, leaving her soft lips mere inches from his mouth.

Gabe could feel himself weakening. “Oh, damn, Angel, you could break a saint.”

“I don’t want a saint,” Angel told him, her eyes never leaving his. “I want you.”

Dear Reader,

Here we are, back in Forever, Texas. This time we’re visiting Alma’s brother, Gabe. Gabe is trying to deal with the sting of being dumped by a woman who felt she could do “better,” and by “better” she meant finding someone wealthier. Alma, in an effort to get Gabe to come around, gets the sheriff to offer him a temporary position as a fill-in deputy. Gabe accepts, but there’s not much to do in a small town like Forever—that is, if you don’t count saving a beautiful woman’s life by pulling her out of a car tottering on the brink of a ledge before it goes over—or bursts into flame (which it does, seconds after he rescues her). There’s a slight hitch with the rescue. The woman doesn’t know how she got there—or who she is. Impulsively, Gabe names her “Angel” because she looks like one to him (and because it’s nearly Christmas).

With nothing but time on his hands, Gabe takes Angel on as his private project, trying to help her remember who she is. But as the days go by, both Gabe and Angel grow more and more reluctant to unearth her past, especially since they are growing so close to one another in the present. Still, nothing goes smoothly, and someone from Angel’s past is looking for her—and he’s not looking for a happy reunion.

As always, I thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy this latest stroll through Forever. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Happy holidays!

Love,

Marie

About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA, a USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

A Forever Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Teaser Chapter

Prologue

It was the rain that was ultimately responsible.

The rain and fear.

In their own unique way, they were both blinding. The rain came down in sheets, demanding that she pull over, or at the very least drive more slowly.

The sky was close to being as dark as midnight, despite the fact that it was in the middle of the day. But there was nowhere for her to pull over, no town, no gas station. Nothing.

Nothing but exposed space.

And she couldn’t risk being exposed. Even in this storm.

She didn’t know if she was still even in Texas anymore.

All she knew was that she had to keep going, had to put as many miles between her and Jake as she could. There had been murder in his eyes the very last time she’d seen him.

Her murder.

He was coming for her. She could feel it.

She’d raced to her car, soaked before she’d ever reached it. Once inside, her hand shaking so badly it was hard to put the key into the ignition, it took her three tries to get it to turn over. Tearing away from the house, she put her foot all the way down on the gas pedal and drove as fast as she could.

Just drove. The destination didn’t matter. She had to save herself.

It was her own fault.

She shouldn’t have come back. She should have known he’d be watching the house, waiting for her to show up.

Jake.

The man who was the reason why she’d taken off to begin with. Why she’d changed her name, changed her appearance, changed her life. Changed everything just to get away from him.

And she had.

But when she’d learned, by accident, of her mother’s death, she couldn’t stay away from the funeral. Her heart ached too much not to say goodbye one last time.

She should have realized that his obsession would have had him watching the cemetery, watching the house. She’d thought she was careful, waiting for everyone to leave before she’d paused at the cemetery. Before she’d slipped into the house. She wanted to get the album of pictures her mother had kept. Pictures from a happier time. That, and her mother’s locket, those were the only two things she’d wanted—almost needed—to see her through this awful period.

Securing them would have only taken a few minutes. In and out. But even just a few minutes were too many.

He’d been watching for her.

Waiting.

And the moment she was in the house, he’d closed in. If that floorboard hadn’t squeaked when it had…

But it had and she’d bolted after throwing the jewelry box at him, hitting him squarely in the face. Bolted even as he heaped a barrage of curses at her through his bloodied lips. Curses that were drowned out by the whine of the bullet that tore by her head.

Missing her by inches.

Her heart hammering so hard she was sure it would burst, clutching the album in her arms and the locket chain woven through her fingers, she had thrown herself into her car and drove. Drove like the devil was after her.

Because he was.

She had no idea how long she’d been driving. Time and space all merged into one formless entity. Her gas tank had been full when she’d begun and now the needle was shivering around Empty.

She kept driving.

She hadn’t seen his headlights—or any lights at all—in her rearview mirror for a while now, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. She knew Jake, knew how obsessed, how focused, he could be. His superiors thought of it as his dedication. They didn’t know the man beneath the facade. Only she had been exposed to him. Jake would think nothing of turning off his lights and driving without them even in this storm if it meant being able to catch her off guard.

She was tired. Frightened and tired. Maybe death was the answer. If she had been the one who’d died instead of her mother…

No, damn it, she wouldn’t give him this final triumph over her, she wouldn’t, she thought angrily. She wouldn’t let him steal her life from her.

She—

The tree came out of nowhere. It was far too close for her to avoid even if she swerved to the right. She swerved anyway.

She could hear the high-pitched sound coming from her tires. The car was fishtailing, spinning out of control. She vaguely remembered something about driving into the spin even as everything else told her to turn the wheel in the opposite direction.

A scream tore from her lips a second before she hit something. The tree? Something else?

There was no time to identify it. The impact had her head hitting the steering wheel. Trying to raise her head, she blinked several times before she saw the edge of the ravine yawning before her.

And then the darkness mercifully swallowed her up even as another scream tore from her throat.

Chapter One

The rain was finally subsiding after coming down in buckets all night.

For a while there, it had been a toss-up between using his 4x4 or debating using a canoe to get back to town this morning. Gabriel Rodriguez shook his head as he laughed shortly to himself. It figured that he’d wind up facing this deluge just when he finally decided to drop by to visit his father on the family ranch. What with everything going on in his life lately—or not going on, he thought ruefully—he’d come up with one excuse after another for not taking his father up on the invitation.

His father, Miguel Rodriguez, wasn’t the type to shout or make demands. Rather, the father of six merely nodded his head and accepted whatever excuse he’d given him. That was the way the man had always been. And his soft-spoken approach had always been far more effective than shouting or giving angry ultimatums. Everyone always came around sooner than later. Though he was quick to deny it, Miguel Rodriguez knew just how to wield guilt as if it were a finely honed rapier in his hand.

The old man always got the results he was after, too, Gabe thought. They all complied, he and his five siblings. Some a little faster than others—Alma could really dig in when she wanted to—but no one was ever immune to their father’s sad brown eyes or quiet demeanor for long. The man had a very easygoing personality, unlike Miguel Jr.—Mike to his friends—who had a highly volatile one.

Mike liked to call it being passionate, but whatever term was given to it, Miguel Jr. was definitely explosive whereas Miguel Sr. was not.

“Senior” also got what he wanted far more often than “Junior” ever did.

Given the monotony of the scenery around him, Gabe’s mind drifted as he drove to town and his relatively new job as deputy to Rick Santiago’s sheriff.

He hadn’t meant to stay as long as he had last night. Initially, he’d planned on leaving by nine, but things hadn’t quite worked out that way.

Dinner had been good, the conversation even better, and somehow the time had just managed to slip away. Suddenly it was way past nine and his father was telling him that his old bedroom was still right where he’d left it—upstairs, down the hall—if he wanted to stay the night rather than taking on the elements.

By then it was raining so hard, it was as if someone had ripped open the sky.

So he’d stayed.

Besides, there was really nothing pressing in town that required him being there by dawn’s early light. Forever, Texas, was one of those sparsely populated towns that really needed law enforcement officers only to settle verbal disputes that sometimes got too heated and testy. On occasion, the sheriff or any of his three deputies might be called upon to rescue the town drunk from himself—or from his less-than-contented wife who, all things considered, was the dangerous one of the two.

He’d lost track of time because he actually enjoyed his father’s company, and he also knew the real reason behind the recurring frequent invitations to come for dinner. His father—like his sister, Alma—was very worried about him.

Worried because, for once in his life, he’d taken a breakup really hard. Usually he was the one doing the breaking up, or orchestrating things so that the woman he was involved with was pushed to break up with him. He did the latter to spare the woman’s pride.

But this, this breakup—or, more accurately, this dumping—had hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. Erica, the woman he’d come to believe that he was going to marry, had abruptly declared she’d found someone else “better suited” for her via a popular dating site—as if finding a husband-to-be was the same as shopping for a dress.

That was when he’d discovered that Erica had actually drawn up a “checklist” of traits—and possessions—that her future husband had to have.

As it turned out, the woman of his dreams turned out to be money hungry.

Looking back, he had to admit, if only to himself, that there’d been signs that Erica was more of a gold digger than the sweet, loving partner he thought she was. She was a woman who knew what she wanted out of life, and what she wanted, first and foremost, was a husband who could give her those things. All those things.

He, as a rancher, very obviously did not fit the bill.

He supposed that made him rather naive because he’d assumed that that was what love was for: to fill in the gaps.

But in Erica’s case, he’d thought wrong.

“You can do better, Gabe,” Alma had insisted fiercely when she’d discovered that he was no longer with Erica. “A lot better.”

He’d smiled and nodded at the youngest member of his family, pretending to shrug off the breakup, but deep down being rejected like that had really bothered him.

Or perhaps, he reconsidered, not so deep down because obviously Alma had seen right through his act. Acting on her firm belief that keeping busy was the best way to forget about a painful situation, she’d casually mentioned that Larry, Sheriff Rick Santiago’s third deputy, had to suddenly leave town for Fort Worth because of an urgent family matter that required his presence. That left his position temporarily vacant.

Then Alma had reminded him about all those times, when they were kids, that they’d played sheriff and cattle rustlers. Knowing that Alma had the ability of going on forever, he’d nodded, barely remembering what she was talking about.

Before he knew it, that casual, noncommittal nod turned into a job offer from Rick. He’d made it clear that the job would only be temporary. At which point Alma had piped up and said it was temporary—unless Larry decided not to come back.

Gabe’s first reaction was to laugh and decline. But the words never rose to his lips. Instead, he turned the idea over in his head. He’d really been feeling restless ever since the breakup and this seemed like a good stopgap solution.

Who knew, maybe he’d even discover that he liked the work, liked the uniform and what it represented. And, quite truthfully, he had nothing to lose. So he’d shrugged good-naturedly and said to Rick, “Sure, if you think I’d make a good one.”

Rick had smiled at him and rather than offer platitudes or say something that lacked sincerity, the sheriff had said to him, “That’s what we’re going to find out, isn’t it?”

And then he and the sheriff had shaken hands on it.

The first couple of days on the job, Alma had stuck to him like glue, explaining absolutely everything until he began to believe his sister thought that he was six years old and incapable of understanding anything unless broken down to the simplest terms and shortest words.

On the third day, he’d just about had his fill. But before he could say as much to Alma, Rick had given her a look that succinctly and silently put the senior deputy in her place. After that, whenever she began to explain something to him, she’d stop herself, murmur, “You’ll get the hang of it, Gabe,” and went back to doing whatever she’d been doing.

Now, after almost four weeks, Gabe had to admit it was an interesting change of pace from being a rancher. Certainly less physically tiring. There’d been times when he’d thought about getting his own spread, but his father still needed help with the ranch now and then. Besides, that ranch technically belonged to all of them. His father had seen to that.

Around the time when they’d lost their mother, all six of them had joined forces, taking any job they could, to help their father pay off all the medical bills that had accumulated. They’d also raised money to keep the bank from taking away the ranch because their father had fallen behind in payments.

Paying off the bills was a point of honor for Miguel Rodriguez, so they had all pitched in together, pooled their resources and their money. They did everything and anything until the bills were paid off and their father was back on good terms with the bank.

That was when Miguel Sr. had them all accompany him to the bank. He’d been very mysterious about why he wanted them there, not really saying anything by way of an explanation until they were all assembled in the bank president’s office. That was when he told them that he was having the title on the deed changed so that it included all their names under the word Owner.

Stunned, they’d tried to argue him out of it, but their father had been adamant about it, refusing to change his mind. So now they were all proud joint owners of the ranch where they had grown up. And although no one said as much to their father, as far as they were all concerned, the ranch still belonged to him. Rafe, Mike and Ray still lived on the ranch and worked it while the rest of them lent a hand whenever they were needed.

But Alma worked predominantly as a deputy and Eli had his own spread to tend to, so that cut down on the number of “hands” his father could tap into.

Which was why he’d hesitated when Alma had initially suggested his taking Larry’s place.

“It’s only going to be temporary. C’mon, what’ve you got lose?” she’d urged in that way of hers that got people to come around no matter what it was she was pushing.

So he’d said all right, and before he knew it, he was holding his right hand up and swearing his allegiance to both the state and the town, promising to do the best job he could, “So help me, God.”

And just like that, he, Gabriel Rodriguez, was a U.S. deputy sheriff.

So far, he liked it. But he had to admit, the job was far from exciting.

The rain had all but stopped. That was when he first saw it. Saw the car that appeared to be tottering on the edge of the ravine. It looked like something straight out of an action movie—and not a very good one at that.

Except that this was real.

All too real.

The closer he came to the scene, the worse it appeared to him.

He would have said that it looked as if someone had run the vehicle off the road—if there’d actually been a discernible road to begin with. But whether by design or accident, the end result was that the vehicle was precariously positioned on the edge of the ravine. It gave every indication of being on the verge of going over if there was so much as the slightest breeze to give it a push.

He had no idea how it had managed to withstand the forces of the rain. In his opinion, it had rained hard enough to send the sedan plummeting into the ravine.

He supposed the fact that it hadn’t came under the heading of a miracle. He would need another one if there was anyone inside that sedan who needed rescuing.

Gabe hoped the supply of miracles hadn’t suddenly run dry.

He’d been a deputy sheriff for less than four weeks, but he’d been a man a great deal longer than that. And as a man, he reacted a certain way.

Basic instincts, literally honed at his father’s knee, had him acting almost automatically, without needing to stop to think anything through. Seeing someone in danger, his immediate reaction was to try to help, not to “go and get help.”

Gabe brought his weather-beaten 4x4 to a dead stop less than a foot away from the precariously perched sedan.

From what he could make out through the clouded windows, there was someone inside the car.

He caught his breath. Every second counted. The smallest wrong movement on either that person’s part—or his own—and the car was going to be history. As would be the person inside.

Moving carefully around the vehicle in a wide semicircle, Gabe assessed the situation, confirming there was only one person inside the car. A woman. And she wasn’t moving.

Was she in shock, or—

Gabe pressed his lips together, contemplating his next move. He wanted to call out, to ask the woman if she was all right, but that might startle her. Much as he wanted reassurance that she was alive, he didn’t want to risk her making any sudden moves that could throw off the car’s fragile equilibrium.

The most logical thing was for him to drag the woman out of the car, but that had an extremely risky downside to it.

What he needed to do, Gabe decided, was to drag the car away from the edge and back onto solid ground again with all four tires firmly planted on a flat surface.

Easier said than done.

Gabriel pushed his hand through his hair. He had to find a way to hook up her car and his 4x4 so that he could pull the sedan away from the edge of the ravine with a minimum of risk.

He thought of calling Mick, the town’s best mechanic. The fact that Mick was also the only mechanic in town didn’t in any way affect the fact that the man could perform miracles with vehicles of all sizes and shapes. Taking out his cell phone, Gabe looked uncertainly at the teetering sedan.

How long had it been like that? More to the point, how much longer could it stay that way?

But even as he pressed one of the preprogrammed numbers on his keypad, he didn’t know if he had enough time to wait for Mick to get here.

What if the rain started up again, full force?

He glanced down at the screen and saw that he had only half the number of bars that he usually did. The storm was probably responsible for that.

A gravelly voice answered on the other end. Rather than a formal greeting, the man said, “Yeah?”

“Mick, it’s Gabe Rodriguez.”

At hearing the name, Mick’s voice softened just a touch. “What can I do for you, Deputy?” Mick asked, putting special emphasis on Gabe’s new title.

“You can get yourself out here about ten miles out of town, by Lazarus Ravine. I’ve got a car all set to go over the edge and I need a tow.”

“Yours?”

“No—”

“Belong to anyone you know?”

“No—” Again, he didn’t get time to finish.

Mick’s approach to life was very cut-and-dried. “Then what’s the problem?”