A Christmas Blessing by Sherryl Woods

the attraction went beyond her being unavailable to him. Traits he’d only suspected before were clear to him now. He was coming to know her strengths and her weaknesses in a whole new way and nothing he’d discovered disappointed him.
    In addition to being beautiful and warmhearted, she was also quick-tempered. In addition to being strong and brave, she was also willful and stubborn. She had a quick wit and a ready laugh, but she could also be a bit of a nag when she believed in her cause. In his view the positives outweighed the negatives. The contrariness only made her more interesting.
    Those discoveries solidified his long-held belief that she and Erik had been mismatched from the start. As much as he had adored his younger brother, he’d also recognized that Erik was weak, too weak to stand up to their father, too weak to provide much of a challenge to a woman like Jessie.
    He’d wondered more than once what had drawn them together in the first place. Observing them in years past with a sort of detached fascination, he had had no problem guessing why Erik had chosen a woman with Jessie’s strengths. Less clear was why she had fallen in love with his brother. The past couple of days had given him some insight into that.
    He was beginning to realize that far from being the gold digger she had appeared to some distrusting family members at first glance, Jessie had simply craved being part of a family with history and roots. On the surface, anyway, his family was storybook caliber with its strong men, boisterous affection, deep-rooted ties to the Texas land and abiding sense of loyalty. Erik had been her passport to all of that.
    He couldn’t help wondering, though, why she had chosen to move across the state after Erik’s death, when she could have stayed at White Pines, claimed her rightful place in the family she’d obviously grown to love, and been doted on.
    As he understood it, his parents had begged her to stay, especially after they’d learned she was pregnant. Even though it had meant giving up something desperately important to her, Jessie had insisted on going.
    Whatever her reasons, he admired her for standing up to them. He also knew she hadn’t taken a dime when she’d left. It was yet more testament to her character, proof that she had married Erik for love, not for money.
    Lingering in the barn, Luke was leaning against a stall door, still contemplating Jessie, when Chester butted him from behind. The old goat was obviously tired of being ignored. Luke turned on him with mock indignation.
    “Hey, what was that all about? Goats who get pushy don’t get treats.”
    Chester didn’t get the message. He nudged Luke’s coat pocket trying to get at the sections of apple he knew were there. Luke dug them out and fed them to him.
    “So, what do you think, Chester? What can I do to make this holiday special?”
    Since the goat didn’t seem to have any sage advice, Luke headed back toward the house. He was almost there when inspiration struck. He might not be able to deliver a load of gifts or even an album of Christmas carols, but he could certainly come up with a tree.
    He detoured to the woodpile for an ax, then headed into the stand of pine trees on the ridge behind the house. He’d planted most of them up there himself, full-grown pines that had cost a fortune. He supposed he’d done it just because his parents had no similar trees, despite the name of their home. The gesture had been some sort of perverse link to his past.
    He surveyed the cluster of trees critically, dismissing several as too scrawny, a few more as misshapen, though they’d all seemed perfect to him when he’d chosen them from the nursery. Finally his gaze landed on a tree that was tall and full and fragrant.
    He worked up a sweat and an appetite chopping it down, then dragging it through the snow all the way back to the house. Propped up against the back porch railing, the tree seemed ever-so-slightly larger than it had on