A Cowboy for Christmas by Lori Wilde Page B

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.
    â€œC’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