Harlan was still at the breakfast table when Luke arrived downstairs in the morning. He knew the instant he looked into his father’s eyes that he was upset about something. Luke had a sinking feeling deep in his gut that he knew what that something was. He had thought he heard his parents come in the night before just as he’d slipped from Jessie’s room well after midnight. He’d been all but certain he had gotten past them undetected, but perhaps he hadn’t been as stealthy as he’d imagined.
His father put the paper aside and waited while Luke poured himself a cup of coffee. Luke deliberately took his time.
When he was finally seated, he met his father’s gaze. “Everything okay?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
“Oh?”
“I saw you leaving Jessie’s room last night. I wondered if there was something wrong with her or the baby.”
The question might have been innocuous enough, but Luke knew his father better than that. Harlan never inquired casually about anything. And their earlier conversation had already demonstrated Harlan’s suspicions. Luke could have manufactured a discreet answer, but he had a hunch his father had already figured out the implications of catching him in that upstairs hallway.
“They’re fine,” he said, focusing his attention on buttering his toast.
“Then there must have been some other reason for you to be sneaking out with half your clothes in your hand.”
So, Luke thought dully, there it was, out in the open. Spelled out in his father’s words, it sounded sordid, and his love for Jessie was anything but.
“I love her,” he declared defiantly, meeting his father’s gaze evenly. “And she loves me.”
Harlan sighed deeply, but there was little shock in his eyes. Instead, his gaze hinted of sorrow and anger. “I was afraid of this,” he said.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re just two people who fell in love. You could be happy for us.”
“She’s your brother’s widow, dammit!”
Luke bit back an expletive of his own. “Erik is dead, Dad. Denying our feelings won’t bring him back.”
The quietly spoken remarks did nothing to soothe Harlan’s temper. “How far has it gone?”
“Not far. She just had a baby.”
His father scowled at him. “I meant before.”
Luke felt a rough, fierce anger clawing at his stomach. How readily his father was willing to condemn him for a sin he hadn’t committed. He supposed that was the price he had to pay for declaring his independence. Despite Jessie’s analysis last night, he knew that Harlan would never totally trust him because of that.
“There was nothing between us when Erik was alive,” he declared quietly. “Nothing!”
“Who the hell are you trying to kid, son? I saw the way the two of you looked at each other. I knew in my gut that was what drove you away, what drove both of you away. You were running from feelings you knew weren’t right.”
He stared hard at Luke. “Whose baby is it?” he demanded. “Erik’s or yours?”
For the first time in his life, Luke honestly thought he could have slammed a fist into his father’s face and enjoyed it.
“How dare you?” he said, his tone lethal. “Neither Jessie nor I ever did anything to deserve a question like that. It doesn’t say a hell of a lot about your opinion of Erik, either. Whether you choose to believe it or not, he and Jessie had a good marriage. She’s not the kind of woman to turn her back on her vows. And I would have rotted in hell before I would have done anything, anything at all to take that away from him.”
“Instead, you took away his life.”
The cold, flatly spoken words slammed into Luke as forcefully as a sledgehammer. Though he had blamed himself too damned many times in the middle of the night for not doing more to save Erik, the doctors had reassured him over and over that his brother had been beyond help. Hearing the accusation leveled by his father, the same man who’d absolved him from guilt only a day or two before, made him sick to his stomach.
He refused to dignify the accusation with a response. Instead, he simply stood and headed for the door. “I’ll be gone before Mother gets down.” He glanced back only once, long enough to say, “If Jessie so chooses, she and your granddaughter will be going with me. You can put us all out of your head forever.”
“Lucas!” his father called after him. “Dammit, son, get back here!”
Luke heard the command, but refused to acknowledge it. He could not, he would not submit to more of his father’s disgusting accusations. Nor would he allow Jessie to be put through the same ordeal.
He had known this was the reaction they would face. It was one reason he had fought his feelings so relentlessly. It was why he’d struggled against Jessie’s feelings as well, but no more. Those feelings were out in the open now and the fallout had begun. That didn’t mean he had to linger at White Pines until his parents poisoned the happiness he and Jessie were on the threshold of discovering.
He was still trembling with rage when he slammed the door to Jessie’s suite behind him.
Visibly startled by his entrance and by his obviously nasty temper, Jessie motioned him to silence. “I’ve just gotten the baby back to sleep,” she whispered as she led him into the bedroom. “What on earth’s wrong?”
“Pack your bags,” he ordered at once. His plan to give her an option in the matter had died somewhere between the dining room and the top of the stairs. He intended to claim what was his and protect them from the righteous indignation they would face if they remained here.
“Why?”
“We’re going to my ranch.”
To her credit Jessie held her ground. “Why?” she repeated, her voice more gentle. Worry shadowed her eyes.
Luke muttered an oath under his breath and began to pace.
“Lucas, sit
