It was gone.
As was she.
He had to face it. Whitney was gone and so was his opportunity to apologize, to tell her that whether or not his career took off didn’t matter to him—the only thing that mattered was her.
Feeling incredibly empty, he slowly closed the door to the hotel suite and went back to Murphy’s. Work was waiting for him.
* * *
“GREAT JOB.”
Wilson’s words echoed in her head as Whitney recalled the satisfied expression on her brother’s face when she’d brought him the Laredo band’s signed contract. She had lived up to her promise, done what she had initially set out to do. She had auditioned the pop group—the drummer had bounced back faster than anyone had hoped and had attended, propped up in his chair. They’d turned out to be as good as their demo so she had signed them to a contract. Each side felt as if they had come out ahead. It was a mutually beneficial contract.
After delivering the contract to her brother, she’d thrown herself back into traveling and making the rounds at the various clubs where, on occasion, decent new talent could be found.
“Why don’t you take some time off?” Wilson had suggested the next time she’d touched base with him. “You certainly have earned it—and by my reckoning, you haven’t taken any time off in years.”
“I want to work,” she’d answered, summarily rejecting her brother’s suggestion.
What was implied, but not said, was that she needed to work, needed to keep moving so that she could stay ahead of her thoughts, which were still far too melancholy for her to handle.
“Well, then, by all means, work,” Wilson had told her, leaning back in his swivel chair. “I’m sure as hell not going to stand in your way because—and if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it—you’ve become even better at spotting talent than I am.”
She’d looked at him then, surprised. This was definitely out of character for her brother. If she didn’t know any better, she would have checked his garage for a pod to see if he’d been cloned.
“You don’t have to treat me with kid gloves, Will,” she’d said.
“No kid gloves,” he’d immediately denied, holding up his hands as if she had the right to inspect them. “Just respect. It’s about time I gave you your due.” Leaning over his desk, he’d handed her the newest list of possible up-and-comers she could go check out in person before she made any arrangements for future auditions. “That should keep you busy.”
Whitney had tucked the list away in her pocket without even looking at it, only saying, “Good,” before she’d left her brother’s office.
Though she worked frantically, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was sleepwalking through her life.
And she ached inside.
* * *
“HAVE YOU TRIED getting in touch with her?” Brett asked out of the blue two days before Finn’s wedding.
He’d been watching Liam sitting on a bar stool, just staring off into space for the past twenty minutes. He’d voiced his concern for his youngest brother, concern over the fact that in the past two weeks, Liam had moved around like a man in a trance.
Liam went through the motions of being alive, tended bar, played with his band, but it was as if his very soul had gone missing. There was nothing about Liam that even remotely hinted at the man he’d been just a short while ago.
“Liam?” Brett said, raising his voice when he received no answer. “Earth to Liam.”
The third time was the charm. Hearing his brother for the first time, Liam turned toward him and said, “Yeah?”
“Have you tried getting in touch with her?” Brett repeated.
Liam glanced away. “Who?” he asked innocently.
“The Tooth Fairy,” Brett retorted. “Who do you think, lunkhead? That woman you saved from drowning. The one who’s got your insides all tied up in knots.”
“Nobody’s got me tied up in knots,” Liam denied angrily.
Brett frowned, shaking his head. “You could have fooled me.”
“Apparently that’s not hard to do,” Liam answered listlessly.
Brett tossed aside the cloth he’d been using to polish the counter. “You want me to track her down?”
For the first time in two weeks, Liam came to life. His head whipped around as he faced his older brother and all but shouted, “Hell no!”
“All right,” Brett agreed. His eyes narrowed as he pinned his younger brother in place. “Then you do it.”
Liam raised and lowered his shoulders in a hapless shrug.
“Nothing to do,” Liam told his brother.
“Look, you’ve been moping around for the last two weeks and frankly, we’re all worried about you.”
Liam deftly turned the tables around. “And I’m worried about you because if you have nothing better to do than sit around watching me, you’re in a really bad way, Brett. What’s the matter? Honeymoon over for you and Lady Doc?”
“Liam—” he began.
“Drop it, Brett,” Liam warned his brother. “I mean it.”
“Okay, then I’ve got a question for you. Are you going to be able to play at Finn’s wedding or should I see if I can find someone else at this late date?”
Just because he was trying to function without a heart didn’t mean he couldn’t do right by Finn.
“Don’t worry about it. The band and I have got this,” he said, his tone of voice warning his brother to back off if the latter knew what was good for not just him but for everyone.
“I hope so,” Brett said evenly. “Finn wants to give Connie the wedding of her dreams and that doesn’t include a hangdog front man for the band.” He looked pointedly at Liam.
“As I remember, the wedding of Connie’s dreams involved getting married on Christmas Day and having newly fallen snow on the ground for their wedding pictures. That sure isn’t going to happen, not down here.”
“That’s what I mean,” Brett interjected. “He’s already working with a slight handicap.” Brett came across as relatively easygoing, but his hackles went up when it came to anything having to do with his brothers. “I don’t want you to be another one.”
“No problem,” Liam assured him.
“You’re going to be able to play even though it’s in the town square?”
“Yeah, sure.” Liam shrugged dismissively.
But Brett obviously didn’t consider the matter settled yet. “Even though, ever since Whitney left, you’ve gone out of your way not to walk through the town square, specifically, not to walk by the Christmas tree?” Brett looked at him knowingly.
“What are you, following me now?” Liam demanded, stunned.
“Kid, this is Forever. Nobody’s got secrets here no matter how hard they try.” He didn’t need to follow Liam to get his answers. If nothing else, Miss Joan was his conduit. He could always rely on the woman to clue him into things. “Now, one last time,” Brett pressed the matter for Finn’s sake. “Playing in the town square, with that tree she helped decorate in the background, that’s not going to be a problem for you?”
“The only thing that’s a problem for me right now is a nosy brother who doesn’t know when to back off and stop asking so many insulting questions.”
Brett slowly nodded. He’d developed a very tough skin years ago when he’d had to take over running Murphy’s as well as raising his two younger, orphaned brothers. A thin-skinned person would have never been able to survive, coping with everything the way that he had.
Raising his hands up halfway, Brett declared, “This is me, officially backing off.”
Liam merely grunted in acknowledgment as he left the saloon. He was late for rehearsal.
* * *
IT WAS THE NOISE that woke him. The sound of large trucks drawing closer.
Liam hadn’t really been able to sleep very much the past few nights. Someone would have thought it was his wedding today instead of Finn’s by the way that he acted and felt.
Right now, it felt as if he was mounted on pins and needles.
Maybe it was because, in preparing for Finn’s wedding and rehearsing the songs that he and the band would play, it just brought home the fact that he was never going to get married.
Up until almost a month ago, that wouldn’t have even earned a blink from him. But now, it just made him realize that he would face the rest of his life alone. That there would never be someone for him the way there was for Brett and Finn.
Lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place. And he had already had lightning in his life.
The noise grew louder.
It almost sounded as if it was coming from more than one direction. What the hell was going on? he wondered, the fog around his brain lifting.
Liam headed toward the window and looked out to see what there was to see. The window faced the square and he had been avoiding looking out at or even coming near it, but now his curiosity prompted him to push back the drapes and, Christmas tree or no Christmas tree, to look out.
He supposed even the intent to do that was a good sign in his case. Maybe it meant that he was taking back his life—or maybe it meant that he was just more curious than he’d thought.
Pushing the drapes back as far as he could, Liam found himself looking at what seemed like a fleet of huge trucks. Dump trucks from their appearance. And they were dumping their contents right in the middle of the town square.
There were several white mounds in the middle of the square and they grew with each truck’s deposit.
Liam blinked. Was that—
“Damn, it looks like snow!” Finn cried out, crowded in behind him.
Determined to go the traditional route, Finn had opted to spend his last night as a single male in the house where he had grown up instead of with Connie.
“You see it, too, huh?” Liam asked, staring at the white mounds.
“Damn straight I do,” Finn answered excitedly. “Connie is going to love this.” He suddenly looked at his brother. “Did you do this?”
“Me?” Not that he wouldn’t have loved to take credit for this, but there was no way he could begin to pull off something like this. He hadn’t a clue where this—and the trucks that brought it—had all come from. “Where would I get snow?” Liam asked. “I can create songs. Snow’s another matter entirely. Maybe Brett had it shipped,” he guessed.
“From where?” Finn asked.
Damned if he knew, Liam thought. “Good point. Maybe Connie did it,” was Liam’s next guess.
It was a guess that Finn quickly shot down. “Connie wouldn’t waste money like that. Now that she’s heading her own construction company and donating all her free time to renovating the homes on the reservation, she wouldn’t do something like this just to satisfy an old fantasy she had.”
Finn was probably right, Liam thought. But that still didn’t solve the mystery. “Well the snow didn’t just drive itself here,” Liam said, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery and going over to his brother’s side.
Finn had been staring out the window the entire time that the dump trucks had been unloading their cargo in the square.
Looking for anything that might answer his mounting questions, Liam suddenly homed in on the person who appeared to be signing something for each driver.
A bill?
Who in their right minds would have brought in this much snow, or ice, or whatever the substance actually turned out to be? The person signing for the “cargo” turned around and Liam could make out the person’s face clearly.
Son of a gun.
Finn looked rather smug. “I believe you know the lady, right?”
Liam’s jaw slackened. He stood there a moment longer, as if not trusting his own eyes. He’d already made up his mind that right after Finn’s wedding, he was going to move heaven and earth to find Whitney. Was this his mind just playing tricks on him?
The next moment, still only wearing his jeans and forgetting to pick up a shirt, Liam ran barefoot out of the house. He had to see if it was really Whitney.
“I guess ‘right,’” Finn murmured, then announced happily to the air at large, “I’ve got a wedding to get ready for.” He hurried off to get started.
* * *
THE GROUND WAS hard and rough on his bare feet, but Liam hardly noticed. Every fiber of his being was focused on only one thing. The woman in the center of the truck caravan.
She was back.
Unless he was having serious hallucinations, Whitney was back.
He had no intentions of losing this second chance he’d just been granted by the whimsical forces that were out there.
“Whitney!” he called out way before he was anywhere close to her.
The trucks were all rumbling and creaking, creating a veritable wall of noise all around her. Even so, she could have sworn she heard Liam calling out her name.
Most likely, it was just wishful thinking on her part. Wishful thinking, too, that just because she had called in a number of favors from several ski resort managers so that she could help give Liam’s future sister-in-law the wedding of her dreams, everything would be perfect between her and Liam from here on in.
She knew better than that, Whitney silently lectured herself.
At least her brain knew better. Her heart, rebel that it was, well, that was an entirely different matter. Her heart was hoping for a miracle. It was hoping for the opportunity to reconnect with Liam and, this time, to do it right.
Or at least, not to mess up too badly.
“Whitney!”
Damn it, that was Liam’s voice. She was certain of it.
Whitney started to look around, doing her best to scan the immediate area. The fleet of trucks were beginning to draw a crowd on their own. People’s natural curiosity had been aroused.
She could see Miss Joan approaching from the diner, saw a number of other people she recognized converging on the square as well, but Liam wasn’t part of them.
Whitney could feel her heart beginning to sink a little.
Not over yet, she promised herself. It’s not over yet.
She was prepared to do or say whatever it took to make amends with him, and—
“Damn it, woman, I’m yelling myself hoarse.”
Suddenly, she felt herself being swept up as a strong pair of arms closed around her. “You came back!” she heard Liam cry one split second before he covered her mouth with his own.
After that, she was a little fuzzy about the details. All she knew was that everything became right with the world.
And this time, she intended to keep it that way.
Epilogue
It was a wedding that the people of Forever wouldn’t soon forget, Miss Joan would say in the months that lay ahead. Not just because of the last-minute, unexpected appearance of snowdrifts throughout the town square to dazzle the wedding guests—snowdrifts in a town that had never seen any snow before. But also because, as the bride was walking down the aisle on the arm of Stewart Emerson, a man she had come to regard as her surrogate father, her own father, Calvin Carmichael, seemed to materialize out of nowhere. He quietly asked her for permission to walk her the rest of the way.
“I thought you said you couldn’t get away,” Connie said, totally stunned by her father’s unexpected appearance.
It was one of the few times she had ever seen her father smile. “What? A man can’t change his mind about seeing his only daughter get married?”
Overwhelmed, torn, she looked at Emerson, but the stately man had already gently removed her hand from his arm. Smiling encouragingly at her, Emerson nodded and fell back, allow
ing her father to replace him.
Connie silently blessed Emerson.
She struggled with tears the last ten feet to where the minister, and Finn, stood waiting.
By the time the ceremony was over, there was hardly a dry eye left in the crowd.
* * *
IT WASN’T UNTIL several hours later, after the professional wedding photographs had been taken and the reception had officially gotten underway, that Liam had an opportunity to actually talk with the woman who had set his life on its ear.
“Where did you get the snow?” he asked, still marveling at the winter-wonderland effect it was having on everyone, despite the fact that it had, perforce, begun to slowly melt.
Whitney was still very pleased with both herself and the way the bride had squealed in excited disbelief when she first saw the snow around the Christmas tree.
“I pulled a few strings with the managers of a couple of skiing resorts that I knew,” she replied.
“That was a hell of a thing you did,” Brett said, coming up to join them.
Whitney shrugged off the compliment. “A girl deserves to have the wedding of her dreams. Just so happened that I could make it come true. No big deal.”
“Oh, yes,” Liam contradicted, “it’s a very big deal.”
“I second the motion,” Alisha, Brett’s wife, said, raising her hand as if this was an actual vote being taken. Brett’s arm slipped around her shoulders. Alisha flashed her husband a smile before going on to tell Whitney, “That was a really nice thing you did.”
Wanting to deflect the subject away from her, Whitney asked Liam, “Do you think your band can play one song without you so we can dance?”
He was already taking her hand and leading her to the dance floor. Since he and the band were taking a break, the dance floor was presently devoid of couples.
“Consider it done,” Liam said.
Looking over his shoulder toward his band members, he nodded and pointed his index and middle fingers at them. Half a beat later, the air was filled with music.
“I came back for a reason,” Whitney told him as they danced.
Christmas Cowboy Duet Page 17
