A Christmas Blessing (21 page)

“I suppose the real skill in parenting is understanding each child’s personality,” Luke said thoughtfully. “Daddy said just last night how amazed he was at how different we were. Maybe if he’d recognized that sooner, Erik wouldn’t have suffered so, trying to be something he wasn’t. And you wouldn’t have lost him.”

Jessie took a deep breath and met Luke’s gaze. It was time to tell him everything and see where it led them. “I suspect I was destined to lose him one way or another. At least this way he never had to lose me to another man.”

Luke choked on the sip of wine he’d just taken. His eyes watered as he stared at her with astonishment written all over his face. “What are you saying?” he demanded.

Jessie drew in a deep breath. She wasn’t going to let him mistake her meaning with subtleties. “That I was in love with you long before Erik died,” she admitted boldly.

Luke was shaking his head before she completed the sentence. “Don’t say that,” he protested.

“Why not? It’s true.” She leveled a gaze into his troubled eyes. “Why do you think I left here after Erik died?”

“Because you couldn’t bear to be around me, knowing I’d caused his death,” Luke said.

Jessie decided she’d already opened the door. It was time to walk through it.

“No,” she told him softly, but adamantly. “Because I was filled with guilt over my feelings for you. From the day Erik and I moved into White Pines, I felt this connection to you. I didn’t want it. I couldn’t explain it. I certainly could never have acted on it, but it was there, just under the surface, tormenting me.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, spilled down her cheeks. “You have no idea how guilty I felt when he died. A tiny part of me was actually glad that I would never have to make a decision to leave him. I don’t think I could have, no matter how badly I wanted to. I could never have hurt him that way. For all of his weaknesses, Erik was good to me. He deserved better than he got from me. He deserved my whole heart, instead of just a piece of it.”

She thought back to the few moments she’d had with Erik at the hospital after Luke had come to tell her that her husband was dying. Alert for just a heartbeat, he’d turned that gentle, understanding gaze of his on her.

“Be happy, Jessie,” he’d whispered, clutching her hand in his.

“Not without you,” she’d insisted, as the life slowly seeped from his body with each weakening beat of his heart.

He’d squeezed her hand fiercely. “Tell him, Jessie.” Then more emphatically, he’d said, “Tell Luke.”

At first she hadn’t realized what he meant. “What?” she’d pleaded. “Tell Luke what?”

He’d struggled for air, then managed to choke out two words. “Love him.”

“Of course, I will tell him that you love him,” she’d soothed, caressing his cheek.

He’d smiled faintly at that. “Not me. You.”

Remembering how stunned she’d been, how consumed with guilt, Jessie thought no man had ever displayed more love, more generosity than Erik when he’d clung to her hand and said, “’S okay, Jessie.”

“Oh, Erik, forgive me,” she’d pleaded.

That sweet smile spread across his face one last time. “Nothing to forgive,” he’d whispered. “I love you.”

She gazed across the table at Luke and wondered how much she should tell him about Erik’s final words. Would they free him to love her?

Or, as they had with her, would they merely renew his own deeply ingrained sense of guilt? Knowing that Erik had guessed how they felt about each other, even if neither of them had ever acted on those feelings, was a heavy burden. She could attest to that. It had driven her from White Pines.

In the end she kept silent and the moment to confide passed.

“You’re not in love with me,” Luke said sharply, cutting into her reverie.

Jessie’s head snapped up. She almost choked on the bubble of hysterical laughter that formed in her throat. He seemed to think by saying it enough, he could make it true.

“Lucas, that is not for you to say.”

He slammed his glass of wine onto the table with so much force, it was a wonder the crystal didn’t shatter. Wine splashed in every direction. He glared at her. “I won’t have it, do you understand me?”

She gave him a compassionate look. “Maybe you can control your feelings, maybe you can sweep them under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist, but you can’t do the same with mine. I won’t allow that.”

His expression turned thunderous. “You won’t
allow
it?” he repeated slowly.

Jessie held her ground. “They’re my feelings.”

“They’re crazy.”

She shrugged. “Maybe so. In fact, at this precise moment, I’m almost certain you’re right about that. I would have to be crazy to fall in love with such a mule-headed male.” She gave him a resigned look. “But, then again, there’s no accounting for taste when it comes to matters of the heart.”

She watched Luke’s struggle to get a grip on his temper. In a perverse sort of way, she almost enjoyed it.

“Jessie, be reasonable,” he said with forced patience. “It’s not me you’re in love with. It’s the family. I’m taking care of that.”

She went perfectly still. “You’re taking care of that?” she repeated carefully. “What exactly does that mean? Did you suggest Harlan and Mary adopt me? What?”

A dull red flush climbed up Luke’s neck. “No, I…um, I spoke with a private investigator.”

Stunned, she just stared at him. Dear heaven, it was worse than she thought. “About?”

He winced at her curt tone. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Tell me now.” She bit off each word emphatically. She couldn’t think when she’d ever been so furious. He’d denied that this had anything to do with his family. So, if she was interpreting all of the stuttered hints and innuendoes correctly, he had decided to get himself off the hook with her by presenting her with her biological parents. Definitely a tidy solution from his point of view. “What exactly is this investigator investigating?”

Luke heaved a sigh. “He’s looking for your mother.”

At one time that announcement would have thrilled her. She would have leapt from the table and thrown her arms around him for being so thoughtful. Now all she felt was empty. He was expecting her to trade her very real, very deep love for him for a stranger’s possible affection. Couldn’t he see it wasn’t the same at all?

He seemed genuinely puzzled by her lack of response. “I thought this was what you wanted. You said…You told me how much you’d wanted to find your biological family.”

“I did. I still do,” she said wearily. When she could manage it without weeping, she met his gaze. “But not if it’s going to cost me you.”

The instant the words were out of her mouth, she ran from the room. Upstairs in her suite, she sent Lara away and took Angela in her arms.

“Can’t he see it, angel? Can’t he see that the two of you are the only family I need?”

* * *

Well, that had certainly gone well, Luke thought in disgust. Maybe he was every bit as bad as Harlan, trying to manipulate lives and control feelings. He’d only wanted to give Jessie the possible—her real family—to make up for the fact that he could never give her the impossible—himself.

After apologizing to Maritza for spoiling the meal she’d worked so hard to prepare, he slowly climbed the stairs. His thoughts were in turmoil…again.

What could he say to Jessie to make her see that it wouldn’t work? No matter how badly he wanted her, no matter how much she professed to love him, Erik would always be between them. There would never be a moment when their passion could flower, free from guilt and the overwhelming sense of having betrayed a man they had both loved. If their own consciences didn’t destroy them, the disappointment and indignation of the rest of the family surely would.

He paused outside Jessie’s suite and listened. He could hear the faint sounds of movement, the murmur of voices. Or was it only one voice? Jessie’s, perhaps, as she soothed Angela back to sleep?

Unable to help himself, he quietly opened the door a crack and peered inside. The suite’s bedroom was in shadows. A silver trail of moonlight splashed across the bed.

In a corner of the room the whisper of the rocker drew his attention. Jessie was holding the baby to her breast, nursing her. The glow of moonlight made her skin incandescent. Luke’s gaze was riveted, his body instantly throbbing with an aching need.

He realized after a moment that the yearning he felt went beyond the physical. He wanted to claim Jessie and the baby as his own with a fierceness that staggered him. He wanted the right to be in that room beside them, to drink in the incredible sight of mother and child in an act as old as time. He wanted…so much more than words could possibly express.

He could deny it from now to eternity and it wouldn’t change the truth. Somehow Jessie had realized that and made peace with it, while he still struggled. He knew, even if she did not, that love did not always conquer the obstacles in its path. She would come to see him as a sorry prize, if he cost her the love of his family.

Suddenly he sensed her gaze was on him. When she looked up, he could see the sheen of dampness on her cheeks, and a dismay worse than anything he’d felt over betraying Erik cut through him.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a ragged whisper.

The rocker slowed. “For?” she asked cautiously.

The simple question stymied him. For making her cry? For loving her? For refusing to go down a path that could only lead to worse heartache?

“For everything,” he said at last.

He turned away then, a dull sensation of anguish crushing his chest. Knowing he was closing the door on so much more than just the sight of the two people he loved most in the world, he quietly pulled it shut.

Even then, though, he couldn’t move. In the gathering silence, he heard Jessie whisper his name. It was no louder than a sigh of regret, but to his ears it seemed louder than a shout. He resisted the longing to open that door—the only shield between him and a wildly escalating temptation—for a single heartbeat, then two.

“Luke?”

He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sound of her voice, but the echo of his softly spoken name was already in his head, driving him crazy. A sigh shuddered through him and he knew he was lost. He opened the door, stepped inside, then closed it.

And as he did, he knew with every fiber of his being that nothing in his life would ever be the same.

Chapter Fifteen

J
essie watched with bated breath as Luke closed the door to the suite behind him. Her heart seemed to have stilled and then, as he took the first step toward her, it began to thunder mercilessly in her chest.

Dear heaven, how she loved him. Earlier tonight she’d been sure that she had lost him forever. She had run out of ways to combat his stubbornness, or so she had thought.

Apparently all it had taken was the whispered cry of his name on her lips, a soft command he’d been unable to resist. He crossed the room, reluctance still written all over his hard, masculine face, and sank slowly to the edge of the bed beside the rocker, careful not to allow his knees to brush against hers. Too careful. It told her how deeply his feelings for her ran and how much he feared losing control.

His gaze remained fixed on the baby in her arms. A soft, tender smile tugged at the corners of his lips. If she could have, without disturbing Angela, she would have touched a finger to that normally stern, unforgiving mouth. She would have tried to coax that smile to remain in place.

“Was it so very difficult?” she inquired dryly.

His gaze found hers. “What?”

“Walking into this room.”

“Not difficult,” he said, the smile coming and going again like a whisper. “Dangerous. When I’m around you, I can’t think. My common sense flies out the window. No one has ever had such control over me.”

“I don’t think feelings are something you can dictate with common sense,” she said.

“Maybe not, but actions are.” He studied her with a rueful expression. “You have the lure of a siren, Jessie. You and your baby.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“I’ve told you all the reasons it is.”

“Reasons, yes, but you’ve never said what was in your heart.”

Luke sighed and looked away. When he eventually settled his gaze on her again, there was an air of acceptance about him that she hadn’t seen before. It gave her hope.

“My heart,” he began, then shook his head. “I’m not sure I can find the words.”

She leveled a look at him, then said quietly, “Then show me.”

A soft moan seemed ripped from somewhere deep inside him. “Jessie, don’t…”

“It’s just the two of us here in the dark, Lucas. You can show me what’s in your heart. There’s no one to object.”

She thought she detected the faint beginnings of another wry smile.

“Not just two of us, Jessie. Angela’s right here with us. Hardly a proper audience for all I’d like to do to you, all the ways I’d like to show you how I feel.”

Jessie wasn’t about to let him seize an easy excuse for maintaining the status quo. Her entire body shook with her desperate yearning for his touch.

“She’s ready to be put down for the night,” she countered. “I’ll take her into the other room. After that, Luke, no more objections. No more excuses.”

She tucked the baby into her crib, caressing the soft, sweet-smelling cheek with a delicate touch. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with emotions—love for this precious new life, love for the man who waited in the next room. Her fear of the future was diminishing day by day.

Finally it was her love for Luke that drew her back. She was lured by the promise of warmth, by the deep sense of honor that made Luke the man he was, a man worthy of loving. There would be no passion between them, she thought with deep regret. Not tonight. Physically for her, it was too soon. Perhaps emotionally, as well, though she didn’t think so.

But there would be commitment at last. She could sense it with everything in her. He would no longer deny his feelings. And with Luke by her side, they could fight the rest of the inevitable battle with his family together.

He stood when she entered, then met her halfway across the room. Fighting, then visibly losing one last battle with himself, he opened his arms to her. Jessie moved into the embrace with the sense that she was finally, at long last, home to stay. The serenity that swept through her was overwhelming.