this kind of thing happen often?” Whitney asked warily. Because if it did, she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live here.
Why not? her inner voice mocked. You live in the land of earthquakes. One natural disaster is pretty much like another.
Her expression remained stony as she waited for the cowboy to give her an answer.
“No, not often,” Liam assured her, removing his hands from her shoulders. “But when it does, I guarantee that it leaves one hell of an impression.”
The woman was trying to sit up again, he realized. Rather than watch her digging her elbows into the ground to try to push herself up, Liam put his hands back on her shoulders, exerting just the right amount of pressure to keep her down.
The look she gave him was a mixture of exasperation and confusion.
“Why don’t you just hold on to me and I’ll get you into a sitting position,” Liam suggested.
Having no choice—she was not in any shape to outwrestle him and she suspected that out-arguing this gentle-spoken cowboy might be harder than it appeared—Whitney did as he proposed.
With her arms wrapped around his neck, Whitney was slowly raised into a sitting position. She realized that she was just a few feet away from what had been angry, dangerous waters a very short time ago, not to mention her final resting place.
The scene registered for the first time. The man beside her had risked his life to save hers. Why?
“You dived into that?” she asked in semi-disbelief.
Liam nodded. “I had to,” he replied simply. “You weren’t about to walk on water and come out on your own. What happened?” he asked. “Did the water overwhelm you?” Then, before she could answer, he added another basic question to the growing stack in his head. “Why weren’t you swimming?”
She was about to lie, saying whatever excuse came to mind, but then she stopped herself. This man had risked his life in order to save her. She owed him the truth.
“I don’t know how,” she murmured almost under her breath.
Liam stared at her, still not 100 percent convinced. “Really?”
Her very last ounce of energy had been summarily depleted as she had devoted every single ounce within her to staying alive in the swiftly moving waters. If it hadn’t been, she would have been annoyed at his display of disbelief.
“Really,” she answered wearily.
“Never met anyone who didn’t know how to swim,” he commented.
“Well, now you have,” she answered, trying her best to come around enough to stand up.
Since the torrents had abated and she was now sitting on the ground, utterly soaked, Whitney looked around the immediate area.
That’s when it finally hit her. She wasn’t overlooking it. It wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“Where’s my car?” she asked the man who had rescued her.
Liam looked at her a touch uncertainly.
“What car?”
“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
