A Cowboy for Christmas (7 page)

“Do you have a place to stay the night?” she asked before she even realized she was going to ask it.

“No.”

“I've got . . . You could billet in the garage apartment. It's a bit junky, but it has a bed with a good mattress.” Why was she doing this? She couldn't believe she was doing this. Offering the garage apartment to him for the night.

“Billet?” His lips curved slightly upward.

“Military term I picked up from Jake. It means sleeping accommodations.” She shrugged as if the offer was no big thing. As if she wasn't feeling the disturbing and wondrous undercurrents flowing back and forth between them. “There's no point in getting on the road tonight in the rain or spending money on a motel room.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate the offer.”

He smiled at her. Calm, steady, trustworthy. Why then did she feel like she'd just stepped off a cliff with a blindfold on?

O
n the return ride to Lissette's house, with the truck seats protected from their muddy bodies by empty feed sacks and the horse blankets he'd found inside the pole barn, Rafferty's mind was racing. Seeing the cutting horse had given him an idea. He was beginning to hatch a plan to give her the money without Lissette knowing she was taking it from him. The scheme would allow her to maintain her pride and independence and still let him live up to his promise to Jake.

Trouble was, it meant staying in Jubilee for the next several weeks.

Even bigger trouble, he realized he
wanted
to stay.

When he was a kid—particularly when things were bad with Amelia, which in those days was more often than not—he would lie in bed at night and fantasize that Gordon Moncrief would come for him and whisk him away to a better life in Texas. He had an old atlas and he'd looked up Jubilee, circling the town with a red pen. He promised himself that eventually, he'd make his way there, seek out his father and his real home, leave L.A. far behind.

When Amelia found the marked-up atlas, she'd laughed at him. “Give up the dream, kid. Gordon Moncrief doesn't give a tinker's damn about you. I'm the only parent you get.”

Her comment hit him squarely in the solar plexus because he'd known it was true. Gordon would not be galloping to his rescue. It was up to Rafferty to save himself, to save his mother, to save the day.

Always saving the day. Lone Ranger Rafferty.

But after years of never hearing from Gordon, he'd completely shelved the dream, and then out of the blue Jake had suddenly shown up, appearing like a superhero in Rafferty's moment of greatest need. Jake was the new Lone Ranger and Rafferty had eagerly accepted the role of Tonto.

Exhilarated to have someone to look up to, he'd fallen for the unexpected big brother like a pound puppy hungry for adoption. Rafferty swallowed back the memory.

Jake had never told Lissette about him. Why not? Had Jake been that ashamed of him? Rafferty had so many questions. Could he unearth the answers in this town and finally lay the past to rest? It was a new goal, this inner quest he'd buried since childhood. Get in touch with his roots. Find out where he came from. Resolve his issues from the past so he could completely let them go.

A new question arose in his mind. Was he simply using Lissette as an excuse to stay in Jubilee and find out more about Gordon? About Jake who'd disappeared from his life as quickly as he'd entered it? Or maybe—and this was probably it—did he simply prefer the handy excuse of digging up old history to facing the fact that Lissette stirred him in a way he hadn't been stirred in a long time. Stirred him enough that he was searching for reasons to linger?

In a way he did not want to be stirred, especially not by Jake's widow. It was wrong.

But after she killed the truck engine and looked over at him, her cheeks smeared with mud, her big eyes peering into his, a slow, indigo spark ignited deep in his belly, sending unreasonable desire spreading throughout his bloodstream, melting his reason.

He unbuckled the shoulder harness, leaned deliberately toward her. She was looking at him with a wavering smile that plucked her lush lips up, then tipped them down, then yanked them back up again.

Lissette started to say something and that's when he reached out to touch her cheek.

Kiss her.

The thought rolled through his mind like an unwanted melody. Her chin set hard and her eyes grew even wider and he saw it in her face—the same wanting that sank him.

It was hard to think through the delicious smell of her, the earthiness of mud on the top layer, the wizardry of yeast and cinnamon and brown sugar underneath. Amelia had never baked. To him, baking seemed an angelic skill, more akin to magic than science. Mix up some ingredients, add some heat and time, and
voilá
, an accomplished baker could create something that made the whole world seem brand-new.

He leaned closer.

Every impulse in his body urged him to kiss her. He ached to taste her flavor, to lay claim on her sweet mouth. He wanted to press his lips to the hollow of her throat, lick the steady beat of her pulse. He was feeling something powerful here, something too powerful to act upon. This was dangerous territory and Rafferty was a cautious man.

Her lips parted slightly.

From the backseat, the boy whimpered, waking up. Rafferty could not hear, did not want to hear. His fingers traced Lissette's skin and his own lips parted.

She hissed in air.

A quiet noise by most anyone's estimation, barely audible, but combined with the uncertainty in her eyes, the gentle flare of her nostrils, it was deafening—a whisper hiss loud enough to cut through the indigo heat like a whetstone-honed pocketknife—but instead of smothering the flames, that slight sound let in a back draft of shame, concern, agitation, and the spine-stiffening quake of reality. A definite, don't-cross-that-line sound, with his history on one side of it and all his hopes for the future on the other, a sound like the blister of plastic tossed recklessly onto a campfire.

A moment of utter silence followed while he forcefully swept aside the mental embers and instead of kissing her as he'd intended, rubbed away a smudge of dried mud from her petal-soft skin.

“Dirt,” he mumbled, pulling his hand back and rubbing his index finger against his thumb. “You've got dirt on your cheek.”

“Oh,” she murmured, and her hand went up where he'd just touched. “Thank you.”

They kept staring at each other.

“We both need a bath,” she said, and even in the darkness of the cab, he could see her blush.

“Yeah,” he said, remembering what it had felt like straddling her in the muddy pasture. Rafferty felt himself grow hard and he quickly glanced away, grateful for Kyle, who whimpered again. “I'll get him out of the car seat. You go on inside the house and take a shower,” he offered.

“That's okay, I can handle it.”

There it was again, her prickly pride. “You don't have to prove anything to me.”

“What does that mean?”

“I know you can take care of your boy. If you let me help it doesn't mean that you can't take care of him on your own.”

She ducked her head, stuck the truck keys into her purse. “I can't afford to grow accustomed to having a man to depend on. I don't want to grow accustomed to depending on anyone. Not anymore.”

He barely caught what she said, decided to pretend that he hadn't heard it. Ignoring her words seemed safer than exploring what they meant or how they made him feel.

“Go on in the house,” she said, and opened the door to get out of the truck. “You can strip off in the mudroom—” She halted abruptly as the feed sack she'd been sitting on stuck to her backside and chunks of falling mud clattered against the floorboard. “Good grief, what a mess. I'm the one who needs to strip off in the mudroom.”

Strip off.

The words branded into his brain as his imagination spun pictures of Lissette in her yellow polka dot underwear. Rafferty moistened his lips, banished the image.

Her feet touched the ground and she reached around to peel the feed sack off her backside and then with an unexpected chuckle, she tossed the sack into the corner of the dark garage. “I'll deal with that tomorrow.”

“Go on,” he said. “Get yourself cleaned up. I'll give you a head start so you can leave your clothes in the mudroom, and then I'll bring Kyle in and entertain him in the kitchen while you take a shower.”

Shower.

A vision of Lissette standing naked under steamy hot water replaced the polka dot picture. His throat tightened.

“I really can't let you do that. Kyle is my responsibility.” While she opened the back door to retrieve her son from his car seat, Rafferty got out and went around to her side of the truck.

He noticed how her soft hair shone in the glow of the dim garage lighting. His gaze slid to the hollow of her throat. She was still wearing that pretty opal necklace. Had it only been since that afternoon that he'd first met her? Time warped and he had an odd sense that he'd known her for years. He was a practical man who did not believe in magical things like fate or destiny or soul mates, but this easy familiarity unsettled him.

“You know,” he drawled, slowing down his speech in the hopes of slowing his pulse. “Our relationship will go a lot easier if you stop fighting me on every little thing.”

“We don't have a relationship.”

“But we will. I'm Kyle's uncle. Now that I've met him . . . met you . . . I don't want to go back to the shadows.”

She opened her mouth as if she was about to argue, but shut it again.

“I've been meaning to tell you that my ranch foreman is deaf. We've worked together for ten years. I might be able to offer you some insight into the condition.”

“Know a lot about deafness, do you?”

“I'm proficient in sign language, yes.”

“Really?”

“Really, now say thank you, Rafferty, and go take a shower.”

She looked like he'd just thrown her a lifeline when she was going down for the third time. “Thank you, Rafferty.”

“See,” he said. “Was that so hard?”

Hard.

Poor choice of words considering what was going on in his body.

“Go on.” He motioned her toward the house. “I've got the boy.”

She nodded, headed toward the house. Halfway there, she stopped and glanced back at him.

Rafferty had Kyle in his arms by then, the boy's little hands clutching his collar. “Move, Mama Hen. All is well here.”

A bemused smile crossed her lips. For a split second she actually looked happy.
He'd
made her happy. He smiled back, but she ducked her head and hurried into the house, and that's when he knew he was going have to be very careful. Because he liked her.

Too damn much.

Chapter Six

A
sexy cowboy was showering in her guest bathroom.

Lissette allowed that erotic image to flit through her head as she sat at her bedroom vanity blow-drying her hair. Kyle lay stretched out on his belly near her feet, legs swinging back and forth in the air as he ran the wheels of a red plastic fire engine over the hardwood floor. Above the sound of the blow dryer, she heard the hot water pipes vibrating inside the walls, the downside of owning a hundred-year-old home.

Rafferty. A stranger. Naked.

She thought of that moment in the cab of the truck when she had been almost certain that Rafferty was going to kiss her and she had just sat there, a small part of her
wanting
him to kiss her. Was she that hungry for a man's attention? Seriously, was she that messed up?

Thankfully, she'd been wrong about the kiss. He'd simply wiped mud from her cheek. Ha! So much for her silly ego.

She blew out her breath. If her neighbors knew she was thinking such things they would be scandalized. Some might say she shouldn't care what others thought of her, and she wished she had feathers so she could let opinions slide off her like water off a duck's back, but the truth was she treasured her social community. She'd found a home here in Jubilee and she hated upsetting the status quo.

This attitude used to bamboozle Jake. “Stop trying to please everyone, Lissette. Please yourself, dammit.”

But when she dared to voice a strong opinion around him, he'd dismiss it out of hand—unless it was something he wanted or agreed with. To keep the peace, she'd learned to read his desires and reflect them back to him. She'd cut off pieces of herself in order to be with him. Denying what she needed just to avoid stirring the pot. Since he'd died, she felt a wondrous awakening as if anything was possible if she was brave enough to dig deep and do the work to find out what it really was that she wanted. She hadn't dared yet take those steps and now Kyle was in trouble and she no longer had the luxury of self-exploration. Her son came first. Always.

She was grateful for Rafferty.

Yes, grateful. Because for several miraculous minutes this evening—most notably when Rafferty had straddled her in the mud—she'd forgotten that her little boy was deaf. He'd gotten her out of her mind, lifted the heavy fog that had engulfed her since learning of Kyle's diagnosis.

But the tiny respite had passed. Vanished along with the fleeting attraction she'd felt for Rafferty during those insane seconds. Reality was back, big and ugly. She had to call her parents and Claudia and give them the sad news. Her gaze traced over her son. He looked so perfect. How could he be broken?

Impossible, and yet she knew it was true. No amount of denial or diversion could change the fact that Kyle was losing his hearing.

The same anguish that had hit her that morning was back and packing a mind-numbing wallop, desperate and dark, plucking at her like fingers on guitar strings coaxing out a mournful melody.

She flicked off the blow dryer, set it aside, and absentmindedly ran a brush through her hair. Her gaze shifted to the bedside clock. It was almost eight
P.M.
Kyle's usual bedtime, but he'd napped extra long today and she'd have a tussle if she tried to put him to bed now.

At loose ends, she glanced over at the phone. Claudia would be beside herself with worry. Why hadn't her mother-in-law called already? Lissette hadn't told her parents that she was taking Kyle to the doctor, so she could get away with breaking the news to them tomorrow, but she had to phone Claudia tonight. She knew her mother-in-law. Claudia wouldn't sleep a wink fretting over her grandson.

The water went off.

Unbidden, she pictured Rafferty getting out of the shower, toweling off, and—

What would Claudia think if she knew Gordon's illegitimate son was in her house naked?

Lissette got up from the vanity. One problem at a time. Right now, she needed to get Rafferty squared away in the garage apartment. “Kyle . . .”

He can't hear you. How long will it take for you to get that through your head?

She wiped her fingers across her lips, and then bent down to pick up her son. It was sticky in here, humid from her shower and the rainy evening pressing against the old windowpanes, but it was more than clamminess that sent a slight sickness sinking into her belly. Kyle's diagnosis did that, the memory of that black moment when the doctor had explained about his hearing loss.

Had it only been that morning? It felt like a thousand years ago. When she'd awakened today she'd been one person. Tonight she was someone else entirely.

The mother of a deaf child.

The memory brought the overwhelming guilt and despair back, the utter sense of helplessness. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips to her son's temple. “Mommy loves you no matter what.”

On the lower floor a door closed. Rafferty. She had to deal with him.

Settling Kyle on her hip, she went downstairs.

Rafferty stood outside the guest bedroom looking out of place and uncomfortable. His damp hair was combed back off his forehead and he wore a fresh pair of jeans and a Los Angeles Rams T-shirt. He was barefoot. Lissette had never thought of toes as sexy before, but Rafferty had very sexy toes—long, lean, well groomed. Just like the rest of him.

Lissette's heart gave a strange little hop. She raised her gaze from his feet to his face. He tilted his head, looked a bit bashful at her assessment. Feeling pretty embarrassed herself, she walked to the linen closet at the end of the hallway, did a one-handed fumble for fresh sheets and a pillow, and loaded up Rafferty's open arms. Kyle's solemn little eyes rested on him, not missing a single beat.

“C'mon,” she said, and led him through the kitchen.

In the mudroom, Rafferty put on his boots while Lissette slipped her bare feet into a pair of rubber flip-flops she kept at that back door. They went out that way, instead of tracking through the kitchen to the French doors, and around the side of the house to the driveway.

The backyard flood lamp was on, lighting their way to the garage apartment. She guided him up the wooden steps to the outside door. She paused, stood on tiptoes to retrieve the key hidden at the top of the door facing. She and Jake had talked about fixing up the apartment and renting it out, but he had decided that he didn't want her dealing with a renter while she was here alone, so the place was little more than a storage room. Although Jake had come out here a few times to watch football whenever she and her friends used the house for the Jubilee Co-op meetings. She pushed open the door and flipped on the light.

The apartment was a three-hundred-square-foot room layered in dust. Storage containers—filled with a variety of household overflow from Christmas decorations to old clothes to outdated electronics—were stacked almost to the ceiling. There was an ant trail from the door to where the bed was positioned in front of a garage-sale chest of drawers with a portable television set resting on it. In one corner stood a college dorm–sized refrigerator that wasn't plugged in and a small porcelain sink. Behind a second door lay a half bathroom, sink and toilet but no showering facilities. There was an intercom system that Jake had installed in the wall so Lissy could call him from the house if she needed him for something.

One large window looked out over the back of the house. From that vantage point, Rafferty would be able to see her when she was in the kitchen.

Thank heavens he was going to be here for only one night.

“This'll do fine,” he said, and carried the fresh linen to the bed.

She was suddenly hyperaware that she was in her pajamas and housecoat. “I better go,” she said. “I have to call Claudia and tell her about Kyle.”

“Not an easy task.”

“Coming on the heels of Jake's death, it's going to be a kick in the teeth.” Lissette sighed. “I wish I could protect her a little while longer.”

A mirthless smile lifted his lips. “You really like her?”

“She's been nothing but good to me.”

“Rare mother-in-law.” His expression was noncommittal, but there was something sarcastic in his tone.

Lissette bristled. “She's a good woman.”

“I didn't say she wasn't.”

They looked at each other. More tension between them because of stuff other people in their lives had done. She supposed she couldn't blame him for his attitude. From his point of view Claudia was probably the enemy, but today of all days, she'd used up her allotment of empathy on herself.

“Do you plan on telling her about me?” His gaze never left her face.

Kyle squirmed in her arms. Lissette shifted her weight. “Not until you've gone. There's no point in hurting her any more than she's already been hurt.”

“So, it's not a totally open relationship.”

Irritated, but not knowing why, she scowled at him. “Look, don't get me involved in your twisted family dynamics. I'm just the innocent bystander here.”

He took a step toward her and it was all she could do not to back up. He was a very masculine man. “You mean that you want me to stay the Moncriefs' dirty little secret?”

Lissette gulped. “That's not what I mean at all.”

“Sure it is. But don't worry. I'm used to being everyone's dirty little secret.”

Oh hell, she'd hurt his feelings. That wasn't how she'd meant it, but with exhaustion weighing down every cell in her body she had trouble finding an apology.

“That's not what I meant. I'm just . . . this is all . . .” She waved a hand at Kyle's ear. “I'm hanging by a thread here.”

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.