Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(106)

“And that is funny why?”

“I love my grandmother, but she excuses everything by saying it’s her Indian voodoo. She can smell a storm on the way, and if it doesn’t arrive, then it bypassed us, but it didn’t mean that she couldn’t smell it. That kind of thing,” she said.

“Well, whatever voodoo she has, I’m glad she’s got the cows in one small enclosure and that they can huddle up under the shed roof on the back of the barn for a little protection.” He kicked another piece of mistletoe with his toe as he started through the kitchen.

He picked it up and she reached for it. “I’ll take that.”

It was twice as big as the other pieces. Grand would say that was because she wasn’t being mean anymore.

“Where are you going to set up to paint?” he asked.

She pointed. “Right there in front of the living room window to the left of the fireplace.”

“What are you going to paint?”

She shrugged. After that comment about Indian voodoo she couldn’t tell him her deepest painting secret. That she depended on her painting gods to give her inspiration and that she respected them enough to paint what they offered.

“I’m going to paint a picture of that kitchen window with a bright red cardinal on the outside ledge looking in. While you were gone one lit there and looked like he wanted to come inside.”

“Smart bird. It’s terrible out there. How in the world did you ever get home? The last report I got before the electricity went out was that all roads into the canyon were going to be closed.”

“They were just putting up the sawhorses and signs when I drove up. I shimmied around them and kept on driving. The men weren’t real happy with me, but I wanted to be home, not holed up in a motel somewhere. I didn’t have to worry about oncoming traffic.”

“It was stupid! You were lucky to get here.”

“I’m a damn good driver.”

“Didn’t say that. I said that driving down that twisting, steep incline wasn’t too smart.”

The dog raised her head and yipped.

“Guess she don’t want us to fight,” Creed said.

“Guess she don’t get to make the calls,” Sage shot back.

“I’ll put a pot of soup on for lunch and then I’m going to have a hot shower to warm up my bones.”

“You are changing the subject. Besides, the meat is frozen and the microwave runs on electricity so you can’t thaw anything out that way,” she reminded him.

“I took hamburger out of the freezer yesterday when I heard about the storm moving in. And yes ma’am, I am changing the subject. I don’t like to argue and fight. I got plenty of that growing up with a house full of brothers.”

“Why do you cook?” she asked.

“Why don’t you?” he fired back at her.

She frowned. “Because Grand does a good job of it and I didn’t need to learn. Your turn.”

“Because Momma said so. Seven boys make for a lot of work. So she made us all learn to cook and we had to do our own laundry and ironing after our twelfth birthday.”

“Seven!” She carried the easel to the living room and set it up close to the window beside the fireplace.

He sat down in the rocking chair nearest the fire and shoved his feet toward the warmth. “You heard me right and I didn’t stutter. Seven boys. She really wanted a daughter, you see. But she got three boys in about four years right after she and Daddy married. She waited a few years and tried again and got another boy, Ace. Waited a few more years and decided to give it another try. And got three more boys for her efforts. Me, Dalton, and Blake. She spoils her daughters-in-law and her granddaughters these days.”

“I always wanted a brother or sister,” she said.

The words were out and she couldn’t put them back, but she wished she hadn’t said them. She didn’t want to share anything with Creed. That just led down a pathway that only ended in pain.

She chose a sixteen-by-twenty-inch stretched canvas. That would be the perfect size for a window painting. She looked at the kitchen window and her gods smiled on her that morning. For the briefest moment the snow blew in circles creating an angel in the upper part of the window.

Sage was known for her Western paintings that portrayed hidden animals in the rock formations of the canyon. She painted in earthy tones of umber, sienna, and ocher. But today she’d been given a new path: an angel looking down on a little red cardinal who studied three pieces of mistletoe lying on the sill just inside the window. She wanted to capture the cold and the way the bird eyed the mistletoe. She could hardly contain the excitement of something new and original as she set up the canvas and unlocked the paint box.

“What did you see?” Creed asked.

“What makes you think I saw anything?”

“You looked at the window and something changed in your face. All I saw was snow and mistletoe, but you saw something more,” he said.

“I saw a cardinal,” she said.

It was the truth. She had seen a cardinal earlier.

“Must’ve blinked at the wrong time. I didn’t see it.”

Sage could feel his eyes on her as she sketched and it created an itchy feeling like she’d been too close to poison ivy. She knew the very minute that he went to sleep. Trusting soul, he was, sleeping when she could easily get to the shotgun hanging over the fireplace or to the knives in the kitchen drawer.