A Cowboy for Christmas Page 9

  He looked chagrined. “You’re right. The hard feelings are all mine and they have nothing to do with you.”

  She exhaled audibly and it was only then that she realized she’d been holding her breath.

  “It’s been a long day for both of us.”

  She nodded, unable to speak. The empathy was all his now and Rafferty’s eyes overflowed with it. One minute he was rubbing her the wrong way; the next, she wanted nothing more than to melt into his arms. Why did she have to have such a thing for cowboys?

  “Everything has changed forever,” she whispered. Kyle rested his head on her shoulder, slipped his arms around her neck.

  “Yes.”

  “I would wish that I could go back to yesterday and stop time forever so that I would never have to know what was going to happen to Kyle, but if I did that . . .”

  “What?” he prompted.

  It would mean I would never have met you.

  What kind of irrational thing was that to think? She didn’t want to think it, but it coiled in her mind, tripwire tight and ready to spring.

  “Why not just go back to the Fourth of July and stop time before you heard about Jake?” he asked.

  Why? Because her marriage had been in trouble. Because she’d been miserable and she’d had no one she could tell the truth. Even a whispered word to her close friends about how emotionally damaged Jake had become and it would have gotten back to Claudia one way or the other. She couldn’t have risked it.

  After Jake’s death, she’d felt as if someone had slipped a key into a lock, opened a door. She was a bird with an open cage door and the wide world beckoning to her and she couldn’t spread her wings and fly, terrified that instead of taking flight, she would hit the ground hard.

  Rafferty’s hot eyes were still on her face. It was unsettling, this chemistry between them.

  “You’ll get by,” Rafferty murmured softly. “You’ll make a new life. Kyle will adjust.”

  “How can you be so sure?” she whispered.

  “Because you’re rock solid.”

  “How do you know that? You don’t know me.”

  “I can see it in your face, in the set of your shoulders, the way you cradle your baby and because my mother wasn’t solid or strong or dependable. It feels rough now, but you’ve got the right stuff, Lissette.”

  The way he spoke her name—the name she’d never much liked—as if it was the most beautiful name in the world, raised goose bumps on her arms.

  “I don’t feel strong. I feel like a dandelion. Blown every which way by life’s winds,” she confessed.

  “Flexibility is what makes dandelions so strong,” he said. “They have several ways of reproduction—through seed, through pollination, through buds, even through taproots. You can’t keep a good dandelion down. They look delicate and ephemeral, but they are as resilient as any plant on earth.”

  She had to laugh at that. “They’re pesky weeds.”

  “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” He took her hand and drew her gently into his arms.

  The gesture was too intimate, she knew it, but she didn’t stop him. He held her close, Kyle cocked on her hip. She could feel the steady beating of Rafferty’s heart. They stood there, the three of them, in that cramped garage apartment, drawn together by circumstance and sorrow.

  She’d let him hold her earlier that day, but that had been in a public parking lot. In private, their embrace held added weight and a new dimension of possibilities that scared the living hell out of her.

  She stiffened in the circle of his arms and immediately, he released her.

  “Lissette,” he whispered her name again, breathing butane on the embers.

  Her hands were trembling. So were his.

  “It’s late,” she said.

  “Yes.” He nodded, fully agreeing.

  “I need to go.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good night.” She brought her palm up to Kyle’s head, drawing strength from touching him, grounding herself. First and foremost, she was a mother. It trumped everything.

  “Good night,” he echoed.

  As quickly as she dared with Kyle in her arms, she turned and left the apartment, clattering down the stairs, rushing across the damp yard toward the safety of her house. Once inside, she bolted both back doors.

  Not to keep Rafferty out, but to keep herself locked securely in.

  It was almost ten P.M.

  Claudia paced her bedroom, cell phone clutched in her hand. She’d been willing the thing to ring ever since Stewart had brought her home from Lissette’s house. The longer it went without ringing, the more upset she grew.

  Whose pickup truck with the California plates had been parked in front of her daughter-in-law’s house? Could it be? Was it . . . ? Rafferty Jones?

  Was that why Lissette hadn’t called? Was she entertaining Gordon’s illegitimate son? She could only imagine the things he might be saying about her. How much did Rafferty know about the awful thing she’d done?

  Claudia closed her eyes. Remembered the moment still so fresh in her memory. How rage had shaken her hands. How jealousy and hatred tasted like peppered vinegar. How that narrow corridor had smelled like sweat, garbage, and the sickly sweet odor of marijuana.

  She’d gone to ugly lengths to protect her own son, to stake a solid claim on her husband. She’d been unable to absolve herself. How could she expect Lissette to understand or forgive her? Then again, it wasn’t Lissette’s place to forgive her. Rafferty Jones was the one she’d wronged.

  Unable to bear thinking of her past mistakes, she finally made up her mind to call Lissette. Swallowing back her self-loathing, she punched in her daughter-in-law’s number.

  “Hi, Mom,” Lissette answered on the first ring, “I was just about to call you.”

  From the first moment they met, she and Lissette had hit it off. When her daughter-in-law first started calling her Mom Moncrief, Claudia had been so pleased. She considered Lissette the daughter she’d always longed for. After a while, Lissette just dropped the Moncrief part and started calling Claudia Mom. Every time Lissette said it, a warm glow of happiness lit Claudia’s heart and she bragged to all her friends about the close relationship she had with her daughter-in-law.

  Except not tonight. Something was different. Something was wrong. Lissette sounded so weary, wary.

  A heated flush of apprehension coursed through Claudia’s body. Dread squeezed her stomach. Had her greatest fear come to pass? Was it indeed Rafferty Jones’s truck parked in front of her daughter-in-law’s house? Had she learned the terrible truth about Claudia? Would Lissy stop loving her because of it?

  Dear God, no. She couldn’t bear that. Not on top of everything else. Why, oh why hadn’t she told Lissette the truth when they learned Jake had left his life insurance money to Rafferty?

  Claudia could barely breathe. “Lissy, are you all right?”

  “No.” Lissette’s voice was high and stringy. She sniffled.

  “Are you . . .” Oh dear, oh dear, what had happened? Claudia’s insides froze icy. “Crying?”

  “It’s Kyle,” Lissette whispered.

  Claudia sat down hard, missed the edge of the mattress, and tumbled to her butt onto the floor. “Ooph.”

  “Mom? You okay?”

  “What’s happened to Kyle?” Claudia could hear her own voice shattering like crisp peanut brittle under an angry fist. Here she’d been selfishly worried about her own past misdeeds when Lissette had been laboring under the weight of something bad.

  “He’s . . . It’s why I didn’t call you . . . I didn’t know how to say it. Couldn’t bear to say it out loud.”

  Claudia rubbed her stinging rump—she’d gotten a bit bony down there—concentrating on the physical pain as a way to blunt the emotional turmoil that she knew was coming. A hundred horrible thoughts raced through her brain.

  Leukemia. Autism. A brain tumor.

  “What is it?”

  “He . . .” Lissette hiccupped. �
�He’s going deaf.”

  “What?”

  “Kyle is losing his hearing.”

  “Oh,” Claudia said. She had a split second to process the information and then relief rolled through her. Thank God! It wasn’t autism. Or cancer. They would get him hearing aids and teach him to read lips and look into surgery. This wasn’t the end of the world. They could be proactive. Do something about this. Fix her grandson. “Well, okay then. We can handle this.”

  “The hearing loss is progressive. Nonreversible. It’s genetic,” Lissette whispered.

  “No one in our family is deaf,” Claudia said, feeling defensive.

  “I’m not pointing fingers. Apparently, your family carries a recessive gene for deafness, as does mine. It takes two parents who carry the recessive gene that creates this form of deafness,” Lissette explained. “Jake and I were a perfect storm for producing deaf children. A bad genetic match.”

  “You were good together,” Claudia said staunchly.

  “No,” Lissette whispered, and Claudia knew she was not talking about just genetics now. “No, we were not.”

  A stony silence, punctuated by Lissette’s harsh breathing, settled in her ear. Every elongated second was torture, ticked off by a range of emotions too complicated to express, all shades and hues of dark bleakness.

  Jake was her son. Her baby. Her only child. Pain and sorrow burned through her then, stoking unexpected anger that Claudia hadn’t known was nibbling on the edge of her brain like some kind of bloodthirsty zombie.

  “You were perfect together,” Claudia snapped, frantic with despair. “Jake took damn good care of you—”

  “Don’t go there,” Lissette warned, her tone suddenly deadly.

  Alarm spread through Claudia. “What do you mean? Jake was—”

  “I can’t do this right now.”

  Claudia fought off the ugly brain-eating zombie whispering nasty things. Jake didn’t take good care of her. He wasn’t a good husband or father. He was broken. Something inside him wasn’t quite right. No. No. She refused to hear it. “My son bought you a beautiful home. He—”

  “Claudia, I’m warning you. Not another word or I’ll hang up this phone.”

  Taken aback, she snapped her mouth closed. Lissette never interrupted, had never spoken to her like this. Normally, she was agreeable, easygoing. A real sweetheart. Lissette always made her feel comfortable, welcome, and she readily accepted Claudia for who she was.

  Ah, but she doesn’t know the real you. She has no clue exactly what you’re capable of.

  While part of Claudia was startled by the change in her daughter-in-law, another part of her sat up and took notice. Lissette was setting boundaries, asking for what she needed. Claudia respected that, wondered where Lissette’s gumption had come from. She was proud of her, even as her feelings were hurt.

  This wasn’t Lissette’s fault. She was in pain over Kyle’s diagnosis and she was letting her own grief drive a wedge between them.

  “I’m sorry,” Claudia apologized immediately. “So sorry, Lissy.”

  “I know, I know. Let’s not point fingers. It’s just the way it is.” Lissette sounded so controlled under the circumstances. How could that be? “Something we have to accept.”

  “I’m coming over right now. I’ll make you a cup of tea and we’ll—”

  “No!” Lissette commanded. “Do not come over here right now!”

  The sharpness of Lissy’s voice staggered her. “I drove by your house earlier.” Don’t say it! Don’t say it! “There was a truck parked in front of your house with California plates.”

  “Yes.”

  Another long silence stretched between them. What did Lissy know? What had Rafferty told her? Claudia couldn’t bring herself to mention his name. “You don’t want me to come over?”

  “No.” Blunt. Hard.

  “When?”

  Another long moment passed; finally Lissette said, “I’ve got a wedding cake to deliver tomorrow. Kyle will be with the babysitter. After that, I’ll come over and we can hash this out.”

  Hash this out? It sounded so ominous. The zombie hissed, She knows. Rafferty’s in Jubilee and he’s told her everything. That’s why she’s being so tough with you.

  You’re jumping to conclusions. You have no proof that it was Rafferty Jones’s truck parked in front of her house. None at all. But her gut knew. Knew it as surely as she’d known Jake was destined to die young. Her chickens were coming home to roost. Hadn’t she just been waiting for it all these years?

  “I have to go,” Lissette said. “Good night, Claudia.” Then she hung up the phone.

  Claudia sat on the floor, holding the dead phone, her heart lurching. Lissy had called her by her first name.

  The dial tone set up a deafening racket.

  Not Mom.

  The unraveling of their relationship had started. Claudia hugged her knees to her chest and broke into inconsolable sobs.

  Chapter Seven

  No more self-pity, Lissette vowed. She was done with that. Pity was a waste of energy. Kyle didn’t feel sorry for himself. Why should she? This was a challenge, a hurdle, but she refused to let her son’s affliction define either one of them.

  She was a warrior mom, going into battle against helplessness and despair. They would get through this one day at a time, one step at a time. They would be happy again. She’d started the healing process last night. She’d talked to Claudia even though the conversation had turned weird. Today, she would go see her mother-in-law in person. Then she would call her parents, but first she had to deliver a wedding cake. It was going to be a long day. Just thinking about everything she had to do made her bones ache.

  One step at a time.

  After tossing and turning, barely sleeping, she finally got up an hour earlier than her normal six-thirty. Even when she had managed to sleep, bothersome dreams crowded in on her. Disturbing, off-kilter dreams where she and Claudia and Jake were desperately searching for Kyle, who’d gone missing. Then somewhere in the middle of the dream they’d entered a war zone. Claudia disappeared in a bloody ambush and Jake morphed into Rafferty, who found Kyle whole and healthy eating cowboy cookies in Lissette’s kitchen. In her dreams, she’d thrown herself into Rafferty’s arms and he’d kissed her.

  Hot and passionate.

  His mouth fired a domino effect that began in the center of her stomach, spreading out in rolling waves. He tasted like heaven, sweet and warm and delicious. She hungered for more.

  For a dozy second, happiness had poured over her like warm syrup and then she woke with a start.

  Dream. It had been nothing but a dream.

  To dispel the strange achiness weighing heavily in her lower abdomen, she started making cinnamon rolls. Thank heavens Rafferty was leaving today. Once he was gone, she could set about finding a new normal for her life.

  After she put the cinnamon rolls in the oven, Lissette went to the commercial-grade refrigerator and started taking out the wedding cake she’d baked on Thursday evening. The cake was made up of four tiers and she would transport them in four separate boxes and assemble them once she got to the reception hall at Mariah and Joe Daniels’s ranch. The wedding was at ten, but she needed to have the cake set up by nine.

  She glanced at the clock. Six forty-five. She had plenty of time. She put the coffee on to brew and went to peek in on Kyle. He was still sound asleep so she tiptoed back to the kitchen before realizing there was no reason to tiptoe. Sadness caught her low, hard, and vicious. She closed her eyes.

  Don’t think about it. Not now.

  She needed something else to focus on. Her mind obeyed and replaced her worries about Kyle with a vivid picture of what had almost happened in Rafferty’s apartment last night. They’d come within inches of kissing.

  Don’t think about him either. Keep your mind on baking. Think about your business. The Texas-themed baked goodies. What recipes do you want to use? How do you intend on getting the word out? How are you going to finance the expan
sion?

  The oven timer went off. She took out the cinnamon rolls and put them on the sideboard to cool. A knock sounded at the French doors that led to the back patio.

  Rafferty.

  She motioned him inside.

  “Mornin’,” he said, bringing in the smell of the outdoors with him.

  “Hi,” she replied, feeling suddenly shy. “Would you like breakfast before you get on the road?”

  He paused. “We haven’t finished talking about money.”

  She squared her shoulders, met his gaze. “I’m not taking Jake’s life insurance money and I don’t want to discuss it anymore. The topic is closed.”

  In her mind it was a done deal. The money was Rafferty’s. She might want it, and wish that Jake had left it to her instead, but the truth was that he had not. At first, she’d felt hurt, shocked, betrayed, but as the months had gone by, she’d come to see it as a hard life lesson. She was responsible for herself and her son. Yesterday, Kyle’s diagnosis had stirred up the feelings again, but today her conclusion was the same. It might be nice to be handed a pile of cash, but it wouldn’t teach her anything about how to take control of her own financial future.

  And Lissette was ready to be in the driver’s seat. She’d taken a passive role for far too long. No more going where life’s current took her. From now on, she was taking the helm in navigating the river of life, and she was determined to set an example for Kyle. With his hearing loss, he was going to face many challenges. If he saw her bravely making her way in the world in spite of the struggle and coming out triumphant, it would teach him to never give up until he achieved his goals. At this point taking the money would dismantle all her good intentions. She simply could not afford to accept it. Too much was at stake.

  Instead of arguing as Lissette expected, Rafferty nodded. “I got that. I wanted to talk about Slate.”

  “What about him?” she asked warily.

  “Before you say no, just hear me out.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and noticed he had a tiny half-moon scar over his left eyebrow that she hadn’t seen before. “I’m listening.”

  “The Fort Worth cutting horse futurity begins at the end of November. If you enter Slate and he puts up a good showing, you’ll be able to sell him for a much higher price, and who knows? He could even advance to the next level and earn you a bit of extra money. You said that Jake had been training him and that he had already paid the entry fee for this year.”