Christmas at Home

by Carolyn Brown

  She jerked her head up to lock gazes with him across the table.

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “It’s a compliment, I promise.”

  “Maybe so, but it won’t keep me from talking Grand out of selling the ranch, and that’s a fact.”

  He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. His knee settled against hers under the table at the same time.

  “I meant what I said. You are beautiful. Whether I own the ranch or not, it doesn’t make you any less gorgeous,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Then his knee was gone and his hand left hers.

  He picked up his spoon and started eating stew again, changing the subject and talking between bites. “I haven’t had snow ice cream in at least five years.”

  “Well, finish up your dinner and bring in a big bowl of snow, and you’ll get the best you’ve ever had in your life,” she said.

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Are we still talking about ice cream?”

  “Creed Riley!”

  “Just checkin’ to be sure.” He grinned.

  “Yes, we are!”

  He finished eating, grabbed a huge metal bowl from the pantry, and filled it with snow from a drift at the edge of the back porch. He was halfway across the porch when he noticed bird droppings in the snow. He dumped it and went to the other end of the porch, checked to be sure it was clean, and took it inside.

  Sage swallowed her last bite at the same time he did and set their dirty dishes beside the sink. She grabbed a can of sweetened condensed milk from the pantry, hurriedly opened it, poured it into a mixing bowl, and grabbed a whisk.

  When Creed returned, she was busy stirring, scraping the sides, and stirring some more so he would think she’d whipped up several ingredients together. She stirred small amounts of snow into it until it was finally the right consistency and then dipped out two smaller bowls full.

  He tasted it and shut his eyes as he groaned. “God, this is the best I’ve ever had. What is your secret?”

  “Just the right mixture of eggs, sugar, and cream,” she said.

  There were some things a woman just kept to herself, right?

  “Living room?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah! Warm fire, snow ice cream, and Christmas.”

  He sat on one end of the sofa. She claimed the other.

  She grabbed her head with her free hand. “Oh, shit!”

  Creed set his ice cream on the end table, scooted down the length of the sofa, cupped her chin with his hand, and kissed her hard.

  “Wow, that worked,” she said when he pulled back.

  “Heat melts cold, darlin’.”

  He went back to the other end and started eating again.

  In seconds Sage had gone from aching cold to boiling hot. How many times could a woman’s body do that and not explode?

  Chapter 7

  A brand-new blank canvas waited on the easel. The window painting had been relegated to the top shelf of the pantry to finish drying. The bunnies now had the drying space on the living room wall, and she liked them even better the second day after finishing them than she did at first. Two paintings in such a short time did worry her, though. Was she color-booking or was she really painting?

  Sage eyed the rest of the canvasses and decided the one on the easel was too big. She removed it and picked up a sixteen-by-twenty-inch one and slid the top bar of the easel down to hold it steady. She looked around the room, but there were no angels swirling about outside the kitchen window.

  A flash of yellow leapt from floor to living room windowsill and caught Sage’s attention. The snow people seemed to fascinate the cat. Or maybe it was the birds that lit in their tree limb arms that got her attention. She made a deep guttural sound in her throat, as if telling them if they’d come on into the house, she’d tell them a pretty story.

  Sage had no doubt that the old fairy tale would be a brand-new jacked-up version of “Little Red Riding Hood” if Angel could entice the birds inside. Sage smiled at that idea and turned her attention back to the canvas in front of her.

  “The Mistletoe Collection,” she said. “That sounds wonderful.”

  Still, nothing materialized. Maybe her mistletoe collection was going to consist of two paintings. One of a snow angel and one of two bunnies.

  The back door swung open and Creed filled the space for a split second before he stepped inside. “Mistletoe what?”

  “Cowboy. Mistletoe cowboy. Did you track more inside the house?”

  She was not going to paint a cowboy with mistletoe on his shoulder or a cowboy boot with it frozen to the toe, either.

  He looked at his shoulders and down at the floor. “Not today. I plowed the snow away from a third of the feedlot so the cows wouldn’t be standing in it, but you were right. They’d stomped down most of what was in the lot so the job was easy. Those wind breaks your Grandpa planted sure work.”

  “Next thing you know, you’ll ask me to knit socks for the cows.”

  He hung his heavy coat on the rack. “You knit?”

  She stole quick glimpses of him without turning around to face him head-on. His jeans were snug and stacked up over his scuffed up boots. His denim shirt had two buttons undone showing an oatmeal-colored thermal shirt underneath.

  “I do not knit. Grand does and she tried to teach me. That pesky yarn crawled up the needles and tried to strangle me. So don’t ask me to make socks for your cattle.”

  He chuckled.

  “What? It’s the truth.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not. You said your cattle.”

  “Slip of the tongue. I meant to say Grand’s cattle.” She folded her arms over her chest and turned her attention once again back to the blank canvas.

  Nothing!

  Nada!

  Nil!

  The PGs weren’t giving her a thing that morning. Two small paintings weren’t enough to make the Sage Presley Mistletoe Collection. Had her special gods forsaken her?

  Then the sun peeked out from the dark clouds covering the skies and there it was, plain as day. Angel’s fur glistened as the rays flowed through the window and settled on the basket of kittens sleeping soundly. A snowbird with its dark feathers on top and white belly sat in the twig arms of Mr. Frosty, right at the top of the mistletoe ball. Sage moved the canvas one foot to the left. Mr. Frosty was barely showing in the side of the window and the mistletoe in his arm made of twigs hung right above Angel’s head as she washed a paw.

  Sage grabbed a sketch pencil and began to work as fast as she could before the sun rays shifted. Two long rectangular lines to denote the direction of the sun. The edge of the snowman’s hat, his scarf blowing out in the wind, the stick arms, and the bird. And the sun’s rays bringing it all to life.

  Please, paint gods, let the sun stay out a few more minutes so I won’t lose every little detail. It’s the world coming back after darkness. It’s the sun breathing warmth into a dark room, and it is a momma cat who wants to go outside and play, and it is baby kittens basking in warmth they’ve never known.

  She expected the sun to disappear as soon as she had the major sketch done, but it didn’t. Angel hopped down and joined her babies. The snowbird flew away and a chicken hawk tried to rest on the twig arms to peck at the frozen carrot nose, but the twigs wouldn’t support him so he gave up and flew away.

  “So that’s the next one? Coffee, tea, or me?” Creed asked.

  “That’s a hell of a choice there, cowboy,” she said.

  “Your choice, darlin’.”

  “Better be hot chocolate then. I’ve already had too much coffee, and honey, right now even you couldn’t entice me away from this picture.”

  “Now I’m hurt.” He threw a hand over his heart and his chin dropped to his chest.

  “You are not. You a
re a big flirt and you’re used to rejections. And marshmallows, please.”

  She chose her background colors and squirted them onto the palette.

  Creed headed for the cabinet. “I’m not a big flirt and you’ll have to stop all this shit about me not having the ranch to make it up to me for hurting my feelings.”

  “You’re one brazen cowboy,” she laughed.

  The phone rang and they both jumped. Creed had to do some fast handwork to keep from dropping a whole can of cocoa onto the floor. Sage did drop her brush but caught it midair against her sweatshirt, leaving a yellow blob right on her breast.

  Sage crossed the floor in long, easy strides and grabbed the receiver before Creed could get around the table.

  “Hello!”

  Creed set the cocoa on the cabinet with a bang.

  “Yes, ma’am, he is right here. Yes, ma’am, the sun is out and I am Sage Presley.”

  He reached for the phone and she put it in his hand.

  “Hi, Momma.”

  Sage finished making the hot chocolate he’d started, but the kitchen was small so she heard every word.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A pause.

  “Just fine.”

  Another pause.

  He laughed. “I’m not answering that.”

  He listened for a long time and then said, “Bye, love you, too. Tell all my brothers that I’m surviving, but if they’d like to play in the snow to come out for a visit.”

  He’d barely gotten the phone back on the hook when it rang again. He picked it up. “Hello.”

  He held it out to her. “This one is for you.”

  Two long strides and she stood in front of him, her hand outstretched.

  His fingers brushed her palm in the transfer, and naughty visions danced through her mind. “Hi, Grand. Looks like we’ve got phone service but no electricity. Creed’s momma just called and…”

  Creed stepped around the table and took over the chocolate making process.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Marquee. I thought you’d be my grandmother. She’s on a vacation trip to Pennsylvania. I didn’t think about you calling the house phone.”

  Marquee’s excitement came through the phone line. “You wrote it down on the back of your business card. I love this new mistletoe idea, Sage. It’s going to be every bit as big as your Western pictures. I feel it in my bones. I’ve already got it penciled in for the first week in December. I need a better photo of the one you sent when you have time. When I design the brochure I plan to use that one on the front page. It’s… Damn, girl, I can’t even think of a word to describe it. Ethereal. Paranormal. I don’t know, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever represented,” Marquee said.

  “I’ll have it to you as soon as I get electricity. Cell phone battery is dead. Internet won’t be back until we have electricity, and my laptop battery has long since gone. If my grandmother hadn’t kept this old rotary phone we wouldn’t even have phone service.”

  “I can’t even begin to tell you how much I like these,” Marquee gushed. “The inspiration is still going, isn’t it? I’d like ten or more.”

  “So far the PGs are smiling on me.”

  “Well, don’t do anything to piss them off,” Marquee said. “Call me if you need to discuss anything.”

  “Will do.”

  She put the receiver back on the wall base and two cups of hot chocolate were sitting on the table.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “PGs?” Creed asked.

  Sage didn’t want to tell him about her special gods. That was even more personal than scorching hot kisses.

  “Personal gurus?” he asked.

  “Paint gods,” she said before she could bite down on her tongue.

  “And they are smiling on you?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, that’s good. I found a package of hot dog buns in the freezer. Reuben hot dogs for dinner?”

  She nodded. One minute she’s telling him the most personal thing about herself and the next he’s talking about hot dogs? Her world got crazier with every passing minute.

  He motioned toward the new canvas. “What’s that one going to be?”

  And now it was back to paintings. Talk about one complex cowboy.

  “Wait and see,” Sage said.

  The phone rang again and Sage got it.

  “Hello.” Sage put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s April. They keep an old rotary around for times like this too.”

  * * *

  Creed went to the living room and settled into a rocking chair. Noel left her blanket and stretched out at his feet. Angel got out of the basket and with a single leap landed on his lap.

  He hadn’t liked the idea of being holed up with Sage at first, but it hadn’t been so bad. She was easy on the eyes, had scorchin’ hot lips, and she entertained him with her painting. Yep, he would miss her when she moved to the backside of the property, but maybe he could talk her out of one of the kittens. He peered over the edge of the basket and decided he wanted the yellow one. He could catch any field mice that came into the house and sleep in his lap like Angel was doing right then.

  At first, Sage’s voice sounded excited and happy as she told April about building the snow family and going off in a new direction with her paintings. But then after a few minutes of silence, it turned serious and worried.

  “April, you’ve got to talk to them both about this. It’s a big decision,” she said.

  She listened a while longer and then hung up, picked up her lukewarm chocolate, and slouched down into the rocking chair beside him.

  “They love you more than me,” she said.

  As if she understood, Noel left Creed’s side and went to stand beside Sage.

  Sage reached down and massaged her ears. “Thank you, Noel. I need some love right now.”

  “All you had to do was tell me,” Creed said.

  “Oh, hush. I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Some days a lonesome old cowboy don’t get handed nothin’ but bad luck. Well, if we aren’t going to talk about love then tell me what kind of trouble is your friend April in? I couldn’t help but overhear,” he asked.

  “Big decisions. She wants to quit college and come home. The ranch will be hers someday and it’s the biggest operation in the canyon. She thinks she’s ready to start learning how to run it from the bottom up.”

  “If she’s in college, she should already know the basics. By the time I was that age, Momma and Dad were leaving me and my brothers to run the place when they went places like rodeos and off to Graceland for their anniversary,” Creed said.

  “Lawton and Eva, that’s her dad and mom, divorced when she was four. Eva took her to Oklahoma and she only comes to Canyon Rose Ranch in the summers and for three weeks at Christmas. Sometimes she sneaks down for a couple of days during her spring break and maybe a day at Thanksgiving. When she’s at the ranch she’s the adored pet, not a working ranch rookie.”

  Creed whistled through his teeth. “Whew!”

  “Yep! And there’s more. Eva hates the canyon. Didn’t like it when she married Lawton according to what little I know, but she managed to stick it out for a little more than four years. Story is that Lawton was the quarterback and Eva was the head cheerleader. They got pregnant toward the end of their senior year and married soon as they graduated.”

  “Mercy!” Creed said.

  “April will have a hell of a lot to learn if and when she quits school. And she’ll have to wade through Eva to get to the ranch.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty. She’ll have two years of college finished in May.”

  Creed stopped petting Angel and she left him for Sage’s lap.

  “Fickle critter,” he said. “Can I keep a kitten here when you get your own place a
nd move to the back of the property?”

  “You can take a kitten with you when you go home to Ringgold. Oh, and speaking of going somewhere, April says if the roads get cleared off that Lawton is going ahead with the Christmas party at the ranch.”

  “You are downright mean, Sage. I’m not going back to Ringgold and you just don’t want to share your kittens.”

  “You got it, cowboy!”

  * * *

  Time had stood still the past several days. Sage had painted. She’d lived, slept, ate, and gotten to know Creed. Minutes drug by like a slow old turtle in the hot summertime. Hours sped by with the speed of lightning.

  Limbo. I feel like I’m floating around in space.

  It was hard to believe that just a week ago she was setting up in Denver for her final showing, the excitement mounting as the first people arrived to look at her work. There had been a room full of canyon pictures, most of them at least two feet by three feet in size. She’d figured out that the massive size of the canyon required a big picture even if the central focus was nothing more than an eagle or a lone wolf.

  One critic said that he felt like he could crawl into the picture and smell the heat off the canyon walls. She knew what he was talking about as she stole a glance toward Creed. She could feel the heat all the way across the room. She was a moth and he was an open flame. She should not go any closer or her wings were going to catch on fire. Keeping her distance was the only way that she’d ever talk Grand into keeping the ranch.

  He caught her before she could blink. “What? Do I have chocolate between my lip and nose?”

  “No,” she said quickly and went back to work.

  “Well, I’ve wasted enough time and I’ve gotten warm all the way to my bones so I’m going back out to plow some more snow. Maybe I’ll push it out of the way up the lane next so we can get out when the roads are clear. I’ll be back in time to help get some dinner on the table. Want some more snow ice cream this afternoon?”

  She shook her head. “Grand says if you have it more than once a snow it isn’t special anymore. I’ve got a chicken thawing out for supper. I was thinkin’ dumplins, but if you don’t like that idea I could fry it.”