Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(105)

Merry Christmas to Sage!

“Noel it is. I like that better than Chris anyway,” he said. “I’m getting too warm with all these clothes on inside the house. Easel and paints are here. Now one more trip for canvases. How many, and anything else?”

“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.