A Christmas Blessing (14 page)

Jessie’s resolve almost wavered in the face of his stubborn, harsh refusal to admit his real feelings. “I guess that’s the difference between us, then. I believe in you. I believe in
us
. You don’t.”

“That’s a significant difference, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s only significant if you want it to be.”

“I do.”

A tear spilled over and tracked down her cheek. “Damn you, Luke Adams.”

“You’re too late, Jessie,” he told her grimly. “I was damned a long time ago.”

For all of her natural optimism, for all of her faith in what a future for the two of them could hold, Jessie couldn’t stand up to that kind of bleak resignation.

“Angela and I will be gone before you know it,” she said, fighting to hold back her tears as she finally admitted that she was defeated.

In the doorway she paused and looked back. “One of these days you’re going to regret forcing us out of your life, Luke. You’re going to wake up and discover that you’ve turned into a bitter, lonely old man.”

That said, she straightened her spine and walked away from the man she’d come to love with all her heart.

* * *

Regrets? Luke was filled with them. They were chasing through his brain like pinballs bouncing erratically from one bumper to the next.

Was he doing the right thing? Of course, he was, he told himself firmly. He had to let Jessie go. He had to let her walk out of his life, taking the baby who’d stolen a little piece of his jaded heart with her. They weren’t his to claim. They were Erik’s and they were going home, where they belonged. They were going to a place where he no longer fit in.

He would have stayed right where he was, hidden away in his office, but Jessie was apparently determined to make him pay for forcing her out of his life. She appeared in the doorway of his office, bundled up, her long hair tucked into a knit cap, her cheeks rosy, either from anger or from a trek outdoors. He suspected the former.

“We’re leaving,” she announced unnecessarily.

Luke had seen Doc Winchell arrive in a fancy four-wheel-drive car a half hour earlier cutting a path through the fresh snow. He’d been expecting to see it driving away any minute now heading back to the airport. He’d been listening for the sound of the backdoor slamming shut behind them, then the roar of the car’s engine. The silence had taunted him. Now, though, it seemed they were finally ready to go, and he was going to be forced to endure another goodbye.

“Have a safe trip,” he said, refusing to meet her condemning gaze.

“Aren’t you going to come and say goodbye to Angela?”

“No,” he said curtly and felt his heart break.

“Lucas, please.”

She didn’t know what she was asking, that had to be it, he decided as he finally got to his feet and followed her into the kitchen.

Doc Winchell, who’d been the family physician ever since Luke could recall, beamed at him. “Lucas, you did a fine job bringing this little one into the world. Couldn’t have done better myself. We’ll get her weighed and checked out from head to toe tomorrow, but she looks perfectly healthy to me.”

Luke kept his gaze deliberately averted from the bundled-up baby. “She really is okay, then?”

“Perfect,” the doctor confirmed.

“Being out in this weather won’t hurt her?”

“The truck’s heater works. She’s wrapped up warmly. She’ll be fine.”

“What about flying?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem and I’ll be right there to keep an eye on her.”

Luke nodded, his hands shoved in his pockets to keep from reaching out to hold the baby one last time. “Take good care of her, Doc. She’s my first delivery.” He grinned despite himself. “Hopefully, my last, too. I don’t think I ever want to know that kind of fear again.”

As if she sensed that Angela was his Achilles’ heel, Jessie plucked the baby up and practically shoved her into Luke’s arms. He had to accept her or allow her to tumble to the floor. One look into those trusting blue eyes and he felt his resolve weaken.

“Say goodbye, Angela,” Jessie murmured beside him. “Uncle Luke isn’t coming with us.”

As if she understood her mother, Angela’s face scrunched up. Her tiny lower lip trembled. Huge tears welled up in her eyes.

Luke rocked her gently. “Hey, little one, no tears, okay? Your Uncle Luke will always have a very special spot in his heart, just for you. You ever need anything, anything at all, you come to me, okay, sweet pea?”

As always, the sound of his voice soothed her. She cooed at him. His effect on her gave him a disconcerting sense of satisfaction. He felt as if his sorry existence meant something to somebody.

Jessie seemed to guess what he was feeling. Her gaze, filled with understanding and a kind of raw agony, was fixed on his face. Luke couldn’t bear looking into her eyes. She knew too well why he was pushing them away. He looked back at Angela’s precious little face instead.

“Goodbye, sweet pea. You take good care of your mommy, okay?”

He held the baby out until Jessie finally had no choice but to claim her.

“Goodbye, Lucas,” she said, her voice laced with all the regret he was feeling. “I will never, ever forget what you did for us.”

He wanted to tell her it was nothing, but he couldn’t seem to force the words past the lump lodged in his throat. He just nodded.

Jessie reached up then and touched her hand to his cheek, silently commanding him to look at her. When he did, she said softly, “If you ever,
ever
change your mind, I’ll be waiting.”

“Don’t wait too long,” he warned. “Don’t waste your life waiting for something that can never be.”

For an instant he thought she was going to protest, but finally she sighed deeply and turned away. She walked out the kitchen door and never looked back.

It was just as well, Luke thought as he watched her. He would have hated like hell for her to see that he was crying.

Chapter Ten

T
he commotion caused by their arrival at White Pines was almost more than Jessie could bear, given her already-confused and deeply hurt state of mind.

Harlan gave Doc Winchell the third degree about the baby’s health. Mary claimed Angela the minute Jessie set foot across the threshold. Jordan and Cody studied the new baby with fascination, offering observations on which family members she most resembled. A handful of strangers, visiting for the holiday, chimed in.

They had almost nothing beyond the courtesies to say to Jessie, and not one of them asked about Luke. It was hardly surprising, she concluded, that he had refused to set foot in the house at White Pines.

As she stood apart and watched them, Jessie couldn’t help wondering why she’d once wanted so desperately to be a part of this family. It suddenly seemed to her that she’d mistaken chaos and boisterous outbursts for love.

Of course, back then she’d had Erik as a buffer. He’d seen to it that she was never left out of the conversation. He’d insisted that she be treated with respect. She had basked in his attention and barely noticed anyone else.

Except Luke.

Thinking of him now, all alone again on his ranch, she regretted more than ever leaving him, despite his cantankerous behavior. She should have risen above it. She should have listened to her heart.

Suddenly she couldn’t stand all the fussing for another instant. Reaching for Angela, she startled them all by announcing that the baby was tired from the trip and needed to be put down for a nap. To her astonishment, no one argued. She would have to remember that tone of voice for the next time someone in the family tried to steamroll over her.

“I found an old crib in the attic,” Mary said at once. “I had Jordan set it up in your old suite. As soon as the rest of the roads have cleared and it’s safer to drive, we’ll go into town for baby clothes and new sheets and blankets. In the meantime, I’ve had Maritza wash a few things I saved from when the boys were babies.”

Jessie fought a grin as she tried to imagine sexy, irrepressible Cody, the tall, self-assured Jordan or Luke ever being as tiny as Angela was now. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

Cody separated himself from the others as she started up the stairs. “How is Luke?” he asked, walking along with her. Lines of worry were etched in his brow that she was sure hadn’t been there mere months before. He was only twenty-seven, but he seemed older, wearier than he had when she’d left.

“Stubborn as a mule,” she said. “Lonely.”

“Why didn’t he come with you?”

Jessie met Cody’s concerned gaze and gave him the only part of the real answer she could. The rest was private, just between her and Luke. She couldn’t say he was staying away because of her. “Because he blames himself for Erik’s death, and he thinks the rest of you do, too.”

Cody couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d announced that Luke was locked away at home with a harem.

“But that’s crazy,” he blurted at once. “We all know what happened was an accident. Nobody blames Luke. Hell, if anybody was at fault it was Daddy. He’s the one who backed Erik into a corner and made him try to be something he wasn’t. Any one of us could have taken a spill on that tractor. Accidents happen all the time on a ranch.”

Jessie couldn’t have agreed with him more, but she was startled that Cody recognized the truth. Of all of them, he had always seemed to be the least introspective. Cody seemed imperturbable, the one most inclined to roll with the punches. She’d always thought he accepted things at face value, including Harlan’s own view of himself as omnipotent. Obviously she’d fallen into the trap of viewing him merely as the baby in the family. The truth was he’d grown into a caring, thoughtful man.

“That’s what I tried to tell Luke, but the accident didn’t happen here. It happened on his land. He seems to think he should have prevented it somehow.” She looked into Cody’s worried eyes. “Talk to him. Maybe you can get him to see reason. I couldn’t.”

Cody looked doubtful. “Jessie, if you couldn’t reach him, I don’t see how I can. You were always able to communicate with him, even when the rest of us were ready to give up in frustration.”

Jessie sighed. “Well, not this time.”

At the doorway to the suite she had shared with Erik she paused. Cody leaned down and brushed a light kiss across her cheek. “I’m glad you’re back, Jessie. We’ve missed you around here. I think the last ounce of serenity around this place vanished the day you left.”

She was startled by the sweet assessment of her importance to this household where she’d always felt like an interloper. “Thanks, Cody. Saying that is the nicest gift anyone could have given me.”

He grinned. “Don’t say that until you’ve opened those packages downstairs. Something tells me everyone’s gone overboard in anticipation of your return and the arrival of the baby.” He winked at her. “One thing this family is very good at is bribery.”

“Bribery?”

“So you’ll stay, of course. You don’t think Daddy will be one bit happy about his first grandbaby growing up halfway across the state. He’s going to want to supervise everything from cradle to college. Hell, he’ll probably try to handpick her husband for her. Just be sure he doesn’t make her part of some business deal.”

Before Jessie could react to that, Cody was already thundering down the stairs again.

“Cody, for heaven’s sakes, remember where the dickens you are,” Harlan bellowed from somewhere downstairs.

“I’m just in a hurry to get another slice of Maritza’s pie,” Cody shouted back, unrepentant.

“No more pie until dinner,” Mary called out. “There won’t be a bit left for the rest of us.”

“Mother, Maritza’s been baking for a month,” Cody retorted. “There must be enough pies in the kitchen to feed half of Texas. You’ve only invited a quarter of the state at last count. One slice won’t be missed.”

Jessie stood for a moment longer, listening to the once-familiar bickering and decided that this, too, was what it meant to be part of a family. Somehow, though, with neither Erik nor Luke here the atmosphere had lost something vital—its warmth.

Feeling thoughtful and a little lonely, she opened the door to her suite, took a deep breath…and walked back into her past.

* * *

The house was empty. Luke found himself wandering from room to room, hating the oppressive silence, hating the sense of loneliness that he’d never noticed before. He’d always been a self-contained man. Hell, any cowboy worth his salt could spend days on end in the middle of nowhere, content with his own thoughts.

Suddenly he didn’t like his own company all that much. In a few short days, he’d grown used to Jessie invading his space at unexpected moments. He’d come to look forward to his own private time with Angela, their one-sided conversations, her sober, trusting gaze.

He stood at the doorway to his own bedroom and tried to force himself to cross the threshold. For some idiotic reason, he felt as if he were trespassing on Jessie’s private space, rather than reclaiming his own.

She’d left the room spotless, far neater than it had been when she’d arrived. The bed had been made up with fresh sheets. He knew because he’d heard the washing machine and dryer running and investigated. He’d found sheets and towels in the dryer, a load of his clothes in the washer.

He sighed. He almost wished she had left the old sheets on. Perhaps then, when he finally crawled back into that lonely bed of his, he might have been surrounded by her scent. Now, he knew, it would smell only of impersonal laundry detergent and the too-sweet fabric softener.

As he stood there he caught the glint of something gold on the nightstand beside the bed. The last rays of sunshine spilled through the window and made the metal gleam, beckoning him. Instinctively he knew whatever it was, it wasn’t his. Puzzled, he crossed the room to see what Jessie had left behind.

Even before he reached the nightstand, he realized what it was: a ring. Her wedding ring. His heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. He picked up the simple gold band and let it rest in the palm of his hand. Even though he knew what it said, he read the engraved message inside: Erik and Jessica—For Eternity.

What had she been thinking? he wondered. She must have taken it off when she was cleaning and simply forgotten it, he decided because he wasn’t sure he wanted to consider any other implications. He didn’t want to believe that she’d been deliberately making a statement, leaving him an unmistakable message that would force him to act or forever damn himself for his inaction.