A Christmas Blessing

here the atmosphere had lost something vital—its warmth.
Feeling thoughtful and a little lonely, she opened the door to her suite, took a deep breath…and walked back into her past.
* * *
The house was empty. Luke found himself wandering from room to room, hating the oppressive silence, hating the sense of loneliness that he’d never noticed before. He’d always been a self-contained man. Hell, any cowboy worth his salt could spend days on end in the middle of nowhere, content with his own thoughts.
Suddenly he didn’t like his own company all that much. In a few short days, he’d grown used to Jessie invading his space at unexpected moments. He’d come to look forward to his own private time with Angela, their one-sided conversations, her sober, trusting gaze.
He stood at the doorway to his own bedroom and tried to force himself to cross the threshold. For some idiotic reason, he felt as if he were trespassing on Jessie’s private space, rather than reclaiming his own.
She’d left the room spotless, far neater than it had been when she’d arrived. The bed had been made up with fresh sheets. He knew because he’d heard the washing machine and dryer running and investigated. He’d found sheets and towels in the dryer, a load of his clothes in the washer.
He sighed. He almost wished she had left the old sheets on. Perhaps then, when he finally crawled back into that lonely bed of his, he might have been surrounded by her scent. Now, he knew, it would smell only of impersonal laundry detergent and the too-sweet fabric softener.
As he stood there he caught the glint of something gold on the nightstand beside the bed. The last rays of sunshine spilled through the window and made the metal gleam, beckoning him. Instinctively he knew whatever it was, it wasn’t his. Puzzled, he crossed the room to see what Jessie had left behind.
Even before he reached the nightstand, he realized what it was: a ring. Her wedding ring. His heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. He picked up the simple gold band and let it rest in the palm of his hand. Even though he knew what it said, he read the engraved message inside: Erik and Jessica—For Eternity.
What had she been thinking? he wondered. She must have taken it off when she was cleaning and simply forgotten it, he decided because he wasn’t sure he wanted to consider any other implications. He didn’t want to believe that she’d been deliberately making a statement, leaving him an unmistakable message that would force him to act or forever damn himself for his inaction.
Eventually he pocketed the ring and returned to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He put the ring on the table in front of him as he sipped the rank brew that had been left since morning.
What the devil was he supposed to do now? He could mail it to her at White Pines. Unfortunately, the arrival of her wedding ring in the mail might stir up a hornet’s nest, if anyone in the family happened to notice. Heaven knew what interpretation they might place on her leaving it behind. He hadn’t even figured out his own interpretation of its significance.
If an outsider saw him, he’d think Luke had lost his mind, Luke acknowledged dryly. He was studying that tiny ring as if it were a poisonous snake, coiled to strike. The truth was, though, that the ring’s presence in his bedroom was every bit as dangerous as any rattler he’d ever encountered.
“Seems to me like there are two choices here,” he finally muttered, his gaze fixed on the gold band. “Send it off and quit worrying about it or call her up and ask what the devil she had in mind. Sitting here trying to make sense of it isn’t accomplishing a blessed thing.”
It was also leading him to talk to himself, he noted ruefully.
He carried the coffee and the ring into his office, where he’d left the cellular phone. He sat behind his desk for several minutes, trying to figure out what he could say that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot. Finally he just dialed the damn number, taking a chance that Jessie would be in her old suite and that it would still have the private line Erik had had installed. She answered on the first ring.
“Jessie?”
There was the faintest hesitation before she asked, “Lucas? Is that you?”
Something inside him suddenly felt whole again at the sound of her voice. It was a sensation that probably should have worried him more than it did. “Yeah, it’s me,” he confirmed. “How was your flight? Any problems?”
“No, everything went smoothly. Angela never even woke up.”
“That’s good. I imagine everyone there made quite a fuss when they saw her.”
“That’s an understatement,” she said. “According to Cody, your father will probably want to plan out her entire life, up to and including her choice of a husband.”
Luke found himself laughing at the accuracy of his youngest brother’s assessment. “Listen to him. He has the old man pegged.”
That said, he suddenly fell silent.
“Luke?”
“Yes.”
“Was that all you wanted, to see if we’d arrived okay?”
He sighed. “No.” Without quite realizing that he’d reached a decision on his approach, he blurted out, “Actually, I wanted to let you know that you’d forgotten your wedding ring. You must have taken it off when you were cleaning or something.”
“I didn’t forget it,” she said, a note of determination in her voice.
Her response left him stymied. “Oh,” he said and then fell silent again, struggling with the possibilities, fighting a flare of hope he had no business at all feeling. Finally he asked, “Why, Jessie?”
“Think about it, Lucas,” she said softly and he could almost see her smiling. “You’re a bright man. You’ll figure it out.”
“Jessie…”
“Goodbye, Luke. Merry Christmas.”
She hung up before he could get in another word. He sat staring stupidly at the phone in his hand. He closed his eyes and wished with all