A Cowboy for Christmas (8 page)

I
t 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

N
o 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 expansion?

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.”

“Yes, but that was before he decided to reenlist in the army.”

“There's no reason to let the entry fee go to waste.”

True enough. “That sounds good, but you said it would cost me three or four thousand dollars to train him. That money is earmarked for expanding my bakery business. I can't do both. The bakery is my future and this thing with Slate is a total gamble.”

“Not if I help you. Slate's a good horse. I was just out at the acreage looking him over again.”

She wasn't sure she heard him correctly. “You're offering to train the horse?”

“It's what I do for a living.”

“Don't you have someplace to be? A ranch to run? A movie to make?”

“I'm in between movies. My ranch foreman handles the day-to-day operations on my ranch. I can take some time off. Let me do this for you.”

“Don't feel guilty on my account because Jake gave you the money. I absolve you of all guilt. Go back to California guilt-free.”

“It's not guilt,” he said. “I have my own reasons for wanting to stay awhile in Jubilee.”

“Had you planned on staying for a while before you got here?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Why the change of heart?”

“Meeting you and Kyle, I—”

“We don't need you to feel sorry for us.” She bristled.

“I don't feel sorry for you.” His eyes were on hers, steady as the sun.

“No?” She felt oddly breathless.

“I feel sorry for me. For the father I never knew. For the brother I lost. For the childhood I never had.”

“Oh.”

“Look, you won't take the money, at least let me do this. It goes against my sense of honor to walk away leaving you and Kyle high and dry.”

“We'll be fine.”

“I know you will.” He looked one hundred percent sincere. “There's no question of that. But don't let pride override common sense. Jake left you the cutting horse. Let me train him and then sell him for you after the futurity is over. It'll do wonders for my ego.”

“Ego, huh?”

Rafferty's lips curled in a smile. He was particularly handsome when he smiled. “I want to prove that I'm as good a horse trainer as my father. Better even.”

How could she deny him the opportunity? Especially when it benefited her.

“You can pay me with free room and board while I'm here. How does that sound?”

It was so tempting, but dangerous as well and there were Claudia's feelings to consider. “I suppose we could try it for a few days. See how it goes. Trial basis.”

His shoulders relaxed. “Okay.”

“Would you like a cinnamon roll?” she asked, pushing back the baker's spice rack to make room for the saucers she took from the cabinet.

Her mother had given her the rack for a bakery school graduation present. The hand-carved wood rack was from Williams-Sonoma, a store she could not afford to shop in. The squat glass jars held rich, dark cocoa powder, vanilla sugar, whole allspice, cloves and nutmeg and ground Saigon cinnamon.

“Sounds good,” he said. “Smells good too.” He came closer until Lissette was hemmed in between him and the corner of the kitchen cabinet. “
You
smell good. Like cinnamon candy.”

“It's not me.” She held up the spice jar marked “Cinnamon” in block lettering.

“Nope, it's you.”

She raised her wrist to her nose. He was right. She did smell of cinnamon.

“It's my favorite spice.”

Was Rafferty flirting with her? He didn't seem the flirty type, but she could swear he was flirting with her—the look in his eyes, the closeness, his friendly tone, the compliment. This was why it was dangerous to have him around. Even if he wasn't flirting with her, she was imagining it. Wanting it.

“Here.” She shook off the feeling—if he was going be staying here, she couldn't have any of that—and pushed a cinnamon roll toward him. “Help yourself to the coffee.”

“Da.” Kyle stood in the kitchen entryway in his diaper, pointing at Rafferty. “Da.”

“Don't read anything into that sound,” Lissette said quickly. She didn't want Rafferty thinking that Kyle was calling him daddy. “It's about the only thing he says.” She wiped her hands on a cup towel, moved to pick up her son. “Hey, little man, do you need a dry diaper?”

“What do you feed him for breakfast?” Rafferty asked. “I'll get it ready while you change him.”

“You're too helpful, you know that?”

“And you're looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

“The Trojan horse was a gift.”

“Do you want me to leave?” He inclined his head toward the door.

Did she? “No,” she answered truthfully. “I'm just . . .” She searched for the right words so as not to hurt his feelings.

“Cautious. I get it.”

“Kyle loves Cheerios. No milk. He eats them dry.”

“Where do you keep the cereal?”

She hoisted Kyle onto her hip, nodded toward the pantry.

Rafferty retrieved the cereal box. “Got a little plastic bowl?”

“His Elmo bowl is in the dishwasher.”

“Gotcha.”

She took Kyle into his bedroom to change him. He squirmed the entire time. When she was done, she put him down and he immediately toddled back into the kitchen ahead of her, clearly fascinated with Jake.

Rafferty had found the bowl and poured up half a cup of Cheerios into it. He squatted down in front of Kyle, gave him a big smile.

Kyle reached for the Cheerios, but Rafferty set the dish on the table out of his reach. Her son grunted in frustration.

What was Rafferty up to? Lissette stood in the doorway watching him.

Rafferty formed a circle with his right hand, and then slowly and distinctly enunciated, “Cheerios.”

Kyle cocked his head, studied first Rafferty's hands and then his face.

Rafferty picked up the dish again, then repeated both the sign and the spoken word.

Immediately, Kyle made a circle with his hand in imitation of what Rafferty had done, along with puckering his little mouth into the shape of an O.

“Good boy!” Rafferty exclaimed, ruffling Kyle's hair and rewarding him with the bowl of Cheerios.

Her son beamed up at him.

Surprised joy squeezed Lissette's throat. She splayed a palm over her chest. Her son had just communicated in rudimentary sign language!

“Are you okay?” Rafferty asked.

Overwhelmed, she nodded, unable to speak.

“Should I put him at the table?”

She motioned toward the dining room table chair topped with a red plastic booster seat.

Rafferty guided Kyle to the table. Lissette turned away, pressed her lips together tight, laid a hand over her mouth. She blinked, busied herself with taping up the boxes filled with the tiers of the wedding cake.

After he had Kyle situated, Rafferty came over to rest a hand lightly on her shoulder. “You sure you're okay?”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I can't tell you how hopeful it makes me feel to see him picking up sign language so quickly.”

“It's going to get better,” he promised, his touch at her shoulders tightening into a reassuring squeeze.

She quelled a strong urge to lean against him. It was too much, this contact, their swiftly growing closeness. She stiffened and he responded instantly, dropping his hand, backing off.

“Well,” he said. “I have some calls to make. Find out who I know that might be interested in buying a first-class cutting horse.”

“Thank you,” she repeated.

He headed toward the door, stopped when he got there, turned back around. “Lissette?”

She met his gaze but couldn't read what he was thinking. “Yes?”

“Where's Jake buried? I'd like to visit his grave.”

“I
t's going to get better, I promise,” Mariah said, and slung an arm around Lissette's waist when the wedding was over. It had been a ten
A.M.
ceremony with a reception brunch, and the bride and groom had just left. A few friends and family members lingered in the reception hall, which had been converted from a horse barn, visiting and catching up.

Since she was contract labor and not an employee, Lissette usually didn't hang around once she got the cake set up. But that morning after she arrived, she'd told Mariah about Kyle's diagnosis and Rafferty's appearance in her life. They hadn't had much of a chance to talk beforehand, so she stayed afterward, needing her levelheaded friend's take on her situation.