“When did you get here? Or better yet, how did you get here?” Sage asked.
“We flew into Amarillo and got a taxi to bring us home,” Ada said.
“We would have come and got you, Miz Ada,” Creed said.
“Hello, Creed, I’m Essie, Ada’s sister. She’s told me all about you. We didn’t mean to be rude and not include you in this homecoming surprise.”
Creed stuck out his hand, but Essie bypassed it and hugged him.
“Aunt Essie, you said y’all instead of you’ens.” Sage laughed.
“You scared seventy years off of me and I reverted back to my Okie days,” she said. “Now go get washed up. Supper will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Grand, a taxi must’ve cost a fortune. Why on earth didn’t you call us?” Sage asked.
“Wanted to surprise you, and besides, money ain’t nothing but dirty paper with dead presidents on it. The look on your face when Creed hauled you in here like a sack of feed was worth every dime. Do I want to know why you got carried in that way?” Ada asked.
“We were racing. Loser had to cook supper,” Creed answered. “It looked like I was going to lose so I evened the odds. That is one long-legged granddaughter you got, Miz Ada.”
“From the smell of this kitchen, I’d say we both won, and neither of us has to cook,” Sage said.
“We been here an hour and thought we’d go on with the supper. Place looks nice all decorated up,” Ada said. “You didn’t even forget the nativity on the credenza.”
Heat popped out on Sage’s face and neck like a red-hot sunburn. “No, ma’am, I did not.”
“I like it better there than on the mantel. Creed, did she tell you the story of that credenza?” Ada asked and went on before he could answer. “It belonged to my mother’s grandmother. Started out as one of those old washstands that folks put in their bedrooms. There was a bow on the back with a rod across the two ends to hang a towel on. And the washbowl and pitcher set on the top. The doors underneath opened up for a chamber pot.”
“Grand!”
“Well, they did. Momma said that when she inherited it she set it on the screened-in porch and opened the doors for a whole summer just to air it out. She gave it to me for a wedding present and it has set right there ever since Tom brought me down into this canyon. He laughed when he brought it in and said we was uptown now because we had a credenza.”
“Well, it’s a nice piece of furniture. Good and sturdy,” Creed said.
Essie gave Sage a push toward the living room. “Stop talkin’ about old furniture and go wash up. We can talk over supper.”
Creed held it in until they reached the bathroom and then he chuckled.
She unzipped her coveralls and let them fall down to her waist, pushed up the sleeves of her knit shirt, and turned on the water. “Lord, if you hadn’t turned me around when you did I’d have embarrassed the tee-total hell out of us both.”
“Credenza?”
She looked in the mirror at his reflection and grinned. “I know. She’s psychic, I swear she is. Why else would she bring up the credenza?”
“You going to tell her?” Creed asked.
Sage shivered. “Hell, no! Not even on her deathbed.”
Creed unzipped his coveralls and let them fall to his waist, pushed up his sleeves, and stuck his hands under the faucet with Sage’s. Would there ever come a time when his touch, even with her grandmother so close by, didn’t give her naughty thoughts?
She wrapped her soapy hands around his fingers and washed his hands for him. “Oh, I’d slippy and I’d slidey over Creed’s little heinie. Oh, I wish I was a little bar of soap.”
“Shhh.” Creed caught her fingers. “You want to get me in trouble? And besides, that’s not the way the song goes.”
“That’s the way it went in my head right then. And besides, I don’t get to see you cook supper in the nude,” she whispered.
He burst out laughing.
“It wasn’t that funny,” she said.
“Not that. It just dawned on me. The credenza.”
She blushed. “What about it?”
He stopped laughing and kissed her on the cheek. “We had sex on top of the outhouse. Bet you never thought you’d say that, did you?”
Sage’s eyes popped so wide open that they hurt. “We did, didn’t we? Oh my God!”
They finished washing up and Creed stood to one side so Sage could go ahead of him. She made it to the middle of the living room floor when she stopped so suddenly that he plowed right into her back. She started to fall forward but he grabbed her from behind and held on until she got her balance.
“Where’s Angel and Noel?” she whispered.
Ada poked her head across the bar and said, “They’ll be outside in those fancy log cabins. I plugged in their lightbulbs and you should have seen those two animals. They carried on together in the snow like a couple of kids. You’d have never believed that they were supposed to hate each other.”
“Cats don’t like me and I ain’t none too fond of them either,” Essie yelled. “I’m mashing these potatoes and then we’re eating.”
“It’s okay,” Creed whispered. “They helped us out. Neither one of us could have carried the puppies or the kittens outside. We’ll go check on them after supper.”
“That is one ugly dog,” Ada said. “I would have bought you something a little prettier than that. Them bluetick pups of hers is even better looking than she is.”
Sage patted Creed’s hands, which were still firmly around her waist, and took a step forward. “She grows on you. In a week, you won’t think she’s ugly because she is so sweet.”
***
It wasn’t that the sofa was uncomfortable. There had been times when Creed had slept on the hard ground with nothing but his saddle for a pillow.
It wasn’t that he was hungry. After that supper, he probably didn’t need to eat until Christmas dinner.
The tossing and turning was because he missed Sage. He missed the feel of her back pressed against his chest, his hand wrapped around her ribs, and her hair tickling his nose. He missed the sweet smell of soap on her skin and her cold toes warming against his feet.
And there was that other thing.
Ada hadn’t brought up the sale or what she’d decided in her almost three weeks, but the time had come. Creed wanted the Rockin’ C and he wanted Sage right along with it. He didn’t know what he’d do if Ada had changed her mind and didn’t want to sell. He couldn’t ask Sage to leave her home, but his heart would shrivel up and die without her.
He pulled the quilt up over his shoulders and shut his eyes tightly. It didn’t work but it did provide a blank screen for him to imagine all kinds of pictures of Sage. There she was in the kitchen that first morning looking like she could chew up nails and spit out staples. And in the mall with the same expression on her face the day they went on their only date.
His eyelids flew up so fast that he couldn’t focus for several seconds.
He couldn’t ask Sage to marry him. They’d only been on one date.
Don’t be stupid. What was that little ride through the pasture the day that Noel had the puppies? What was that trek through the snow to show her the icicle on the mistletoe?
The quilt fell on the floor when he sat up and stared at the fireplace. He was so deep in the inner argument with himself that he didn’t hear Sage padding across the floor. He felt a movement and there she was, pulling his arm around her and the quilt over both of them.
“I can’t sleep. Hold me,” she mumbled.
He kissed her on the forehead and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Me neither.”
***
Essie awoke the next morning long before dawn and tiptoed to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. She stopped in front of the Christmas tree, turned around, and went right back to the bedroom she and Ada were sharing. She pulled the cover off Ada and slapped her on the shoulder.
“I’m awake,” Ada said.
“Th
en quit wastin’ daylight.”
“I’m not. Can’t waste what ain’t here.”
“Yes, you are. You can get the chores done and use the daylight to do what you can’t do in the dark.”
Ada sat up and yawned. “What put a burr in your butt this morning?”
“Put on your housecoat and come with me.”
Ada slung her legs over the edge of the bed and Essie handed her a faded blue chenille robe.
“Shhhh!” Essie motioned for her to follow.
They stopped in the middle of the living room floor and stared mesmerized at Sage and Creed. One quilt covered both of them. Her head rested on his shoulder. His chin rested on her head.
“Ada, they couldn’t sleep without each other. You’ve got to loosen up and tell them they can sleep in the same bed.”
“The hell I can. This is still my house and if she wants to sleep with him in a bed under my roof, she can marry him.”
Chapter 20
Sage sat across from her grandmother at the kitchen table. Essie had claimed a rocking chair in front of the blazing fireplace and was crocheting something pink. Creed had suited up and left to do the chores.
It was time for the argument that Sage had looked forward to and planned for the past three weeks. And she was speechless.
“Well?” Ada asked.
“You first,” Sage answered.
“I was right.”
Sage shrugged.
Dammit, anyway! It wasn’t easy admitting defeat before she’d even spit on her knuckles and drawn a line in the snow.
“I liked that cowboy from the start and you’ve fallen in love with him,” Ada said.
“You were right, and yes, I have.”
“Then why the long face this morning?”
Sage stretched her hands across the table and laid them on Ada’s. “Grand, I don’t want you to leave the Rockin’ C. I can live with the sale now. Got to admit when I dropped down into the canyon on those slick roads all I wanted to do was bust in here and have a big fight with you, but you were right about Creed.”
“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Essie said from the living room.
“She’s been spoutin’ off that brand of bullshit for days,” Ada whispered.
“I can hear you,” Essie singsonged.
“She’s probably right but it pains the hell out of me to admit it,” Ada said.
Sage gently squeezed her hands. “Why? You and Aunt Essie can live here. The ranch is plenty big and I can take care of you when you get old.”
“When? Honey, we done passed the time of if and when. We are old,” Essie said.
***
Creed fed the cattle and worried.
He scattered chicken scratch in the henhouse and worried.
He opened the chute and poured a mixture of sour milk and cornmeal into the hog’s trough and worried some more.
Sage was in the kitchen with Ada and it didn’t take the intelligence of a rocket scientist to know what they were discussing. His whole future, hell, his whole heart was laid out on that old kitchen table between them.
His boots felt like they’d been filled with concrete as he trudged back to the barn. The brown and white milk cow waited for him as if she understood that he didn’t need any further distractions that morning. He led the way to the milk stall and she followed obediently.
“I’ll hire some help so Sage can have more time for her painting. Lord only knows I don’t want her to give that up.” He pulled up a three-legged milking stool and sat down.
The first milk made pinging noises as it hit the bucket, and whirls of steam arose until the bottom was covered. “Besides, I love to watch her paint. It’s soothing to a cowboy’s soul. Rye mentioned one of his cousins was looking for work. I met several of his family at his and Austin’s wedding reception. I can’t put names with faces, but if he’s an O’Donnell, you can bet that he knows ranchin’ and horses.”
The cow mooed.
“Sounds like a good idea, does it? I can clean up the bunkhouse and start with one hired hand this year and if the calf crop and the hay makes good, I can maybe hire a second one next year.”
By the time the bucket was full, he’d envisioned more than one year into the future and every one of them involved Sage and the rings still hidden in his coat pocket.
“Well, shit! If Ada gets to snooping around in the closet, she’s liable to find the rings. That would be a disaster.”
He let the cow back out with the other cattle and carried the milk back to the house, dreading what lay ahead.
His eyes swept the kitchen first looking for Sage, but she wasn’t there. He peeked around the bar but she wasn’t working on the newest painting. Essie was doing something with pink yarn in front of the fireplace. Ada had just pulled a pan of spicy-smelling cookies from the oven.
She tossed oven mitts on the cabinet, poured two cups of coffee, and motioned for him to sit down. “I’ll strain the milk while you get out of those coveralls and we’ll talk.”
He unzipped his coveralls. “Where is Sage?”
“She’s out on the porch playing with her pets. I got to hand it to you, Creed Riley. I knew you was the cowboy I’d been waiting for when you knocked on my door. I could feel it in my bones but I never figured that you’d talk her into animals. That’s a pretty nice momma cat; kinda pretty with all that long fur and I can see Sage falling in love with her. But that ugly dog? God Almighty, that took a pure miracle.”
Creed didn’t want to talk about animals. He wanted to talk about the sale of the Rockin’ C. “Yes, ma’am, but Noel wormed her way into Sage’s heart real quick.”
He kicked his boots off and joined Ada at the table. A plate of fresh cookies sat between them and the coffee was still steaming.
Ada pushed the cookies his way. “Help yourself.”
He bit into the soft gingerbread and nodded. “Very good.”
“Christmas tradition around here. I like that y’all put the tree up and the lights around the barn and that you made sugar cookies and gingerbread. I had to make fresh for today though because this is an important day.”
It took two long gulps of hot coffee to swallow the gingerbread. “Yes, it is.”
“I’m going to sell you this ranch, Creed. I’m not backing out of the agreement. Are you?”
He shook his head. Had he heard her right? Would Sage be able to really live with the decision?
“Good.”
“Well, damn!” Essie said. “Now she’ll lord it over me that her damned old Indian sense is real.”
“Oh, hush. You want me to sell the ranch and you know it. Put that yarn down and tell Sage to come in here. We need to talk amongst the four of us because there are some conditions.”
Essie obeyed but she muttered something about her sister being too bossy.
Creed smiled at Sage when she came back into the house. Her nose was scarlet and her knit cap was set off to one side. No doubt Noel had been extra friendly.
She smiled back and winked.
The stone in his heart dissolved completely. She was okay with the sale and their relationship was fine.
“Okay, Sage, get out of that coat and pour some coffee for you and Essie. We’re going to lay out the terms of this sale amongst us.”
Sage stopped long enough to brush a kiss across Creed’s cheek. “Good morning.”
He grabbed her hand and pulled her down onto his lap where he kissed her properly. “Good morning, darlin’. Your grandmother has not backed out of the sale.”
“I know. I chose eating my cake.”
A puzzled expression crossed his face.
Essie laughed out loud. “So did Ada, thank God.”
“I’m sure it’ll all make sense someday,” Creed said.
He would have preferred that Sage sit in his lap through the whole discussion of the terms but she stood up. Once her coat was removed she took her place and reached under the table to squeeze his thigh.
“Okay,” Ada
began. “I’ll go first. Essie and I had a long talk last night after we went to bed. When I left the canyon I was positively sure about this sale but then the doubts came creepin’ in on me. So we made arrangements to come a few days early so that I could tell Creed I’d changed my mind and wasn’t going to sell out. Seemed only right to give him time to go home to his family for the holidays and I wanted to be with you, Sage.”
“She was an old bear,” Essie said. “Wanted her cake and wanted to eat it too, just like Sage did.”
Ada shot her sister a dirty look and went on. “Essie and I want to be together in our old age. She wants to be in Shade Gap because that’s her home. I want to be here because this is my home. We couldn’t have it both ways until we got to studying the matter. This is what we’ve come up with and if you are in agreement, we’ll call the lawyer and have him meet us at the courthouse in Claude this afternoon.”
“Why the hurry?” Sage asked.
“Courthouse will be closed on Monday. Tuesday is Christmas, and besides, Essie and I are going back to Shade Gap on Sunday evening. Had to get a red-eye home because all the planes are booked full during the holidays.”
“But Grand, if you were going to back out of the sale, why did Essie come with you? She would have had to fly home all by herself,” Sage asked.
Essie put up a palm. “That was my idea. If I let her out of my sight for a minute she makes the wrong decisions. I had to come along to keep her in remembrance of the fact that I need her to help me.”
“Bullshit! Woman who can climb on the roof don’t need nobody to help her,” Sage said.
“Okay, you caught me. I don’t need her but she needs me,” Essie giggled.
“That’s a load of bullshit for sure,” Ada raised her voice.
“Oh, hush the bitching and tell them the plan,” Essie said.
“Okay, I’m selling you the ranch for the price we agreed upon. But I want to buy this house back from you for the same amount. Not the land it sits on, just the house.”
Creed’s brows knit together. “Explain please.”
“You are going to give me the rest of the money for the ranch. I’m going to tear up the check because I’m buying my house back from you. Understand that much?”
Mistletoe Cowboy Page 26