A Christmas Blessing

Angela waved her fist in what he took for an approving gesture.

“Okay, then. A little sugar water ought to do it.” Cradling her in one arm, he ran some water into a pan, added a little sugar and turned on the burner to warm it. Unfortunately, getting it from the saucepan into the baby required a little more ingenuity.

Luke considered the possibilities. A medicine dropper might work. He’d nourished a few abandoned animals that way as a kid, as well as an entire litter of kittens when the mother’d been killed. One glance into Angela’s darkening expression told him he was going to have to do better than that and fast.

“Chester,” he muttered in a sudden burst of inspiration. When the old goat had wandered into the path of a mean-spirited bull, Luke had wound up nursing him with a baby bottle for months while he recovered. Where the hell had he put the bottle?

Angela whimpered a protest at the delay.

“Shhh, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be just dandy,” he promised as he yanked open every single cupboard door in the kitchen. Consuela had the whole place so organized that a single old baby bottle should have stood out like a sore thumb. If it was there, though, he couldn’t find it, which meant it was probably out in the barn. He couldn’t very well take the baby out there looking for it.

“Damn!” he muttered under his breath.

Huge tears spilled down the baby’s cheeks. Obviously she sensed that his plan was falling apart. Any second now she was clearly going to make her impatience known with angry, ear-splitting screams.

“Hey,” Luke soothed. “Have I let you down yet?”

Spying Consuela’s rubber gloves beside the sink, he had another flash of inspiration. He snatched them up, put another pot of water on to boil, then tossed the gloves in to sterilize them. He found a sewing kit in a drawer, extracted a needle and tossed that in as well.

So far, so good, he reassured himself. The problem came when he judged everything to be sterile. He couldn’t poke a hole in one of the glove’s fingers and then fill it with warm water while still holding the baby. He grabbed a roasting pan that looked to be about the right size, padded it with a couple of clean dish towels and settled the baby onto the makeshift bed. Judging from the shade of red that her face turned, she was not happy about being abandoned.

“It’s only for a minute,” he promised her as he completed the preparations by tying a bit of string tightly around the top of the glove. He eyed the water-filled thumb of the glove with skepticism, waiting for the contents to gush out, but it appeared the hole he’d made was just right. He held it triumphantly where Angela could see it. “There! Now didn’t I tell you we could manage this? We’re a hell of a team, angel.”

He picked her up, then sank onto one of the hard kitchen chairs and offered her the improvised bottle. Her mouth clamped on it eagerly and within seconds she was sucking noisily. Luke regarded her with pride.

“You are brilliant,” he applauded. “Absolutely the smartest baby ever born.”

“You’re pretty smart yourself,” a sleepy—and damnably sexy—voice commented.

Luke’s heart slammed against his ribs. He refused to look up, refused to permit himself so much as a single glance at the tousled hair or bare legs or full, swollen breasts he’d dreamed about too many times to count.

Unfortunately Jessie pulled out a chair smack in his line of vision. She was still wearing his shirt, which came barely to mid-thigh. Her shapely legs were in full view. How many times had he envisioned those legs clamped around him as he made love to her? Enough to condemn his spirit to eternal hell, no doubt about it.

“Feeling rested?” he inquired huskily, keeping his eyes determinedly on the baby he held.

“Some. When did the baby wake up?”

“About a half hour ago. She was hungry.”

“So I see.”

He could feel a dull, red flush climbing into his cheeks. “I didn’t want to wake you. I figured we could manage. It gave me a chance to test that theory I read. Seems to be working. She likes it.”

“I’m impressed.”

He stood so suddenly that the makeshift bottle slid from Angela’s mouth. She protested loudly. Luke shoved both baby and water into Jessie’s arms.

“I have work to do.” There was no mistaking the sudden expression of dismay in Jessie’s eyes, the flicker of hurt at his harsh tone. He managed to grit out a few more words before fleeing. “Help yourself to whatever you need. I’ll be in my office.”

“Luke, you don’t have to run off,” she said quietly.

Something in her tone drew his gaze back to her face. The longing he read there shook him more than anything that had happened so far. “Yes, I do,” he said tightly.

“Please, I’d like the company.”

“No.” He practically shouted the word as he bolted.

Her expression stayed with him. Had it truly been longing, he wondered to himself when he was safely away from the kitchen, a locked oak door between him and temptation. Surely he’d been mistaken. No sooner had he reached that conclusion than he cursed himself for a fool. Of course, Jessie was yearning for something right now, but not for him.

No, he told himself sternly, that look had been meant for her husband. It was only natural at a time like this that she would be thinking of Erik, missing him, wishing that he were the one beside her as she fed their first precious baby. Luke was nothing more than a poor substitute.

There was only one way he could think of to keep from making another dangerous mistake like that one. He had to stay inside this room with the door securely locked…and temptation on the other side of it.

Chapter Four (#ulink_2b04be9b-4ff5-5a48-9006-4340c3966c38)

Unfortunately, temptation didn’t seem inclined to stay out of Luke’s path. Only one person could be tapping on his office door not an hour after he’d stalked off in a huff and left her all alone with her baby in the kitchen. Since that display of temper obviously hadn’t scared her off, he wondered if she’d have sense enough to take the hint and go away if he didn’t answer. He waited, still and silent, listening for some whisper of movement that would indicate she’d retreated as he desperately wanted her to do.

“Luke?” Jessie called softly. “Are you asleep?”

Apparently she didn’t have a grain of sense, Luke decided with a sigh. “No, I’m awake. Come on in.”

She opened the door and stood at the threshold, shifting uneasily under the glare he had to force himself to direct her way. Despite his irritation, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.

She’d wound her long hair up into some sort of knot on top of her head, but it threatened to spill down her back at any second. Luke stared at it in fascination, wondering what she’d do if he helped it along, if he tangled his fingers in those silky strands and tugged her close. An image of their bodies entwined flashed in his head with such vivid intensity it left him momentarily speechless—and racked with guilt.

“Are you hungry?” she asked quietly, ignoring the lack of welcome. “I’ve fixed enough supper for both of us. I hope you don’t mind.”

Luke thought of all the reasons he should reject the gesture. If not that, then tell her to bring the food to him in his office. Sharing a meal seemed like a lousy idea. He had no business sitting down across from her, making small talk, acting as if they were a couple or even as if they were friends. Every contact reminded him of the feelings he’d had for her while she’d been married to his brother. Every moment they were in the same room reminded him that those feelings hadn’t died. He owed it to her—to both of them—to keep his distance.

Just when he planned to refuse her invitation to supper, he caught the hesitancy in her eyes, the anxious frown and realized that Jessie was every bit as uncertain about their present circumstances as he was. There apparently wasn’t a lot of protocol for being stranded with the man responsible for a husband’s death, especially when those feelings were all tangled up with feeling beholden to him for delivering her baby.

“Give me a minute,” he said with a sigh of resignation.

He watched as she nodded, then closed the door. He shut his eyes and prayed for strength. The truth of it was it would take him an hour, maybe even days to be ready for the kind of time he was being forced to spend with his brother’s widow. He had only seconds, not enough time to plan, far too much time to panic, to think of all the dangers represented by having Jessie in his home.

As soon as he’d gathered some semblance of composure, he got to his feet, gave himself a stern lecture about eating whatever she’d fixed in total, uncompromising silence, and then racing hell-bent for leather back to the safety of his den. That decided, he set out to find her.

When he reached the kitchen, where she’d chosen to serve the dinner on the huge oak table in front of a brick fireplace that Consuela had persuaded him to build, the first words out of his mouth were, “I don’t want you waiting on me while you’re here.”

It was hardly a gracious comment, but he had to lay down a few rules or it would be far too easy to fall into a comfortable pattern that would feed all the emotions that had been simmering in him for years now.

She leveled her calm, blue-eyed gaze on him. “We both have to eat. It’s no more trouble to fix for two people than it is for one,” she said as she dished up a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes. She passed the bowl to him.

Luke didn’t have an argument for that that wouldn’t sound even more ungracious than he’d already been, so he kept his mouth clamped shut and his attention focused on the food. The potatoes were creamy with milk and butter. The gravy was smooth and flavored with beef stock, just the way he liked it. The chicken fried steak was melt-in-the-mouth tender. The green beans had been cooked with salt pork.

“When did you have time to do all this?” he asked. He studied her worriedly, looking for signs of exhaustion. She looked radiant. “You’re not even supposed to be on your feet yet, are you?”

“There wasn’t much to do. Consuela saw to most of it. I’ve never seen so many little prepackaged, home-cooked meals. She must have been stocking your freezer for a month. How long is she going to be gone, anyway? Or has she abandoned you for good, because of your foul temper?”