Christmas Cowboy Duet - Marie Ferrarella

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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.

      “So why do you think you need a cherry picker way out here?” Henry asked. He looked from Liam to Mick and then to Whitney.

      “Because of that,” Liam answered, pointing to one of the trees along the basin.

      “That tree?” Henry asked. “Why would you— Oh.” The cherry picker’s operator stopped abruptly as he took in the entire scene and finally saw the precariously perched vehicle. He laughed shortly as he shook his head in wonder. “You people sure don’t make things easy out here, do you?”

      Anxious about the condition of her sports car, Whitney cut to the chase. “Do you think you can get it down?” she asked.

      “Oh, I can get it down, all right. But it’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to be fast,” Henry warned. “And it might not even be in one piece. But I can get it down,” he reasoned.

      Getting the car piecemeal wasn’t going to do her any good. “How long would it take you if you took the proper precautions to get it down in one piece?” Whitney asked.

      “Won’t know until I start,” Henry answered. “I’m also going to have to have someone working with me,” he added, giving the situation further thought. “This is not a one-man job.”

      “What do you need?” Liam asked.

      “I need someone in the basket,” Henry said, nodding at the extreme upper part of the cherry picker. “To secure the car,” he explained. “Otherwise, the damn thing’ll just come crashing down to the ground the second we try to move it.”

      “Tell me what to do,” Liam told the operator, volunteering for the job.

      Henry laughed softly to himself. “The first thing you need to do is back away from the cherry picker and let me call someone on-site,” the man said seriously. “No offense—and thanks for the offer—but this’ll go a whole lot better and faster if someone with experience is doing it.”

      Liam took no offense at being turned down. “I get it. But in the interest of time, I thought I’d volunteer.” And then he felt compelled to add, “Securing a car isn’t rocket science.”

      “Might not be rocket science,” Henry agreed, “but one wrong move and no car, either. Hey, it don’t matter to me one way or the other, but I think this little lady might have something to say about it.” Henry’s small, deep-set brown eyes darted toward her.

      Whitney was still having trouble wrapping her mind around this rather strange turn of events: first she nearly drowned, and then her vehicle was thrown into a tree. It all felt like some sort of a bizarre nightmare. A small part of Whitney thought that she’d actually wake up at any moment.

      The more practical side of her,

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