The whole family and dozens of friends had been crowded around a gigantic tree, its branches loaded with perfectly matched gold ornaments and tiny white lights, chosen by a decorator. Mary had played carols on the baby grand piano, while the rest of them sang along, their voices more exuberant than on key.
Jessie remembered thinking of all the quiet Christmases as she’d been growing up, all the times she’d longed for a boisterous houseful of people. With her hand tucked in Erik’s, she’d been so certain that for the first time she finally understood the joy of the season. Her heart had been filled to overflowing. In agreeing to go to White Pines this year, perhaps she’d been hoping to reclaim that feeling for herself and eventually for her baby.
It seemed unlikely, though, that it would have been the same. Erik had stolen her right to be there from her, wiped it away in an instant of carelessness that she’d never really doubted for a moment was as much his fault as Luke’s. Sometimes, when it was dark and she was scared, she blamed Luke, because it hurt too much to blame her husband.
Everything Luke had said earlier was true. Erik had hated working on the ranch, whether his father’s or his brother’s. He’d had other dreams, but his father had been too strong and Erik too weak to fight. He’d preferred working for Luke, who tolerated his flaws more readily than his father did. He’d accepted his fate by rushing through chores, by doing things haphazardly, probably in a subconscious bid to screw up so badly that his father or Luke would finally fire him.
Well, he’d screwed up royally, all right, but he’d died in the process, costing both of them the future they’d envisioned, costing Angela a father and her the extended family she’d grown to love. Sometimes Jessie was so filled with rage and bitterness over Erik’s unthinking selfishness that she was convinced she hated him, that she’d never loved him at all.
At other times, like now, she regretted to her very core all the lost Christmases, all the lost moments in the middle of the night when they would have shared their hopes and dreams, all the children they’d planned on having.
“Jessie?” Luke said, interrupting her sad thoughts as he stood in the kitchen doorway, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans. “Are you okay?”
“Just thinking about last year and how much things have changed,” she admitted.
Luke’s eyes filled with dismay. “I’m sorry. I know facing a Christmas without Erik is the last thing you expected,” he said, regarding her worriedly. “Why don’t you come on in the living room? I’ve started a fire in there.”
Without argument Jessie stood and followed him. She was frankly surprised by the unexpected invitation, but she had no desire to spend the rest of the evening alone with her thoughts, even if being with Luke stirred feelings in her that she didn’t fully understand.
When Luke stood by the fireplace, Jessie crossed over to stand beside him. He looked so sad, so filled with guilt, an agonizing of guilt that had begun some seven months ago for both of them. Instinctively she reached for him, placing her hand on his arm. The muscle was rigid.
She tried to make things right. “I don’t blame you for the way things are, Luke. I wanted to. I wanted to lash out at someone and you were the easiest target. You were there. You could have stopped him.” She sighed. “The truth is, though, that Erik was always trying to prove himself, taking chances. You couldn’t have kept him off that tractor if you’d tried.”
He shrugged off her touch. “Maybe not, but I blame myself just the same. Look what I’ve cost you.”
Jessie wanted to explain that it wasn’t Erik she missed so much as the feeling of family that had surrounded them all that night as they sang carols. To say that aloud, though, would be a betrayal of her husband, an admission that their life together hadn’t been perfect. She owed Erik better than that. He had given her the one thing she’d never had—the feeling of belonging to a family with history and roots.
“Regrets are wasted, Lucas. We should be concentrating on the here and now. It’s almost Christmas, the season of hope and renewal,” she said.
She glanced around the living room, which looked as it would at any other time of the year—expensive and sterile. It desperately needed a woman’s touch. Even more desperately, it needed to be filled with love.
“You’d never even know it was the holidays in here,” she chided him. “There’s not so much as a single card on display. I’ll bet you haven’t even opened them.”
“Haven’t even been out to the mailbox in days,” he admitted.
She lifted her gaze to his. “How can you bear it?” Before he could answer, she shook her head. “Never mind. That was what the cabinet full of liquor was all about, wasn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said angrily. “It was about forgetting for a few blessed days, forgetting Christmas, forgetting Erik, forgetting the guilt that has eaten away at me every single day since my brother died right in front of my eyes.”
Jessie flinched under the barrage of heated words. “Sounds like you’ve been indulging in more than whiskey. You sound like a man who’s been wallowing in self-pity.”
“Self-loathing,” Luke said.
“Has it made you feel better?” she chided before she could stop herself. She’d been there, done that. It hadn’t helped. “Has anything been served by you sitting around here being miserable?”
He didn’t seem to have an answer for that. He just stared at her, his expression vaguely startled by her outburst.
“Don’t you think I feel guilty sometimes, too?” she
