Finding Love in Christmas Creek

by Mary L. Briggs

  “Positive. I’ve already sent off three boxes of books to Florida. Howie’s sister is going to take all of it over to the condominium. All of it will be there waiting for us when we get there sometime before Christmas. And there are probably a good six hundred books on my Kindle.”

  Macy sighed. It seemed like Alta was leaving a lot of her things behind.

  Her aunt caught the sigh and her eyebrows shot up. “What’s wrong, Macy?”

  She managed a laugh. “Nothing, really. It’s just that things have changed so fast. I barely get here and you’re getting married and leaving.”

  Alta kissed her on the cheek. “You are all but my child. How can you not know that we are going to be in touch all the time? We’ll be up here visiting and we’d love it if you came to Florida a few times a year. That is, unless you’re busy with a family of your own,” she teased.

  Macy nodded and ignored the last remark. She tucked another pair of socks into her aunt’s bag. “I want you to know that I’m very happy for you and Howie.”

  “Speaking of Howie, does he have that motor home started, yet? He said it needed to warm up before we left.”

  They walked to the front room and opened the door. The hum of a motor greeted them. Howie, sitting in the driver’s seat, noticed them and waved.

  “Looks like I better hurry,” Alta said, turning to her niece.

  “Give me a hug before you go,” Macy said, feeling her aunt’s arms go around her.

  “Now, come on out and give a hug to Howie, too,” her aunt insisted. “And keep me updated about Scott. That young man seems to like you. And he’s quite a catch,” she winked.

  “I’d better hurry if I’m going to give Howie a hug,” Macy laughed, ignoring her aunt’s last comment.

  ***

  She blinked away the tears that threatened to fall and made sure she had a big smile on her face, as she waved goodbye. She waved until her arm hurt, and the motor home made a turn at the end of the street. She could always cry later tonight.

  Inside, she was met by Scotchy and Brownie, both sitting on the stairs.

  “OK, guys, it’s just the three of us. Are we going to make a good team?”

  Scotchy stood, yawned and headed up the stairs. Brownie took off after an imaginary mouse.

  “So much for team work,” she yelled after them.

  Chapter 11

  Friday morning saw several customers in and out. Her ears echoed with the sound of the bell ringing every time someone opened the front door of the shop.

  “I’ll be in my office,” she called to Janet, as the last current customer stepped out the door. Signing into the store’s account, she put in another order for candy and candles before hurrying back to the front counter.

  Janet had two more customers.

  “Hi, may I help you?” Macy asked the woman that seemed to be patiently waiting for Janet.

  “Yes,” the tall woman smiled. “I’d like to know if you carry any velvet ribbon in your craft department.”

  “Let’s just check on that,” Macy answered, leading the way up the stairs to the quilting and crafting room. The top floor of the shop had been converted into a customer friendly area. The shelves that spanned around the walls held crafting materials, including sewing, cross-stich, quilting, and latch-hook kits.

  “It looks like we have a nice selection,” Macy showed her.

  After a few moments, the woman decided on three yards of the green. Macy cut it and they headed back downstairs.

  “I’m surprised so many of our customers are locals,” she commented to Janet, as the woman left the shop.

  Janet dropped the change in the old-fashioned cash register. “We do a fair amount. The ladies really like the line of candles we carry, and the kids all love the candy. We can’t seem to keep enough of it. And the craft supplies are always a good draw for locals.”

  Macy picked up a stray stick of candy and carried it to the container labeled Butterscotch. “I noticed, when I was ordering, that chocolate fudge and orange mint seem to be the favorites.”

  Janet nodded. “They are very popular. Just make sure you have a good supply of eggnog candy, once the season starts. We always sell out of it.”

  “Eggnog? I never knew there was such a flavor!”

  The bell over the door jangled, and Macy turned to see Scott Henson and his daughter, Sammie, enter the store. He was casually dressed in jeans, a faded blue shirt that had probably never seen a blob of ketchup, and cowboy boots.

  “Well, good afternoon,” she grinned.

  “We’ve come to look at the craft kits,” Sammie answered, skipping toward the front counter, braids swinging in the air, before Scott had time for a greeting.

  He laughed. “She’s decided she wants to learn how to make a rug. A Latch Hook rug, that is.”

  Macy took Sammie’s hand. “Now don’t you look pretty this afternoon! I like that fringed skirt. And the boots, too.”

  “I’m going to dress like this for the Annie Oakley Western Day next week,” she said. “Today is just to practice wearing it.”

  Macy laughed at the serious tone in her voice. “Well, you’re doing a good job. So, you think you want to make a rug?”

  Sammie nodded and glanced at her father, then back to Macy. “It’s not hard, is it?”

  Macy shook her head. “Not hard at all. In fact, I can teach you, if you want me to.”

  “What do you think, Daddy?” the child turned to her father.

  “I think we better pick out the kit, first,” he said.

  “I want a horse rug,” she insisted, as they followed Macy up the stairs to the craft room.

  Did they have a horse rug? Surely they did. She hadn’t had much time to look through all the merchandise. “We’ll just have to look and see,” she told the child, as they reached the shelf full of rug kits.

  After much debate, Sammie changed her mind and decided on a latch hook pillow that depicted a kitten and ball of yarn. “It looks just like Dooley,” she exclaimed.

  “Dooley?” Macy glanced at Scott.

  He grinned. “Our cat. Granny’s actually. He came with the place.”

  Macy shook her head. “Granny always had a lot of cats. My cat Scotchy came from Granny’s place. I picked her out of one of the many litters of kittens that Granny had at the time.”

  “How many cats do you have?” Sammie wanted to know, clutching the boxed kit.

  “Two. Scotchy and Brownie. Brownie isn’t much more than a kitten. He was a gift to my aunt from her new husband. But they’ve decided to leave him to live here, in Christmas Creek. And I’m glad. They are good company for me.”

  “I could never give Dooley away,” Sammie insisted, as they made their way back downstairs.

  Scott paid for the kit and took the change from her. “So, when do you give lessons that she can come to?”

  Macy stared for a moment. “We don’t. I just meant that I’d teach her. If you’ve got some other things to do in town, I can work with her right now. If we have any customers, Janet can take care of them.”

  Janet waved from behind the row of candles. “I’ll be right here.”

  Scott smiled and shoved his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. “OK. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “I’ll have it all done by the time you get back, Daddy.”

  “Whoa, there,” Macy laughed. “It’s going to take more time than that. But you’ll get a good start on it,” she said, seeing the disappointment in Sammie’s eyes.

  ***

  Now, look at you go,” she teased the eight year old. “You’re doing very well.”

  “It’s a lot of fun,” Sammie insisted, inserting the latch hook into the next square and reaching for a piece of yarn. “I’m going to put the pillow on my bed when it’s finished.”

  “Be sure to come back in when you’re all finished and I’ll find something pretty for you to make the back of the pillow with.”

  Biting her lip, eyes on the project, Sammie nod
ded. “Next time, I’ll make a horse rug.”

  Macy pushed the pile of yarn a little closer to the child. “Do you have a horse?”

  Sammie looked up from the rug and grinned. “Daddy has three and I have one. We like to ride in the afternoons.”

  “I used to ride years ago,” Macy commented. The first boy she’d had a crush on lived on a small ranch and he had taught her to ride. Aunt Alta had bought a horse for her soon after, and she had boarded it at a local ranch.

  “You know how to ride?” Sammie had dropped the latch hook and was staring at her.

  “Well, like I said, I used to ride wh —”

  “You can come out and ride with us!”

  Macy shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know —”

  “Please? Please, please, please?”

  “Well….”

  The bell jangled above the door and they both looked up to see Scott enter the store.

  Sammie all but leapt from her chair and ran to her father. “Macy likes to ride horses. Can she come ride with us, Daddy? Please?”

  He grinned and glanced at Macy. “I don’t see why not. How about it, Macy?”

  Macy swallowed back her embarrassment. Me and my big mouth. “I suppose that I could, but of course, just when —”

  “Great! How about Saturday. You close at….” he glanced at the sign on the door. “Three o’clock, don’t you?”

  Macy stared. Was he really asking her out to his house? “Yes. Three o‘clock.”

  He grinned. “That’ll give us a couple of hours to ride before it starts getting dark.”

  “Yippee! Yippee!” Sammie shouted, jumping up and down, her little red cowgirl boots stomping on the old wood floor.

  Macy bit her lip. “OK. Except, there’s just one thing. . .you see, I haven’t ridden very much in a long while. Well, at least not in years.” Like not since she was a teenager. But maybe that wasn’t necessary to mention.

  He laughed and put his hand on Sammie’s head to slow her excitement. “As long as you can tell the front end from the back end of a horse, you’re way ahead of a lot of folks,” he told her. “You’ll do fine.”

  ***

  Janet’s eyebrows raised as they closed up the shop. “It sounds like you have a date!” she teased.

  Macy opened the cash register and began to pull the money out to make the day’s deposit on her way home. She shrugged. “I guess. He probably just invited me because Sammie wanted him to.”

  Janet shook her head and grinned. “That man has his eyes on you, Macy. Don’t throw away an opportunity to get to know him.”

  Macy nodded and reached for the money bag beneath the counter. “I’m going riding with them. We’ll just see where it goes from there.”

  Chapter 12

  Saturday morning was busy, with people in and out all morning. “I wish this wasn’t the one day we didn’t close for lunch,” she mentioned to Janet, as the store cleared of customers.

  Janet nodded and stopped to straighten a decorative stalk of corn that had fallen over. “Alta and I thought it was worth it, since we close early.”

  Macy grinned and opened a granola bar from the box under the counter. Reaching back down, she pulled out another and tossed it to Janet. “Enjoy, before someone else comes through that door.”

  “Too late,” Janet grinned, slipping the snack into her apron pocket, as the bell rang again.

  “Can I help you?” Macy asked, swallowing her bite of snack bar.

  ***

  At three o’clock, Macy locked the doors of the shop. Janet pulled down the shades that were behind the front windows, while Macy rechecked the deposit she had made to drop in the deposit box at the bank on her way out to the Henson place.

  Just the thought of spending the evening out there sent a shiver of nervousness down her spine. It was a silly way to feel. It wasn’t a date, just a ride on a horse. With the most handsome man in town, she reminded herself.

  She shook her head. What was wrong with her? She’d met plenty of handsome men in Oklahoma City. Had dinners with them, gone to plays, concerts. And none had made her this nervous.

  While Janet finished with the sweeping and checked the lights upstairs, she headed to the office to change out of her calico skirt and into her jeans and boots. With daylight getting shorter by the day, there wouldn’t be time to go home and change.

  “Have a good time,” Janet called after her as they made their way to their cars parked in the back of the store.

  ***

  After dropping the bag in the overnight deposit at the bank, the drive to Scott’s place took her about five minutes. Ahead, she could see that he had set the scaffolding back up in place under the sign, which now read Henson’s Red Rooster Christmas Tree Farm. She grinned. Had Sammie made him keep the Red Rooster part of the name?

  She turned into the driveway and drove a short distance to the white frame farmhouse, porches on three sides. She sighed. It was a perfect little house. As much as she loved her little Victorian house, farmhouses were her favorite.

  The screen door opened, and Sammie emerged, dressed in jeans, boots, a brown jacket, and cowboy boots, her arms waving in excitement. Macy parked under a big oak and got out of the car. “Good afternoon,” she called to the girl.

  Sammie was next to her at once, taking her hand and all but dragging her toward the farmhouse. “Daddy’s on the telephone with his boss. He said to bring you in and give you some coffee.”

  Inside, Scott was standing next to a desk, his ear covered by a phone receiver with a short cord. He waved to her. “Go ahead and get some coffee. Bring me a cup, too, if you don’t mind. I’m on hold,” he explained, pointing at the phone receiver.

  Macy glanced around the old house. It had been years since she’d been inside, but it looked much the same. Except that all of Granny’s ‘stuff’ had been removed and it was now a nice, neat space. She followed Sammie into the kitchen and observed that the tall, glass-fronted cabinets were still in place, along with the old Formica countertops. She breathed a sigh of relief. A real farmhouse. No granite in sight.

  “I made the coffee myself,” Sammie told her, standing on a chair and retrieving two brown coffee mugs from the open cabinet above the sink. “Daddy likes his with a little bit of milk,” she added, watching Macy pour the dark liquid. “And we have cookies, if you want one.”

  Macy reached for the small pitcher of cream. It was cold, so obviously just out of the refrigerator. “It looks like you help your daddy a lot around here,” she grinned at Sammie. “Did you make the cookies?”

  Sammie shook her head and laughed. “Mrs. Miller made them. They’re her special sorghum cookies. She comes in and cleans the house while Daddy writes and I’m at school.”

  Macy smiled. The Miller place was just next door to Scott and Sammie. And Mrs. Miller was known for her cookie baking “I think I’ve had these cookies before,” she said, taking one off of the plate.

  Sammie smiled, her eyes sparkling. “Guess what?”

  “What?” Macy asked, popping the small cookie into her mouth and adding some cream to her cup.

  “Look!”

  She laughed. Sammie’s mouth was wide open and her little finger pointing to the empty space in the front of her mouth.

  “You lost a tooth!”

  Sammie nodded and pushed the sugar bowl toward her. “Last night. And the tooth fairy brought me a dollar.”

  “A whole dollar? I don’t think I ever got more than a quarter,” Macy said, dropping a cube of sugar in her cup.

  Sammie shrugged and leaned in, whispering, “It’s really just my daddy giving me the money.”

  “I won’t tell him you know that,” Macy whispered back, picking up the cups of coffee.

  She set Scott’s on the desk beside him and he nodded. “Yes, sir. I do know that, and I appreciate all that you’re doing about it.” He paused, listening, and took a sip from his cup. “I see. . .I see. . .well —”

  Sammie tugged at her hand. “Come see my
room,” she begged.

  Macy nodded and followed her through the living room. A large Christmas tree, decorated in what appeared to be mostly home-made ornaments, dominated the corner near the back door. She allowed her eyes to glance up to the whitewashed board ceiling. She had always loved the old wrought-iron chandelier that hung from the middle of the ceiling, its prisms catching colors in the afternoon light, as well as from the twinkling colored lights on the tall tree. She paused to admire the large stone fireplace, flanked by long tall windows on each side. It would be lovely to sit in front of a fire on cold, winter nights. On the plain mantle were various framed pictures of Scott and Sammie. And one of the two of them with a lovely young woman.

  Was it a photograph of Scott’s wife? She gave a quick glance at Scott, then followed his daughter up the stairs. There would be time for looking at those pictures later.

  “Here it is!” Sammie exclaimed, rushing to her canopied bed and grabbing a pillow.

  Macy gasped. “You’ve already finished?” How was that possible? But the little gray cat with the ball of blue yarn was perfect. And someone had even sewed a calico print back to complete the pillow.

  Sammie laughed. “Daddy did most of it. He said it’s good. . .good theppy. Or something like that.”

  Therapy. She smiled. “I guess it probably is. I think I’ll have to start one myself. It turned out very nice, Sammie.”

  The girl nodded and took the pillow, arranging it back on her bed. Macy looked around the room. It was obvious that great pains had been taken to make it a very nice room for Sammie. The pink on the walls was echoed in the rose colored spread, and the numerous pictures that covered the wall ran the gamut of flowers to cats.

  “You have a very pretty room, Sammie,” she complimented.