Czytaj książkę: «A Christmas Blessing»

Chapter One

Getting Consuela Martinez out of his kitchen was proving to be a much more difficult task than Luke Adams had ever envisioned. His housekeeper had found at least a dozen excuses for lingering, despite the fact that her brother was leaning on his car’s horn and causing enough ruckus to deafen them all.

“Go, amiga,” Luke pleaded. “Enjoy your holidays with your family. Feliz Navidad!”

Consuela ignored the instructions and the good wishes. “The freezer is filled with food,” she reminded him, opening the door to show him for the fourth time. Though there were literally dozens of precooked, neatly labeled packages, a worried frown puckered her brow. “It will be enough?”

“More than enough,” he assured her.

“But not if you have guests,” she concluded, removing her coat. “I should stay. The holidays are no time for a good housekeeper to be away.”

“I won’t be having any guests,” Luke said tightly, picking the coat right back up and practically forcing her into it. “And if I do, I am perfectly capable of whipping up a batch of chips and dip.”

“Chips and dip,” she muttered derisively.

She added a string of Spanish Luke felt disinclined to translate. He caught the general drift; it wasn’t complimentary. After all this time, though, Consuela should know that he wasn’t the type to host a lot of extravagant, foolish parties. Leave that sort of thing to his brother Jordan or his parents. His brother thrived on kissing up to his business associates and his parents seemed to think that filling the house with strangers meant they were well loved and well respected.

“Consuela, go!” he ordered, barely curbing his impatience. “Vaya con Dios. I’ll be fine. I am thirty-two years old. I’ve been out of my playpen for a long time.”

One of the dangers of hiring an ex-nanny as a housekeeper, he’d discovered, was the tendency she had to forget that her prior charge had grown up. Yet he could no more have fired Consuela than he could have his own mother. In truth, for all of her hovering and bossiness, she was the single most important constant in his life. Which was a pretty pitiful comment on the state of his family, he decided ruefully.

Consuela’s unflinching, brown-eyed gaze pinned him. Hands on ample hips, she squared off against him. “You will go to your parents’ on Christmas, sí? The holidays are a time for families to be together. You have stayed away too long.”

“Yes,” he lied. He had no intention of going anywhere, especially not to his parents’ house where everyone would be mourning, not celebrating, thanks to him.

“They will have enough help for all of the parties that are planned?”

Luke bit back a groan. “Consuela, you know perfectly well they will,” he said patiently. “The place is crawling with your very own nieces and nephews. My parents haven’t had to cook, clean or sneeze without assistance since you took over the running of that household forty years ago before they’d even met. When you came over here to work for me, you handpicked your cousin to replace you. Maritza is very good, yes?”

“Sí,” she conceded.

“This trip to see your family in Mexico is my present to you. It’s long overdue. You said yourself not sixty seconds ago that the holidays are meant for families. You have not seen your own for several years. Your mother is almost ninety. You cry every time a letter comes from her.”

“After all these years, I get homesick, that’s true. I am a very emotional person, not like some people,” she said pointedly.

Luke ignored the jibe. “Well, this is your chance to see for yourself how your mother is doing. Now stop dawdling and go before you miss your plane and before your brother busts our eardrums with that horn of his.”

Consuela still appeared torn between duty to him and a longing to see her mother. Finally she heaved a sigh of resignation and buttoned her coat. “I will go,” she said grudgingly. “But I will worry the whole time. You are alone too much, niño.”

It had been a long time since anyone had thought of Luke Adams as a little boy. Unfortunately, Consuela would probably never get the image out of her head, despite the fact that he was over six feet tall, operated a thriving ranch and had built himself a house twice the size of the very lavish one he’d grown up in.

“Ever since—“ she began.

“Enough,” Luke said in a low, warning tone that silenced her more quickly than any shout would have.

Tears of sympathy sprang to her eyes, and she wrapped her plump arms around him in a fierce hug that had Luke wincing. For a sixty-year-old woman she was astonishingly strong. He didn’t want her weeping for him, though. He didn’t want her pity. And he most definitely didn’t want her dredging up memories of Erik, the brother who’d died barely seven months ago, the brother whose death he’d caused.

“Go,” he said more gently. “I will see you in the new year.”

She reached up and patted his cheek, a gesture she dared only rarely. “Te amo, niño.”

Luke’s harsh demeanor softened at once. “I love you, too, Consuela.”

The truth of it was that she was about the only human being on the face of the earth to whom he could say that without reservation. Even before Erik’s death had split the family apart, Luke had had his share of difficulties with his father’s attempted ironclad grip on his sons. His mother had always been too much in love with her husband to bother much with the four boys she had borne him. And Luke had battled regularly with his younger brothers, each of them more rebellious than the other. Erik had been a year younger, only thirty-one when he’d died. Jordan was thirty, Cody twenty-seven. Consuela had been the steadying influence on all of them, adults and children.

“Te amo, mi amiga,” Luke said, returning her fierce hug.

Consuela was still calling instructions as she crossed the porch and climbed into her brother’s car. For all he knew she was still shouting them as the car sped off down the lane to the highway, kicking up a trail of dust in its wake.

Alone at last, he thought with relief when Consuela was finally gone from view. Blessed silence for two whole weeks. His cattle were pastured on land far from the main house and were being tended by his foreman and a crew of volunteers from among the hands. The ranch’s business affairs were tied up through the beginning of the new year. He had no obligations at all.

He opened a cupboard, withdrew an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey from the supply he’d ordered, ostensibly to take along as gifts to all the holiday parties to which he’d been invited. He pulled down a nice, tall glass, filled it with ice and headed for his den and the big leather chair behind his desk.

Uncapping the bottle, he poured a shot, doubled it, then shrugged and filled the glass to the rim. No point in pretending he didn’t intend to get blind, stinking drunk. No point in pretending he didn’t intend to stay that way until the whole damned holiday season had passed by in a blur.

Just as he lifted the glass to his lips, he caught sight of the wedding photo on the corner of his desk, the one he’d turned away so that he wouldn’t have to see Erik’s smile or the radiance on Erik’s wife’s face. He’d destroyed two lives that day, three if he counted his own worthless existence. Erik was dead and buried, but Jessie’s life had been devastated as surely as if she had been in that accident with him.

A familiar knot formed in his stomach, a familiar pain encircled his heart. He lifted his glass in a mockery of a toast. “To you, little brother.”

The unaccustomed liquor burned going down, but in the space of a heartbeat it sent a warm glow shimmering through him. If one sip was good, two were better, and the whole damned bottle promised oblivion.

He drank greedily, waiting to forget, waiting for relief from the unceasing anguish, from the unending guilt.

The phone rang, stopped, then rang again. The old grandfather clock in the hall chimed out each passing hour as dusk fell, then darkness.

But even sitting there all alone in the dark with a belly full of the best whiskey money could buy, Luke couldn’t shut off the memories. With a curse, he threw the bottle across the room, listened with satisfaction as it shattered against the cold, stone fireplace.

Finally, worn out, he fell into a troubled sleep. It wasn’t his brother’s face he saw as he passed out, though. It was Jessie’s—the woman who should have been his.

* * *

The sky was dark as pitch and the roads were icing over. Jessie Adams squinted through the car’s foggy windshield and wondered why she’d ever had the bright idea of driving clear across Texas for the holidays, instead of letting her father-in-law send his pilot for her. She wasn’t even sure how Harlan and Mary Adams had persuaded her that she still belonged with them now that Erik was gone.

She’d always felt like an outsider in that big white Colonial house that looked totally incongruous sitting in the middle of a sprawling West Texas ranch. Someone in the family, long before Harlan’s time, had fled the South during the Civil War. According to the oft-told legend, the minute they’d accumulated enough cash, they’d built an exact replica of the mansion they’d left behind in ashes. And like the old home, they’d called it White Pines, though she couldn’t recall ever seeing a single pine within a thirty-mile radius.

The bottom line was the Adamses were rich as could be and had ancestry they could trace back to the Mayflower, while Jessie didn’t even know who her real parents had been. Her adoptive parents had sworn they didn’t know and had seemed so hurt by her wanting to find out that she’d reluctantly dropped any notion of searching for answers.

By the time they’d died, she’d pushed her need to know aside. She had met Erik, by then. Marrying him and adjusting to his large, boisterous family had been more than enough to handle. Mary Adams was sweet as could be, if a little superior at times, but Erik’s father and his three brothers were overwhelming. Harlan Adams was a stern and domineering parent, sure of himself about everything. He was very much aware of himself as head of what he considered to be a powerful dynasty. As for Erik’s brothers, she’d never met a friendlier, more flirtatious crew, and she had worked in her share of bars to make ends meet while she’d been in college.

Except for Luke. The oldest, he was a brooder. Dark and silent, Luke had been capable of tremendous kindness, but rarely did he laugh and tease as his brothers did. The expression in the depths of his eyes was bleak, as if he was bearing in silence some terrible hurt deep in his soul. There had been odd moments when she’d felt drawn to him, when she’d felt she understood better than anyone his seeming loneliness in the midst of a family gathering, when she had longed to put a smile on his rugged, handsome face.

That compelling sense of an unspoken connection had been ripped to shreds on the day Luke had come to tell her that her husband was in the hospital and unlikely to make it. In a short burst riddled with agonized guilt, he’d added that he was responsible for the overturning of the tractor that had injured Erik. He’d made no apologies, offered no excuses. He’d simply stated the facts, seen to it that she got to the hospital, made sure the rest of the family was there to support her, then walked away. He’d avoided her from that moment on. Avoided everyone in the family ever since, from what Harlan and Mary had told her. He seemed to be intent on punishing himself, they complained sadly.

If Luke hadn’t been steering clear of White Pines, Jessie wasn’t at all sure she would have been able to accept the invitation to come for the holidays. Seeing Luke’s torment, knowing it mirrored her own terrible mix of grief and guilt was simply too painful. She hated him for costing her the one person to whom she’d really mattered.

Searching for serenity, she had fled the ranch a month after Erik’s death, settled in a new place on the opposite side of the state, gotten a boring job that paid the bills and prepared to await the birth of her child. Erik’s baby. Her only link to the husband she had adored, but hadn’t always understood.

She stopped the dark thoughts before they could spoil her festive holiday mood. There was no point at all in looking back. She had her future—she rested a hand on her stomach—and she had her baby, though goodness knows she hadn’t planned on being a single parent. Sometimes the prospect terrified her.

She found a station playing Christmas carols, turned up the volume and sang along, as she began the last hundred and fifty miles or so of the once familiar journey back to White Pines. Her back was aching like the dickens and she’d forgotten how difficult driving could be when her protruding belly forced her to put the seat back just far enough to make reaching the gas and brake pedals a strain.

“No problem,” she told herself sternly. A hundred miles or more in this part of the world was nothing. She had snow tires on, a terrific heater, blankets in the trunk for an emergency and a batch of homemade fruitcakes in the back that would keep her from starving if she happened to get stranded.

The persistent ache in her back turned into a more emphatic pain that had her gasping.

“What the dickens?” she muttered as she hit the brake, slowed and paused to take a few deep breaths. Fortunately there was little traffic to worry about on the unexpectedly bitter cold night. She stayed on the side of the road for a full five minutes to make sure there wouldn’t be another spasm on the heels of the first.

Satisfied that it had been nothing more than a pinched nerve or a strained muscle, she put the car back in gear and drove on.

It was fifteen minutes before the next pain hit, but it was a doozy. It brought tears to her eyes. Again, pulling to the side of the road, she scowled down at her belly.

“This is not the time,” she informed the impertinent baby. “You will not be born in a car in the middle of nowhere with no doctor in sight, do you understand me? That’s the deal, so get used to it and settle down. You’re not due for weeks yet. Four weeks to be exact, so let’s have no more of these pains, okay?”

Apparently the lecture worked. Jessie didn’t feel so much as a twinge for another twenty miles. She was about to congratulate herself on skirting disaster, when a contraction gripped her so fiercely she thought she’d lose control of the car.

“Oh, sweet heaven,” she muttered in a tone that was part prayer, part curse. There was little doubt in her mind now that she was going into labor. Denying it seemed pointless, to say nothing of dangerous. She had to take a minute here and think of a plan.

On the side of the road again, she turned on the car’s overhead light, took out her map and searched for some sign of a hospital. If there was one within fifty miles, she couldn’t spot it. She hadn’t passed a house for miles, either, and she was still far from Harlan and Mary’s, probably a hundred miles at least. She could make that in a couple of hours or less, if the roads were clear, but they weren’t. She was driving at a safe crawl. It could take her hours to get to White Pines at that pace.

There was someplace she could go that would be closer, someplace only five miles or so ahead, unless she’d lost her bearings. It was the last place on earth she’d ever intended to wind up, the very last place she would want her baby to be born: Luke’s ranch.

Consuela would be there, she consoled herself as she resigned herself to dropping by unannounced to deliver a baby. Luke probably didn’t want to see her any more than she wanted to see him. And what man wanted any part of a woman’s labor, unless she happened to be his wife? Luke probably wouldn’t be able to turn her over to Consuela fast enough. With all those vacant rooms, they probably wouldn’t even bump into each other in the halls.

Jessie couldn’t see that she had any choice. The snow had turned to blizzard conditions. The world around her was turning into a snow-covered wonderland, as dangerous as it was beautiful. The tires were beginning to skid and spin on the road. The contractions were maybe ten minutes apart. She’d be lucky to make it these few miles to Luke’s. Forget going any farther.

The decision made with gut-deep reluctance, she accomplished the drive by sheer force of will. When she finally spotted the carved gate announcing the ranch, she skidded to a halt and wept with relief. She still had a mile of frozen, rutted lane to the house, but that would be a breeze compared to the five she’d just traveled.

A hard contraction, the worst yet, gripped her and had her screaming out loud. She clung to the steering wheel, panting as she’d seen on TV, until it passed. Sweat streamed down her face.

“Come on, sweet thing,” she pleaded with the baby. “Only a few more minutes. Don’t you dare show up until I get to the house.”

She couldn’t help wondering when that would be. There was no beckoning light in the distance, no looming shape of the house. Surely, though, it couldn’t be much farther.

She drove on, making progress by inches, it seemed. At last she spotted the house, dark as coal against the blinding whiteness around it. Not a light on anywhere. No bright holiday decorations blinking tiny splashes of color onto the snow.

“Luke Adams, you had better be home,” she muttered as she hauled herself out from behind the wheel at last.

Standing on shaky legs, she began the endless trek through the deepening snow, cursing and clutching her stomach as she bent over with yet another ragged pain. The wind-whipped snow stung her cheeks and mingled with tears. The already deepening drifts made walking treacherous and slow.

“A little farther,” she encouraged herself. Three steps. Four. One foot onto the wide sweep of a porch. Then the other. She had made it! She paused and sucked in a deep breath, then looked around her.

The desolate air about the place had only intensified as she’d drawn closer. There was no wreath of evergreens on the front door, no welcoming light shining on the porch or from any of the rooms that she could detect. For the first time, she allowed a panicky thought. What if she had made it this far, only to find herself still alone? What if Luke had packed his bags and flown away for the holidays?

“Please, God, let someone be here,” she prayed as she hit the doorbell again and again, listening to the chime echo through the house. She pounded on the glass, shouted, then punched the doorbell again.

She heard a distant crash, a loud oath, then another crash. Apparently Luke was home, she thought dryly, as she began another insistent round of doorbell ringing.

“For cripe’s sakes, hold your horses, dammit!”

A light switch was thrown and the porch was illuminated in a warm yellow glow. Finally, just as another contraction ripped through Jessie, the door was flung open.

She was briefly aware of the thunderstruck expression on Luke’s face and his disheveled state, only marginally aware of the overpowering scent of alcohol.

And then, after a murmured greeting she doubted made a lick of sense, she collapsed into the arms of the man who’d killed her husband.