Christmas at Home

by Carolyn Brown

  “I’m not grumpy anymore.” He grinned.

  She removed her hands and he zipped his coveralls. “Me either, but I am hungry.”

  * * *

  Creed’s stomach growled, but food was the last thing on his mind. He could not fall for Sage Presley, not now. Maybe later on down the road it could happen, after he’d bought the ranch and they really got to know each other. And besides, Creed did not believe in that love at first sight shit.

  It was the snowstorm causing all the crazy emotions between them. He was excited about finally finding just the right ranch and getting it for such a good price. He would just blame the whole thing on Christmas. For the past two years he’d searched for a ranch that he could afford and that had the right feel. And now he’d found it at the beginning of the season. It stood to reason that after growing up on a ranch with a big family, he’d get a silly notion like that in his head too.

  The place had to have some kind of voodoo magic to make him fall prey to Sage’s charms. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind she had something up her sleeve that had to do with her grandmother changing her mind. He’d have to be very careful or else he’d be right back looking for a place of his own again if Ada Presley came home and listened to her granddaughter.

  He’d just let things get to him. He’d been bored with only chores to keep him busy and it had been a long, long time since he’d wrapped his arms around a woman. Pregnant dog, new baby kittens, cooking together, and sharing meals—it all combined to put thoughts of a family into his mind.

  Creed had a lot of work to do before he could entertain notions of a family. He’d arrived at the ranch with the idea etched in solid granite that he’d given up on all women. That he’d dance with them, do a little flirting, and enjoy a one-night stand a few times a year. But in the end, he’d be the old bachelor uncle who lived out in Palo Duro Canyon that all the nieces and nephews adored. There were six other Riley sons. The three older ones had families. Ace and Jasmine were already pregnant and it was going to be a girl, so Creed’s momma was happy. And Dalton and Blake were out there scanning the mesquite bushes for a woman. It wouldn’t be long until they’d have one cornered and wedding bells would be ringing. He didn’t need to produce a Riley to keep the name going, and he didn’t want another heartbreak.

  He stomped what snow he could off his feet and slung open the back door. Noel danced around Sage’s feet as she kicked off her boots and unzipped her coveralls. Angel peeked up over the edge of her basket and then curled up again. Sage reached over and picked a piece of mistletoe from off Creed’s shoulder.

  “This stuff thinks you are an oak tree.” She smiled.

  “It must be blowing off the scrub oaks. I swear if they brought an instrument to measure the wind that would be a snow tornado out there. The wind is as bad if not worse than the actual snow.”

  She dried the mistletoe and laid it on the shelf with the other pieces. “It does feel like that with the hard wind, don’t it? If you keep growing this, we won’t have to go looking for any to hang up for the holidays.”

  Just moments before she’d unzipped his coveralls to the waist and slipped her hands inside to hug him tighter. His poor heart had about stopped in anticipation of where those hands might be headed, but they’d splayed out on his chest and stayed there. He’d wished she would go a layer deeper and pull his shirt out from his belt and put skin on skin. Frostbite would have been worth it to feel those long slender fingers all stretched out on his abs.

  Now she was talking about mistletoe as if the kisses never happened at all.

  “At least we’ll have plenty to tie up with a bow and put over the doorway,” he said.

  If she wanted to ignore the kiss, then he could do the same thing.

  * * *

  When Sage painted, she concentrated on the underlying message of her picture while she carefully built dimension upon dimension to bring out depth and character.

  Anyone can color a page in a coloring book.

  That’s what her art teacher told them the first day she had walked into his class as a sophomore in high school. He’d seen something in her raw ability and had fussed at her for three years, critiquing and pressuring her to do better and better until she’d gotten the fantastic opportunity to study art in college.

  Two years later she’d had all she wanted. She wanted to paint, not write creative English papers for the basic classes she had to take. So she quit and came home to the canyon. Grand supported her decision without a single negative remark. Four years later her bank account was substantial and she was doing exactly what she loved to do.

  That morning she stood in front of the painting of the kitchen window and studied it. The angel was there, hiding in the snow. The little cardinal was on the window ledge, details in the way his feathers fluffed out against the cold. The next step was his eyes. She looked back at the window and either the original cardinal or one just like him flew out of the white flakes to land there again. Only this time he brought his mate, a female cardinal, with him to take a peek inside the house.

  They stared into each other’s eyes for several seconds before they took flight. Sage looked back at the picture on the easel. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to put the female in the picture. The part of the picture where she would be was as yet unfinished. Sage picked up a tiny outline brush and painted the male cardinal’s eyes. The critics might not see the love at first glance. They might only see four panes in each of the upper and lower windows with a snowstorm in the background. Maybe after close scrutiny, they’d see the whole story and it would touch their hearts.

  She was tempted to rush, but she forced herself to slow down, to shut her eyes several times and get the female bird’s part in the picture just right. Even though her colors weren’t as brilliant as her counterpart’s, and even though the wood between the panes separated them, she was his choice. And the angel was smiling down on them.

  When both birds were to her satisfaction, she picked up the brush to paint in the mistletoe. She glanced back at the window and suddenly in her mind’s eye the mistletoe wasn’t lying on the sill but was tied up together with a bright red satin ribbon and hanging from the bottom of the poinsettia valance.

  She blinked and it was back on the windowsill, but Sage Presley did not argue with her visions. If the gods said that she should hang the mistletoe then she would do just that. The times when she’d done what she wanted rather than what her visions gave her, those paintings had been a big flop. When she listened, the critics went wild with what she produced.

  * * *

  Creed and Noel played tug-of-war with an old wash rag he’d found in the scrub bucket. Creed held onto the rag with his hand and Noel pulled against it with all her might using her teeth. Even while he played, he kept a steady watch on the picture’s progress. He didn’t know jack shit about good art versus bad art. But the canvas on the easel was alive with color and motion. Two birds on the windowsill, feathers fluffed out against the cold wind, the promise of warmth behind the thin glass, mistletoe and poinsettias and an angel floating in the background.

  When Sage painted the mistletoe above the cardinal’s head, Creed could actually feel the painting. He couldn’t have put a single thought into words, but it touched all the senses. He imagined one hand on the outside of the window and the other on the inside. One cold. One hot. He could taste the snowflakes on his lips, and the mistletoe reminded him of the kiss he and Sage had shared.

  Lots of kisses were shared under the mistletoe during the Christmas season. He’d seen posters about Jesus being the reason for the season. If he turned it around maybe the season was the reason he felt such an attraction to Sage when she was definitely not the type that usually caught his eye.

  * * *

  Sage signed her name to the bottom of the picture, removed it from the easel, and carried it across the room where she hung it on two screws in a bare s
pot.

  “Why’d you put it right there?” Creed asked.

  “That’s where my work dries.”

  “Now what?” Creed asked.

  She pulled the rocking chair away from the fireplace and parked it in front of the picture. “I study it to determine what I could have done better. I look at it through the critic’s eye and the buyer’s. Then I decide if I’m going to burn it or put it with my stash to take to the gallery.”

  “Good God, Sage! You’ve worked on that thing for hours and hours. Surely you wouldn’t burn it,” Creed said.

  “What would you do if you were riding a horse, one that you’d raised yourself from birth, one you’d broken to the saddle and who’d carried you through a blizzard to a warm house, and he stepped in a hole and snapped his leg bone so badly that it stuck out of the skin and it could never be fixed? Would you shoot him to put him out of his misery or let him lie there in excruciating pain?”

  “It would break my heart, but I’d shoot him,” Creed said.

  “That’s my point. I’d rather burn it than take something that looks like a second grader’s coloring book page to a gallery showing. And this picture scares me. I’ve never painted anything that quickly.”

  Creed gave the cleaning rag to Noel and pulled his rocking chair over close to Sage’s chair. He reached across the distance separating them and laid his hand on hers and together they studied the painting.

  “What do you see?” she asked finally.

  “I’m not a critic. I don’t know how long a masterpiece is supposed to take from start to finish. Hell, my momma thinks the prettiest picture in her house is a velvet Elvis that Daddy bought for her when they visited Graceland for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. It hangs above her bed and there’s never a spot of dust on it.”

  “Surely you see something,” she said.

  Creed took a deep breath and told her the emotions it had evoked in him when she was painting the mistletoe.

  “And you say you aren’t a critic.” She smiled. “It’s just that I’ve never painted snow before. I’m building a reputation as a Western artist.”

  He pointed to the picture hanging above the credenza just inside the front door. “Like that?”

  She nodded. “What do you see in that one?”

  “I see the big rock formation over on the backside of the property. And the way the top is eroded, it looks like an old cowboy without his hat. His neck is sagging with age and his eyebrows have drooped. His face is fuller and wider than it would have been in his youth, but there’s character there and lessons he could teach a grandchild.”

  “Wow!” She pulled her hand from his and hugged herself.

  “Do I get an A?”

  “A-plus. Are there any similarities in the pictures?” she pressed on.

  “Oh, yeah!” He pointed to the one above the sofa again. “That one is fall and the end of life is near for the old cowboy. The one you painted is right now and there’s a beginning for those two birds if they survive the cold. He’d like to kiss her under the mistletoe, but his little beak is frozen.” Creed chuckled at his own joke.

  “Then you could tell that the same artist painted them?” she asked.

  Creed studied one picture and then the other. They were so different that his first thought was no one would ever know that Sage Presley had done both. But that first impression was totally wrong. It was very evident that she’d done both pictures.

  “Well?”

  “Give me a minute to put my words together. And while I’m doing that, Sage, you should be building a career as an artist, period, not solely as a Western artist. Paint life. It will sell because people will feel it.”

  “It’s just that I’ve never finished a picture, even a small one, this fast and it scares me. I usually do six a year, maybe eight on a very good year.”

  “Okay, does size mean anything to a critic? Is bigger better?” he asked.

  She giggled nervously. “Are we still talking about paintings?”

  He laughed with her. “For now, we definitely are.”

  “Then the answer is no. Size is not a factor.”

  “You won’t think I’m a sissy if I tell you my honest opinion, will you?” Creed asked.

  She shook her head.

  He ran his fingers through his dark hair. Men weren’t supposed to see feelings or feel emotion or pain and they damn sure weren’t supposed to discuss any of the above. That was women’s business when they got together for a hen session.

  He cleared his throat and started, “What I see is emotion, Sage. It’s not just pretty pictures that you paint. It is feelings. Momma says that when she looks at her velvet Elvis she remembers the wonderful second honeymoon she and Daddy had. To her that is pure art. When I look at these two pictures, I see that old cowboy not caring that his days are up and time is short before the cold winter takes him away from this world. But there’s a smile on his face and he’s taking a whole passel of memories with him to the other side. In the other one I see the promise of spring, birds singing as they build a nest, and life buds once again in spite of the terrible storm. I feel warmth inside the window and sympathy for the poor little birds that are so cold. The angel promises protection if they’ll remember the love of the season. That curtain thing is old so it’s representative of the past. The angel is the promise of an eternal future.”

  When he looked over at Sage, tears were flowing down her cheeks. “Those are the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.”

  Heat crawled up his back and he felt the sting of a blush on his cheeks. Creed could not remember the last time he’d blushed.

  She squeezed his hand. “Thank you. I won’t burn it and I’m going to paint more like it.”

  Angel hopped down from the window and ran across the room, landed in Sage’s lap with a thud, and looked up at her. Sage pulled her hand away from Creed’s and stroked the cat’s long fur while she continued to look at the picture.

  “She’s purring, Creed. I think she’s thanking us for the milk and food,” she said.

  * * *

  Creed grinned.

  Us.

  She had said us.

  Some miracles weren’t instant. Some of them took a while in coming around.

  Noel left the business of tearing up the rag and joined the family, putting her paws on the edge of Creed’s rocking chair.

  “Feeling left out, are you?” Creed scratched her ears.

  “Didn’t take them long to make themselves at home, did it?” Sage said.

  “I think the children are asking you to do a portrait of them.”

  Sage laughed. “They aren’t my children. I’m not even sure they’ll be my pets. When the storm clears and they can go outside, they could easily go right on down the road on their journey.”

  “I doubt that Angel will leave her babies or Noel either when she has them. Did you ever think about a husband and children?” he asked abruptly.

  Sage bit her lower lip for several seconds.

  Now why in the hell had he asked that question, Creed wondered. It was too personal and would kill the miracle that had barely gotten a foothold in her heart. Maybe she didn’t even hear him ask. Hopefully she’d been studying her art so intensely she’d blocked out everything else.

  Finally she answered. “That is a scary thought, Creed. My dad died and my mother’s heart was broken as well as Grand’s. Daddy was her only child. He and Momma were high school sweethearts and married before he went off to the Army. She went with him as soon as she could and I was born a few years later.”

  “So you have a fear of commitment?” he asked.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve heard it before and I don’t have any fears. I’m just a careful woman. Fear is one thing. Caution is another. Besides, if I had a fear it wo
uldn’t be of commitment, it would be of abandonment and Grand ain’t helping one damn bit in that business.”

  “Well, I’m honest enough to say that I have the big C-word fear. It’s the only thing that makes me shake in my boots. After my fiancée pulled off her stunt, I’m gun-shy when it comes to relationships.”

  “You? I don’t believe it!”

  “Believe it, darlin’. I’m a flirt but when it comes to trusting anyone enough to give them my whole heart to put through a meat grinder, well, that’s another matter.”

  “Guess we make a pretty damn good pair to get stuck in a blizzard together,” she said.

  Chapter 5

  “Well, dammit all to hell on a rusty poker,” Ada fussed.

  “Burned another pan full, did you?” Essie giggled.

  “Damn sure did. Guess we’ll only be takin’ three dozen to the canasta game tonight.”

  “I reckon that’ll be plenty. Everyone else will bring cookies too. You wouldn’t burn them if you’d stop your worrywartin’.”

  Ada tucked her salt-and-pepper hair behind her ears. She and Esther had been born in southern Oklahoma to a father with Chickasaw blood and a red-haired Irish mother. Esther had gotten the red hair and green eyes, but she was as mild tempered as a gentle southern breeze. Ada inherited the dark hair and dark eyes and had a temper like a tornado and a hurricane meeting head-on with a Texas wildfire.

  Essie had just passed her eighty-sixth birthday and Ada was over seventy. They hadn’t grown up together or known each other as sisters until later in life because Essie married when Ada was only two years old.

  It had been love at first sight between Esther and Richard Langston. He had come to Ravia, Oklahoma, for Christmas dinner with one of his buddies on the WPA project. That afternoon he’d met Esther, who was literally the girl who lived next door to his buddy. Three months later, when he went home to Pennsylvania to take over the farm after his father died, Essie went with him.

  Sixteen years later, Thomas Presley came to Ravia from Fort Sill with a friend for a long weekend. There was a birthday party that summer for his fellow army buddy, and Ada had been invited. When Thomas finished his enlistment the following year, she went with him to the Palo Duro Canyon.