Christmas Cowboy Duet. Marie Ferrarella

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ