Sherryl Woods - A Christmas Blessing

Widowed Jessie was about to give birth, and she needed help fast. Unfortunately, the closest ranch in town belonged to her brother-in-law. Though this charismatic rancher was her only hope, he was the last person Jessie wanted to be with.

Previously published.

A Christmas Blessing

Sherryl Woods

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-03378-7

A CHRISTMAS BLESSING

© 1995 Sherryl Woods

Published in Great Britain 2015

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2018-04-18

Table of Contents

Cover

Back Cover Copy Widowed Jessie was about to give birth, and she needed help fast. Unfortunately, the closest ranch in town belonged to her brother-in-law. Though this charismatic rancher was her only hope, he was the last person Jessie wanted to be with. Previously published.

Title Page A Christmas Blessing Sherryl Woods www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Copyright

Chapter One

Getting Consuela Martinez out of his kitchen was proving to be a much more difficult task than Luke Adams had ever envisioned. His housekeeper had found at least a dozen excuses for lingering, despite the fact that her brother was leaning on his car’s horn and causing enough ruckus to deafen them all.

“Go, amiga ,” Luke pleaded. “Enjoy your holidays with your family. Feliz Navidad! ”

Consuela ignored the instructions and the good wishes. “The freezer is filled with food,” she reminded him, opening the door to show him for the fourth time. Though there were literally dozens of precooked, neatly labeled packages, a worried frown puckered her brow. “It will be enough?”

“More than enough,” he assured her.

“But not if you have guests,” she concluded, removing her coat. “I should stay. The holidays are no time for a good housekeeper to be away.”

“I won’t be having any guests,” Luke said tightly, picking the coat right back up and practically forcing her into it. “And if I do, I am perfectly capable of whipping up a batch of chips and dip.”

“Chips and dip,” she muttered derisively.

She added a string of Spanish Luke felt disinclined to translate. He caught the general drift; it wasn’t complimentary. After all this time, though, Consuela should know that he wasn’t the type to host a lot of extravagant, foolish parties. Leave that sort of thing to his brother Jordan or his parents. His brother thrived on kissing up to his business associates and his parents seemed to think that filling the house with strangers meant they were well loved and well respected.

“Consuela, go!” he ordered, barely curbing his impatience. “ Vaya con Dios . I’ll be fine. I am thirty-two years old. I’ve been out of my playpen for a long time.”

One of the dangers of hiring an ex-nanny as a housekeeper, he’d discovered, was the tendency she had to forget that her prior charge had grown up. Yet he could no more have fired Consuela than he could have his own mother. In truth, for all of her hovering and bossiness, she was the single most important constant in his life. Which was a pretty pitiful comment on the state of his family, he decided ruefully.

Consuela’s unflinching, brown-eyed gaze pinned him. Hands on ample hips, she squared off against him. “You will go to your parents’ on Christmas, sí? The holidays are a time for families to be together. You have stayed away too long.”

“Yes,” he lied. He had no intention of going anywhere, especially not to his parents’ house where everyone would be mourning, not celebrating, thanks to him.

“They will have enough help for all of the parties that are planned?”

Luke bit back a groan. “Consuela, you know perfectly well they will,” he said patiently. “The place is crawling with your very own nieces and nephews. My parents haven’t had to cook, clean or sneeze without assistance since you took over the running of that household forty years ago before they’d even met. When you came over here to work for me, you handpicked your cousin to replace you. Maritza is very good, yes?”

“Sí,” she conceded.

“This trip to see your family in Mexico is my present to you. It’s long overdue. You said yourself not sixty seconds ago that the holidays are meant for families. You have not seen your own for several years. Your mother is almost ninety. You cry every time a letter comes from her.”

“After all these years, I get homesick, that’s true. I am a very emotional person, not like some people,” she said pointedly.

Luke ignored the jibe. “Well, this is your chance to see for yourself how your mother is doing. Now stop dawdling and go before you miss your plane and before your brother busts our eardrums with that horn of his.”

Consuela still appeared torn between duty to him and a longing to see her mother. Finally she heaved a sigh of resignation and buttoned her coat. “I will go,” she said grudgingly. “But I will worry the whole time. You are alone too much, niño .”

It had been a long time since anyone had thought of Luke Adams as a little boy. Unfortunately, Consuela would probably never get the image out of her head, despite the fact that he was over six feet tall, operated a thriving ranch and had built himself a house twice the size of the very lavish one he’d grown up in.

“Ever since—“ she began.

“Enough,” Luke said in a low, warning tone that silenced her more quickly than any shout would have.

Tears of sympathy sprang to her eyes, and she wrapped her plump arms around him in a fierce hug that had Luke wincing. For a sixty-year-old woman she was astonishingly strong. He didn’t want her weeping for him, though. He didn’t want her pity. And he most definitely didn’t want her dredging up memories of Erik, the brother who’d died barely seven months ago, the brother whose death he’d caused.