“Put on a couple for me,” Liam called out to her as he continued walking away. “I’ve got to be getting ready for work.”
Whitney glanced at him in surprise. She’d just assumed that Liam would get one of his brothers to cover for him at the bar and remain here with her to decorate the tree the way Miss Joan insisted.
Obviously, he didn’t feel not showing up at the bar was an option. Or maybe, after spending the better part of a day with her, Liam had had his fill.
She found that option number two bothered her. A lot. The fact that it did concerned her.
“She’s in good hands,” Miss Joan promised, speaking up so that her voice followed him as Liam walked away from the town square. “Don’t worry, honey.” Miss Joan turned her attention back to her. “I know where to find him and once you’ve had your fill of small-town camaraderie, I’ll point you in the right direction and send you off to be with Liam.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Whitney replied a little stiffly, feeling uncomfortable with Miss Joan’s assumptions.
Had she really come across that way? Had she looked uneasy watching Liam leave? She was going to have to really work on her poker face.
Why would the older woman even think that? she wondered. She functioned just fine on her own. After all, she spent more than half her time being by herself, flying alone from place to place to watch young singers and bands in action, looking for that elusive, magical “something” that separated one performer or band of performers from the rest.
“Good!” Miss Joan was saying. Her voice rang with approval as the woman patted her hand. “So, let’s get on with it, girl. Put a little elbow grease into it,” she ordered, back to her take-charge self.
“Don’t let her intimidate you,” a rather tall, willowy woman with light blond hair advised.
When Whitney turned around to face this newest stranger, the woman smiled and put out her hand.
“Hi, I’m Olivia Santiago—the sheriff’s wife,” she added by way of introduction as Whitney shook her hand.
“Whitney Marlowe—just passing through,” Whitney added in case the other woman thought otherwise.
“Between you and me, I thought Miss Joan came on like gangbusters when I first came here. The woman thought nothing of elbowing her way into my life. But that’s just because she cares,” Olivia explained. “If you ever need a friend or someone in your corner, you couldn’t ask for a better person than Miss Joan,” Olivia went on to assure her.
So she’d been hearing, Whitney thought. “Well, luckily, I don’t need either. I don’t plan on being here that long.” She had no idea why that statement would make the attractive blonde smile that way. She didn’t think she’d said anything funny.
Small-town residents were really rather strange people.
“Yes, that’s what a lot of us said when we first found ourselves here,” Olivia replied, nodding her head. And then she winked. “This is the fun part,” the woman told her, leading the way over to the decorations. “C’mon, grab a few. Decorating is almost addictive.”
The woman really needed to get out more. But, since she had nothing else to do at the moment—and it would appease Miss Joan—Whitney decided to take Olivia up on her invitation and joined in the initial wave of tree decorators.
* * *
WHITNEY WOUND UP staying a great deal longer than she’d intended. Not because she was forced to or found herself commandeered by Miss Joan for some other trivial task, but because she discovered, much to her amazement—and pleasure—that she was having fun.
The simple fact hadn’t even dawned on her until Whitney caught herself laughing at something one of the people on her side of the tree had said in an offhanded quip.
Whitney had gotten drawn into the conversations happening around her. Before she knew it, she’d lost track of time. Not long after that, Miss Joan made the rounds, announcing that it was getting dark and decorating the remainder of the tree would resume bright and early in the morning.
“How long does decorating go on?” Whitney asked, turning to Olivia.
“Until all the decorations are on the tree and the boxes are empty,” Forever’s first lawyer replied.
Whitney took a couple of steps back away from the tree and looked to the uppermost part of the spruce. “How do you get the top of the tree decorated?” she asked, taking in the barren branches far above her.
“Miss Joan usually rents a cherry picker and we use that to help,” Olivia told her. “This year, though, thanks to the construction project—Forever’s getting its first hotel,” she confided with a deep sense of town pride, “we have a cherry picker already on the premises.”
That was when she realized that the woman who had befriended her didn’t realize that she was currently staying in the hotel she’d just mentioned.
Whitney couldn’t help smiling to herself. It was nice to know that not everyone here was like Miss Joan—ten steps ahead of her at all times.
“Did I say something funny?” Olivia asked, slightly puzzled.
“No,” Whitney denied, then added quickly, “I’m just happy.”
“Decorating a Christmas tree will do that to you,” Olivia agreed wholeheartedly. “I think that’s why Miss Joan makes such a production out of it every year. It’s her personal way of spreading cheer.” Olivia stopped to glance at her watch. It was obvious by her expression that what she saw was a surprise. “Look at the time. I’ve got to run. It was nice talking to you,” she said, then asked just before she headed for home, “Are you planning on staying here awhile?”
“Couple of days at most,” Whitney answered.
“A couple of days is better than nothing. Maybe I’ll see you around, then,” Olivia said.
“Maybe,” Whitney murmured. “Oh, by the way, which way’s is Murphy’s?” she asked. “I got a little turned around earlier when we came back with that behemoth tree.”
Olivia pointed directly behind her. “Just keep going south. You can’t miss it.”
Ordinarily, that was a direction that Whitney very well could miss. She had never had much of a sense of direction and relied completely on the GPS firmly fixed to her dashboard. Right now, it did her no good since she was separated from the device, but then this wasn’t a typical crowded urban area. Forever was a small town with very little going on and if she’d been left on her own, Whitney was fairly certain she could get to the point where she had the streets—and directions for getting around in general—memorized.
As it was, even though the directions struck a familiar cord with her, it still took Whitney about ten minutes to walk from the center of town to Murphy’s.
Pushing the door aside, Whitney noted that the inside of the hospitable saloon was nearly as crowded as the town square had been at the height of today’s activity.
Anticipating that the crowd would only get bigger, she wove her way to the bar, expecting to find Liam behind it. After all, he had told her that he needed to work and she had just assumed that he had meant here. But instead of Liam, she saw his older brother Brett.
Had Liam lied to her? she wondered. After spending the better part of the day with her, searching for just the right Christmas tree to bring back, had he decided he had put in enough time and just wanted some space between them?
Still, she couldn’t imagine Liam lying. He just didn’t seem like the type to be anything but honest. Charming, yes, but still almost painfully honest.
So what, now you’re making a saint out of him just because he saved you from drowning? Face it, Whit, all men are more or less alike. Their needs come first. Maybe he’s already found himself someone else to occupy his time.
Maybe she had even scared him off with that kiss this morning.
Hell, she’d almost scared herself off, as well. Looking back, she had never felt a pull like that before—or an
y sort of an actual sexual pull, when she got right down to it. She hadn’t had time for any sort of steady relationship, and the handful of dates she’d gone on had pretty much left her cold and convinced that the only magic to be had between a man and a woman was strictly only to be found in the movies or in some fanciful romance books.
Real life just wasn’t like that.
Until it was.
With a sigh, she neatly pushed all that aside in her head and she began to turn away from the bar when she heard her name being called.
Turning around again, Whitney scanned the immediate area, curious as to who had called to her since she wasn’t exactly a regular here. She sincerely doubted that any more than a handful of people even knew her name.
“Whitney, over here!”
That was when she saw Brett waving to her.
Once she looked in his direction, the handsome bartender beckoned her over to the section he was standing behind.
Because it would have been rude to ignore the man, Whitney forced herself to make her way through the crowd. It took a little bobbing and weaving, but she finally managed to reach him.
Once she did, Brett grinned at her. “I see you survived Miss Joan’s annual Christmas tree foraging.”
She survived, all right, but there were times when she felt as if she had just barely succeeded. “She certainly is something else,” Whitney replied evasively.
In total agreement, Brett was nodding his head. “The woman does take a little getting used to,” he replied. “It helps to know that her heart’s in the right place.”
“So people keep telling me,” Whitney commented. But that just wasn’t enough of a recommendation to her. And then, because she felt she didn’t have anything to lose—after all, she would be leaving town the minute her car was repaired, which meant that she’d never see any of these people again—that was her incentive to ask Brett, “Is Liam around? I thought he’d be tending the bar, but obviously, he’s not.”
“Liam doesn’t tend bar very much anymore. His interests have taken him in a new, different direction,” Brett said.
As he continued speaking to her, Brett took a rather impressive-looking bottle from the rear counter. It was filled with a thick amber liquid. He poured a very small amount into a shot glass. Placing the bottle back on the display behind him, he moved the shot glass closer to Whitney.
“First one’s on the house,” he told her with a warm smile.
Rather than reach for it, Whitney eyed the drink for a moment.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing lethal,” Brett promised. “Just a little something to take the chill out of your bones—it is December 1, after all, even if we don’t have snow around here.”
There was no real chill as far as she was concerned, but she took a tentative sip from her glass. As the liquid made its way through her system she raised her eyes to his.
“Bénédictine?” she asked.
Brett appeared impressed. “Ah, the lady has a discerning palate,” he declared with a note of admiration.
“A lot of the deals I make are closed over drinks,” she explained. “Some of the people tend to favor Bénédictine, which is how I know what it tastes like.”
Pausing for a moment, she contemplated the remaining contents of her glass. “These interests that Liam has developed,” she began, getting back to what Brett had said to her a minute ago, “just which way are they taking him?”
“Well, if he’s good enough, probably the sky’s the limit,” Brett guessed, and then as he looked at her, he went on to add, “But then, you’d be the better judge of that than I would.”
A third sip had her finishing the drink he had placed in front of her. Whitney put the shot glass back on the bar and her eyes met his. What he’d just said clearly intrigued her.
“How’s that?” She was completely in the dark about what he was talking about.
Brett tried to explain it another way. “It’s an area that you’re far more familiar with than I am.”
He wasn’t making any sense to her. She looked down at the shot glass. “That was only one shot and I can pretty much hold my liquor, so it’s not the alcohol making my brain fuzzy. But I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” she freely admitted.
Brett, like his brother Liam, had that going for him. Charming, he had a way of dismantling barriers, dismantling them in such a way that one minute they were there, the next, they were gone and life had taken on a far more meaningful, far more satisfactory air.
“Why would I be the better judge than you?”
Rather than answer her question outright, Brett smiled and refilled her glass, pouring from the same bottle.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I don’t need another.” Though two drinks still didn’t make her unsteady, she didn’t see the need to stand there essentially drinking by herself. That was for people trying to erase something from their memory.
“I’m thinking that maybe, this one time, you just might need a second one.”
They really did talk in riddles in this town, she thought, frustrated. They should all come with an instruction manual.
Maybe this penchant for riddles had something to do with the fact that there seemed to be preciously little entertainment to be had in Forever. Outside of the saloon, she hadn’t seen anything that promised to cut into the day-to-day, wall-to-wall boredom.
There were no malls, small or otherwise—there wasn’t even so much as one mini-mall. There were no chain movie theaters. From what she could ascertain, there wasn’t even one movie theater in the entire town. There certainly wasn’t a restaurant to challenge Miss Joan’s diner for business.
There was, in effect, nothing that served as some sort of a temporary diversion for the people of this small town.
So, poking their noses into other people’s business and saying enigmatic statements that made little to no sense to an outsider seemed to be the residents’ only means to entertain themselves.
She looked at the refilled shot glass with its shimmering contents. “Well, I’m just going to leave it where it is, but since you poured it, it can’t go back into the bottle. So let me pay you for it. That way, it doesn’t count as a loss to you.
“Tell Liam the excursion earlier was really an experience.” She paused a second, then added, “Tell him I really had fun.”
There was no harm in telling the man the truth, especially if she didn’t see him again.
Then Brett said something that blew that out of the water for her.
“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”
“I would if I could,” she told Brett, “but since he’s not around—”
Brett interrupted her again. “Turn around,” he said. When she went on staring at him, confusion creasing her brow, Brett pointed behind her.
It was so noisy in here, with people shouting over one another to be heard, she had a hard time hearing Brett, and the bartender was standing just a couple of feet away from her.
Still deliberately leaving her drink on the bar, Whitney turned around just as she heard someone—was that Liam?—loudly counting off, “Three, two, one!”
The next second, the countdown was instantly followed by a rather enthusiastic burst of music she could literally feel into her very bones.
That was certainly an attention getter.
It had certainly gotten hers.
By the time Whitney had managed to turn all the way around, she noticed a four-piece band set up some distance from the middle of the saloon.
There was a man playing an upright keyboard, accompanying three guitarists. The one in the middle was the only one who was singing.
The one in the middle was also Liam.
Like someone in a trance, Whitney, her eyes riveted on the band, slowly reache
d behind her for the drink that she had just rejected. She spread her fingers out, trying to make contact with the shot glass.
Taking pity on her, Brett pushed the shot glass into her questing fingers. Triumphantly securing it, Whitney brought the shot glass to her, then raised it in a single toast to the band.
The drink disappeared in one gulp.
Chapter Ten
“Would you like another?” Brett asked, his amusement plainly audible.
He addressed the words to the back of Whitney’s head. She was on the bar stool, sitting absolutely ramrod straight. Every fiber in her body was focused on the band. More specifically, on Liam.
“I’ll let you know,” she finally told Brett after a beat, the words all but dribbling from her lips in slow motion.
“All right,” Brett answered.
Even those words were too many, interfering with her concentration. Whitney waved him into silence, wishing she could do that with the rest of the people who were in the saloon. She was doing her best to try to hear the song the band was playing, really hear it. She wanted to be sure she wasn’t mistaken, or talking herself into something.
But even the surrounding chatter couldn’t diminish or detract from what she knew she was hearing: one rather professional-sounding band playing background for one extremely excellent-singing guitarist.
She became even more impressed when Liam indulged in some entertaining, albeit exceedingly difficult, guitar fingering.
Sliding off the bar stool she’d only been partially perched on, Whitney abandoned her place by the bar and came closer to the music, drawn there more or less like one of the hypnotized children mesmerized by the Pied Piper’s flute.
She stopped herself just a little short of the perimeter that surrounded the band.
As she absorbed the quality of the music, she began to notice other equally as important things, as well. Such as the fact that the inner circle that surrounded the band was comprised predominately of young women. Young women who appeared to be absolutely spellbound, hanging on every syllable Liam sang, on every note he played.
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