Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(109)

Noel wolfed down the whole pie pan of soup and curled up on her warm blanket at Sage’s feet. Sage wanted to talk to the dog and figure out how she’d gotten things so confused in less than twenty-four hours, but Creed would hear every word so she kept quiet.

She mixed just a dot of ivory black into a big glob of titanium white and stirred it with her palette knife. Then she squeezed out a small amount of pure titanium white on the side. Glass wasn’t easy to paint, with its glares and shadows, but snow was even harder unless it was lying on a tree or hiding in the crevices of the rock formations.

Next she put a tiny bit of cobalt blue in the corner of her palette. Snow was cold and the blue mixed with lots of white would create the icy shadows in the angel’s wings. The cardinal would require red light hue and a dot of pure black for around his eyes and under his fluffed out feathers. She glanced at the window and added colors for the mistletoe and the valance that Grand had put up in the past two weeks.

Sage almost giggled out loud. There it was! Living proof in the form of a kitchen window valance. Grand wouldn’t sell out, not when she’d put up the Christmas curtain, the one with the poinsettias embroidered on the border. If she was really going to sell, she would have taken that valance with her because her mother had done the stitching on it and it was one of her most prized possessions.

She dipped a brush into the paint and started working on the poinsettias in the valance, happiness filling her heart as much as the soup had taken care of her hunger. Painting was good for Sage’s soul. That day she painted because she was all happy that the paint gods had smiled on her and given her an inspiration for a new picture and that she had no worries.

She felt a little bit sorry for Creed. It wasn’t his fault. He wanted a ranch and Grand had set a price so low that any cowboy in the whole canyon would have jumped on it with both boots.

At least the painting had taken her mind off Creed and his sexy eyes.

“It’s an angel,” Creed said.

She jumped when he spoke. Did he read minds? If so, did he know that she’d been thinking about his sexy eyes?

“You can see it?” she asked.

“How could I not see it? It’s an angel in the swirling snow and it’s looking at the little cardinal on the outside and the mistletoe on the sill there. Where did you get three pieces, anyway?”

“You brought them in with you. I guess the wind blew a bunch down from one of the scrub oak trees. One piece was stuck on your shoulder when you came in the first time. Then you tracked the other two inside.”

“We’ll tie a red ribbon around them and hang them up for the holidays. When are we putting up the tree?”

“Well, it won’t be today, will it?”

“Don’t get all cranky on me, lady.”

“Statin’ facts. Not bein’ cranky.”

“You do put up a tree, don’t you?”

“Yes, we do. A big real cedar tree and we decorate the whole house even if just me and Grand are the only ones who see it. She might be gone this year until the last minute, but I’ll have the whole place decorated up by the time she gets home.”

Creed laid his book aside. “I love Christmas. Momma sends me and Dalton and Blake to the woods the day after Thanksgiving while she and my brothers’ wives do the Black Friday shopping. That night everyone comes home for leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner and we decorate the tree. I won’t be there this year, but we can find a cedar tree and start our own tradition right here.”

There was that word again, or at least a derivative of it.

Us. We. Our.

They all meant a joining of minds to form relationships, friendships, or otherwise. How could things change so quickly? Wasn’t she fighting against it with all her soul and heart?

“If this wind doesn’t stop we might have to dig a tree out from under the drifts before we could even cut it down,” she said and went back to painting.

“It’s doable. When it does stop we’ll go find just the right one and we’ll drag it in here, snow and all. These floors will mop up, and the branches would soon dry in the warm room. Did you ever wish you’d grown up in a big family atmosphere?” he asked.

“All the time,” she said wistfully as she carefully dotted in the angel’s eyes with her smallest brush. “You’ll miss them if you stay, Creed. The canyon is a lonely place.”

“But it’s peaceful and that doesn’t come cheap. And lonely is just a state of mind. Sometimes peace can override lonely if…” He stopped.

“Go on.”

“I was engaged a while back. Head over heels in love with a woman named Macy. She went on a trip and when she came home she said she didn’t really love me. She loved the idea of being in love, but she didn’t think she’d ever really loved me. Turned out she’d met someone else that she did love on that trip. The engagement was over and I kept asking myself what I could have done different. This place has brought me the first peace I’ve known since then.”

Sage’s heart stopped. After that confession, how could she push him out of the canyon? Or maybe he was just playing her so that she wouldn’t put up a fight for her grandmother to back out of the sale. He said he always told the truth and could be trusted, but saying and doing were often two horses of very different colors.

“Well?” he said.