Free A Cowboy for Christmas by Lori Wilde

gift. It’s how she had survived life with Jake. He’d been a war ship. She’d been the rolling sea.
    Claudia didn’t know where her son got the darkness. Her new-agey sister, Carol, said that maybe the trouble was left over from a previous life, but Claudia didn’t believe in reincarnation, even though part of her found the idea appealing. Second chances. It was a provocative notion, but what was the point if you couldn’t remember who you’d been in a previous life? How could you correct past mistakes if you couldn’t remember them?
    For the most part, she was an optimistic person in spite of all the curveballs life had thrown her way. The death of her first baby, born three months premature. These days, they probably could have saved Robbie. But back then? She shook her head. Three months in the NICU, looking like a naked baby sparrow, hooked up to tubes and monitors. Such a tiny, precious thing. All that suffering and then she’d still lost him.
    She’d been so thankful when Jake had come along a year later to ease her grief. For years, she believed her life was perfect. She had a handsome cowboy husband and a healthy baby boy and then one awful Christmas Eve she discovered Gordon had sired a son by another woman when he’d been on the cutting horse circuit out in California. Claudia’s happily-ever-after had come crashing in on her.
    It wasn’t even the cheating that ate at Claudia so fiercely. Gordon had always had a revved-up sex drive and a wandering eye and she understood what problems that combination could cause when he was on the road alone. Before Jake came along, she’d traveled the circuit with him, but once she had the baby, her son had become her entire world.
    No, it wasn’t so much the affair as the fact that Gordon had two sons while she had only one. He’d not only cheated on her, but he’d cheated by having a child without her. Jake’s birth had been difficult, resulting in her having to have a hysterectomy. Even though Claudia longed for more children, she couldn’t have them. So she showered love on Jake. But part of her couldn’t get over the fact that she was no longer a real woman. Empty. Wombless. Barren.
    Gordon vehemently denied that the child was his, but Claudia knew the truth. It had eaten at her, dark and festering. And then she’d gone and done a horrible thing. The big, nasty awful that earned her a place in hell. She’d done what she had to do to protect Jake. She had not regretted her actions when she’d done it, but with the passing of time came wisdom. Hindsight stirred the edges of her secret disgrace into bloodred remorse.
    She pretended to believe Gordon that the baby was not his and she never told him about her big awful sin. They repaired the tatters of their marriage as best they could and moved on. Neither one of them ever spoke of Amelia Jones and her son again, and for the most part, she put it out of her mind and life returned to normal.
    Twelve years ago, Gordon had been kicked in the head by a wild quarter horse he’d been trying to tame and he’d died of a brain hemorrhage on the way to the hospital. Then when she lost Jake on the Fourth of July, she lost her direction. Lost both her heart and her soul in one fell swoop. If it hadn’t been for Lissette and Kyle, she might have done the unthinkable.
    She’d been completely stunned a few weeks later when she learned Jake had left his life insurance money and death gratuity benefits to Amelia Jones’s son, although she offered no explanation to Lissette. She had even pretended that she had no idea who Rafferty Jones was. That lie ate at her, but she hadn’t been strong enough to face her daughter-in-law, especially when she could not understand why Jake had cut his wife and child off from the money that rightfully belonged to them. And without thinking what the consequences would be for Lissy and Kyle if he were