Christmas at Home

by Carolyn Brown

  “If Lawton was going to remarry, he would have already done it,” Sage said.

  “That’s what I think.”

  “He’ll always love Eva.”

  April nodded. “She hasn’t remarried either. She used to date a lot but lately she’s married to her job.”

  “Think they’ll ever come to their senses?”

  “I didn’t, but then I come over here and you’ve got the ugliest dog on the face of the earth and there’s a cat and kittens. I think I believe in miracles again. Hell’s bells, Sage. Santa Claus might even come down the chimney at Canyon Rose again!” April laughed.

  “Want to see Angel and the babies while the coffee cools?”

  April followed Sage into the living room.

  The yellow cat looked up at the intruder with indifference and curled tightly around her kittens.

  “Ahh, they are so cute. What are you naming them? Going to keep them all?” April asked. “That was one of my favorite parts of coming to the ranch in the summer. There were always baby kittens to play with.”

  “Haven’t decided on names, but they’ll be taking up permanent residence in the barn as soon as it gets warm. Creed assures me that Angel will kill her weight in rats at least three times a day.”

  “Well, they should have Christmas names since their momma is Angel and they were born in a manger. If there’s a boy, name him Rudolph.”

  Sage picked up one of the fat little kittens and held it to her cheek. “This one looks like a Rudolph, doesn’t it? Boy or girl, I christen you Rudolph today.”

  “Well, I’ve done my day’s work. I named a kitten for Sage Presley. Call the Smithsonian or at least the Guinness people because it has to be recorded in someplace real special,” April said. “I’m headed home now. I’ll be back. Next time I’ll knock before I rush in. I wasn’t thinking about the cowboy and you being in the bunkhouse together.”

  “We were just getting Christmas decorations.”

  “Sage, honey, you don’t lie worth a damn.”

  April took a couple of sips of the coffee, donned her coat, and closed the front door just as Creed opened the back one. He brought in another big container and carried it all the way to the living room. “Looks like the tree has dried out. Want to eat or start decorating? Where’s April?”

  “I’ll put a frozen pizza in the oven and we can string the lights while it cooks. April went home,” Sage answered.

  “Cardboard pizza. My favorite,” Creed said.

  “Don’t make fun of it. It’s better than a bologna sandwich, and that’s the alternative.”

  “I was serious. When I was a little kid, Grandpa Riley would make them for me. I don’t know if it was really the pizza or spending time with my grandpa that I liked. The tape on this box says it’s got the tree lights in it. I’ll hold them on my arms and you can put them on the tree.”

  “This ain’t your first rodeo, is it, Creed?”

  “No, ma’am. And none of us want to suffer the wrath of Momma if we don’t put the lights away right when they come off either,” he answered.

  “She must be kin to Grand. Don’t matter if it takes a whole week—the lights best be stored just right without any tangles.”

  He got the first strand ready and waited for her to slide the pizza in the oven. She kicked off her boots and giggled on her way across the living room floor.

  “Do I look crazy standing here with lights around my arms like knitting yarn?”

  “No, I was thinking that you are pretty vulnerable. If you drop those lights one might break and we’ll have to test them all. And if you drop them they’ll tangle all up and we’ll have to spend hours getting them ready to go on the tree.”

  “So don’t drop the lights, right?” he asked.

  “So I could do whatever I wanted to you right now, including hanging those jingle bells on you somewhere,” she teased.

  “I’ll stand very still.”

  “Creed Riley, you aren’t any fun at all.”

  “Sounds like fun to me.”

  The air around them crackled with heat and suppressed desire. The back of Sage’s neck tingled. If someone had told her the week before that she’d be flirting with a cowboy on the Rockin’ C by the next Saturday, she would have had them declared insane.

  She grabbed the end of the light string and deliberately brushed her breasts against his arm. His sharp intake of breath said that it affected him every bit as much as it did her. She bent over to start at the bottom tree limbs and his knee touched her fanny, setting it on fire.

  She was flirting like a teenager, but it was so much fun that she didn’t want to stop. When the lights were finally perfectly strung, she plugged them in to see if they worked.

  “Still no electricity,” he said.

  “Shit! I knew that. Habits die hard.”

  Habits die hard. I hate change. But it happens and I’ll have to deal with all of it when it does.

  With the aroma of cedar and pizza combining and a Christmas tree right there in front of her, Sage decided that none of it was going to kill her.

  She turned to find him so close that she threw up her hands to land on a chest full of hard muscles. His lips touched hers in a kiss that was a blend of sweet and hot. With a gentle probe his tongue asked permission to enter her mouth. She gave it by opening up and inviting him right inside.

  And then the timer on the stove buzzed, telling them that the pizza was ready.

  “God hates me,” Creed moaned.

  “No, He loves me.” She laughed.

  Creed followed her into the kitchen. “How do you figure that?”

  “Twice today we’ve been interrupted. I think it’s an omen. It’s not time for the next step, Creed.”

  “That commitment word?”

  She pulled the pizza from the oven. “No, that Creed word. We need to slow the buggy down and step back to think about what we’re doing.”

  “That’s not cardboard pizza. That is the real thing,” he said.

  “It’s just a better frozen pizza than those little thin ones. I’ll pour some sweet tea if you’ll slice it up.”

  “Why?” he asked as he pulled up the lever and popped ice cubes from an old metal tray.

  “Because it’s hot.”

  “I make you hot?”

  “I don’t think we’re on the same page. I was talking about pizza and needing tea because it is hot.”

  “Okay, why slow the buggy down?”

  “Because. It’s going too fast.”

  * * *

  Creed understood, but like she had said earlier, he didn’t have to like it. He wanted the ranch, but he didn’t want there to ever be reason later in life for her to think he’d used her as a pawn to get it.

  He set two glasses of iced tea on the table at the same time she put a big round pizza on a hot pad in the middle. He bowed his head and laid his hand on top of hers for grace.

  “Amen,” they said in unison when he finished.

  “I’m starving.”

  “It takes a lot of energy to find a tree and put it up. Think we will survive all this?” he asked.

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “We managed to get through the blizzard without killing each other. I even decided you weren’t such a bad person after all.”

  “Oh, you thought I was at one time?”

  “Hey, put yourself in my shoes. Woman sells me the ranch but I have to sign a paper saying you can live on it until you die. Then she tells me that when you get home get ready for a shit storm because you don’t want her to sell and you are going to pitch a fit like what ain’t never seen in these parts. What would you think?”

  Sage smiled. “Did she really say it like that?”

  “She did and I was so damned glad to hear the news that the roads were closed that I
almost danced a jig, woman. Truth is, I was about half-afraid of you. That morning when I found you in the kitchen I was stunned out of my mind. It’s a wonder I could speak.”

  “So I wasn’t what you thought I’d be?” she asked.

  “I was expecting something way, way different, lady. Your picture doesn’t do you justice. You are one beautiful woman.”

  “Thank you for that. But put yourself in my place.”

  “Are you going to be really angry when she sells me this ranch?”

  Sage thought about the question while she chewed. “Not angry. Sad.”

  “That’s what you were thinking about this morning, isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “My momma was hoping I’d hate this place. All of her kids are within a thirty-minute drive but me. I’m the only one who won’t be there for Christmas.”

  Sage looked up quickly. “But you can go home for the holidays if you want to. Grand will be back for those days. She and I can do the chores.”

  “This is my home. I knew it when I walked up on the porch that first day. Home is where the heart is, not where you hang your hat, and for the first time in my life I want to be here. Going to Ringgold now is going to Momma’s house, not home. And I want to spend my first Christmas on my very own ranch, not at Momma’s house.”

  “Okay then, let’s eat and start decorating the tree. I bet we can get it done before time for chores,” she said.

  * * *

  They looped the tinsel on the tree and then began hanging the ornaments. He removed each one from a bit of tissue paper and handed it to Sage, who told stories as she hung them.

  She’d made the reindeer ornament from an old wooden clothespin with the glued-on eyes and red felt nose in kindergarten. The long, skinny glass ones had belonged to Grand’s mother, so she hung them in the middle of the tree to make sure Angel and later Rudolph and his siblings wouldn’t bat them off.

  “How do you remember all that?” Creed asked.

  “I’ve been reminded every single Christmas that I can remember. I loved hearing the stories behind the ornaments and Grand loved telling them. Grandpa bought a new ornament for her every year. This is the last one he gave her.”

  She held up a gingerbread man made of cedar. “He made it himself.”

  “He was pretty good with a whittlin’ knife, was he?”

  “He was gone before I was born but he must have been because some of the ornaments are made of wood. Grand said that those were the lean years when he couldn’t afford to buy her anything so he made one. It just dawned on me, Creed. Grand took over running the whole ranch all alone when she was in her early forties, after a bad year. And then in the next seven years she lost her son and her daughter-in-law and was left with me.”

  “She must’ve always been tough.”

  Sage nodded. “She ran this place and raised me with a steel hand, but she’s also soft. I remember… We’ve got to make cookies.”

  He looked up at Sage and grinned. “Lord, girl, you can turn the course of conversation around on a dime.”

  Sage’s lungs burned as if the air was hot and her mind really did plunge into the gutter. If he walked into a room full of women and looked out over the crowd and smiled, the women would flock to him like bees to a honey jar.

  “People will be stopping by during the holidays. Grand always offers them a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and she puts a plate full of cookies and candy on the table.”

  “What kind of cookies?”

  “All kinds, but especially sugar cookies with icing and gingerbread bars. We have to make gingerbread bars because Grand said her great-great-grandmother made them and it’s a Christmas tradition.”

  “O…kay!” Creed dragged the word out to four syllables.

  She hung the last ornament and stood back, adjusted a few, popped her hands on her hips, and declared it finished. “Now when the electricity comes back we’ll light up the whole ranch. Well, we will when we get the lights on the house and that’s the next job.”

  “You are a drill sergeant. What if I wanted to take a long nap, do chores, and read until my eyes get tired?”

  She air-slapped him on the shoulder. “Really?”

  He laughed. “No, Sage. I want to finish decorating and then make cookies. I can guarantee you that I’ll eat them as fast as they can cool, so you’d better make a whole bunch.”

  She sat down in his lap. “You are a good sport, Creed Riley.”

  Chapter 10

  Creed held a single stalk of mistletoe toward Sage. It was covered with white berries, but the leaves on it weren’t as thick as the ones he’d either brought in on his shoulder or else tracked inside.

  “You ever heard the legend of the mistletoe?” he asked.

  She laid it on the window ledge. “No, I haven’t. You can tell me about it in front of the fireplace. It’s colder this morning. I turned on the oven and two burners on the stove to warm up this end of the house. Coffee?”

  “Yes, please. According to the thermometer on the fence post out there it’s eighteen degrees. Snow ain’t meltin’ at this temperature. Noel ran out long enough to make some yellow snow beside the porch and whined to get back inside. She didn’t even go feed with me. The rooster didn’t want to do much crowing and I didn’t even hear a grunt coming from the hogs.”

  She carried two steaming mugs to the living room, set one on each end table, and pulled a quilt from the back of the sofa. She curled up on the sofa with a quilt wrapped snugly around her legs. “It’s a wonder the cow even gave milk.”

  “Well, it did look like ice cream,” Creed teased as he hung his hat on the rack. “The refrigerator is full of milk, Sage. What are we going to do with all of it?”

  “Grand gives it away or she skims it, uses the cream for butter, and feeds the rest to the hogs. Now tell me about the legend thing. Listen to that wind.”

  “It’s howling worse than when the blizzard was in full force. You’d think the sheer force of it would melt some of the snow, but it ain’t happenin’. All it did was blow it around and drift it up against the house and barn. I’m not seeing much thawing. At least it puts nitrogen back into the soil and we’ll have some pretty pasture grass come springtime.”

  Sage snuggled deeper under the patchwork quilt. She was glad for a small house that morning because it heated quickly. If the temperature kept falling they’d have to light the propane heater on the south wall of the living room. She and Grand saved that for the last resort in the winter. Propane was expensive and they had to use it for cooking and hot water. But they always used as much wood as possible to heat the house. Mesquite was cheap and using it was two-fold. It cleared the land and warmed the house.

  What kind of setup would she have in a trailer? After the mother of all storms, she sure wouldn’t have anything that was totally electric.

  “You were going to tell me about the mistletoe,” she said.

  “Just getting my toes thawed out before I started talking.”

  Sage set her mug on the floor. “There’s lots of quilts in the linen closet. I’ll get another one.”

  She tossed the one she’d been using on Creed’s lap, tucked it around his thighs, and made sure his feet were covered well. “Your toes are frozen, Creed. And you’ve only got one pair of socks on your feet.”

  “I didn’t realize it was so cold until I got out there. It was thirty-two degrees yesterday and the sun made it feel even warmer. I bet the wind chill brings it down into the single digits tonight.”

  “It’s a wonder you’ve got any digits after being out there more than an hour with only one pair of cotton socks. Are all your good wool boot socks dirty? We can do hand laundry and hang it in front of the fireplace to dry, or we could light the heater and dry things on chairs in front of it. Even if everything in the house is running, it won’t use up all the propane in j
ust a week.”

  She mumbled the whole way from the hall to the linen closet and back. Mainly, it was to cover the feelings brought on when she touched him. She’d hugged lots of men, danced up close and personal with men, and brushed against them in the grocery store or the pew after church. None of them turned up her hormones like tucking a quilt around Creed’s toes did.

  Creed raised his voice. “Do you know anything about the gas pump? Is there enough in the tank to keep the generator running? I haven’t had to put any in the tractor or my truck since I got here, but the gauge is broken so I don’t know how much is in reserve.”

  “Gauge has been broken for years. The gas company checks the pumps on the tenth of the month. The weather kept them from getting here but now that the plows have cleared the roads they should be here any day. Do y’all keep diesel and gas pumps on your property in Ringgold?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. Farmers and ranchers don’t like to stop working and drive twenty miles to get a tank full of fuel for a tractor or a pickup. And thank you for the quilt. It’s warming my toes right up. I don’t think any of them are going to fall off from frostbite.”

  “Next time wear warm socks,” she said. “You were going to tell me a story about the mistletoe, remember?”

  “In the early days when folks hung up the kissing plant or a kissing ball, each time a feller kissed a girl he had to pick off a berry. When the berries were all gone then the kissing was finished for that season,” he said.

  “Us tall, gangly, cosmetically challenged girls had best claim a spot under it pretty early then because when the berries got scarce, the good-lookin’ cowboys would be more particular, right?”

  “Sage Presley, there isn’t one thing awkward or gangly about you. Cosmetically challenged, my ass. You are the most beautiful woman this old cowboy ever clapped his eyes upon. And believe me, if you ever got stuck under the mistletoe, cowboys would be pushing each other out of the way. Hell, there might even be pistols drawn and bloodshed just trying to get to you.”

  She shook out a second quilt and covered herself with it when she sat down. “And where would you be in all that pushin’ and shovin’?”