The Rancher And The Baby

As the first lawyer to open a practice in Forever, Texas—a practice she now ran jointly with Cash Taylor with an eye out for further expansion—Olivia put in rather long hours. This despite the fact that she was married to the town sheriff and had a young, growing family. Between them, she and Cash handled all the legal concerns for the residents of Forever, be those concerns large or small. For the most part, Olivia could do that in her sleep.

But rain was something that always made Olivia pause, especially when it seemed to give no indication of stopping. What that meant was that a downpour could turn into a flash flood—often without any warning.

Olivia had learned to be leery of the sound of rain on her roof. It had been raining since early morning and gave no sign of stopping.

“This storm looks like it’s going to be a bad one,” she commented, looking at Cassidy.

Cassidy McCullough had been interning at the law firm for close to four months now, and she saw a great deal of herself in the young woman. Granted she was the firstborn in her family while Cassidy was the last, but Cassidy possessed a spark, a drive to become someone. She wasn’t one to just allow herself to float along through life, enjoying each day but never having any sort of an ultimate game plan other than making it through to the end of another week. A go-getter, Cassidy was working for her as an intern even as she was taking online courses at night to complete her postgraduate degree.

They had instantly hit it off, and Olivia had taken an interest in Cassidy from the first day she had walked into the law office.

Since Cassidy hadn’t said anything in response to her comment, Olivia raised her voice to get the young woman’s attention. “Why don’t you call it a day and go home?” she suggested.

Stationed at a small desk in the corner of Olivia’s office—a desk that was piled high with stacks of paper—Cassidy glanced up from the report she’d been compiling since she’d come in that morning.

Her brow furrowed slightly as she replayed Olivia’s words in her head.

“I can’t leave now. I’m not anywhere near finished with this.” It wasn’t something she would have normally advertised since she took pride in being fast as well as thorough, but if Olivia was considering sending her home, it was something the lawyer needed to know.

Olivia listened again to the rain as it hit the windows. Was it her imagination, or had the rain gotten even more pronounced in the last five minutes? If it got any worse, she wondered if the windows could withstand it.

“If you don’t leave now,” Olivia warned her, “you may have to sleep on that desk, and I promise that you won’t find it very comfortable.”

“Why?” Cassidy asked, puzzled. “I mean, I can see why the desk wouldn’t be comfortable, but why would I have to sleep on it if I went on working?” She glanced at her watch. “It’s not late.”

“It’s later than you think,” Olivia responded, then looked at the younger woman seriously. “Don’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Cassidy asked uncertainly, scanning the room.

“That.” Olivia pointed toward the window when she saw she wasn’t getting through to her intern. “The rain,” she added for good measure just in case she wasn’t making herself clear.

Enlightened, Cassidy nodded. “Oh, that. Of course I hear the rain,” she acknowledged. As far as she was concerned, a storm was no big deal. There was always going to be another one. “It was raining when I came in this morning.”

“Not like this,” Olivia insisted. “This sounds like it’s only going to get worse, and you know what that could mean.”

Cassidy nodded. “Yeah. Connor’s going to be stomping around the ranch house, muttering that he can’t do any of his work because it’s raining too hard.”

Olivia shook her head. Her intern was misreading the situation. “I think you should go home,” she said.

Cassidy still saw no need for her evacuation. “To watch Connor stomping around?”

“No, to keep from being washed away,” Olivia insisted. “You should know better than I do just how quick these flash floods can hit.”

“I know,” Cassidy agreed, “but there hasn’t been one in a couple of years and even that one was over before it practically started.” She waved away what she felt was Olivia’s needless concern. “Besides, I can take care of myself.”

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.