Christmas Cowboy Duet

Chapter Two

“What do you mean ‘What car?’” Whitney asked, bewildered as she echoed her rescuer’s words back to him. “My car.”

The events of the past few minutes were far from crystal clear in her mind, however, amid the lashing rains and the tumultuous rising waters in the basin, Whitney was fairly certain that her car hadn’t sunk to the bottom of the threatening waters. She and the car had gone their separate ways, but she was sure that she’d been thrown from the vehicle as it was raised up, not pushed down.

Liam shook his head. “I didn’t see any car,” he told her honestly. “All I saw was you.”

“But I was in a car,” she insisted. “At least, I think I was.” She looked at him, struggling to keep her disorientation and mounting panic contained. “How do you think I got out here?”

Liam had done very little thinking in the past few minutes, mostly reacting. He was still reacting right now. Saving a life was a heady feeling and it certainly didn’t hurt matters that she was a knockout, even soaking wet.

He shrugged in response to her question and hazarded a guess, his expression giving nothing away.

“Divine intervention?” It was half a question, half an answer.

“No, I was driving a car,” Whitney retorted, then took a breath. Her nerves felt as if they were systematically being shredded. “A pearl-white Mercedes,” she described. There couldn’t be any other cars like that around, she reasoned, not in a town that was hardly larger than a puddle. “A sports car,” she elaborated. “I wound up being thrown from my car because I couldn’t get the top up once that awful deluge started. Don’t you people get weather warnings?” she asked, frustrated. She’d always been in control of a situation and what she’d just been through had taken that away from her.

She didn’t like feeling this way.

“Sometimes,” Liam answered, although he had a feeling that wouldn’t have done her any good. The woman would have had to have her radio station set to local news and he had a hunch she would have been listening to some hard-rock singer.

Her story about being thrown from her vehicle was completely plausible. There was no way she would have been out here without a car or at least some mode of transportation.

But if that was the case, where was her car? Had it gotten completely filled with rainwater and wound up submerged? If so, it would turn up once the floodwaters receded. Unless the turbulent basin waters had succeeded in dragging it out to the gulf.

In either case, the car she was asking about wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

Just for good measure, and because the woman appeared so utterly distraught, Liam looked around the surrounding area again.

Slowly.

Which was when he saw it.

Saw the car the woman had to be asking about. The topless white vehicle wasn’t lying mangled on the side of the newly created bank, but it might as well have been for all the use she could get out of it in its present position.

How was she going to take this latest twist? he couldn’t help wondering.

Only one way to find out, Liam decided, bracing himself. “Is that your car?” he asked, pointing toward the only vehicle—besides his own—in their vicinity.

Hope sprang up within her as Whitney looked around. But she didn’t see anything that even resembled her gleaming white vehicle—

Until she did.

Whitney wasn’t aware of her mouth dropping open as she rose to her feet and walked toward her car, moving like someone in a trance—or more accurately, in a very bad dream.

“Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper and she felt numb all over as she stared at the Mercedes in utter disbelief. Her beautiful white vehicle appeared to be relatively intact—but there was one major problem with it.

The white sports car was caught up in a tree.

“What’s it doing up there?” she cried, her voice cracking at the end of her question.

None of this seemed real to her, not the sudden deluge coming out of nowhere, not the fact that she had almost drowned in water that hadn’t been there minutes earlier and certainly not the fact that her car now had an aerial view of the area.

“By the looks of it, I’d say hanging,” Liam replied quietly.

“Can’t you get it down?” she asked him. She hadn’t the faintest idea on how to proceed from here if he gave her a negative answer.

As she looked up at him hopefully, Liam gave her a crooked grin. “I might be strong,” he told her, “but I’m not that strong.” Having said that, Liam took out his cell phone. Within a second, his fingers were tapping out a number on his keypad.

“Are you calling AAA?” she asked.

Again, Liam smiled. He was calling the only one everyone in the area called when they had car trouble, Forever’s best—and only—mechanic.

“I’m calling Mick,” he told her. “He might be rated AAA, I don’t know, but he’s been a car mechanic for as long as I’ve known him and he’s pretty much seen everything.”

Maybe it was because her brain was somewhat addled from its underwater adventure, but the fact that this cowboy was calling some hayseed mechanic didn’t exactly fill her with confidence or sound overly encouraging to her.

Whitney took a step closer to the tree and to her dismay, she realized that she’d lost one of her shoes during her brief nonswim. That left her very lopsided. The fact only registered as she found herself pitching forward.

The upshot of that was she would have been communing—face-first—with the wet ground if the man who had initially pulled her out of the water hadn’t lunged and made a grab for her now, grabbing her by the waist.

“Are you okay?” Liam wanted to know, doing his own quick once-over of the woman—just in case. His arm stayed where it was, around her waist.

She wanted to say yes, she was fine. She’d been trained to say yes and then pull back, so that she could go back to managing on her own. But training or not, she still felt rather shaky inside, the way a person who had just come face-to-face with their own mortality might.

Given that state of mind, in a moment of weakness, Whitney answered him truthfully, “I don’t know yet.”

Turning so that he was facing her and the incline, he indicated his truck. “Why don’t you sit down in the cab of my truck while we wait for Mick to get here? Or, better yet, I could take you to the clinic in town if you want to be checked out.”

“Clinic?” she repeated with a slight bewildered frown. “You mean hospital, right?”

“No, I mean clinic,” he replied. “If you want a hospital, I could take you,” he said, then warned her, “but the closest one is approximately fifty miles away in Pine Ridge.”

He was kidding, right? Were the hospitals around here really that far apart?

“Fifty miles away?” Whitney echoed, utterly stunned. “What if there’s a medical emergency?” she asked.

Fortunately, they had that covered now—but it hadn’t always been that way. The residents of Forever had gone some thirty years between doctors until Dan Davenport had come to fill the vast vacancy.

“It would have to be a pretty big emergency to be something that Dr. Dan and Lady Doc couldn’t handle,” Liam told her.

Very gently, he tried to guide her over to his truck, but the petite woman firmly held her ground. She had to be stronger than she looked.

Dr. Dan. Lady Doc. She felt like Alice after the fictional character had slid down the rabbit hole. For a second, Whitney thought that the cowboy was putting her on, but there wasn’t even a hint of a smile curving his rather sensual mouth and not so much as a glimmer of humor in his eyes.

He was serious.

What kind of a place was this?

“So, do you want to go?” Liam prodded.

“Go? Go where?” Whitney asked. Her light eyebrows came together in what looked like an upside-down V.

“To the clinic,” Liam repeated patiently. If she couldn’t keep abreast of the conversation, maybe he should just take her to the clinic even if she didn’t want to go. He sincerely doubted that she could offer any real resistance if he decided to load her into his truck and drive into town. And it would be for her own good.

“No, I’m okay,” Whitney insisted. “A little rattled, but I’m okay,” she repeated with more conviction. “And I’ll be more okay when my car is taken down out of that tree.”

Looking over her shoulder to see if she had finally convinced him, she found that the cowboy had walked away from her. The next moment, he was back. He had a fleece-lined denim jacket in his hand that he then proceeded to drape over her shoulders.

“You look cold,” he explained when she looked at him warily. “And you’re already chilled. Thought this might help.”

Her natural inclination to argue subsided in the face of this new display of thoughtfulness. Besides, she had begun to feel a cold chill corkscrewing down along her spine. The jacket was soft and warm and given half a chance, she would have just curled up in it and gone to sleep. She was exhausted. The next moment, she was fighting that feeling.

Whitney smiled at the cowboy and said, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he responded, then extended his hand to her. “I’m Liam, by the way. Liam Murphy.”

Whitney slipped her hand into his, absently noting how strong it felt as she shook it. “Whitney Marlowe,” she responded.

Liam’s grin widened. “Pleased to meet you, Whitney Marlowe,” he said, then added, “Sorry the circumstances weren’t better.”

Whitney laughed softly to herself. “They could have been worse,” she told him. When he looked at her quizzically, she explained, “You might not have heard me in time and then I would have drowned.”

What she said was true, but he had learned a long time ago not to focus on the bad, only the good. “Not a pretty picture to dwell on,” he said.

“Nonetheless, I owe you my life.”

The grin on his face widened considerably. If she really felt that way, he could take it a step further. “You know, in some corners of the world, that would mean that your life is now mine.”

“Oh?” The single word was wrapped in wariness. “But this isn’t ‘some corner of the world.’ This is Texas,” she pointed out. “And people don’t own other people here anymore and haven’t for a very long time,” she added just in case he was getting any funny ideas.

He could almost feel her tension escalating. “Relax,” he soothed her in a calming voice that, judging by her expression, just irritated her more. “It’s just a saying. You sure you don’t want me taking you into town so you can get checked out at the clinic?”

“I’m sure,” she insisted as adamantly as she could, given the circumstances. Her throat felt as if she’d swallowed a frog wearing pointy stilettos that scraped across her throat with every word she uttered.

The noise she heard coming in the distance alerted her of the car mechanic’s impending arrival.

Whitney turned toward the sound and if she’d been expecting a large, souped-up-looking tow truck, she was sadly disappointed. Mick, the town mechanic who had been summoned to the scene, was driving a beat-up twenty-year-old truck that had definitely seen far better days.

Stopping his truck directly opposite Liam’s, Mick lumbered out. Thin, he still had the gait and stride of a man who had once been a great deal heavier than the shadow he cast now.

Mick took out his bandanna-like handkerchief and wiped his brow, then passed it over his graying, perpetual two-day-old stubble.

“What can I do you for, Little Murphy?” he asked Liam, tucking the bandanna back in his pocket.

Putting one hand on Mick’s sloping shoulder, Liam directed the man’s attention to the reason he had been called. “Lady got her car stuck in that tree.”

“And you want me to get it down,” Mick guessed. Taking off his cap, he scratched his bald head as he took a couple of steps closer to the tree.

“That’s the general idea,” Liam replied.

Mick nodded his head. “And a good one, too,” he commented seriously, “except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” Whitney asked, cutting in. She didn’t like being ignored and left out of the conversation. After all, it was her car up there.

“The thing of it is,” Mick told her honestly, “I don’t have anything I can use to get that car down.” He squinted, continuing to look at the car. “I could cut the tree down,” he offered. “That would get the car down, but I sure couldn’t guarantee its condition once it hit the ground again.” His brown eyes darted toward Liam. “You’re going to need something a lot more flexible than my old truck for this.”

“So what do I do?” Whitney asked. This was a nightmare. A genuine nightmare.

“Beats me,” Mick said in all honesty.

Liam suddenly had an idea. “Would a cherry picker work?”

Mick bit the inside of his cheek, a clear sign that he was thinking the question over. “It might,” he said. “But where are you gonna get one of those?”

“From Connie,” Liam replied, brightening up. Why hadn’t he thought of this before? he silently demanded. It seemed like the perfect solution to the problem.

“Who’s Connie?” Whitney asked, unwilling to be left on the sidelines again. She looked from Liam to the mechanic.

“Finn’s fiancée,” Liam answered, clearly excited about this new solution he’d just come up with. Taking out his cell phone again, he made another call.

Connie, Finn, Mick. It sounded like a cast of characters in a strange college revue, Whitney thought. How did any of this get her reunited with her car? she wondered impatiently.

Because the man who rescued her from a watery grave was on the phone, she glanced at the scruffy man in coveralls whom Liam had called to the scene first. “Who’s Finn?” she asked.

“That’s Liam’s brother. One of them, anyway,” Mick amended.

“And this Finn, his fiancée has a cherry picker?” Whitney asked incredulously. This definitely sounded surreal to her. What kind of woman had a cherry picker on her property? And what would she be doing with one, anyway?

“She does,” Mick confirmed.

It still sounded unbelievable to her. Whitney waited for more of an explanation. When none came, she realized she hadn’t gone about this the right way. She had to ask for an explanation before she could expect one to be forthcoming. Even that struck her as strange. Didn’t these people like to spin tall tales, or go endlessly on and on about things?

So why did she have to pull everything out of them? “Why does she have a cherry picker?” Whitney asked.

Liam had quickly placed and completed his call. Tucking his phone away, he answered her question for her before Mick could. “Because Connie’s in the construction business and she’s currently building Forever’s first hotel.”

Something was finally making sense, Whitney thought with relief. “And she’s willing to let you borrow it?”

“Better than that,” Liam told her. “She’s willing to have one of her crew drive it over here and get your car down,” he corrected.

Liam took no offense at the extra measure. He was actually relieved about it. Intrigued though he was about getting a chance to handle a cherry picker, this was really not the time for him to get a new experience under his belt. Especially if he wound up dropping the very thing he was attempting to rescue.

Besides, he’d already had his new experience for the day—he had never saved a person’s life before and even though he had expertly deflected compliments and thanks, knowing that he had saved a life still generated a radiant feeling within him.

Having answered Whitney’s question, he turned toward Mick and asked the mechanic, “Are you going to stick around?”

Mick nodded his head.

“The car might need a little babying once it’s on flat ground.” He gestured toward the white car. “Those kind of vehicles really thrive on attention.”

Whitney frowned. “You’re talking about my car like it’s a person.”

Mick obviously saw no reason to contradict her. “Yes, ma’am, I am. And it is,” the mechanic assured her. “And it’s a she, not a he. It responds to a soft touch and kindness much better than to a rough hand,” he explained, making his case.

Whitney opened her mouth to protest and argue the point. She had every intention on setting the grizzled old man straight.

But then she shut her mouth again, deciding that it really wasn’t worth the effort. This wasn’t the big city and people thought differently out here in the sticks. The mechanic seemed cantankerous and if she had a guess, she would have said that the man was extremely set in his ways—as was his right, she supposed.

When she got down to it, as long as this mechanic got her car down out of the tree and running, what he called the car or how he interacted with it really didn’t matter all that much.

“What are you doing here?” Liam asked her, averting what he took to be a budding clash of wills.

Whitney turned around to look at the cowboy. The question, coming out of the blue, caught her off guard. “What?”

“What are you doing here?” Liam repeated. “In Forever,” he added in case she didn’t understand his question.

Whitney laughed shortly. “You mean when I’m not drowning in a flash flood?”

Liam’s easy grin materialized again. “Yeah, when you’re not doing that. What brought you to Forever? Are you visiting someone?”

As a rule, they didn’t get many people traveling to Forever—unless they were visiting a relative and Liam was fairly certain that if this woman was related to anyone in town, he would have known about it.

Still, in the past couple of years, they’d had people coming to the town and making changes to the structure of Forever’s very way of life.

“Nothing,” Whitney told him. “I was just on my way to Laredo.”

“Laredo?” He rolled the name over in his head, mentally pinpointing the city on a map. “That’s kind of out of your way, isn’t it?” Liam asked.

She didn’t like being wrong. Having that pointed out to her was a pet peeve of hers and she had trouble ignoring it. “I was just following the map—”

“Guess your map’s wrong, then,” Liam informed her simply.

“I’m beginning to get that impression,” she answered with a barely suppressed sigh.

Chapter Three

“Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Mick commented.

Before either Liam or Whitney could ask what he was referring to, the mechanic pointed behind them. Turning, they saw a bright orange cherry picker being driven straight toward them.

Maybe this was going to turn out all right after all, Whitney thought.

“Somebody put out a call for a cherry picker?” the machine’s operator, Henry MacKenzie, asked cheerfully as he climbed down from inside the cab. He approached Liam, obviously assuming that he was the one in charge. “Ms. Carmichael told me to tell you that this baby is at your disposal for as long as you need it. I guess, by association, I am, too. Unless you know how to operate this thing and want to do the honors yourself,” the tall, burly man added.

Henry, along with several others on the construction crew, had initially been sent out from Houston by the construction company’s business manager, Stewart Emerson. Highly skilled laborers, they were needed to operate the machinery that had been shipped out to do the basic foundation work for Forever’s first hotel.

At this point, that part of the project had been finished more than a month ago, but the men—and their machines—had been instructed to remain on-site until the project was completed. Emerson had paid them well to remain in Forever and on call—just in case some unforeseen glitch suddenly made their services necessary.

Eager though he might have been to try his hand at operating the fancy forklift’s controls, Liam had no desire to risk retrieving the car from out of the tree merely to satisfy his own curiosity. One wrong move on his part and the car was liable to become a thousand-piece puzzle.

He definitely didn’t want to be the one responsible for that unfortunate turn of events.

“No, haven’t got a clue,” Liam confessed. “She’s all yours.”

Henry nodded his head, clearly expecting the reply he’d just heard.