Marie Ferrarella - The Rancher And The Baby

Olivia sighed as she rolled her eyes. “Lord, did you ever pick the right profession. Someday, you are going to make one hell of a lawyer, but in order to do that, Cassidy, you’re going to need to stay alive. Now, I might not be a native to this area, but I’ve seen what a flash flood can do—”

“I can swim,” Cassidy insisted stubbornly.

“All well and good,” Olivia replied patiently as she began to pack up some things on her desk, “but your truck can’t. Now, I’m not going to spend the next hour arguing with you. I’m your boss and what I say goes. So now hear this—go home.”

Cassidy retired her pen and the stack of papers she’d been going through with a sigh. “Okay, like you said, you’re the boss.”

Olivia smiled at her. “Yes, and I’ve been arguing a lot longer than you have. Although, given what your brother said to me at the wedding a few weeks ago, you were born arguing.”

Cassidy paused to give her boss a penetrating look. “Which brother was that?” she asked conversationally.

Olivia wasn’t being taken in for a moment. Finished packing her briefcase, she snapped the locks into place. Behind her, the wind and rain were rattling the window. “I never reveal my sources.”

“Isn’t that what a journalist usually says?”

“Where do you think they got it from?” Olivia asked with a smug smile. Packed, she rose from her chair. “I’m not sure if my kids can recognize me in the daylight. Although...” She glanced out the window again. The world outside the small, one-story building that housed her law firm had suddenly become shrouded in darkness. “There’s not all that much daylight to be had, and it’s getting scarcer by the minute.”

Raising her voice, Olivia called out to her partner. “Cash, we’re locking up.”

The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the lights overhead went out.

“None too soon, if you ask me,” Cash Taylor commented, poking his head into the office. “Is it just us,” he asked, flipping the light switch off and on with no change in illumination, “or do you think the whole town’s lost power?”

“Lord, I hope not,” Olivia commented with feeling. “The only thing worse than cooking over a hot stove is not having a hot stove to cook over.”

“You have a fireplace, don’t you?” Cassidy asked as she gathered a selected stack of papers together so she could review them that evening.

As far as Olivia was concerned, a fireplace was good for one thing and one thing only. “Yes, but that’s for cuddling in front of with my husband after the kids are asleep in bed.”

Cassidy grinned at this human glimpse into her boss’s life. “In a pinch, it can also be used for cooking dinner as long as you’re not trying to make anything too elaborate.”

“Elaborate?” Olivia echoed. “I’d just settle for it being passably edible.”

Now that she thought of it, Olivia had never made any reference to a meal she’d taken pride in preparing. The woman’s talents clearly lay in another direction.

“Maybe you should stop at Miss Joan’s on your way home,” Cassidy suggested tactfully.

Cash seconded the suggestion. “It’ll give my stepgrandmother something to talk about.”

“No offense, Cash, and I obviously haven’t known her nearly as long as either one of you have, but I’ve never known Miss Joan to ever be in need for something to talk about. She’s everybody’s go-to person when it comes to getting the latest information about absolutely everything.”

There was a sudden flash of lightning followed almost immediately by an ominous crack of thunder, causing all of them to involuntarily glance up.

“Well, if we don’t all get a move on, this rain just might turn nasty enough to give everybody something to talk about—provided they’re able to talk and aren’t under five feet of water,” Cash observed.

With one hand at each of their backs, Cash ushered the two women out of the main office and toward the front door.

The moment she opened the front door, Olivia knew that she’d made the right call to have them leave early. The rain was coming down relentlessly.

It was the kind of rain that placed raising an umbrella against the downpour in the same category as tilting at windmills. Olivia turned up the hood on her raincoat. Cash did the same with his jacket. Cassidy had come in wearing her Stetson, a high school graduation gift from her oldest brother, Connor. She held on to it with one hand while pressing her shoulder bag with its newly packed contents against her with the other.

Locking up, Olivia turned away from the door. She was having second thoughts about her estimation of the rain’s ferocity.

“Maybe you should come stay at our place,” she suggested to Cassidy.

“And interfere with your plans for the fireplace? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Cassidy responded with a grin. “I’ll be fine. See you in the morning, boss.”

The rain seemed to only grow fiercer, coming down at an angle and lashing at anyone brave enough to venture out of their shelter.

Taking two steps toward her vehicle, Olivia turned toward her intern. “Last chance!” she called out to Cassidy.

Rather than answer her, Cassidy just waved her hand overhead as she made a dash for her four-by-four. Reaching it, she climbed in behind the wheel and pulled the door closed behind her.

Utterly soaked, Cassidy sat for a moment, listening to the rain pounding on the roof of her vehicle. This really was pretty bad, she silently acknowledged. Half of her expected to see an ark floating by with an old man at its helm, surrounded by two of everything.

Well, she couldn’t just sit here, she told herself. She needed to get home. Pulling the seat-belt strap up and over her shoulder, she tucked the metal tongue into the slot.

“I better get going before Connor and Cole come out looking for me,” she murmured. Connor got antsy when he didn’t have anything to do.

Starting her vehicle, Cassidy turned on her lights and put the manual transmission into Drive before she turned on the radio.

Apparently music wasn’t going to be on the agenda that afternoon, Cassidy realized with a sigh. The reception was intermittent at best—and hardly that for the most part. When a high-pitch squawk replaced the song that kept fading in and out, Cassidy gave up and shut off the radio.

With the rain coming down even harder, she turned the windshield wipers up to their highest setting. The blades all but groaned as they slapped against the glass, fighting what was turning out to be a losing battle against the rain.

Exercising caution—something, to hear them talk, that all three of her brothers seemed to believe she didn’t possess—Cassidy reduced her speed to fifteen miles an hour.

Three miles out of town, her visibility went from poor to next to nonexistent.

At this rate, it would take her forever to get home, and the rain was just getting worse. She needed to hole up someplace until the rain subsided. Remembering an old, empty cabin she and the others used to play in as kids, Cassidy decided that it might be prudent to seek at least temporary shelter there until the worst of the rain let up.

The cabin was less than half a mile away.

If the rain didn’t let up, she thought when the cabin finally came into view, then she would be stuck there for the duration of this downpour with nothing to eat except for the half consumed candy bar she had shoved into her bag.

Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had skipped lunch.

Leaning forward in her seat, she looked up at the sky—or what she could make out of it.

“C’mon, let up,” she coaxed. “The forecast specifically said ‘rain.’ It didn’t say a word about ‘floods’ or the end of the world.”