A Christmas Blessing

table and disappear before she could blink. She’d passed his office, just in time to see him vanish into the library. She’d bundled up and trailed him to the barn, only to see him riding away on horseback. A gimpy old goat had been gamely trying to follow him.
Shivering, she had trudged back inside only to hear Angela screaming at the top of her lungs. Nothing she’d done had settled the baby down. Angela was dry and fed. For the past twenty minutes, Jessie had been rocking her in front of the fire in the kitchen. Angela’s great, hiccupping sobs continued unabated.
“A few more minutes of this and you’ll have me in tears, too,” Jessie murmured in distress. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re tired. Go off to sleep, like mommy’s little angel.”
Blessed silence greeted the suggestion. Five seconds later, Angela screamed even louder than before. Obviously she’d only taken time off to rev up her engine.
Jessie could feel the first, faint beginnings of panic. Already uncertain about her mothering skills, her inability to soothe her baby seemed to confirm just how unprepared and inept she was.
Because the rocking seemed to be making both of them more jittery than serene, she stood and began to pace as she racked her brain for some new technique to try.
She tried crooning a lullaby, singing an old rock song at full volume, rubbing her back. She was at her wit’s end when she heard the back door slam.
Luke hesitated just inside the threshold. “What’s all this racket?” he demanded, but there was a teasing note in his voice and a spark of amusement in his eyes. “I could hear both of you all the way out at the barn. Chester took off for parts unknown. The horses are trying to hide their heads under the hay.”
“Very funny,” Jessie snapped just as Luke reached for the baby. She relinquished her all too readily.
“Come here, angel,” he murmured consolingly. “You were just missing Uncle Luke, weren’t you?”
Jessie’s traitorous daughter gulped back a sob, then cooed happily. Held in the crook of Luke’s arm, she looked tiny, but thoroughly contented. Jessie wanted to warn her that a man’s arms weren’t a guarantee of protection, but maybe that was a lesson it was too soon to teach. If the feel of Luke’s strength could silence the baby’s cries for now, Jessie had no complaints. She felt the oddest, most compelling yearning to have his arms around her as well. With her hormones bouncing around in the wake of the baby’s birth, she seemed to be more insecure than ever.
Luke glanced her way. “Stop hovering. We’re doing fine. I’m going to start supper and Angela’s going to help, aren’t you, munchkin?”
Jessie sank gratefully onto a kitchen chair and watched Luke’s efficient movements as he pulled packages from the freezer with one hand, all the while carrying on a nonsensical conversation with the baby. Jessie sighed with envy as she watched him.
“How do you do that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s like a horse. If it knows you’re afraid, it’ll buck you off sure thing. If you handle it with confidence, it’ll go along with you.”
Jessie sorted through the metaphor and came to the conclusion he thought she was scared to death of her own daughter. “In other words, I’m lousy at this.”
He shot a glance over his shoulder at her. “Did I say that? I thought I was saying that she senses you’re not sure of yourself.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“You will be.”
“How did you get to be so good with babies?”
“Three younger brothers, I suppose. All three of them had very different temperaments. Jordan was the charmer from day one. He could wheedle anything out of anybody. He gurgled and smiled and cooed. Even Daddy wasn’t immune to him. It’s no wonder he’s been such an incredible business success.”
“And Cody?”
“He’s the flirt. There hasn’t been a woman born he couldn’t win over. Daddy couldn’t handle him worth a lick. Come to think of it, Mama could never handle him either, but he could always make her think she’d won. He wrapped Consuela around his little finger and, believe me, she’s no patsy.”
“What about Erik? What was he like?” Jessie asked cautiously, keeping her gaze on Luke’s face. His expression didn’t change, but he did hesitate. For a moment she almost regretted bringing him up.
“Erik was the diplomat,” he said eventually. “He was the master of compromise. If Mama gave him two chores, he’d make her settle for one. If Daddy ordered him to be home at midnight, Erik would compromise for twelve-thirty. He never, ever accepted their first offer. If he’d been in the foreign service, it was a skill that would have served him well. As it was, he compromised himself into waiting for the life he really wanted by offering to prove himself first as a rancher.”
There was a note of sorrow in his voice that resonated deep inside Jessie. “He wanted so badly to be a teacher in junior high, the age when kids are testing themselves, and he would have been good at it, too,” she said. “He just wanted to please your father.”
“He should have known that nothing would impress Daddy except success,” Luke said bitterly. “If Erik had stuck to his guns and gone on to be a teacher, if he’d won recognition for that, it would have pleased Daddy more than seeing him trying to be a rancher and failing.”
Jessie felt a surge of anger on Erik’s behalf. “Don’t belittle your brother for trying. At least he admitted that he was staying at the ranch in an attempt to gain your father’s approval. You won’t even admit that’s what you’re doing.” She waved her hand to encompass the kitchen, the whole house. “Isn’t that what all of this is for, to impress your father, to prove you could start from scratch, without a dime of his money and have a bigger, more impressive ranch?”
As if she sensed the sudden tension, Angela whimpered. Luke soothed