A Christmas Blessing Read online

  Chapter Twelve

  Luke was having a great deal of difficulty remembering what it was that had originally brought him to White Pines. Sitting across from Jessie in a booth at Rosa’s Mexican Caf;aae, his mind kept wandering to that desperate, hungry kiss they had shared in his truck. Just thinking about it aroused him. She had been hot and yielding in his arms, every bit as passionate as he’d ever imagined.

  Now, as he watched her gasp with each bite of Rosa’s lethally hot salsa, he was just as fascinated by her passion for the spicy food. Her eyes watered. Sweat beaded on her brow. He thought she had never been more appealing, though he wondered if she was going to survive the meal.

  “They have a milder version,” he said, taking pity on her.

  She waved off the offer. “This is delicious,” she said as she grabbed her glass of water and gulped most of it down before reaching for another chip and loading it with the salsa. “The best Mexican food I’ve ever had. I wonder why Erik never brought me here.”

  Luke didn’t have an answer to that, but he couldn’t help being glad that they were sharing her first experience with Rosa’s Caf;aae, a place he’d always preferred to the fanciest restaurants in the state. Rosa, yet another of Consuela’s distant cousins, had been bossing him around since his first visit years before. Coming here felt almost more like coming home than going to White Pines. He was delighted that Jessie liked it.

  In fact, he was discovering that he was captivated by her reactions to everything. It seemed to him that in many ways Jessie took a child’s innocent delight in all of her surroundings. Her responses to the simplest pleasures gave him a whole new perspective on the world, as well. Each time he was with her, his jaded heart healed a bit. Each time she chipped away at his resolve not to get more deeply involved with his brother’s widow.

  Remembering his resolve reminded him at last of why he’d broken his vow never to return to White Pines. He had come not simply to see Jessie again and indulge his fantasies about her, but to ply her for information about her past. It was a mission from which he couldn’t afford to be distracted. He wanted to give her the gift of her family before he walked out of her life.

  “It doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” she asked, snagging his attention.

  “What?”

  “The food.”

  “Why? Because it’s hot? I grew up on Mexican food. Consuela put jalape;atno peppers in everything. I’m pretty sure she ground them up and put them in our baby food.”

  Jessie grinned. “No wonder you’re tough as nails. This stuff will definitely put hair on your chest, as my daddy used to say.”

  There it was, Luke thought. The perfect opening. “Tell me about your family,” he suggested. “Did you always know you were adopted?”

  She shook her head. “No, I didn’t have a clue until I was a teenager. One night I was talking about a friend who was adopted and who’d decided to search for her birth mother, and my mother suddenly got up and ran from the room. I had no idea what I’d said to upset her so. Daddy looked at me like he’d caught me torturing a kitten or something and went rushing after her. I sat there filled with guilt without knowing why I should feel that way.”

  Luke couldn’t begin to imagine her confusion and hurt. “Is that when they told you?”

  “Later that night. I’d cleaned up the supper they’d barely touched and done the dishes when they finally came into the kitchen and told me to sit down. They looked so sad, but stoic, you know what I mean?”

  Luke nodded. He’d actually seen a similar look in her face the day before, when he’d sent her away. He wondered how much of this she’d shared with Erik. A pang of pure jealousy sliced through him, and he cursed himself for being a selfish bastard, for wanting more of her than his brother had had.

  Oblivious to his reaction, Jessie went on. “Anyway, they told me then that they had adopted me when I was only a few days old. They said they didn’t know anything at all about my birth mother, that they hadn’t wanted to know. They’d made sure the records were sealed and never looked back.”

  “You must have felt as if your whole world had been turned on its ear,” Luke suggested.

  “Worse, I think. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t who I’d always thought I was—Dancy and Grace Garnett’s daughter. It was that they had lied to me for all those years. If you knew how Dancy and Grace preached about honesty above all else, you’d know how betrayed I felt when I learned the truth. It was as though they weren’t who they’d claimed to be, either.” She looked at him. “Am I making any sense here?”

  “Absolutely.” Since she seemed to be relieved to be sharing the story with him, Luke remained silent, hoping that would encourage her to go on.

  “I begged them to let me find my biological mother, but Grace started crying and Dancy got that same accusing look on his face again.”

  Even now, she sounded guilt ridden, Luke noticed. “Do you realize that when you talk about them in casual conversation, you refer to them as Mother and Father, but just now, talking about that time, you instinctively started calling them by their first names?”

  She seemed startled by the observation. “I suppose that’s true. Like I said, I started thinking about them differently then.” She gave him an imploring look. “Please, believe me when I say that no one could have had more wonderful parents. I loved them with all my heart. I grieved when they died. But something changed that night. I didn’t want it to, but it did.”

  “Not because they were your adoptive parents, but because they’d lied.”

  She nodded. “The very thing they’d always told me was one of the worst sins a person could commit.”

  Luke felt a shudder roll through him and wondered if his own devious plan would fall into the category of lying and whether she would forgive him when she discovered what he was up to.

  “But you gave up the idea of looking for your birth parents, didn’t you?”

  “At first I was so angry that I didn’t care what they wanted, but then, after a few days, I realized how deeply hurt they would be. I told myself that they were my real parents in every way that mattered, so, yes, I dropped the idea.”

  “Where would you have looked?” he asked.

  “Dallas, I suppose. It was the closest big city.” She shrugged. “I was sixteen. This hit me out of the blue. I had no idea how to start.”

  “And they never told you anything more, just that you had been born in Texas?”

  “Nothing.” She sighed and broke the chip she was holding in two and put it aside.

  When she glanced up again, Luke saw that her eyes were shimmering with unshed tears. His resolve stiffened. He would find her biological parents for her. She would have her family. She would have an identity that belonged to her, something he realized with sudden intuition was probably just as important to her as family.

  No longer would she be Grace and Dancy Garnett’s adopted daughter. Or Erik Adams’s widow. Or even Angela Adams’s mother. She would know her roots, her heritage. That, above all, was something Luke could understand. It was something no one in his family ever lost sight of. He’d been raised on tales of his ancestors and their struggles and accomplishments. They’d been held up as role models, tough in body and indomitable in spirit. Luke and his brothers had been expected to surpass their examples. The pressure had been unceasing.

  It was odd, he thought. Jessie had so little family history. He sometimes thought he and his brothers had had too much. The legacy had shaped them into the men they were. He had wanted to shape his own legacy. Cody had fought to claim the one they shared. Jordan was, quite possibly, the most fiercely independent of all of them.

  He reached across the table and claimed Jessie’s hand. It was cold as ice. Clearly startled by his touch, she met his gaze.

  “Just wanted to bring you back to the present, darlin’,” he said softly.

  Color rose in her cheeks. “Oh, Luke, I’m sorry. I never talk about the past like that. I can’t imagine what got into
me. You’ve probably been bored to tears.”

  “Anything but,” he assured her, resisting the urge to run straight to the pay phone and call Jim Hill with the few bits of new information he had. He needed one last thing, though, the only thing he could think of that might help and that Jessie was sure to know, despite her doubts about so much else. He needed to find out her exact birthday. He knew how old she was—twenty-seven. And he recalled that her birthday was sometime in summer.

  In fact he would never forget the celebration they’d thrown at White Pines her first year there. Erik had insisted on a real, old-fashioned Texas barbecue with neighbors coming from miles around and a live band for square dancing. He remembered every minute of it. That, in fact, was the night he’d realized that he was falling for his brother’s wife, that what he’d dismissed as attraction went far deeper.

  Jessie had been his partner for a spinning, whirling, breath-stealing square dance. Her cheeks had been flushed. Her bare shoulders had shimmered with a damp sheen of perspiration. Her lush lips had been parted, inviting a kiss. He had obliged before he’d realized he was going to do it. The quick, impulsive kiss had been briefer than a heartbeat, but it had shaken him to his core. Jessie had looked as if she’d been poleaxed.

  The band had shifted gears just then and played a slow dance. Jessie had drifted into his arms, innocently relaxing against him, oblivious he was certain to the fact that his body was pulsing with sudden, urgent need. Desperate to keep her from discovering just how badly he wanted her, he had spotted Erik across the dance floor and maneuvered them into his brother’s path. Erik had been only too eager to claim his wife.

  If there had been regret in Jessie’s eyes, Luke had blinded himself to it. He’d taken off right after that dance and from that day on he’d steered as far away from Jessie as he possibly could without drawing notice.

  Glancing at her, he wondered if she recalled that night as vividly as he did. Bringing up the memory was one way to learn the last piece of information he figured he could get for the detective—or so he told himself.

  “Hey, darlin’, do you recall that shindig we threw for your birthday your first year at White Pines?”

  Her blue eyes sparkled at once. “Goodness, yes. I’d never had such a lavish birthday party. Your parents actually had a dance floor installed under the stars, remember?”

  “Oh, I remember,” he said, his voice dropping a seductive notch.

  “I’d never square danced before.”

  “You sure took to it.”

  “It was exhilarating,” she said softly, and her eyes met his, her expression nostalgic.

  If she was saying more than the obvious, Luke couldn’t be sure. He decided for his own sanity it would be best to steer away from the minefield of any more intimate memories.

  “Was that July or August? All I remember was how hot it was.” Of course, he conceded to himself, his memory of the temperature might have had nothing to do with the weather. Jessie could have had his blood steaming with a look back then. She still could, he admitted. Air-conditioning hadn’t been manufactured that could cool him off in her presence.

  “August second,” she said. “It was the day before my birthday.”

  That nailed it down, Luke thought, rather proud of himself. He glanced at his watch, then slid from the booth. “Excuse me a second, Jessie. There’s a phone call I was supposed to make. I just now remembered it.”

  She regarded him oddly, but said nothing. Feeling like a sneak, Luke practically raced to the phone booth. He reached the detective on the third ring.

  “I was able to come up with a little more information,” he said and gave him what he had. “Does that help at all?”

  “Some,” Hill said. “I ran the name through the computer after we talked, just to see if anything turned up based on what you had this morning.”

  Luke sucked in a breath. “And?”

  “Nothing much beyond the usual, social security number, credit rating, that kind of thing. There was one thing I found a little odd, though.”

  “What?”

  “Looks to me as if she’s been investigated before. There are some inquiries on the credit history.”

  “Couldn’t that have been for a car loan or a job reference or something?”

  “Possibly. It just didn’t seem to track that way.”

  “How recently?”

  “A few years back.”

  Luke felt his heart begin to thud dully. “In the fall?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Most of the inquiries seemed to be around September or October.”

  Erik and Jessie had been married on November first. Her name had started coming up at White Pines only a month or two before as someone about whom Erik was serious.

  “Do you know something about that?” Hill asked.

  “Not for certain, but I’d put my money on Daddy,” Luke said, fighting his anger. He’d known that Harlan suspected Jessie’s motives in marrying Erik, but he’d had no idea he’d gone so far as to check her out. “My guess is that Harlan was doing some checking before Erik and Jessie got married. He probably wanted to be sure that the Adams name wasn’t about to be sullied or that she wasn’t going to take Erik for a fortune.”

  The detective didn’t react to Luke’s explanation except to say, “Maybe you can get the information you’re after from your father, then. He was probably pretty thorough. Do you want me to wait until you check it out?”

  “No, get started. Even Daddy probably couldn’t bust his way into sealed adoption records.”

  “What makes you think you can?”

  “Because you’re going to tell me exactly how to go about it, and then I’m going to tell Jessie. She’s probably the only one who can get through the legal red tape.”

  “If she wants to,” Hill reminded him.

  Luke thought of the sad expression he’d seen on her face earlier. “She’ll want to,” he said with certainty.

  “She might not like what she finds.”

  “I’ll be with her every step of the way,” he vowed. “It’ll be okay.”

  “You’re the boss,” the detective said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have anything. Where will I find you?”

  “At White Pines.”

  “Home for the holidays?”

  “Exactly,” Luke said dryly. “Just your typical family get-together.”

  It would be a lot less typical when he cornered his father about having Jessie investigated before the wedding. He was filled with indignation on her behalf. In fact, he might very well do something he’d been itching to do for years. He might wring Harlan’s scrawny old neck.

  * * *

  Luke’s expression looked as if it had been carved in stone when he came back from making that phone call. Whatever it had been about, the call had obviously upset him.

  Jessie watched his profile warily on the ride home, wondering if she should try to probe for an explanation for his change in mood. She supposed she ought to be used to his sullen silences, but having caught a few tantalizing glimpses of the other, gentler side of his nature, she wasn’t sure she could bear this return to an old demeanor, an old distance between them.

  “Bad news?” she inquired eventually.

  “You could say that,” he said tersely.

  “Can I help?”

  He glanced her way. “Nope. I’ll take care of it.”

  Jessie’s gaze narrowed. “You jumped in this morning when you saw I had a problem,” she reminded him. “Why won’t you let me return the favor?”

  “Because I can solve this myself.”

  “I could have solved my problem myself, but that didn’t prevent you from butting in, because you cared.”

  Luke’s gaze settled on her and his mouth curved into the beginnings of a smile. “You saying you care, Jessie?”

  “Well, of course I do,” she said hotly. “Luke, you know how I feel about you…” At the warning look in his eyes, her voice trailed off. Then, irritated with him and h
erself, she added determinedly, “And about what you did for me and Angela.”

  “Let’s not start that again.”

  “Well, dammit, it’s not something I’m ever likely to forget.”

  “Stop cursing. It’s out of character.”

  She lost patience with all the verbal tap dancing. “Lucas, you are the most exasperating, mule-headed man it has ever been my misfortune to know. It’s no wonder I’m cursing.”

  He grinned at her outburst. “I care about you, too,” he conceded, his voice gentler. “If I really needed help with this, Jessie, I swear you’d be the first person I’d turn to.”

  Ridiculously pleased, she said, “Really?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “So does it have something to do with the ranch?”

  He laughed. “Give you an inch and you go for the whole damned mile, don’t you?”

  “You know a better way to get what you want?”

  An oddly defeated expression passed across his face. “No, darlin’, I can’t say that I do.”

  “Luke?”

  “Drop it, Jessica. There’s nothing for you to worry about.” He glanced at her. “Except maybe how you’re going to bring Mother and Daddy to heel.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I’d rather tackle your problem.”

  “No,” he said with a grim note in his voice. “I can just about guarantee that you wouldn’t.”

  Before Jessie could respond to that cryptic remark, he’d parked the fancy four-wheel-drive car in front of the garage and climbed out. Before she could move, he had her door open. He reached out, circled her waist with his hands and lifted her down from the high vehicle.

  He was close enough that she could feel his warmth, close enough that his breath whispered against her cheek. She would have given anything to stay just that way, but the reality was they were at White Pines and there were far too many prying eyes.

  Besides, judging from the grim, determined set of Luke’s jaw, he would not have allowed it.

  “Come on, darlin’. Let’s go show ’em who’s in charge of our lives.”