A Cowboy for Christmas (9 page)

“I know.” So as not to give in to self-pity, she started pulling the white lace slipcovers off the chairs and folding them into neat squares. “I don't think it was such a smart idea for me to let Rafferty stay in the apartment while he trains Slate to compete in the futurity.”

“Why not?”

“You know how I am about cowboys.” Lissette waved a hand. “They're my fatal attraction.”

“Are you saying you're attracted to him?”

“Yes. No. I mean, I could be, and that's what's so scary.”

“You're not going to fall for him just because he's a cowboy. You're not that shallow.”

“A cowboy who's staying in my backyard. I don't get why he's willing to do this for me. He doesn't owe me anything.”

“He probably just wants to help.”

“I don't want to feel beholden. Not to him. Not to anyone. Not anymore. Is that crazy?”

“Not crazy, no.” Mariah shook her head. “But everyone needs help now and again and this certainly qualifies as one of those times. It doesn't mean you're weak or helpless. Honestly, I think it's kind of sweet that he feels protective of you. Especially since staying here in Jubilee is bound to stir up some negative blowback for him.”

“You mean Claudia.” Lissette patted the slipcover flat and added it to the pile she was accumulating.

“That's going to be a sticky wicket.”

Lissette groaned and covered her face with a hand. Telling her mother-in-law about Rafferty was not going to be fun. “I know. How did I get myself into this situation?”

“Hey, you haven't done anything wrong.”

Lissette glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was in earshot. “I had a sex dream about him.”

“Who? Rafferty?”

“Shh.”

Mariah looked slightly shocked, but she rushed to reassure her. “It's just a dream, Lissy. It doesn't mean anything.”

“It's that stupid cowboy fantasy I've had since I was a teenager. You'd think after things didn't go so well with Jake I would have gotten over it.” She snatched up another slipcover to fold. “That's it. I'm going to tell him I made a mistake this morning. I don't need his help selling Slate. Joe or Cordy or Brady would be happy to help me find a buyer. Why did I agree to his scheme?”

“What's the difference if Rafferty helps you or one of your friends?”

“You're right.” She gritted her teeth. “I hate being a damsel in distress.”

“Men like to feel needed, Lissy.”

“Well, he can feel needed somewhere else.”

“It's not about Rafferty, is it? Not really.”

Lissette slumped down into one of the chairs she'd just stripped of its slipcover. “No,” she admitted. “I just don't want to get into another situation like I was in with Jake. He took control and I followed. I don't want to repeat that pattern.”

“Rafferty's not Jake. Just give him a chance. And besides, he's not going to be here forever. His time in Jubilee is limited. Cut yourself some slack. Let him train the horse. Hell, bring him to our monthly poker game next Friday. What's the worst that could happen?”

A
t two o'clock that same afternoon, Rafferty stood on the banks of the Brazos River that ran a serpentine path between the twin towns of Twilight and Jubilee. The river divided the two counties, Parker to the north, Hood to the south.

The October wind blew against the water, whipping up moody whitecaps. Dead leaves fell from the red oaks. They skittered across the asphalt of the empty boat ramp, dry and thin as old bones. Numb gray clouds bunched, threatening to pepper the muddy ground with more rain, and the air smelled briny.

He breathed in the bitter, brittle, brown flavor, jammed his hands into his pockets, and hunched his shoulders. He thought about going back to the truck for his denim jacket but decided not to bother. It felt good, this bracing blast.

A mourning dove cooed from its perch on the highline wire overhead. Far off in the distance, a drilling rig pounded steadily, echoing a hard, steely tempo up and down the river. This part of the country sat on the Barnett Shale, the largest producible reserve of natural gas in the United States. No boats traversed the waterway. No cars passed on the bridge. No one anywhere. In that moment it felt like the loneliest place on earth. And this was where Claudia and Lissette had left Jake. Cremated him. Scattered his ashes. Walked away. Without even a tombstone to mark his passing.

Unexpected resentment rapped on his chest. He didn't know where the feeling came from, but by damn, there should be some kind of monument to honor a fallen solider, some testament to the fact that Jake had existed. He got the feeling his brother hadn't been the best husband or father in the world, but he had mattered, and however briefly, Rafferty had known him, he'd loved him.

“It was Jake's wishes,” Lissette had said as he'd stood in her kitchen that smelled of cinnamon rolls. “ ‘When my time comes, cremate me and don't make a damn fuss. No military brouhaha. No ceremony.' Those were his exact words.”

The wind mussed his hair and Rafferty finally gave in and retrieved his jacket. He wandered back down to the water's edge, sat on a large, flat, smooth river rock. The stone was cold, even through the seat of his jeans, and he was glad for the warmth of his jacket. He watched bits of flotsam whirl and twirl down the river.

“Well, Jake,” he said, “you sure screwed the pooch. You went back to war when you could have walked away. Left that sweet wife of yours alone. Abandoned your boy. Now he's gonna grow up without a daddy. You don't get how tough it is for a boy without a dad. But I do.”

Great. Now you're sounding like a Lifetime movie of the week. Poor you. Suck it up, Jones.

“Still can't believe you left a woman like Lissette,” he mumbled. “She's something special. Didn't you know that?”

In his mind's eye, he saw Lissette as she'd looked that morning in the kitchen, a flowered apron tied in a perky little bow around her narrow waist, her busy hands boxing wedding cakes. Those slender, delicate hands produced such smooth, graceful movements. Those hands kneaded and mixed, cut and shaped. And the things she baked—crumb cake and cinnamon rolls—tasted like sugary magic on his tongue. He figured love was like that, created from the heart, sweet and unexpected, like Lissette, drawing him in with the scent of cinnamon and home.

Home.

Nostalgia for something he'd never had drifted over him. But this was not his home. He didn't belong here. He knew that, but stupid thoughts keep crawling through his mind, unwanted and forbidden.

He liked the hint of sassiness in Lissette that reared its head at unexpected times. As if sass were a little-used muscle and she was trying to sneak in a workout. There was something innately compelling about the brown-sugar-haired, warmhearted, single mother that got to him, something that had nothing to do with their current situation. He would have been attracted to her under any circumstances. She possessed an unconscious grace, a quiet, enigmatic sexiness, and a pair of sorrowful green eyes that, when she turned them on him, made him forget his own name.

Guilt crept in then for the way he was feeling about his dead brother's wife. Desire. He wanted her. It was completely wrong. Make no mistake. He knew it, but he wanted her all the same.

Biology. Chemistry. Grief. His habit of falling for women in need. He liked being the one that other people ran to when they were in trouble. Although it always seemed to backfire on him in one way or the other. Any or all of those excuses were true, but in the end, they were simply excuses used to rationalize the sleepless night he'd spent thinking of Lissette and the kiss he'd wanted to steal.

One smart thing. That was the one smart thing he'd done. Or rather, hadn't done.

If he hadn't promised Jake he would take care of her, if he hadn't hatched this scheme to train Slate and enter the cutting horse in the futurity just so he could secretly purchase the stallion from her as an anonymous buyer to save her pride, he would have already been on the road back to California.

The sound of a truck engine drew his attention to the boat ramp where his pickup was parked. So much for solitude. He hadn't made much headway into his conversation with Jake. Hadn't even touched on the gratitude he felt for the way his half brother had saved his ass from prison on that long-ago summer day.

He couldn't make up his mind whether to just stay here or get in his pickup and clear out before the other vehicle showed up. In his hesitation he ended up in the middle of the road, halfway between the rock and his pickup when the other truck came into sight.

It was a familiar black extended-cab pickup with tinted windows.

Lissette.

Chapter Eight

S
he should have expected Rafferty to be here. Why hadn't she expected him to be here? But honestly, she hadn't even known that
she
was going to be here, coming to the river where they'd scattered Jake's ashes had been a spur-of-the-moment impulse.

Lissette had paid Mariah's babysitter Ruby an extra twenty bucks to keep Kyle for a few more hours while she had a long talk with Claudia. It would be easier; she rationalized, if Kyle wasn't there to stir the emotional pot.

On the drive back to Jubilee, she'd toyed with the ring on the third finger of her left hand. It was time to take it off. She'd only worn it this long because of Claudia. The love she'd once felt for Jake had long disappeared, replaced only with sadness for the lost hopes and dreams and the waste of it all.

That's when an idea had taken hold inside her. Toss the ring into the river. Say good-bye once and for all. Close the book on that chapter of her life.

“Oh, Jake.” She sighed. “How did we get here? Once upon a time we had such stars in our eyes.” Or maybe it had just been she. In her infatuation with cowboys in general and Jake in particular, she hadn't seen things clearly.

And now here was another cowboy standing in the middle of the boat ramp, staring at her with hungry eyes.

A chilly thrill lifted the hairs on her arms. Rafferty was so sexy! Part of her wanted to throw the truck into reverse and shoot out of there, but how would that look? She forced a smile, parked the truck, and got out.

“Hey,” she said a little breathlessly as she rounded her vehicle.

“Hey.”

They exhaled simultaneously.

“Where's Kyle?” he asked.

“Babysitter's. I have to go talk to Claudia in person.”

Rafferty's gaze searched her face, his eyes attentive as if he was trying to figure out every thought that went through her mind. She wasn't accustomed to this kind of masculine attention. It made her nervous.

And grateful.

Gratitude was the dangerous part.

He bowed his head against the gusting wind, the early afternoon sun slanted over his shoulder. He wasn't wearing his Stetson and his mussed hair curled down the back of his neck. He hadn't shaved that morning and her fingers twitched to trace over the dusting of dark stubble.

He lowered eyelashes as long and thick as Jake's and Kyle's. Something all three Moncrief men had in common. Gorgeous black lashes. Those lashes softened the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. Lines that said he'd brushed up against the hard side of life too soon and too often. On any other man, that hardness would be intimidating. But he wore it like a badge of honor, not a weapon. He made her feel safe.

Something else to worry about.

“You came out here to pay your respects to Jake,” she said.

He nodded. “You too?”

“I came—” She halted abruptly, not sure she should tell him the truth, then decided, no, she was just going to say it. “To say good-bye to him one final time.”

Clouds passed over the sun, casting them in shadow. “One final time?” he echoed.

Silently, she reached up, removed her wedding ring, and slipped it into her pocket. “I'm tired of pretending.”

In the muted light, Rafferty's whiskey-colored eyes darkened, glinted with meaning she couldn't read. Was he upset with her? The taut planes of his face remained impassive. The man kept a tight rein on his thoughts, but of course, he was a cowboy. It was the nature of the beast.

She lifted her chin. “Our marriage was over in our hearts, if not officially, long before Jake shipped off for his last tour. I've only worn the ring this long for Claudia's sake. She was under the delusion that we had the perfect marriage.”

Lissette braced herself. Waiting for his anger or his judgment or both.

Instead, he nodded toward a dirt path leading through a forest of nearby public land. “Would you like to take a walk?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

He put his arm out, but didn't touch her, rather ushered her toward the thicket, his hand stirring up the air behind her. She could feel him as surely as if he had placed a palm to her back. An involuntary shiver passed through her. Why did she overreact every time he came near her?

“You're cold,” Rafferty said, and the next thing she knew he was shrugging out of his blue jean jacket and draping it around her shoulders, leaving him wearing a blue chambray work shirt with the sleeves rolled up a quarter turn. His scent wrapped around her, warm and masculine.

She didn't need him to take care of her and here she was hugging his jacket around her, pretending she was chilled from the weather and not his proximity. “Thanks. It turned out cooler than I expected. I should have brought a jacket. Odd time of year in Texas. Hot one day, cold the next.”

“No problem.”

But it was a problem. A very big problem. In the exchange, his knuckles grazed her hand. Her body heated at his touch and she felt her nipples tighten. What was this? A dozen different emotions pelted her—anxiety, attraction, guilt, irritation.

Yes, he irritated her.

They tramped around a fallen log, passed through a cedar copse, their feet crunching crisply on fallen leaves. The wind bit their cheeks. They could no longer see the river, but they could hear it rushing softly toward Lake Twilight.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Huh?” For a second, she thought he meant metaphorically, and then realized he was speaking literally. “I don't know.” She laughed. “You invited me for the walk.”

“This isn't my stomping grounds. I have no idea where this path leads.”

“We'll run into a fence soon. A ranch borders the public property. Why?”

“I like to know where I'm headed.”

They were walking side by side. She cast a glance at him. “You're the opposite of Jake. He liked to be surprised. When we went on trips he refused to make reservations. He said it killed the spirit of adventure. We ended up staying in some gawd-awful places because of it. On our honeymoon in Corpus Christi, we forgot it was spring break and we ended up sleeping on the beach because there were no rooms to be had.”

“Jake was a spontaneous guy.”

Lissette couldn't help wondering if he had known Jake better than she had. “We got sand fleas.”

“You were a good sport to go along with it.”

“I have a tendency to get caught up in whatever tide I find myself floating in and Jake was a tsunami. There was no denying him.”

“That's not necessarily a bad thing.”

“What?”

“Going with the flow.”

“It is if you lose yourself. Jake was a storm who blew through my life,” she whispered, feeling terrible because she did not mourn her husband the way he deserved to be mourned. Although the tragedy of his death hurt and saddened her, a shameful part of her had been quietly relieved that the waiting and worrying was finally over. She could at last move on. “He left me breathless and broken.”

Rafferty did touch her this time, the tips of his fingers gently pressing against the middle of her spine.

“I'm okay,” she said.

“You're amazing. You know that.”

She gave a half laugh. “I'm nothing special.”

“Stop it.” His face turned fierce and the harshness in his voice startled her. “Stop hiding your light under a bushel. You're exceptional, Lissette Moncrief, and it stuns me to think you don't realize that.”

She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “If I'm so exceptional why did—” She bit down on her bottom lip, stalked ahead of Rafferty.

“What?” He halted.

She stopped, turned back to face him, hauled in a deep breath, and there in the quiet of the forest, she said the words out loud to another human being for the first time. “He was having an affair.”

“Jake?”

She nodded, pressed her lips together. Jake had been the father of her son. A man she once loved until war changed him into a stranger she no longer recognized.

“How do you know?”

“I saw his truck parked outside a no-tell motel.”

“He could have been there for another reason.”

“It wasn't the first time.”

“Lissette,” he murmured. “I'm sorry.”

“Why?” she said lightly, because it no longer hurt. “This has nothing to do with you.”

Rafferty shifted his weight. “He left your money to me.”

“Hey, better you than his mistress.” She didn't mean to sound bitter, because she really
wasn't
bitter. Just stating facts.

“Tell me more about your business,” he said.

She was glad for the change in topic and they started walking again. She told him her plans for the cowboy-themed bakery and all the things she needed to do to make the business a success.

“I could help with that,” he offered. “Loan you a little money to get going. Even if Slate wins a purse, it won't be for several weeks.”

“We've already discussed this.”

“I'm not talking much. A few thousand. Just so you don't have to pinch pennies.”

She was about to say no, but she really did need some help if this was going to work. Was Rafferty the right person to borrow money from? “I'll think about it.”

“Just say the word and the money is yours.”

She reached the barbwire fence before he did, stopped, and turned to find him standing right in front of her.

“End of the road,” she said.

They were face-to-face, her back to the fence, Rafferty's shoulders hunched, the sleeves of his blue Western shirt billowing in the wind. He was shielding her, protecting her from the brunt of the cold breeze blowing off the river. She swallowed, uncertain what to say or do next.

“It's peaceful out here.” He took a step closer.

“Quiet.”

“I like quiet.” He rested a hand on the fence post beside her. The muscles in his wrist flexed with tension and his eyes were murky. He had the same look on his face as he'd had last night when they were together in the cab of her truck. The tips of his cowboy boots almost touching hers.

He did not move.

His scent, however, encroached on her. His jacket weighing heavily on her shoulders. He smelled good. Sexy and masculine.

Lissette was suddenly hyperaware of everything—the raspy sound of their comingled breathing, the tingling sensation shooting through her nerve ends, how the material of his jeans stretched across powerful thighs. How his brown eyes actually had sumptuous flecks of gold in them. She thought of honey crisp apples dipped in rich caramel—sweet and tart and gooey delicious.

A strong physical urge pushed through her with an intensity she'd never felt before. Desire. Yearning. Lust.

As irrational as it seemed, her body wanted his.
You just want to feel something again. That's all.
She was feeling plenty of things right now. Plenty scared.

“Lissy,” he murmured.

The way he spoke her nickname, so low and rhythmic and gentle, loosened something inside her head. Turned off the faucet of logic or turned on the spigot of capriciousness. The part of her that had been fighting to keep breathing, to put one foot in front of the other, to pick up the pieces of her tattered life, evaporated, and she was left with no defenses, no ramparts.

She was vulnerable, raw, open. So stupidly open to even the smallest glimpse of peace.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I have to go.”

Then before she did something incredibly stupid like allow him to kiss her, she ducked her head and rushed away.

O
n the way to Claudia's house it occurred to her that if a bystander had seen her and Rafferty together—meeting on the boat ramp, taking a walk, Lissette rushing back with her cheeks flushed and looking guilty—he would have assumed a rendezvous. It hadn't been a tryst but it would certainly look that way to an outsider.

She pulled into Claudia's driveway and stared at the ranch-style bungalow. Her mother-in-law was not going to be happy when she learned Rafferty was in town, working for Lissette, and living in her garage apartment.

By nature, Lissette found conflict uncomfortable, which was the reason Jake had always gotten his way with her. She hated to fight. Disagreements made her feel as if she was being attacked. For the most part, she had trouble taking a stand. She could usually see both sides of an argument. Plus a small voice at the back of her head often whispered,
Why put in your two cents' worth when no one listens anyway?

Jake used to teasingly call her a fence sitter. “Hey Lissy,” he'd ask, “what's the view from the fence?”

One memory from her childhood stood out crystal-clear. When she was three or four years old, she'd gone shopping with her mother and sisters. It was winter and they were bundled in coats. As they crossed the Target parking lot, Brittany, her older sister, was showing off, twirling her sparkly baton and bragging about how she was the prettiest girl in her class. (She was too.) Her mother pushed Samantha in a stroller, and clung to Lissette with her other hand. Across the parking lot, glittery pinwheels, advertising a sidewalk sale, spun gaily in the cold breeze, looking bright as a rainbow.

The spinning entranced her and one thought centered firmly in the front of her mind.
I want it.
Her desire was so clear. She thought of nothing else, but she wanted that pinwheel. She broke away from her mother's hand and dashed for the display.

Car brakes squealed. Her mother screamed her name. A horn honked so loudly in her ear that Lissette startled, snapped from the mesmerizing pinwheel trance. She stared quivering into the hot, yawning, bug-splattered grille of a tangerine-colored sports car that had halted just inches from her nose.

Her mother reached her, fell to her knees, scooped Lissette into her arms, and squeezed her so hard against her chest that she couldn't breathe. The rough material of her mother's tweed coat scratched Lissy's cheeks, already raw from the cold weather. She tried to separate from her mother, struggled to breathe, but the harder she moved against her the more difficult it was to catch her breath. Her mother's distress became her own.