Christmas Cowboy Duet - Marie Ferrarella

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trying to outdo her brother in trying to land this new account for the family recording label. She was the only one who’d been dispatched to audition the new band The Lonely Wolves. Desperate for their big break, the band would have waited for her to come until hell froze over.

      Unfortunately, it wasn’t hell freezing over that was about to be the cause of her demise; it was the torrential rains, all but unheard of in this part of the country at this time of year.

      And yet, here it was, a downpour the likes of which she had never witnessed before. The kind that would have had Noah quickly boarding up the door of his ark and nervously setting sail.

      The rains had fallen so fast and so heavily, the dry, parched ground—clay for the most part—couldn’t begin to absorb it. One minute, she was driving through a basin, her windshield wipers going so fast, she thought they were in danger of just flying off into the wind. The next, the rain was falling so hard that the poor windshield wipers had met their match and did absolutely no good at all.

      Stunned, Whitney had done her best, struggling to keep her vehicle straight, all the while getting that sinking feeling that she was fighting a losing battle. Before she knew it, her tires were no longer touching solid ground.

      The rains were filling up the basin, turning the cracked, dusty depression into what amounted to a giant container for all this displaced, swiftly accumulating water.

      She gave up trying to steer because nothing short of a rudder would have any effect on regaining control of her vehicle. She’d been driving the sports car with the top down and when the rains hit, they came so fast and so heavy, she couldn’t get the top to go back up. Now her car swayed and bobbed as well as filled up with water. It didn’t take a genius to know what would happen next.

      She would be thrown from her car into the swirling waters—which meant that her life was over. She would die flailing frantically in the waters of a miniscule, backwater town.

      She wasn’t ready to die.

      She wasn’t!

      Whitney opened her mouth to yell for help as loudly as she could. But the second she did, her mouth was immediately filled with water.

      Holding on to the sides of the vehicle to steady herself, she tried to yell again. But the car, now at the mercy of the floodwaters, was utterly unsteady. Water was sloshing everywhere. As it crashed against her car, tipping it, Whitney lost her grip.

      And then, just like that, she was separated from the vehicle. The forward motion had her all but flying from the car. The next second, she found herself immersed in the dark, swirling waters—waters that hadn’t been there a few short heartbeats ago.

      Whitney tried desperately to get a second grip on any part of her car, hoping to somehow stay afloat, but the car was sinking.

      There was no help coming from anywhere. No one knew she’d taken this shortcut. No one back home really bothered to trace her route—that was partially because she had insisted years ago not to be treated like a child. She could make her own decisions, her own waves, as well. Certainly, at thirty, she was no longer an unsteady child.

      So other than competing with her, her siblings—except for Wilson, the oldest—all stayed clear of her, making a point not to get in her way. After all, she was the second oldest in the family.

      Tears filled Whitney’s eyes before the rains could lash at them. This wasn’t how she wanted to die. And certainly not the age she wanted to die, either.

      As if she had a choice, the little voice in her head mocked.

      Nevertheless, just before she went under, Whitney screamed the word Help! again, screamed it as loudly as she could.

      She swallowed more water.

      And then the waters swallowed her.

       Chapter One

      The deluge seemed to come out of nowhere.

      On his way back to town after a better-than-average rehearsal session with the band he’d helped put together, Liam and the Forever Band, Liam Murphy immediately made his way to high ground at the first sign of a serious rainfall.

      Traveling alone out here, the youngest of the Murphy brothers was taking no chances—just in case. Flash floods didn’t occur often around here, but they did occur and “better safe than sorry” had been a phrase that had been drummed into his head by his older brother Brett from the time he and his other brother Finn had been knee-high to a grasshopper.

      As it turned out, Liam had made it to high ground just in time. Rain fell with a vengeance, as if the very sky had been slashed open. As he watched in awed fascination, in less than ten minutes, the onslaught of rain turned the basin below from a virtual dust bowl to a veritable swimming pool—one filled with swirling waters.

      More like a whirlpool, Liam silently amended, because the waters were sweeping so angrily over the terrain, mimicking the turbulent waters in a Jacuzzi.

      Liam glanced at the clock on his dashboard. Depending on when this was going to let up, he was either going to be late, or very late. This, after he’d promised Brett he’d be in to work early. He was due at Murphy’s, Forever’s only saloon. Fortunately, it belonged to his brothers and him, but Brett was still not going to be happy about this turn of events.

      Liam took out his phone, automatically glancing at the upper left-hand corner to see if there were any bars available.

      There were.

      “Not bad,” he murmured to himself when he saw the three small bars. “Service must be improving,” he noted with some relief.

      There’d been a time, not all that long ago, when no bars were the norm. A few short years ago, the region around Forever, for all intents and purposes, was a dead zone. But progress could only be held off for so long. Civilization had gotten a foothold in the town, though it had to be all but dragged in, kicking and screaming. Even now, on occasion, the strength of the signal was touch and go.

      Liam pressed the appropriate buttons. It took a very long minute before the call connected and he could hear the line on the other end ringing. He silently began to count off the number of times the other phone rang.

      He was up to four—one more and it went to voice mail—when he heard the cell phone being picked up.

      There was an almost deafening crackle and then he heard, “Murphy’s.”

      The deep, baritone voice could only belong to Brett, the oldest Murphy brother, the one who had been responsible for keeping him and Finn from becoming wards of the state when their uncle died a mere eighteen months after both their parents had passed on. Brett had done it at great personal cost, but that was something he and Finn had only found out about years after the fact.

      “Brett? It’s Liam. Looks like I’m going to be late for my shift,” he told his brother. The rain was beating against the rolled-up windows of his truck with a vengeance as if determined to gain access. All that was missing was a big, bad wolf ranting about huffing and puffing.

      “Don’t tell me, you got caught in this storm.”

      Liam could hear the concern in his brother’s voice—not that Brett would say as much. But it was understood. “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

      He heard Brett sigh. “I always knew you didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Were you at least smart enough to get to high ground?”

      “Yes, big brother, the truck and I are on high ground.” Even as he said the words, his windows stopped rattling and the rain stopped coming down in buckets. He looked up through the front windshield. It seemed to have stopped coming down at all. “Matter of fact,” he said, pausing for a moment as he rolled down the driver’s-side window and stuck his hand out, palm up, “I think it just stopped raining.”

      It

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