A Cowboy for Christmas (5 page)

“So how and when did you first make contact with Jake?”

His unflinching gaze met hers. That head-on look told her that this man did not shy away from trouble, but neither did he go searching for it as Jake had. “Jake came to California looking for me after Gordon died. It was the summer he turned twenty.”

“That would have made you sixteen.”

“Yep. To me, Jake was superhero. Larger than life. Over the top. He did everything in a big way.”

“That's Jake,” she said. Stopped. Corrected. “Was.”

She saw it, the first glimpse of raw emotion on his face. Loss. Regret. But then it disappeared like smoke up a chimney. “What was that like? Meeting your half brother for the first time?”

“I was excited,” he said. “It felt good to have someone looking out after me for a change.”

“How long did he visit you?”

“The entire summer.”

“Your mother didn't mind that he stayed so long?”

“He paid room and board. She liked that. Jake kept trying to talk my mother into moving. The neighborhood was so rough that gunfire woke us up more nights than not. Finally, before Jake left, he rented an affordable apartment in a safer part of town and moved us all in. He paid up the rent for two months, but of course, after that, Amelia couldn't make the payments and we ended up back where we'd started.”

Lissette didn't know what to say, so she just opened the lid of the cake plate, cut off two slices of crumb cake. “What were you doing in Australia?”

“Making a film.”

“You're an actor?” That surprised her. It wasn't that he wasn't good-looking enough to be an actor, because he certainly was. He just seemed too down-to-earth for such a quixotic career. Then again, what did she know of him?

“I train horses for the movies. I have to be on set every day.”

“Is there a lot of money in that?”

“I wouldn't say a lot, but I do all right. I work on three or four movies a year. It covers the bills.”

A low rumble of thunder crackled overhead. She glanced out the window again. A black cat ran across the backyard in a fine-mist drizzle. Another long silence stretched between them. They looked everywhere but at each other. The red light on the coffeemaker glowed. The kitchen clock ticked loudly. The crumb cake dissolved into sweet moistness on her tongue, but she barely tasted it.

“Jake called me from Kandahar,” Rafferty murmured.

“What?” she asked, not certain that she'd heard him correctly. “When?”

“It was just days before he was killed. He hadn't called me in five years.”

Distressed, Lissette inhaled audibly. Jake had called Rafferty from Afghanistan, but he had not called her? She hadn't even gotten more than a couple of e-mails from him during the three weeks after his arrival in Kandahar for his tour of duty until the time the death notification officers had shown up on the Fourth of July to break the tragic news.

At the time, she'd thought Jake's silence was nothing more than a symptom of their deteriorating marriage. Now, with what Rafferty was telling her, she couldn't help wondering what else had been going on in Jake's head.

“What . . .” She moistened her lips, braced herself. “What did he say?”

Rafferty winced, but he didn't mince words. “Jake must have seen something pretty damn bad. He wouldn't talk about what had happened. Just that—”

“What?” Her throat convulsed.

His gaze seared hers. “Are you sure you want to know?”

She lifted her chin. Did she? Her stomach quaked. Her hand was glued to the cake plate. She braced herself. “Yes.”

Rafferty pressed a palm to the nape of his neck. “He said that he shouldn't have come back to Afghanistan, but that when he was home in Jubilee, he tried so hard to be what you wanted him to be, but he simply couldn't do it.”

“Wh . . .” Air got trapped in her lungs. “What does that mean?”

“After being in the Middle East he couldn't live a regular life. Being a husband, a father, and the thought of going to work at a normal job. It was—these were his words—too stupefying.”

Her cheeks burned as if he'd slapped her with two open palms. Her mouth worked but no words came out. She'd suspected as much. When Jake was home he seemed so distant. And yet, when he talked about Afghanistan, his eyes would light up and his muscles would tense and he'd grow restless with excitement. As if he was addicted to war. When she'd seen the movie
The Hurt Locker
, she remembered thinking,
That's Jake. To a T.

She shifted her gaze to an aloe vera cactus in the windowsill. It needed watering. Grateful for something to do, she moved to fill a cup with water. Why had she prodded Rafferty to talk about his conversation with Jake? Really, what did it matter at this late date?

“Jake said he didn't fit in here anymore,” Rafferty went on. “And that he only felt real when he had a gun in his hands. He said war was a bigger high than bull riding.”

An involuntary squeak escaped her. She dropped the cup she'd used to water the plant into the sink and plastered hands over her mouth.
Please, please, stop talking.

Rafferty's voice gentled. “He hated that he would rather be at war than with you and your son. He was very conflicted about it.”

His words were a visceral punch to her organs because a part of her knew it was true. In spite of his cowboy roots and his first career as a bull rider, Jake had been a natural-born soldier. A warrior. Once he'd found his element, he couldn't be happy anywhere else.

Jake's rugged rawness was what attracted her to him. He'd been different from anything she knew. But when he was home from battle, well, he'd done dumb, dangerous things. Chicken drag racing. Drinking too much. Getting into fights. Other things she didn't know about for sure, but suspected. Pushing the envelope. Living on the edge. Finding any way that he could to work up a head of adrenaline. The down side of a brave man.

Recklessness.

Rafferty's gaze followed her as she moved about the kitchen, dishrag in her hand, wiping down counters that didn't need cleaning.

What did he think of her? Did he believe that she wasn't interesting enough to keep her husband home? Dull Lissy? She wondered it herself.

“I tried to talk to him about what he was going through, but Jake said there was no way I could understand.” Rafferty paused, blew out his breath. “He was right.”

Lissette briefly closed her eyes, battled back the self-pity that threatened to overtake her. “Why . . . why didn't he tell
me
any of this?”

“He didn't want to hurt you,” Rafferty said kindly. “He loved you, but he had demons that he couldn't shake.”

“Did he . . .” She cleared her throat. “Do drugs?”

Rafferty made a face. “It wouldn't surprise me.”

A shiver ran through her. Lissette hugged herself, dropped her gaze to the floor. She wished Rafferty would go. She couldn't deal with this. With him. Not now. Not on top of the awful news she'd gotten about Kyle.

“I've scared you.” Rafferty's voice softened. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“I'm not scared,” she lied, and raised her chin. “I know that war damaged Jake in an irreparable way.”

“I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact he's gone,” Rafferty murmured.

“Poor you.” Why was she being so horrible? Was it because she was hurt and scared? She caught herself. Apologized. “I'm sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“Completely understandable under the circumstances.”

“I don't need for you to cut me slack. Be an ass. I can take it on the chin.”

“Why would I do that to you?”

Jake would have. He believed in the cruel-to-be-kind approach to helping someone get over something. He had a forceful, oversized personality. Whenever he'd walked into a room all the attention immediately shifted to him.

But this man wasn't Jake.

There wasn't much resemblance between her husband and his half brother. The strong chin was the same, inherited from their father. Jake had his mother's dark brown hair, but Rafferty's hair was lighter. Whiskey-colored. Jake had been taller, broader. Rafferty was leaner, wirier, just a hair under six foot.

Rafferty reached into his shirt pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. “I brought this to you.”

“What is it?”

“Jake's life insurance and death gratuity check.” He pushed it across the marble slab counter toward her.

With her index finger, she pushed it back at him. “It's yours. Fair and square. You owe me nothing.”

“It's not right. You were his wife. He's got a child he should have provided for.” Rafferty thumped the check her way. “Take it.”

“He wanted you to have it for some reason. It's not my place to question Jake's motives.” She swirled the damn check in his direction. “He called you, not me.”

“Maybe he just forgot to change his beneficiary and it's nothing but a clerical oversight.”

“I don't think so.” Lissette folded her arms, shook her head. “Jake was very deliberate about stuff like that.”

“Don't be stubborn, woman. You need this money more than I do. I don't have a deaf child to educate.”

Lissette pressed her lips into a hard line, struggled hard not to cry. She was not going to cry in front of him again. She was tired of crying. What good did it do? “Don't you dare feel sorry for me you . . . you . . . California cowboy.”

“Is that supposed to be an insult?” He lowered his eyelids, flicked her a hard stare. There was something sultry in his eyes. The way he looked at her. Like a slow simmer rolling into a boil.

The look shot straight through her. She shivered again. Tightened her arms around herself. “If I intended on insulting you, I would have called your paternity into question.”

“Ah.” He smiled lightly, but his tone was barbed. “There it is.” He was staring at her so hard, she could scarcely breathe from the pressure of it. “I'm a bastard. Go ahead. Let's get this out in the open. Your father-in-law screwed my mother and, ta-da, here I am.” He spread his arms wide.

Her emotions churned, raw and achy. They were taking the circumstances out on each other when neither of them was to blame for what other people had done. They were caught in the middle.

She softened, relented. “You've been carrying that around a long time, haven't you?”

“Hey, now I'm the one who doesn't need
your
pity.”

She exhaled. “Why are we getting angry with each other? This was none of our doing. Not the cheating, not the leaving of great sums of money, not the dying in a war.”

“But we are the ones left to pick up the pieces.”

She folded the check and stepped around the island. The closer she came to him, the shallower his breathing grew. Her breathing was none too confident either.

Lissette leaned over.

Felt Rafferty flinch.

His masculine scent got tangled up in her nose. He smelled of horses and cotton and leather. She gulped. What was she doing so near him?

She dropped the folded check into the front pocket of his shirt. In the process her hip bumped lightly against his side. It was all she could do not to leap back at the accidental contact. She pretended it hadn't happened.

The muscle in his jaw jumped. He was doing some pretending of his own. He clenched his hands into fists on the tops of his thighs.

“Take the money.” She patted the check through his shirt pocket. She could feel the hard muscles of his chest.

He went stock-still.

Her pulse skittered.

“I can't just go back to California and leave you here by yourself. Not with your son the way he is. You'll need support.”

“I'm not alone.” She tossed her head. Pride wouldn't let her admit how scared and lonely she felt. “I have friends, my parents are in Dallas and Jake's mother is nearby.”

“Claudia,” he said roughly.

That surprised her. “You know Claudia?”

“I know her name. My mother took it in vain a time or two.”

Lissette smiled. “Probably not as much as Claudia cursed your mother. Claudia looks prim and proper, but when she's angry that woman can cuss a blue streak. Although she never once spoke your name. Not even when we found out about Jake's bequest.”

“What did she say when she found out?”

“She refused to talk about it.”

“You didn't ask her about me?”

“It was easier to let it go than to pin her down. I didn't want to get cursed at.” Not that her mother-in-law had been anything but warm and welcoming to her, but Claudia was the kind who preferred to sweep problems under the rug and pretend they didn't exist. Lissette understood the impulse. She didn't like conflict either.

Their eyes met and they both laughed. It was an uneasy, weird laugh, but it broke the tension.

“I wouldn't feel right, keeping this money,” Rafferty said. “Not when your son is going to have medical bills.”

“It's my problem, not yours. I want to handle things on my own. Prove that I don't need some man to take care of me.”

“Take the money,” he commanded.

She folded her arms under her breasts. “Jake left it to you.”

“And I want you to have it.”

“Well, I don't want it.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Now if you'll excuse me, it's been a long day and I have some calls to make.”

He didn't move, and for a long moment, she thought he wasn't going to leave.

She held her breath, uncertain of what to do next.

Finally, he got to his feet and settled his cowboy hat on his head. “I'm goin' for now,” he said. “You need time alone and I respect that. But this discussion isn't over. Not by a long shot.”

Chapter Four

W
as she being stubborn about accepting the money?

Lissette closed the front door behind Rafferty and went to check on Kyle.

Heaven knew she needed the money, but something in her bristled at taking the check from him. Maybe it was petty anger with Jake for shutting her out. Maybe it was because she did not want to be beholden to Rafferty in any way. But mostly, Lissette wanted to cultivate her independence.

She would soon be thirty and she'd never done anything solely on her own. She'd gone from her family's home in Dallas to college at Southern Methodist University studying to become an art teacher. During her junior year, when she was twenty-one, she'd found her true calling when, just for fun, she took a cake decorating class offered by a local craft store. After that, she was hooked.

She'd persuaded her parents to let her drop out of SMU and they'd funded pastry school at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Dallas. She'd graduated two years later with an associate's degree in pastry and baking arts. At the age of twenty-three, she'd gone to work for the Dallas Hyatt Regency that her father managed. He often joked he was indulging Lissy's foray into food fantasy. Her parents had always assumed she was merely playing at being a pastry chef and that she'd quit once she found a husband. After all, as they'd told her, she was their sweet, passive child who never rocked the boat. She wasn't cut out for a high-pressure career.

Two years later, she met Jake at a party she'd been catering through the Hyatt. He'd been the guest of honor, a sendoff by buddies because he'd just joined the army after his retirement from bull riding. A friend of his had been killed in the Middle East and he felt a strong sense of duty. She still recalled his reasoning for joining the service in his late twenties. It should have been an omen of things to come.

“I want to fight. Really get my hands dirty,” he'd said. “Be part of the action. I've already wasted too much time fooling around with bull riding. It's time for me to cowboy up and do the right thing.”

In her naïveté, she'd admired his willingness to do a job that other men shied away from. What she'd seen as honorable self-confidence had turned out to be self-destructive arrogance. He liked playing protector because he enjoyed control. Not a bad quality in a soldier, but that trait had a darker side.

He'd written to her during his training at Fort Leonard Wood in Waynesville, Missouri, and when he returned, he'd proposed. Giddy at having snagged herself a handsome cowboy, she'd accepted. He'd been assigned to Fort Hood in Killeen and whenever he got leave, he would drive up to see her. He was exciting and cowboy-staunch. He made her feel special. She wasn't around him enough to see the chinks in his armor until it was too late. They married after having known each other less than three months.

Their wedding took place at the Hyatt Regency where they'd met. Not long after that he was sent to the Middle East. Lissette had been willing to stay in Killeen while he was gone, but Jake had said, “You're too special for that. We'll buy a house in my hometown. Jubilee's halfway between Killeen and Dallas, and my mother will be there to help you get settled in.”

On one level, she'd liked living in Jubilee. It was an interesting town. She got along well with her mother-in-law and she quickly made friends, but because she had not lived on base, she missed out on the military culture. She'd never become part of the close-knit group of army wives.

Now, she wondered if there had been another reason Jake hadn't wanted her to stay in military housing. Had he believed she was too fragile for it? That she couldn't handle the pressure? But she knew she was stronger than most people believed her to be.

Kyle was lying on his back, his eyes closed. He looked so peaceful. Her heart tugged. Was she being stupid by turning down the money? Yes, it might be nice to make it on her own, but Kyle's well-being was more important than her pride. She should be grateful that Rafferty was an ethical person.

God, she hated feeling like this. Vulnerable. Wounded. She knotted her fists, channeling the helplessness to anger. Determined to fight back. She might be down, but she damn well wasn't out.

A photograph of Jake sat on the dresser. She crossed the room to pick it up. She'd taken it not long before Jake's last deployment. It had been in the late spring, the mimosa trees blooming in an ecstasy of sweet pink. In the picture, her husband was pushing Kyle on a park swing. Her son's head was thrown back and he was laughing gleefully. Happy. Kyle had been happy.

Too bad that she and Jake had not. She'd stayed in the crumbling marriage for the sake of her son.

Lissette pulled her bottom lip up between her teeth and traced an index finger over Jake's face. The expression was one she'd seen many times. A smile tinged his lips, but there was no joy in it. Smiling simply because he thought it was expected of him—a man playing the role of father, but not really feeling it.

Until now, she'd accepted the false smile. Pretended she hadn't seen the emptiness in his eyes. But she could no longer deny it. Jake had been haunted. He'd never been the same after going over there. And then to get himself killed while willingly disobeying orders. Saving those orphans had been heroic and she would never take that last unselfish act from his memory, but she had to wonder about his deeper motivation. Had he subconsciously harbored a death wish?

What had he seen? What had he done? How much darkness had he hidden from her?

She'd asked these questions of herself before, but she'd been too scared to ask the questions of him. In all honesty, she hadn't wanted to hear the answers.

No rocking Lissy's safe little world.

Well, Jake had rocked it to the core and the aftershocks were still coming.

And now there was Kyle's diagnosis. This was one truth she would not, could not run from.

She might not be able to change circumstances and she couldn't undo the past, but there was one thing she could do. Make the best possible future available to her son.

And in order to do that, she needed money. No more wasting time. She had to start putting her plans in action as soon as possible.

“W
ell, Jake, what now?” Rafferty sat in his pickup truck parked outside Lissette's house. Rain came down slow and steady, dotting his windshield with precipitation and misting the air gray, causing the streetlamps to flicker on prematurely.

When Jake had called him back in June, just before Rafferty left for Australia, he'd said some disturbing things. Some of which Rafferty had told Lissette. He regretted being so frank with her. She had suffered enough. But he felt she'd deserved the truth.

The one thing he had not told her was that Jake had made him pledge that if he didn't come back from Afghanistan, Rafferty would make sure that his wife and son were taken care of.

Of course he'd agreed. Jake had saved him once and he'd do anything for his older brother. When he found out about Jake's bequest, he thought maybe that's what he meant. Give Lissette the money. But why not just make her his beneficiary in the first place? Why use him as the middleman? Then the truth of it hit him all at once.

It's not about the money. He wanted you in Jubilee to pick up the pieces of the mess he left behind.

Honestly, Rafferty had not expected Lissette to reject the money. She needed it. She had a child to raise. A child who would need specialized schooling.

Lissette was both proud and stubborn. She didn't want pity or sympathy. She just wanted to make her own way in the world. He understood that impulse. He had some pride issues himself.

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.”

C
laudia 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.