Christmas Cowboy Duet

by Marie Ferrarella

“What the band and I need,” he pointed out, “is someone we can trust. Someone we feel has our best interests at heart.” He was looking straight at her as he put forth his band’s requirement for the future.

  She had to admit that the idea of representing Liam and his band was tempting. She’d only been at the very beginning of a couple of performers’ careers, but even then it had been strictly in a distant, advisory capacity. The way she viewed it, she wasn’t cutthroat enough to be a successful agent.

  “Look, Liam,” she began, “I’m flattered, but you need someone with a lot more expertise than I have.” She thought for a second, then went on. “I’ve got a list of agents somewhere. Why don’t I—”

  “Maybe I don’t want someone with more expertise than you,” Liam said, not letting her finish what she was saying. “Maybe I want someone who’s as hungry as I am to get somewhere in that particular field, hungry to get started in this business and build a career.”

  Oh, dear God, Whitney thought as she looked up at him, she was tempted. Really, really tempted. What Liam was suggesting—managing his band—would be taking a chance. It meant challenging herself, taking a real risk by leaving everything she knew behind and starting fresh in a brand-new, virgin world. It would mean giving up her comfort zone and the perks she had right now and diving headfirst into the deep end of the pool.

  What perks? A little voice in her head jeered. You spend half the year traveling around, sleeping in strange, uncomfortable hotel beds, periodically calling Wilson and arguing with him until he comes around. That’s not a life. That’s an existence. When you think about it, maybe it’s even a rut.

  Still, rut or not, it was her rut and she could depend on it.

  “Tell you what, Liam, why don’t we just take this whole idea one step at a time? Is that okay with you?” she asked.

  Liam nodded, the moonlight outlining his chiseled features and managing somehow to make them even sexier than they already were. If the man looked any sexier, Whitney caught herself thinking, there would probably be a law on the books requiring him to wear a paper bag over his head in public. As it was, she could hardly keep from running her fingers through his light blond hair. It looked silky—was it? she wondered.

  “Okay,” Liam agreed to her suggestion.

  Arriving at her door, he put the lantern down on the floor.

  The next moment, rather than opening the door for her, Liam managed to surprise her by slipping his fingers into her hair and framing her face.

  Whitney could feel her heart starting to accelerate, beating hard with an anticipation she really shouldn’t be having, she silently lectured herself.

  But she made no move to put distance between herself and Liam. Instead, she asked him in a voice that was hardly above a whisper, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m just following your suggestion,” he told her, his face so serious Whitney had no idea just what she was to expect.

  Everything inside of her was on edge, anticipation all but overwhelming her. “My suggestion?”

  Liam nodded his head. Light blond hair fell into his eyes but he ignored it. His gaze never left hers. “Taking it one step at a time.”

  And then, with the moonlight pushing its way in through the various windows, wrapping itself around them, Liam drew her a fraction of an inch closer, lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her.

  Unlike the first time they’d kissed, this kiss began slowly, softly, but with a purpose. Even though it flowered at an even pace, it drew all the energy from her in a single instant. She came close to melting away in the ensuing wave of heat.

  One moment, the kiss was so gentle, so delicate, it felt as light as a butterfly’s wing fluttering by. The next moment, heated passion all but exploded between them and for the life of her, she couldn’t tell if he was the one who had struck the match—or if she was. All she knew was that something far more powerful than she had taken over, all but consuming her with its head-spinning majesty.

  This was wrong, wrong, wrong. Her brain kept telegraphing the protest to the rest of her, desperately trying to get the message registered and acted on.

  Allowing what was taking place to go any further was wrong for so many reasons, it was difficult to know where to begin. She was mixing business with pleasure, interweaving her professional life with her private one and worse than that, she was behaving like a cougar in training, or maybe just a plain, old-fashioned cradle robber.

  And her resolve was growing weaker by the moment.

  But as much as she could so very easily succumb to what was happening to her, Whitney summoned every last ounce of strength she still had and separated her mouth from his.

  She saw the bewilderment, the question in Liam’s eyes, and knew she couldn’t just turn her back on him and walk off. She had to explain, to make him see why she couldn’t allow this to happen between them.

  She began with the most basic of reasons why they shouldn’t sleep together—because she knew that was where this was clearly headed. “How old are you?”

  Liam stared at her, a look of bewilderment on his face that made her rethink her question.

  “What’s my age have to do with anything?”

  “A lot,” she insisted, her eyes narrowing to tiny laser points focused on him. “Now, how old are you?” she repeated.

  “Old enough,” Liam maintained.

  That’s what people said when they weren’t old enough. “Well, I’m older.”

  He nodded his head as if to evaluate her. “And I see that you’re getting around just fine without your walker,” he cracked.

  That managed to get her more annoyed. “I’m not making jokes,” she snapped.

  “You’re also not making sense,” Liam countered calmly.

  “Don’t you understand? I’m older than you,” Whitney informed him pointedly, certain of the fact now.

  Liam shrugged, completely unmoved by this so-called revelation. “A lot of people are. So what?”

  “So it bothers me,” she insisted hotly. There were so many ugly names for the situation she found herself almost entangled in. She wanted to nip this right in the bud. It couldn’t be allowed to flower.

  Again Liam lifted his broad shoulders in a careless shrug. “It doesn’t bother me,” he said.

  How could it not? she wondered. “It should,” she told him in no uncertain terms, implying that if it didn’t bother him, then there was something wrong with the way he was thinking.

  “Why?” Liam pressed. “You’re a beautiful woman who has sophistication and maturity on her side. If anything, you’re like a fine wine, although I doubt you’ve had much time to ferment,” he teased, softly kissing her temples one at a time.

  Liam was definitely making it exceedingly difficult to resist him, but she knew she had to. Had to keep a clear head and not succumb to the havoc Liam was creating inside of her. If for no other reason, she had to keep him at arm’s length to prevent Wilson from accusing her of pushing a personal agenda by getting him to watch Liam perform. Wilson was very quick to label things. Nepotism was Wilson’s favorite thing to rail against, despite the fact that he was guilty of it himself time and again.

  “I’m twenty-seven,” Liam said. “How old are you?”

  Twenty-seven. She was almost four years older than that. Four whole years. Practically half a decade. However, she wasn’t ready to admit any of it. “More than twenty-seven.”

  Very slowly, his eyes swept over the length of her, lingering a little during the passage. “I’m willing to bet it’s not much more. One year? Two? Six?”

  “Six?” she cried, her eyes widening in apparent shock and dismay. And then she realized by Liam’s grin that he had somehow set her up—to what end?

  “Okay,” he said and nodded, taking in every nuance that had just transpired between Whitney and himself. “
More than two and, judging by that cry, less than six. So that means that you’ve got a few years left before you forget how to feed yourself and have to be shipped off to a nursing home. I suggest you enjoy them.”

  “I am,” she informed him with a toss of her head. It was a studied move, but she felt it did the trick. “I’m doing what I like. I’m discovering new talent.”

  “Commendable,” Liam wholeheartedly agreed. “But how about discovering yourself?”

  What was that supposed to mean? “I don’t have to discover myself. I know just who I am,” she told him. “I always have.”

  She found his smile to be positively wicked and incredibly disarming even if she struggled to give no indication of that.

  “Yeah,” Liam agreed to her assessment. “The lady who can make me forget just about everything else,” he told her and just to show her what he meant by that, he kissed her again.

  This time the gentleness was placed on hold, allowing the passion to come out in full force. So much so that she was swept away. She had to throw her arms around his neck just to anchor herself to something.

  The kiss continued to grow in what amounted to a matter of seconds.

  At that point Whitney realized that she was ready to throw caution, principles and everything in between into the wind in exchange for something intangible, but incredibly wonderful—even though it was fleeting and unpredictable.

  Most likely, she would have done just that, had Liam not stopped what was happening when he did.

  Just as Whitney was ready to lose herself in him, Liam stepped back, smiled into her eyes and said, “Pleasant dreams.”

  She didn’t know whether to throw something at him, drag him to her room or just run for cover as fast as she could.

  She walked sedately for cover instead just as Liam walked back to his truck.

  He had absolutely no idea just how frustrated she was.

  * * *

  WHITNEY WAS FAR too keyed up to go to bed—not that she had expected to get too much sleep that night.

  Once she returned to her hotel room, her initial plan was to begin editing the videos she had taken of Liam and his band with her cell phone. Not altogether certain how long the process would take, she had meant only to get started.

  But whenever she got caught up in something, it became a matter of putting going to bed off for an extra ten minutes, just until she completed work on the next frame and then the next one. Telling herself that all she wanted to do was make a little tweak here, a slightly larger tweak there, and so on.

  Then, before she knew it, daylight slipped into her room, dueling with the light from the lantern left on in the suite.

  She didn’t take immediate note of even that. She realized it was the dawn of a new day somewhat after the fact.

  Whitney glanced at her watch and blinked. That couldn’t be true. Yet as she looked at the old-fashioned face, she saw that it was close to eight o’clock.

  She had been up all night.

  But she had also done some pretty impressive editing, she realized and congratulated herself. The editing had included finding a way to filter out the noisy, albeit appreciative, patrons who had surrounded the band. The only time she allowed the noisy crowd was to highlight the band’s strengths as well as its strong appeal.

  The rest of the time, she made sure that the band’s sound was the dominant one on the video file.

  “Okay, Wilson,” she said, addressing the air, “prepare to have your socks knocked off, starting from all the way up to your knees.”

  She played the video for herself one more time to make sure everything was as perfect as she could get it—then she pressed Send and forwarded the video she had spent all night editing to her brother.

  Drained and exhilarated at the same time, Whitney decided that a shower was in order. So she allowed herself only three extra minutes to absorb the hot water beating down on her rigid shoulders and body.

  The shower, seductive in its heat, went on a little longer before she finally turned the faucet off and stepped out of the stall. Toweling herself off, she got dressed quickly, then, after a few seconds of psyching herself up, placed a call to Wilson.

  Her brother’s phone rang four times on his end before she heard it finally going to voice mail. Her hand tightened on her own phone.

  “Pick up, Wilson, you’ll thank me when you do.” She gave it to the count of twenty, then placed another call to him.

  And another.

  By her count, she placed twelve calls in all before her brother finally picked up his phone and answered it none-too-politely.

  “What?” Wilson fairly roared into the phone. “Are you completely insane, Whit? Should I start calling you Half-Whit?”

  “Whitney is just fine,” she informed her brother crisply. “And, for the record, I’m not insane, just persistent,” she replied, her voice softening slightly. “Remember, that’s part of my charm.”

  “You don’t have any charm,” Wilson snapped at her. “Especially not at six in the morning.”

  “It’s not six,” Whitney informed her older brother.

  “It is here,” he said coldly.

  “It was,” she corrected. She’d forgotten about the time difference, she realized. But she wasn’t that far off and besides, she wanted to talk to him about Liam and his band. “It’s later now—and anyway, when I’m finished telling you why I called, you’re going to thank me and want to know why I didn’t call you earlier.”

  “Ha!” He laughed as if that would be the day. “Did you by any chance come down with something in that hick town you’re staying in? The cattle don’t have anthrax, do they?” he jeered.

  “I haven’t seen any cattle and I haven’t come down with anything,” she said. “I’ve just been doing my job.”

  He took that to mean only one thing. “You auditioned The Lonely Wolves?” he asked, apparently coming to life on the other end of the line. “I thought you said they were short a drummer.”

  “No, I didn’t audition that group. But I found a group that’s even better than they are,” she told him, not bothering to bridle her enthusiasm.

  “How would you know that? You just said that you haven’t auditioned The Lonely Wolves yet, right?” Wilson asked smugly, obviously tickled to have caught her in a lie.

  “Right, but we do have that demo they sent, so I think it’s safe to say the group I heard last night is twice—if not three times—as good as the one you sent me to audition.”

  “I’m getting confused here,” her brother grumbled. “Are you saying—”

  She had no patience to engage in lengthy explanations for the sake of clearing up her brother’s apparently foggy brain. Instead, she cut him off and made another suggestion.

  “Put me on hold and watch the video I sent you,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

  Wilson snorted in disgust. “I’ll call you back later.”

  She knew that meant he was going back to bed and she wanted him to watch the video first. “No, I’ll wait,” she insisted.

  He was obviously out of patience, something he never had a large supply of to begin with. “If I fired you, would you go away?”

  “Nope. And you can’t fire me,” she reminded him. “I’m part owner, remember?”

  “All too well,” he complained. “Okay, I’ll watch your stupid video—but if I don’t like it, that’s the end of it, okay?”

  “If you don’t like it,” she told him, “then I’d seriously think about having you committed because it’ll mean you’ve lost your taste as well as your business savvy.”

  “What I’d really like to lose is you,” Wilson snapped back.

  “Maybe someday, but not now. Now go watch the video,” she ordered. “I’ll be right here when you’re done.” Provided, of course, that her brother
didn’t hit the wrong key, as he was wont to do, and disconnect them.

  The next minute, she had dead air registering against her ear, which could, but didn’t necessarily have to, mean that she had been disconnected.

  With a sigh, she told herself it was an accident on Wilson’s part. There was a fifty-fifty chance that it was just that. But, knowing her older brother’s pigheaded approach to certain things, like being woken up at an early hour, she was inclined to believe that he’d just ended the call and hoped she’d go away.

  “Think again, Will,” she declared, punching in his number again on her keypad.

  Chapter Twelve

  It took her three more tries before she got Wilson to pick up his phone and talk to her again. The first two attempts wound up ringing five times, then going to voice mail. Once she heard the prerecorded message beginning, she’d terminate her call and then hit Redial to start the process all over again.

  Whitney was prepared to continue redialing until she wore him down, or he threw out his phone, whichever came first.

  When he finally got back on the phone, Wilson was not a happy camper. “I swear I’m going to take out a restraining order against you,” he declared in a voice that was barely below shouting range.

  “A restraining order against your own sister and business partner? I really don’t think you’ll be able to get one. The judge’ll see this as a family matter and tell you to sit down and talk to me—which is what I want in the first place,” she informed her brother cheerfully. “Now, stop being so stubborn and take a look at that video I just sent you. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.” She knew he hated it when she took the lead, but this time it was justified. She honestly thought that Liam and his band had that something extra that set them apart from the crowd.

  She heard Wilson blowing out a beleaguered breath and knew that he was slowly coming around. “Just where did you find this band you’re so hot about?”

  “I heard them last night right here at the local saloon,” Whitney replied.

  “Where’s ‘here’?” Wilson asked. She could almost see him frowning as he spoke. It took a great deal to make Wilson smile.