A Christmas Blessing (17 page)

“Jessie? What’s going on?” he asked as he led her away from the door and shut it behind him. A worried frown puckered his brow as he waited with obvious impatience for answers. “What has my family done to you now?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Everything. Oh, Luke, they’re taking over. I’m trying so damned hard not to let them. I am not a weak woman. You know that.”

“No mistake about it,” he agreed.

Jessie barely noticed the sudden return of a twinkle in his eye. She was too caught up in trying to explain her frustration. “But they’re bulldozing right over me,” she said, giving full vent to her exasperation. “They don’t listen to a word I say. They don’t even hear me.”

To her astonishment, Luke chuckled. “Darlin’, that’s nothing to get all stressed out about. That’s just Mother and Dad. Talk louder and stand your ground. Sooner or later, they’ll get the message.”

Jessie recognized the wisdom of his advice. She’d even seen how well it worked in action. She’d just lost her strength to fight there for a minute. She gazed up at Luke, tears still shimmering in her eyes, and offered a watery grin. “Quite a welcome, huh?”

He grinned. “Can’t say I’ve ever minded having a woman hurl herself into my arms,” he teased.

His gaze captured hers and held. Suddenly the teasing light in his eyes died out, replaced by something far more serious, something far more compelling. Jessie’s breath snagged in her throat.

“Luke,” she began huskily, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Luke, what are you doing here? Yesterday you flat-out refused to come. Did something change your mind?” She thought of the ring she’d left behind and the odd call he’d made the day before when he’d discovered it.

“I suppose you could say I came to take the pressure off you.”

She regarded him uncertainly. It wasn’t exactly the response she’d been anticipating. “In what way?”

He shrugged. “With me around, Daddy will be so busy trying to take charge of my life again, he won’t have time to go messin’ in yours.”

“That’s what you think,” she said dismally. “Harlan could fiddle with the lives of an entire army platoon without missing a beat. As for your mother…” She sighed heavily.

Luke grinned. “Don’t I just know it,” he said, matching her sigh with apparent deliberation. “Maybe we should both just hide out in here for the duration.”

An intriguing idea, Jessie thought. She was stunned, however, that Luke had suggested it, even in jest. Or, perhaps that was the point. Perhaps he intended to tease and taunt her as he might a younger sister, robbing her of any notions that he thought of her in any kind of sexual way. She searched his gaze for answers, but whatever emotions had been swirling there a moment before had given way to pure amusement.

“I have an idea,” he said. His voice had dropped to a daring, conspiratorial note.

“What?” she asked suspiciously.

“I saw this very bored young woman sitting right outside your door. I have a feeling she would be more than glad to baby-sit for a bit.”

Jessie rolled her eyes. Obviously Lara had decided to stay within shouting distance. “I’ll bet,” she muttered. “She’s there under orders from your mother.”

Luke chuckled. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Let’s let Lara do her thing. You and I can go to lunch.”

“I just ate breakfast,” Jessie protested.

“Obviously you haven’t noticed the roads into town. By the time we get there, it will definitely be lunchtime.”

“Won’t your family be expecting you to eat lunch here? Have you even seen your father or mother yet? Or Cody?”

“Not hide nor hair of them. I snuck in the back way,” he admitted. “You can help me keep it that way a little longer. Are you game?”

Jessie would have hopped a bus to nowhere if it would have gotten her away from White Pines for a little while, long enough to get back her equilibrium. A trip into town with Luke sounded perfect.

“You tell Lara,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”

As he started toward the door of the suite, Jessie called after him, “Luke?”

He glanced back.

“I don’t have any idea what really brought you here, but I’m very glad you came.”

An oddly wistful expression came over his face for an instant. It was gone in a heartbeat.

“Maybe I just heard your prayers for a knight in shining armor,” he taunted. “My armor’s a bit tarnished, but I can still stand up to a common enemy.”

Hearing him expressing the view of Harlan and Mary that she’d been thinking to herself only a short time earlier made Jessie feel suddenly guilty. For all of their bossiness, they had always been kind to her. The huge pile of Christmas presents stacked in the corner—everything from a silver teething ring to a car seat for the baby, from a golden locket to a filmy negligee and robe for her—attested to their generosity.

“They’re not that bad,” she countered.

“Don’t need a hero, huh? Want me to head on home, then?”

Jessie had the feeling he would be only too relieved to comply. For a multitude of reasons, she wasn’t sure she could bear it if he left.

She leveled a challenging glare at him. “Just try it, Lucas. You’ll have to walk through me.”

He winked at her. “An interesting idea.”

That wink stirred ideas in Jessie that could have gotten her arrested in some parts of the world, she was sure. Harlan and Mary would certainly have been scandalized by her thoughts. She grabbed her coat before she was tempted to act on any one of them.

As if he’d read her mind, Luke inquired lazily, “In a hurry, darlin’?”

“You have no idea,” she replied in a choked voice.

“Oh, I’ll bet I do.” He touched a finger lightly to her lips. “Hold those thoughts.”

Jessie had no problem at all complying with that rather surprising request. She doubted she could have banished them with a solid whack by a crowbar. What she couldn’t comprehend to save her soul was why Luke had suddenly taken it into his head to torment her like this. Whatever his reasons, though, she intended to make the most of his presence.

He might walk away from her and from White Pines eventually, but if he went this time it wouldn’t be without putting up the fight of his life for his heart. Jessie intended to claim it, this time for good.

Chapter Twelve

L
uke was having a great deal of difficulty remembering what it was that had originally brought him to White Pines. Sitting across from Jessie in a booth at Rosa’s Mexican Caf;aae, his mind kept wandering to that desperate, hungry kiss they had shared in his truck. Just thinking about it aroused him. She had been hot and yielding in his arms, every bit as passionate as he’d ever imagined.

Now, as he watched her gasp with each bite of Rosa’s lethally hot salsa, he was just as fascinated by her passion for the spicy food. Her eyes watered. Sweat beaded on her brow. He thought she had never been more appealing, though he wondered if she was going to survive the meal.

“They have a milder version,” he said, taking pity on her.

She waved off the offer. “This is delicious,” she said as she grabbed her glass of water and gulped most of it down before reaching for another chip and loading it with the salsa. “The best Mexican food I’ve ever had. I wonder why Erik never brought me here.”

Luke didn’t have an answer to that, but he couldn’t help being glad that they were sharing her first experience with Rosa’s Caf;aae, a place he’d always preferred to the fanciest restaurants in the state. Rosa, yet another of Consuela’s distant cousins, had been bossing him around since his first visit years before. Coming here felt almost more like coming home than going to White Pines. He was delighted that Jessie liked it.

In fact, he was discovering that he was captivated by her reactions to everything. It seemed to him that in many ways Jessie took a child’s innocent delight in all of her surroundings. Her responses to the simplest pleasures gave him a whole new perspective on the world, as well. Each time he was with her, his jaded heart healed a bit. Each time she chipped away at his resolve not to get more deeply involved with his brother’s widow.

Remembering his resolve reminded him at last of why he’d broken his vow never to return to White Pines. He had come not simply to see Jessie again and indulge his fantasies about her, but to ply her for information about her past. It was a mission from which he couldn’t afford to be distracted. He wanted to give her the gift of her family before he walked out of her life.

“It doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” she asked, snagging his attention.

“What?”

“The food.”

“Why? Because it’s hot? I grew up on Mexican food. Consuela put jalape;atno peppers in everything. I’m pretty sure she ground them up and put them in our baby food.”

Jessie grinned. “No wonder you’re tough as nails. This stuff will definitely put hair on your chest, as my daddy used to say.”

There it was, Luke thought. The perfect opening. “Tell me about your family,” he suggested. “Did you always know you were adopted?”

She shook her head. “No, I didn’t have a clue until I was a teenager. One night I was talking about a friend who was adopted and who’d decided to search for her birth mother, and my mother suddenly got up and ran from the room. I had no idea what I’d said to upset her so. Daddy looked at me like he’d caught me torturing a kitten or something and went rushing after her. I sat there filled with guilt without knowing why I should feel that way.”

Luke couldn’t begin to imagine her confusion and hurt. “Is that when they told you?”

“Later that night. I’d cleaned up the supper they’d barely touched and done the dishes when they finally came into the kitchen and told me to sit down. They looked so sad, but stoic, you know what I mean?”

Luke nodded. He’d actually seen a similar look in her face the day before, when he’d sent her away. He wondered how much of this she’d shared with Erik. A pang of pure jealousy sliced through him, and he cursed himself for being a selfish bastard, for wanting more of her than his brother had had.

Oblivious to his reaction, Jessie went on. “Anyway, they told me then that they had adopted me when I was only a few days old. They said they didn’t know anything at all about my birth mother, that they hadn’t wanted to know. They’d made sure the records were sealed and never looked back.”

“You must have felt as if your whole world had been turned on its ear,” Luke suggested.

“Worse, I think. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t who I’d always thought I was—Dancy and Grace Garnett’s daughter. It was that they had lied to me for all those years. If you knew how Dancy and Grace preached about honesty above all else, you’d know how betrayed I felt when I learned the truth. It was as though they weren’t who they’d claimed to be, either.” She looked at him. “Am I making any sense here?”

“Absolutely.” Since she seemed to be relieved to be sharing the story with him, Luke remained silent, hoping that would encourage her to go on.

“I begged them to let me find my biological mother, but Grace started crying and Dancy got that same accusing look on his face again.”

Even now, she sounded guilt ridden, Luke noticed. “Do you realize that when you talk about them in casual conversation, you refer to them as Mother and Father, but just now, talking about that time, you instinctively started calling them by their first names?”

She seemed startled by the observation. “I suppose that’s true. Like I said, I started thinking about them differently then.” She gave him an imploring look. “Please, believe me when I say that no one could have had more wonderful parents. I loved them with all my heart. I grieved when they died. But something changed that night. I didn’t want it to, but it did.”

“Not because they were your adoptive parents, but because they’d lied.”

She nodded. “The very thing they’d always told me was one of the worst sins a person could commit.”

Luke felt a shudder roll through him and wondered if his own devious plan would fall into the category of lying and whether she would forgive him when she discovered what he was up to.

“But you gave up the idea of looking for your birth parents, didn’t you?”

“At first I was so angry that I didn’t care what they wanted, but then, after a few days, I realized how deeply hurt they would be. I told myself that they were my real parents in every way that mattered, so, yes, I dropped the idea.”

“Where would you have looked?” he asked.

“Dallas, I suppose. It was the closest big city.” She shrugged. “I was sixteen. This hit me out of the blue. I had no idea how to start.”

“And they never told you anything more, just that you had been born in Texas?”

“Nothing.” She sighed and broke the chip she was holding in two and put it aside.

When she glanced up again, Luke saw that her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. His resolve stiffened. He would find her biological parents for her. She would have her family. She would have an identity that belonged to her, something he realized with sudden intuition was probably just as important to her as family.

No longer would she be Grace and Dancy Garnett’s adopted daughter. Or Erik Adams’s widow. Or even Angela Adams’s mother. She would know her roots, her heritage. That, above all, was something Luke could understand. It was something no one in his family ever lost sight of. He’d been raised on tales of his ancestors and their struggles and accomplishments. They’d been held up as role models, tough in body and indomitable in spirit. Luke and his brothers had been expected to surpass their examples. The pressure had been unceasing.

It was odd, he thought. Jessie had so little family history. He sometimes thought he and his brothers had had too much. The legacy had shaped them into the men they were. He had wanted to shape his own legacy. Cody had fought to claim the one they shared. Jordan was, quite possibly, the most fiercely independent of all of them.

He reached across the table and claimed Jessie’s hand. It was cold as ice. Clearly startled by his touch, she met his gaze.

“Just wanted to bring you back to the present, darlin’,” he said softly.

Color rose in her cheeks. “Oh, Luke, I’m sorry. I never talk about the past like that. I can’t imagine what got into me. You’ve probably been bored to tears.”