A Christmas Blessing

“I wouldn’t blame her if she had, but no.” Luke allowed himself a brief, rueful grin. “She figured company might be dropping by during the holidays, but I doubt she imagined it happening quite this way.”

“Neither did you, I suspect.” Jessie’s penetrating gaze cut right through him. “You’d holed up in here for the duration, hadn’t you? You were planning to spend the holidays with your buddy Jack Daniel’s.” She gestured toward the cabinets. “I saw your supply.”

Luke winced at the direct hit. “I’ve only touched one bottle and I smashed it halfway through,” he said defensively.

“Too bad you didn’t do it sooner,” she observed.

“If I’d known you—and especially Angela—were coming, I would have.”

“Now that we are here, what happens next?”

He regarded her cautiously. “What’s your real question, Jessie? You might as well spit it out.”

Her glance went back to the cabinet. “Are you planning to finish off the rest?”

“Not unless I’m driven to it,” he said pointedly.

This time Jessie winced. “Believe me, I know what an imposition this is. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as the roads are passable.” She glanced toward the windows, where the steadily falling snow was visible. “When do you suppose that will be?”

Luke shrugged. “Don’t know. I haven’t heard a weather report.”

“Are the phones still out?”

“Haven’t tried ’em since last night.”

“Don’t you have a cellular phone? That ought to be working.”

To be perfectly honest, Luke hadn’t given his cellular phone a thought. He still wasn’t used to carrying the damned thing around with him. Keeping track of it was a nuisance. It was probably outside on the seat of his pickup. “I’ll check next time I have to go to the barn.”

“I could get it. I need to get the rest of my clothes from my car.”

Luke cursed himself for not thinking of that. Of course, she’d had luggage with her if she’d been intending a stay at White Pines for the holidays.

“I’ll get ’em,” he said, pushing away from the table, leaving most of his food uneaten. The excuse was just what he needed to escape this pleasure-pain of sitting across from her in a mockery of a normal relationship between a man and a woman.

“Finish your supper first.”

“I’m not hungry,” he lied. “I’ll get something later. Besides, I’m sure you’re anxious to call the folks with the good news. They’ll be thrilled to know that you and Erik have a daughter. Doubt they’ll be quite so thrilled to hear where you had it though. Dad will want to fly in a specialist to check you and the baby out. He’ll probably have a med-evac copter in here before the night’s out.”

Though he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his tone, Jessie grinned at his assessment. “He probably will, won’t he? But not even Harlan Adams can defy nature. Nobody’s going to be taking off or landing in this blizzard.”

“They will if Daddy pays them enough,” Luke retorted dryly.

“Well, I won’t have it,” Jessie retorted with a familiar touch of defiance. “Nobody needs to risk a life on my account. The baby and I are perfectly fine here with you and I intend to tell Harlan exactly that.”

Luke had to admire the show of gumption. Obviously, though, Jessie hadn’t had to stand up to his father when he got a notion into his head. To save her the fight she couldn’t win, he found himself saying, “Maybe it would be best not to make that call, then.”

Jessie actually looked as if she was considering it. “But they’ll be worried sick about me not showing up last night,” she said eventually. “I have to let them know I’m okay.”

So, reason had prevailed after all. Luke was more disappointed than he cared to admit.

“Darlin’, they’ve seen the weather,” he said, beginning a token and quite probably futile argument, one he had no business making in the first place. Perversity kept him talking, though. “Their phone lines are probably down, too. They’ll understand that you probably had to stop along the way and can’t get through to let them know.”

“Not five seconds ago you were telling me I didn’t know your daddy. Now who’s kidding himself? Harlan probably has a search party organized. The Texas Rangers are probably out on full alert, sweeping the highways for signs of my car.”

There was no denying the truth of that. Luke stood. “Then I suppose we’d better head them off at the pass. I’ll get the phone.”

He grabbed his heavy sheepskin jacket from the peg by the back door, realizing as he did that Jessie must have hung it there. As he recalled, he’d merely tossed it in that general direction when he’d heard the baby crying earlier. As he pulled it on, he could almost feel her touch. He imagined there was even the faint, lingering scent of her caught up in the fabric.

Outside, the swirling snow and bitter cold cleared his head and wiped away the dangerous sense of cozy familiarity he’d begun to feel sitting at that old oak table with Jessie across from him. He took his time getting Jessie’s belongings from her car, then lingered a little longer in the cab of his truck.

As he’d suspected, the cellular phone was on the passenger seat. All he had to do was pick it up and dial home. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind that his father would find some way to get Jessie out of his hair before dawn. He would be alone again and safe.

Christmas was only three days away, New Year’s a week after that. Surely he could get through so few days without resorting to his original plan of facing them stinking drunk. And heaven knew, Jessie would be better off with his family where the celebrations would be in high gear despite the weather, despite his family’s private mourning, where there would be dozens of people to fuss over Angela.

Feeling downright noble about the sacrifice he was making, he actually managed to pick up the phone. But when it came to dialing it, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He thought of the incredible, once-in-a-lifetime miracle he and Jessie had shared. He remembered how it had felt to hold Angela in his arms, to have those trusting, innocent eyes focused on him. Jessie and Angela’s unexpected presence had been a gift from a benevolent God, who apparently didn’t think his soul was beyond repair.

Would it be so wrong to steal a few more hours, maybe even a day or two with Jessie and Angela? Who could possibly be hurt by it?

Not Erik. He was way past being hurt by anything, not even the knowledge that his brother coveted his widow.

Not Jessie, because Luke would never in a million years act on the feelings she stirred in him.

Not the baby. There was no way he would ever allow anything or anyone to harm that precious child. His paternal instincts, which he’d not even been aware he possessed, had kicked in with the kind of vengeance that made a man reassess his entire existence.

So the only person who might be harmed by his deception would be himself. He stood to lose big time by pretending for even the briefest of moments that Jessie and Angela were a part of his life. Emotions he’d squelched with savage determination were already sneaking past his defenses. The mere fact that he was considering hiding the cellular phone was proof of that.

And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to let them go just yet. He’d fallen for Angela as hard as he’d fallen for her mother. Looking into those big blue eyes, he’d felt a connection as strong and powerful as anything he’d ever felt before in his life. He couldn’t sever it, not until he understood it.

Likewise, he couldn’t watch Jessie disappear until he had finally processed this terrible hold she had on him. From the moment he’d set eyes on her, he’d been riveted. If a bolt of lightning had struck him at that instant, he doubted he would have noticed.

Over time he’d grown to admire her sharp wit, bask in her sensitivity, but in that first instant there had been only a gut-deep attraction unlike anything he’d ever experienced before or since. She had the same effect on him now. He was a man of reason. Surely he could analyze their relationship with cold, calculating logic and finally put it to rest.

He gripped the phone a little tighter and glanced around at the drifts of snow that were growing deeper with each passing minute. A quick toss and no one would find the sucker before spring.

Just as he was about to act on his impulse, that reason of which he was so proud kicked in. What if there was a genuine emergency? The cellular phone might be their only link to the outside world. Instead of burying it in snow, he tucked it into the truck’s glove compartment, behind the assortment of maps and grain receipts and who-knew-what-else had been jammed in there without thought. Then he turned the lock securely and glanced guiltily back at the house, wondering if Jessie would guess that he was deliberately keeping her stranded, wondering what her reaction would be if she did know.

Even through the swirling snow, he could see the smoke rising from the chimney, the lights beckoning from the windows. An unexpected sense of peace stole over him. Suddenly, for the first time since he’d built it simply to make a statement to his father—a declaration of independence from Harlan Adams and his need to maintain a tight-fisted control over his sons—the huge, far-too-big monster of a house seemed like a home.

* * *

Jessie couldn’t imagine what was taking Luke so long. Surely Luke hadn’t lost his way in the storm. Though the snowfall was still steady, it was nowhere near as fierce and blinding as it had been.

And he knew every acre of his land as intimately as he might a woman. His voice low and seductive, he’d boasted often enough of every rise and dip, every verdant pasture. He’d done it just to rile his father with his independence, but that didn’t lessen the depth of his pride or his sensual appreciation for the land. No, Luke wasn’t lost, which meant he was dallying intentionally.

While he was taking his sweet time about getting back, she was tiring quickly. The last burst of adrenaline had long since worn off. She had already cleaned up the remains of the supper they’d barely touched, washed the dishes and put them away. For the past five minutes she’d been standing at the backdoor, peering into the contrasting world of impenetrable black and brilliant white.

She thought she could see Luke’s shadow in the truck and wondered for a moment if he had a bottle stashed there. That array she’d found in his cupboard had worried her. She had never known him to take more than a social drink or two before, had never seen him as on-his-butt drunk as he’d been the night before when she’d arrived.