Christmas at White Pines

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