A Christmas Blessing

he was sprawled in the easy chair in a corner of the bedroom with his eyes closed, the last bit of adrenaline that had gotten him through the delivery had finally worn off.
Faint, gray light filtered through the frosted window and cast him in shadows. She studied him surreptitiously and saw the toll the past months—or some mighty hard drinking—had taken on him.
The lines that time and weather had carved in his tanned, rugged face seemed deeper than ever. His jaw was shadowed by a day or more’s growth of beard. His dark brown hair, which he’d always worn defiantly long, swept the edge of his collar. He looked far more like a dangerous rebel than the successful Texas rancher he was.
If he looked physically unkempt, his clothes were worse. His plaid flannel shirt was clean but rumpled, as if he’d grabbed it from a basket on his way to the door. It was unevenly buttoned and untucked, leaving a mat of dark chest hair intriguingly visible. The jeans he’d hauled on were dusty and snug and unbuttoned at the waist.
Jessie grinned as her gaze dropped to his feet. He had on one blue sock. The other foot was bare. She found the sight oddly touching. Clearly he’d never given a thought to himself all during the night. He’d concentrated on her and seeing to it that Angela made it safely into the world. She would never forget what he’d done for her.
“Luke?” she repeated softly.
The whisper accomplished what her intense scrutiny had not. His dark brown eyes snapped open. “Hmm?” He blinked. “Everything okay?”
“The baby’s hungry. What’ll we do?”
“Feed her?” he suggested with a spark of amusement.
“Thanks so much.” She couldn’t keep the faint sarcasm from her voice, but she smiled as she realized how often during the night she’d caught a rare teasing note in Luke’s manner. In all the time she’d lived with Erik she’d never seen that side of Luke. He’d been brusque more often than not, curt to the point of rudeness. His attitude might have intimidated her, if she hadn’t seen the occasional flashes of something lost and lonely in his eyes. In the past few hours, she’d seen another side of him altogether—strong, protective, unflappable. The perfect person to have around in a crisis. The kind of man on whom a woman could rely.
“Anytime,” he teased despite her nasty tone.
Once again he’d surprised her, causing her to wonder if the quiet humor had always been there, if it had simply been overshadowed by his brothers’ high spirits.
Still, Jessie was in no mood for levity, as welcome a change as it was. “Luke, I’m serious. She’s going to start howling any second now. I can tell. And this diaper you cut from one of your old flannel shirts is sopping. We can’t keep cutting up your clothes every time she’s wet.”
“I have shirts I haven’t even taken out of their boxes yet,” he said, making light of her concern for his wardrobe. “If I lose a few, it’s for a good cause. Besides, I think she looks festive in red plaid.”
As he spoke, he approached the bed warily, as if suddenly uncertain if he had a right to draw so close. He touched the baby’s head with his fingertips in a caress so gentle that Jessie’s breath snagged in her throat.
“As for her being hungry, last I heard, there was nothing better than a mama’s own milk for a little one,” he said, his gaze fixed on the baby.
“I wasn’t planning on nursing her,” Jessie protested. “It won’t work with the job I have. She’ll have to be with a sitter all day. I need bottles, formula.” She moaned. There were rare times—and this was one of them—when she wondered how she would cope. She’d counted on Erik to be there for her and the baby. Now every decision, every bit of the responsibility, was on her shoulders.
“Well, given that she decided not to wait for you to get to a hospital or to arrange for a fancy set of bottles,” Luke said, still sounding infinitely patient with her, “I’d say Angela is just going to have to settle for what’s on hand for the time being. Don’t you suppose you can switch her to a bottle easily enough?”
“How should I know?” she snapped unreasonably.
Luke’s gaze caught hers. “You okay?”
“Just peachy.”
His expression softened. “Aw, Jessie, don’t start panicking now. The worst is over.”
“But I don’t know what to do,” she countered, unexpectedly battling tears. “I have three more classes to take just to learn how to breathe right for the delivery, and a whole stack of baby books to read, and I was going to fix up a nursery.” She sobbed, “I…I even…bought the wallpaper.”
Her sobs seemed to alarm him, but Luke stayed right where he was. Her presence here might be a burden, her tears a nuisance, but he didn’t bolt, as many men might have. Once more that unflappable response calmed Jessie.
“Seems to me you can forget the classes,” he observed dryly, teasing a smile from her. “As for the wallpaper, you’ll get to it when you can. I doubt Angela will have much to say about the decor, as long as her bed’s warm and dry. And babies were being born and fed long before anybody thought to write parenting books. If you’re not up to nursing her yet, it seems to me I heard babies can have a little sugar water.”
“How would you know a thing like that?”
“I was trapped once in a doctor’s office with only some magazines on parenting to read.”
His gaze landed on her breasts, then shifted away immediately. Jessie felt her breasts swell where his gaze had touched. Her nipples hardened. The effect could have been achieved because of the natural changes in her body over the past twenty-four hours, but she didn’t think that was it. Luke had always had that effect on her. A single look had been capable of making her weak in