A Cowboy for Christmas Read online

  And he liked seeing her fight back. When he was a kid, he would have given anything if Amelia had been strong enough to stand on her own two feet. She’d had no one to depend on, and as a result, she’d leaned on him hard. From the time he was very young, four or five, it had been like he was the parent and she was the child. He put her to bed when she got drunk. He locked up the apartment at night. He brought her aspirin for her hangover.

  Rafferty chuffed out a heavy breath. He probably should have just left the check on the counter and driven away. Reality would have brought her to her senses eventually and she would have put it in the bank.

  But there was that promise he’d made Jake. To look after Lissette and Kyle, and right now, she needed a whole lot more than money. She needed an attentive ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on and someone to help her with the boy until she had time to absorb what was happening to her.

  He should be that someone.

  Only one problem. A surprising problem he would never have anticipated in a hundred years.

  He was attracted to her.

  In a way he hadn’t been attracted to a woman in a very long time, and that was wrong on so many levels. She was vulnerable and hurting and his half brother’s widow.

  The rain drummed down while he dithered. He needed to find a motel, make some plans, and figure out how to convince her to let him help without robbing her of her pride, dignity, and independence.

  He was just about to start the engine and drive away when he saw her come out of the side door. Her head was ducked under a big black umbrella. She had on wader boots, and Kyle was on her hip. She rushed toward the detached garage that was just behind and to the left of the house.

  She disappeared from his view for a few minutes. Curiosity kept him where he was. She reappeared without Kyle and the umbrella, hurrying toward the sack of oats slumped against the side of the house. It was a fifty-pound bag, and while it had been sitting under the eaves, it was damp.

  She bent, tried to hoist the oats onto her slender shoulder. Unceremoniously, the sack ripped open, spilling oats all over her and the ground. She let out a curse and looked ready to have a meltdown.

  Rafferty was out of his pickup, crossing the yard in five quick strides. “It’s okay,” he called. “Don’t cry over spilled oats.”

  She tossed her arms in the air. “What am I going to do? Just what the hell am I going to do, Rafferty? Jake’s horse needs tending and that was the last bag of feed. I’ve got to drag my son out in the rain and I’m covered with oats and . . . and . . .”

  He saw the struggle on her face. She was trying hard not to cry. “It’s gonna be fine, Lissette. I’m here. We’ll go to the feed store. Get more oats. Feed the horse. All you have to do is let me help you.”

  “I hate this,” she said vehemently. “I hate not being strong enough or tough enough to take care of things on my own.”

  “Everyone needs a helping hand now and again,” he said smoothly.

  “Even you?”

  “Even me. Now come on. Let’s get the hell out of the rain.”

  Claudia Moncrief had been waiting all day for her daughter-in-law’s call. The longer she went without hearing from Lissy, the more anxious she grew. To calm herself, she puttered in her backyard fall garden, harvesting turnips, onions, and pumpkins. When the rain began, she simply slipped into an old yellow rain slicker and went back at it.

  Her cell phone was tucked in her back pocket. She had to stop herself several times from being the one to call. She did not want to be a meddlesome mother-in-law, but she was concerned. Lissy had told her she had an appointment with specialists at Cook’s Children that morning, but she hadn’t been specific about the time or the reason.

  Claudia suspected for some time now that there was something wrong with her only grandchild. She feared autism, so she’d kept her mouth shut. When Lissette’s best friend, Mariah, had spoken up, Claudia had been relieved. She didn’t have to be the bad guy. And it wasn’t as if she felt strong enough to broach the subject. She was still fragile. She’d just recently stopped lying in bed all day, praying for release from her suffering. Jake had been her only child, and she loved him more than her own life.

  Grief spilled over her in waves. It hit like this. Quiet at times, and then wham. It was a two-by-four upside the head. She ducked her chin to her chest, rocked down onto her knees in the wet soil, and sobbed.

  She had always feared Jake would die young. It was a thought no mother ever wanted to entertain, but it had nibbled at the back of her brain for years. He had been bold from the beginning. Climbing like a Sherpa to the top of the kitchen cabinets before he could even walk.

  Fearless.

  As a boy, he’d had a horrible habit of running into the street without looking both ways first. He liked to jump from the roof of the house, and if he got hurt, he would laugh it off. Her pediatrician told her that he had a high pain tolerance, which, combined with his daredevil nature, had starting turning her hair gray before she was thirty. Now her hair was completely silver.

  When Jake was in those odd in-between years on the bridge from childhood to adolescence, he’d started drawing dark images of war—bloodied and embattled soldiers with severed limbs, exploding bombs dropped on villages, daggers and cannons and guns.

  Always guns.

  As a teen his fascination with guns grew, they were joined by wild bulls, fast cars, and even faster women. Claudia had been so grateful and relieved when he’d brought Lissette home to meet her. Her only concern was that quiet Lissette would be flattened by her son’s oversized personality. Lissy had been good for Jake. Settling him by at least some small measure. On the other hand, she wasn’t so sure that Jake had been good for Lissy. She was so wary at times and hesitant to make decisions on her own for fear Jake would disapprove. Her daughter-in-law’s reticence only seemed to deepen the longer the marriage went on.

  But Claudia admired Lissette’s kind calmness. Her ability to remain impassive in situations where other people got overexcited and reactionary was a true gift. It’s how she had survived life with Jake. He’d been a war ship. She’d been the rolling sea.

  Claudia didn’t know where her son got the darkness. Her new-agey sister, Carol, said that maybe the trouble was left over from a previous life, but Claudia didn’t believe in reincarnation, even though part of her found the idea appealing. Second chances. It was a provocative notion, but what was the point if you couldn’t remember who you’d been in a previous life? How could you correct past mistakes if you couldn’t remember them?

  For the most part, she was an optimistic person in spite of all the curveballs life had thrown her way. The death of her first baby, born three months premature. These days, they probably could have saved Robbie. But back then? She shook her head. Three months in the NICU, looking like a naked baby sparrow, hooked up to tubes and monitors. Such a tiny, precious thing. All that suffering and then she’d still lost him.

  She’d been so thankful when Jake had come along a year later to ease her grief. For years, she believed her life was perfect. She had a handsome cowboy husband and a healthy baby boy and then one awful Christmas Eve she discovered Gordon had sired a son by another woman when he’d been on the cutting horse circuit out in California. Claudia’s happily-ever-after had come crashing in on her.

  It wasn’t even the cheating that ate at Claudia so fiercely. Gordon had always had a revved-up sex drive and a wandering eye and she understood what problems that combination could cause when he was on the road alone. Before Jake came along, she’d traveled the circuit with him, but once she had the baby, her son had become her entire world.

  No, it wasn’t so much the affair as the fact that Gordon had two sons while she had only one. He’d not only cheated on her, but he’d cheated by having a child without her. Jake’s birth had been difficult, resulting in her having to have a hysterectomy. Even though Claudia longed for more children, she couldn’t have them. So she showered love on Jake. But part of her couldn�
�t get over the fact that she was no longer a real woman. Empty. Wombless. Barren.

  Gordon vehemently denied that the child was his, but Claudia knew the truth. It had eaten at her, dark and festering. And then she’d gone and done a horrible thing. The big, nasty awful that earned her a place in hell. She’d done what she had to do to protect Jake. She had not regretted her actions when she’d done it, but with the passing of time came wisdom. Hindsight stirred the edges of her secret disgrace into bloodred remorse.

  She pretended to believe Gordon that the baby was not his and she never told him about her big awful sin. They repaired the tatters of their marriage as best they could and moved on. Neither one of them ever spoke of Amelia Jones and her son again, and for the most part, she put it out of her mind and life returned to normal.

  Twelve years ago, Gordon had been kicked in the head by a wild quarter horse he’d been trying to tame and he’d died of a brain hemorrhage on the way to the hospital. Then when she lost Jake on the Fourth of July, she lost her direction. Lost both her heart and her soul in one fell swoop. If it hadn’t been for Lissette and Kyle, she might have done the unthinkable.

  She’d been completely stunned a few weeks later when she learned Jake had left his life insurance money and death gratuity benefits to Amelia Jones’s son, although she offered no explanation to Lissette. She had even pretended that she had no idea who Rafferty Jones was. That lie ate at her, but she hadn’t been strong enough to face her daughter-in-law, especially when she could not understand why Jake had cut his wife and child off from the money that rightfully belonged to them. And without thinking what the consequences would be for Lissy and Kyle if he were killed, Jake had disobeyed a direct order and gone back to save orphans in jeopardy. She was so fiercely proud of him for that. His last act had been completely unselfish, but she was furious at the government for calling Jake’s supreme heroism willful misconduct and by that designation, denying Lissy and Kyle survivor benefits.

  Now there was something terribly wrong with her grandson. Was this delayed retribution for her despicable actions? Was this life extracting a cruel payback?

  “Please,” she prayed, even though she was no longer certain God listened. So many of her prayers had gone unanswered. “Please, let Kyle be okay. It’s not his fault. None of it. Don’t take things out on him.”

  “Claudia?”

  She jerked her head up, swiped uselessly at the tears rolling down her cheeks with the rain-covered sleeve of her slicker.

  Her next-door neighbor, Stewart English, had pushed open her backyard gate and stood there, umbrella in hand, wearing faded blue jeans, battered old cowboy boots, and a long-sleeved navy blue T-shirt identifying him as a member of the Jubilee Fire Department. His wife, Linda, had died the year before. Cancer. They’d been married thirty-four years. Had three kids. Claudia and Linda had been best friends.

  “Stewart.” She forced a smile. “How are you?”

  “It’s raining. You’re gardening in the rain.”

  “I know.”

  “I brought you some bread.” He held up the loaf of bread wrapped in a plastic bag. “Made it myself in the bread maker that Ben’s wife bought me for Father’s Day. First time I hauled it out of the box. It’s pretty good. I made two loaves.”

  Claudia got to her feet, stripped off her gardening gloves. “That was sweet of you.”

  The yeasty smell of fresh, hot bread drifted across the yard toward her in spite of the scent-dampening rain.

  “Brought butter I churned myself.”

  “You churned it yourself? Now that is quaint.”

  Stewart wore a ball cap embossed with the same emblem that decorated the pocket of his T-shirt. He was bald underneath the cap. He was one of those guys that once his hair started falling out, he’d taken the shears to his whole head, simply going with it instead of fighting nature. Up until the day he died at forty-nine, Gordon had had a full head of brownish-blond hair.

  “Gemma’s on this back-to-nature kick,” Stewart explained, speaking about his oldest daughter. “She’s bought her own Jersey milk cow. Gives me all this fresh milk. Far more than I can drink. I had to do something with it. Gotta tell you, it’s the best butter you’ll ever taste. Warning, it’s addictive.”

  To keep her figure, Claudia had given up excess carbohydrates a long time ago, but the bread did smell good and she’d lost twenty-five pounds since Jake died. Why not indulge? It might take her mind off the fact that Lissy hadn’t called. “Would you like to come in?” She inclined her head toward her back door.

  “Nah, can’t. Hope’s got me hooked up on some blind date.” Hope was Stewart’s youngest child. “I’m not interested in dating, but you know kids.”

  She nodded. “The things we do to please them.”

  Stewart’s eyes met hers. “You’ve been crying.”

  “Who me?” Claudia forced a laugh. “No, no. It’s those winter onions I’ve been grubbing out of the ground.”

  Stewart screwed up his mouth in an expression that said he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t say anything.

  “So,” she said, as the rain dripped steadily onto his umbrella. “Who’s the blind date with?”

  “Piano teacher,” he said. “From Twilight. She gives lessons to Hope’s kids.”

  The neighboring town of Twilight lay thirty miles southwest of Jubilee, and the two communities had a natural rivalry.

  “Well, at least she’s musical. Music is nice.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be a love match,” Stewart went on. “The fact that I’m tone deaf will probably be a deal breaker.”

  “Don’t pass judgment. Give her a chance.”

  “Oh-ho, this sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me,” Stewart said. “I remember when Linda tried to fix you up with her cousin Larry and you wouldn’t even consider it.”

  “Larry sold vitamins through multilevel marketing, for heaven’s sake,” Claudia said. “I couldn’t get involved with a guy who could fall for a glorified pyramid scheme.”

  “Touché.” Stewart smiled. “FYI, Larry declared bankruptcy last year. You dodged a bullet.”

  She smiled, glad for Stewart’s distraction.

  “How’s Lissette?” he asked.

  Claudia drew in a deep breath. “She’s hanging in there.”

  “I heard she had a fender bender in Searcy’s parking lot this afternoon.”

  “What?” Alarm pushed through her. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Mailman.”

  “Oh my goodness.” She pressed a hand to her chest. Why had she been so hands-off? Lissette needed her and she’d been here grubbing in the garden in the rain feeling sorry for herself. “Is she okay? What about the baby?”

  Stewart touched her arm. “It was just a fender bender, Claudia. She’s fine.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “C’mon. You know the gossip mill. If she’d been hurt you would know about it.”

  Why hadn’t Lissy called? “She might be hurt. Maybe she hit her head and got a headache and she went home to lie down and got a brain bleed like that poor actress Natasha Richardson.”

  “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. There’s no point jumping to conclusions. Don’t get upset until there’s something to get upset about.”

  She knew Stewart was simply trying to comfort her, but she didn’t need to be told how to feel. Why was it that men always negated a woman’s feelings? They thought they were being tough, but Claudia suspected it was really because emotions scared the hell out of them. She bit down on her tongue to keep from saying something tacky.

  “Why don’t we go in the house and call her,” Stewart said. “That should put your mind at ease.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “Tell you what, you change your clothes and then I’ll drive you over.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, her pulse thready.

  Stewart followed her into the mudroom, where he took the bread and butter
from her arms and set it on the kitchen counter. She kicked off her muddy shoes and, trailing water, padded through the house to the bathroom.

  She had an awful feeling that something was terribly wrong. She exhaled with the weariness of a woman who’d been through bad times and knew things could always get worse.

  Claudia took a hot shower, got dressed, and by the time she wandered into the living room, she was feeling better. Stewart perched on the edge of the recliner, thumbing through the TV channels. He’d turned on the lamp.

  “Anything good on TV tonight?” Claudia asked.

  He shrugged, looked embarrassed. “I like Survivor.”

  “The girls in bikinis,” she guessed.

  “Nah, it’s the whole Robinson Crusoe thing. Always been fascinated by the idea of being stranded on a deserted island. Not that I mind the eye candy.” He chuckled. “But it’s the survival element that intrigues me.”

  Claudia clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m sorry for losing it.”

  “Completely understandable. You’ve been through more than anyone should ever have to go through.”

  The phrase losing a child went unspoken.

  They studied each other in the light from the lamp. Stewart had nice eyes—kind, intelligent, forgiving.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked, dangling his car keys from his finger.

  “Thank you for doing this,” she said, and then totally shocked herself by going up on tiptoes and planting a light kiss on his cheek. His masculine skin was pleasantly rough beneath her lips.

  Stewart ducked his head and moved toward the door like someone had set a house on fire. “It’s nothing,” he mumbled.

  Good God, Claudia, what were you thinking?

  She cringed. It had been a totally innocent gesture but now she understood it had been a grave mistake. Something between them shifted instantly. Their neighborly relationship had been knocked off kilter.

  The streetlamps were coming on and the rain had eased off. Stewart escorted her over to his driveway, helped her into the passenger seat of his Lincoln Town Car with comfortable leather seats. When he got in beside her, she realized it was the first time she’d ever been alone in a car with him. It felt weird. Particularly after that stupid, meaningless kiss.