Christmas at Home

by Carolyn Brown

  “I’ll take as many as you can carry, and bring that gallon of turpentine, please. It’s sitting against the far wall beside where the easel was.”

  Snow blew in as he left, so she grabbed the broom and swept it into the dustpan along with the piece of mistletoe that had fallen off his shoulder earlier. She dumped the icy water into the kitchen sink and turned on the water to flush both dirt and snow down the drain. And there were two sprigs of mistletoe left in the wake.

  Grand would find some kind of omen or magic in the fact that Creed had had mistletoe on his shoulder and that he’d tracked even more inside. But it just meant that the wind had blown a bunch from the top of a scrub oak tree and it had stuck to him. There was no reading a happily-ever-after into a couple of sprigs of mistletoe.

  She peeled a paper towel from the wooden roller beside the toaster and dabbed at the green leaves and berries before placing the sprigs on the windowsill. If he kept hauling it in with every trip outside, she wouldn’t have to climb a scrub oak for a bunch to hang up with the holiday decorations.

  That turned her thoughts toward putting up the tree, the lights around the barn, and all the other decorations. She’d have the whole house decorated when Grand came home on Christmas Eve. There was no way in hell Grand could sign the ranch over to a stranger when she saw the tree and the sparkling lights. They’d remind her of all the good times that had gone on during Christmas on the ranch, and any notion of selling would be gone.

  And then there were the three weeks with Aunt Essie. That woman was an old sweetheart, but she’d drive a person to whiskey if they had to live in the same house with her. Her house at that! She was so set in her ways that the biggest John Deere tractor on the market couldn’t budge her. And Grand was just as set in hers. Aunt Essie’s house might be nothing but splinters and chunks of age-old linoleum at the end of three weeks because the two sisters argued and fought about everything. One thing was for sure: when Grand got off that airplane in Amarillo, she would be tearing up anything that she and Creed might have signed before she left. And Sage would never hear any bullshit about selling the ranch again.

  Creed took so long that she went to the kitchen window and squinted, but the snow blew so hard against the window that she couldn’t see a blessed thing. Then a bright red cardinal flew up and sat on the windowsill. It stared through the glass pane as if begging for just a little bit of the warmth to take the chill off his fluffed-up feathers.

  “Can’t do it, bird. The dog forced her way in, but you’d be really unhappy in the house,” she said.

  The cardinal took flight and the snow swallowed him up. She looked at the clock. If Creed wasn’t back in five more minutes she was going to suit up in her coveralls and go find him. He could have slipped and fallen. He could be lying out there halfway from the bunkhouse to the kitchen door with a broken leg, freezing to death.

  Well, that would definitely solve the dilemma of selling the ranch.

  Grand’s whisper was so clear that she jumped and looked around the kitchen. In that instant, Sage convinced herself that Grand hadn’t left at all, but there was no one there.

  “I don’t want him dead. I just don’t want things to change,” she said aloud.

  The kitchen door swung open and the room filled up with Creed Riley. Cowboy, attitude, and force all combined together to make the whole house seem smaller. Snow drifted in behind him before he could shut the door with the heel of his boot. He set the turpentine on the table and lined the canvases up on the floor with their backs to the wall.

  “That enough?” he asked. “Speak now or forever hold your peace because once I take these coveralls off I don’t plan on putting them back on until time to feed this evening.”

  She counted eight in various sizes. “More than enough. That should keep me busy for weeks.”

  He hung up his hat, brushed the snow from his face, and unzipped his coveralls. When they were removed for the second time that day, he kicked off his boots and left them on the rug beneath the coatrack.

  “Well, let’s hope the weather lets up before you get them all painted or we’ll be covered up in it. It’s turned even wetter; it’s coming down so hard that you can’t see your hand in front of your face and the wind is bitter cold.” He talked as he peeled out of the outer clothing yet again. “I’m worried about the cattle, and I’m very glad that your grandmother had the foresight to bring them all into the feedlot right behind the barn before the storm hit.”

  “She’s smart that way. She says it’s her Indian blood. We don’t get this kind of weather very often, but Grandpa got prepared for it. That’s why there’s a row of cedar trees on each side of the feedlot. It breaks the wind and the snow coming from the north in the winter and the hard south winds in the summer. If we get as much as the weatherman is saying we will, there’ll only be a couple of inches in the feedlot and the cattle will tromp that down pretty quick. They’ll be cold, but they won’t be standing in it up to their udders.” Sage laughed.

  Her face lit up like a Christmas tree when she smiled, but her laughter wasn’t a girl’s giggles. It was a full-fledged woman’s laugh that echoed through the whole house and sounded even prettier than a good country music song.

  “And that is funny why?”

  “I love my grandmother, but she excuses everything by saying it’s her Indian voodoo. She can smell a storm on the way, and if it doesn’t arrive, then it bypassed us, but it didn’t mean that she couldn’t smell it. That kind of thing,” she said.

  “Well, whatever voodoo she has, I’m glad she’s got the cows in one small enclosure and that they can huddle up under the shed roof on the back of the barn for a little protection.” He kicked another piece of mistletoe with his toe as he started through the kitchen.

  He picked it up and she reached for it. “I’ll take that.”

  It was twice as big as the other pieces. Grand would say that was because she wasn’t being mean anymore.

  “Where are you going to set up to paint?” he asked.

  She pointed. “Right there in front of the living room window to the left of the fireplace.”

  “What are you going to paint?”

  She shrugged. After that comment about Indian voodoo she couldn’t tell him her deepest painting secret. That she depended on her painting gods to give her inspiration and that she respected them enough to paint what they offered.

  “I’m going to paint a picture of that kitchen window with a bright red cardinal on the outside ledge looking in. While you were gone one lit there and looked like he wanted to come inside.”

  “Smart bird. It’s terrible out there. How in the world did you ever get home? The last report I got before the electricity went out was that all roads into the canyon were going to be closed.”

  “They were just putting up the sawhorses and signs when I drove up. I shimmied around them and kept on driving. The men weren’t real happy with me, but I wanted to be home, not holed up in a motel somewhere. I didn’t have to worry about oncoming traffic.”

  “It was stupid! You were lucky to get here.”

  “I’m a damn good driver.”

  “Didn’t say that. I said that driving down that twisting, steep incline wasn’t too smart.”

  The dog raised her head and yipped.

  “Guess she don’t want us to fight,” Creed said.

  “Guess she don’t get to make the calls,” Sage shot back.

  “I’ll put a pot of soup on for lunch and then I’m going to have a hot shower to warm up my bones.”

  “You are changing the subject. Besides, the meat is frozen and the microwave runs on electricity so you can’t thaw anything out that way,” she reminded him.

  “I took hamburger out of the freezer yesterday when I heard about the storm moving in. And yes ma’am, I am changing the subject. I don’t like to argue and fight. I got plenty of that growing up w
ith a house full of brothers.”

  “Why do you cook?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you?” he fired back at her.

  She frowned. “Because Grand does a good job of it and I didn’t need to learn. Your turn.”

  “Because Momma said so. Seven boys make for a lot of work. So she made us all learn to cook and we had to do our own laundry and ironing after our twelfth birthday.”

  “Seven!” She carried the easel to the living room and set it up close to the window beside the fireplace.

  He sat down in the rocking chair nearest the fire and shoved his feet toward the warmth. “You heard me right and I didn’t stutter. Seven boys. She really wanted a daughter, you see. But she got three boys in about four years right after she and Daddy married. She waited a few years and tried again and got another boy, Ace. Waited a few more years and decided to give it another try. And got three more boys for her efforts. Me, Dalton, and Blake. She spoils her daughters-in-law and her granddaughters these days.”

  “I always wanted a brother or sister,” she said.

  The words were out and she couldn’t put them back, but she wished she hadn’t said them. She didn’t want to share anything with Creed. That just led down a pathway that only ended in pain.

  She chose a sixteen-by-twenty-inch stretched canvas. That would be the perfect size for a window painting. She looked at the kitchen window and her gods smiled on her that morning. For the briefest moment the snow blew in circles creating an angel in the upper part of the window.

  Sage was known for her Western paintings that portrayed hidden animals in the rock formations of the canyon. She painted in earthy tones of umber, sienna, and ocher. But today she’d been given a new path: an angel looking down on a little red cardinal who studied three pieces of mistletoe lying on the sill just inside the window. She wanted to capture the cold and the way the bird eyed the mistletoe. She could hardly contain the excitement of something new and original as she set up the canvas and unlocked the paint box.

  “What did you see?” Creed asked.

  “What makes you think I saw anything?”

  “You looked at the window and something changed in your face. All I saw was snow and mistletoe, but you saw something more,” he said.

  “I saw a cardinal,” she said.

  It was the truth. She had seen a cardinal earlier.

  “Must’ve blinked at the wrong time. I didn’t see it.”

  Sage could feel his eyes on her as she sketched and it created an itchy feeling like she’d been too close to poison ivy. She knew the very minute that he went to sleep. Trusting soul, he was, sleeping when she could easily get to the shotgun hanging over the fireplace or to the knives in the kitchen drawer.

  The picture she was about to paint was etched firmly in her mind and she’d sketched in the beginning lines. So she stopped, sat down in the chair next to Creed, and stared at him.

  Know thy enemy, is it? Grand’s voice whispered.

  She whipped around to look behind her and set the rocking chair in motion. She expected the squeaking rocker to wake Creed, but he didn’t move.

  That’s right. I’ll get to know him and find the very weakness that will run him off this ranch. You will not go through with this deal, Grand, she argued.

  Thick, dark lashes fanned out on his angular cheeks that sported a day’s worth of black scruff. He was one of those men who had to shave every day and twice if he was going somewhere that night. He reminded her of her friend, Lawton Pierce, who owned the biggest spread in the whole canyon. Like Creed, Lawton had dark hair and long lashes and a beard. They could have easily been cousins, but Sage didn’t give a rat’s ass if he was Lawton’s long lost younger brother and they’d been cut from the same tanned leather cowhide. She still wasn’t going to like him.

  Creed wiggled and sighed. She sure didn’t want him to catch her staring at him, so she stood up so fast that she got a head rush. Her chair sounded like a bird chirping as it flipped back and forth several times. But then he settled back into a deep sleep and she sat back down. She had the strangest urge to run her fingers through all that dark hair and see if it was as soft as it looked. Would he be a tender lover or a demanding one? Would his kisses build a fire in her or would they turn her completely off?

  Now where did that come from? I’ve only just met him and I’m determined that he won’t be here more than three weeks, so there will be no kisses or sex. Besides, Grand would have a pure old hissy if she found out I’d slept with a man in this house, she thought.

  “I couldn’t face her,” she whispered.

  “You talkin’ to me or the dog?” he asked without opening his eyes.

  “I was just muttering while I decide how to paint that picture over there,” she said.

  His eyes opened slowly and he sat up straight. “Guess I’d best put the soup on if it’s going to be done by dinnertime. That and a skillet of corn bread should do for dinner and supper both, right?”

  “I’ll make the corn bread,” she said.

  “You don’t cook,” he reminded her.

  “I lied. I can cook. I just don’t enjoy it. Grand made me learn enough to survive, and I make a mean skillet of corn bread and the best Christmas sugar cookies in the whole canyon.”

  “You lied! What else did you lie about?”

  Dammit! Was it a real lie if a person just omitted details?

  “I saw the cardinal, but it was earlier in the day,” she said.

  “That all?”

  She squinted at him and set her mouth in a firm line. “Did you tell any lies this morning? About that dog, maybe?”

  “I did not. Your grandmother didn’t say a word about a dog on the place and mine are registered redbone hounds. Two of them, Reba and Wynonna. They sure don’t look like that mutt. So one more time, darlin’—that animal did not come from my neck of the woods.”

  She giggled. “Did you really name two bitches after the red-haired country singers?”

  “You got it. They sing real pretty when they tree a coon or track a coyote.”

  She looked at the sleeping dog. “Think they’ll like Noel?”

  “They probably won’t even think she’s a dog. She looks like a big ball of tangled up yarn, don’t she?”

  The wiry dog did look like its momma had been a poodle and its daddy a cross between a schnauzer and a ball of wool yarn. She opened one eyelid and whimpered.

  Sage bent over and scratched the dog’s ears. “It’s okay, Noel. He didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Her fur is a whole lot softer than it looks, Creed. Do you think we should give her an old quilt? That hardwood floor is hard and cold.”

  “Might be nice.” Creed grinned.

  Chapter 3

  Creed was a big man and Sage wasn’t a midget. The kitchen was small, and every time he or Sage moved an inch they bumped into one another. A shot of her rounded fanny bending over to slide the corn bread inside the oven shouldn’t have been sexy, not in sweat bottoms, but it was. Breasts brushing against his upper arm or plowing into his chest were a different matter. That he could understand stirring up things behind his zipper.

  It had been a long time since he’d had sex, but his body could have behaved a lot better in his estimation. She’d made it very clear that she did not like him and intended to throw every obstacle she could in his way to keep him from buying the ranch. She’d lied to him about her cooking abilities, and now she was tempting him with every touch and move.

  It wasn’t fair. She was getting away scot-free and he was being punished. He’d gotten into scrapes. What kid didn’t? He’d been drunk at rodeos. What cowboy hadn’t? But God did not have to hate him so badly that He made his body respond to a woman who would shoot him stone-cold dead and never feel a bit of remorse about it.

  He’d made several trips to the window to imagine lying naked, facedown in the drivin
g blizzard. Thinking about something that cold on his bare skin and manhood usually shrank it back down pretty fast, but each time it took longer than the last time because pictures of Sage lying naked next to him kept popping up. And the imaginary heat between them melted every bit of the snow for a hundred yards and turned what was falling into warm rain.

  When the corn bread was almost done, he dipped up two big bowls of soup and put them on the table. While he did that, she bent over one more time to get the corn bread out of the oven and transport it to the table. He bit his lip to keep from moaning out loud and shoved his hands into his hip pockets to keep from cupping her fanny in his hand. He’d only met the woman that morning, for God’s sake!

  She put a container of homemade butter and the salt and pepper shakers on the table, and then looked around to see if she’d forgotten anything.

  He rolled off two paper towels to use for napkins and joined her.

  “Grace?” he asked.

  “Grand usually does that,” she answered.

  “I’ll do it since it’s going to be my house,” he said.

  She bowed her head, said “amen” right after he did, and picked up her spoon.

  “Mmmm,” she said. “What’s your secret? This is fantastic.”

  “Picante. I like to use my own, but there’s no electricity and I have to have a blender to make it. I found that in the pantry and it worked pretty good,” he answered. “You like it, do you?”

  It shouldn’t matter, but he wanted her to like the food. He wanted her to like him and for them to be good neighbors. He didn’t want to feel tightness in his chest every time she smiled, but that was just a physical reaction to a very pretty woman.

  “It’s been a week since I’ve had good home food. Next week it might not taste nearly as good, but right now it’s wonderful,” she said.

  “That’s a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.”

  One shoulder raised up half an inch. “I said it was fantastic, didn’t I?”

  Noel left her tattered old blanket Sage had rustled up from the linen closet and went straight to Sage’s side of the table. She gave a little yip, her eyes on Sage’s soup bowl.