A Christmas Blessing

he kept his mouth clamped shut and his attention focused on the food. The potatoes were creamy with milk and butter. The gravy was smooth and flavored with beef stock, just the way he liked it. The chicken fried steak was melt-in-the-mouth tender. The green beans had been cooked with salt pork.
“When did you have time to do all this?” he asked. He studied her worriedly, looking for signs of exhaustion. She looked radiant. “You’re not even supposed to be on your feet yet, are you?”
“There wasn’t much to do. Consuela saw to most of it. I’ve never seen so many little prepackaged, home-cooked meals. She must have been stocking your freezer for a month. How long is she going to be gone, anyway? Or has she abandoned you for good, because of your foul temper?”
“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