Mistletoe Cowboy (4 page)

“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.

“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.

The picture she was about to paint was etched firmly in her mind and she'd sketched in the beginning lines. So she stopped, sat down in the chair next to Creed, and stared at him.

Know
thy
enemy, is it?
Grand's voice whispered.

She whipped around to look behind her and set the rocking chair in motion. She expected the squeaking rocker to wake Creed, but he didn't move.

That's right. I'll get to know him and find the very weakness that will run him off this ranch. You will not go through with this deal, Grand
, she argued.

Thick dark lashes fanned out on his angular cheeks that sported a day's worth of black scruff. He was one of those men who had to shave every day and twice if he was going somewhere that night. He reminded her of her friend, Lawton Pierce, who owned the biggest spread in the whole canyon. Like Creed, Lawton had dark hair and long lashes and a beard. They could have easily been cousins, but Sage didn't give a rat's ass if he was Lawton's long lost younger brother and they'd been cut from the same tanned leather cowhide. She still wasn't going to like him.

Creed wiggled and sighed. She sure didn't want him to catch her staring at him, so she stood up so fast that she got a head rush. Her chair sounded like a bird chirping as it flipped back and forth several times. But then he settled back into a deep sleep and she sat back down. She had the strangest urge to run her fingers through all that dark hair and see if it was as soft as it looked. Would he be a tender lover or a demanding one? Would his kisses build a fire in her or would they turn her completely off?

Now
where
did
that
come
from? I've only just met him and I'm determined that he won't be here more than three weeks, so there will be no kisses or sex. Besides, Grand would have a pure old hissy if she found out I'd slept with a man in this house
, she thought.

“I couldn't face her,” she whispered.

“You talkin' to me or the dog?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“I was just muttering while I decide how to paint that picture over there,” she said.

His eyes opened slowly and he sat up straight. “Guess I'd best put the soup on if it's going to be done by dinnertime. That and a skillet of corn bread should do for dinner and supper both, right?”

“I'll make the corn bread,” she said.

“You don't cook,” he reminded her.

“I lied. I can cook. I just don't enjoy it. Grand made me learn enough to survive and I make a mean skillet of corn bread and the best Christmas sugar cookies in the whole canyon.”

“You lied! What else did you lie about?”

Dammit! Was it a real lie if a person just omitted details?

“I saw the cardinal, but it was earlier in the day,” she said.

“That all?”

She squinted at him and set her mouth in a firm line. “Did
you
tell any lies this morning? About that dog, maybe?”

“I did not. Your grandmother didn't say a word about a dog on the place and mine are registered redbone hounds. Two of them, Reba and Wynonna. They sure don't look like that mutt. So one more time, darlin'—that animal did not come from my neck of the woods.”

She giggled. “Did you really name two bitches after the red-haired country singers?”

“You got it. They sing real pretty when they tree a coon or track a coyote.”

She looked at the sleeping dog. “Think they'll like Noel?”

“They probably won't even think she's a dog. She looks like a big ball of tangled up yarn, don't she?”

The wiry dog did look like its momma had been a poodle and it's daddy a cross between a schnauzer and a ball of wool yarn. She opened one eyelid and whimpered.

Sage bent over and scratched the dog's ears. “It's okay, Noel. He didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Her fur is a whole lot softer than it looks, Creed. Do you think we should give her an old quilt? That hardwood floor is hard and cold.”

“Might be nice.” Creed grinned.

Creed was a big man and Sage wasn't a midget. The kitchen was small, and every time he or Sage moved an inch they bumped into one another. A shot of her rounded fanny bending over to slide the corn bread inside the oven shouldn't have been sexy, not in sweat bottoms, but it was. Breasts brushing against his upper arm or plowing into his chest were a different matter. That he could understand stirring up things behind his zipper.

It had been a long time since he'd had sex, but his body could have behaved a lot better in his estimation. She'd made it very clear that she did not like him and intended to throw every obstacle she could in his way to keep him from buying the ranch. She'd lied to him about her cooking abilities, and now she was tempting him with every touch and move.

It wasn't fair. She was getting away scot-free and he was being punished. He'd gotten into scrapes. What kid didn't? He'd been drunk at rodeos. What cowboy hadn't? But God did not have to hate him so badly that He made his body respond to a woman who would shoot him stone-cold dead and never feel a bit of remorse about it.

He'd made several trips to the window to imagine lying naked, facedown in the driving blizzard. Thinking about something that cold on his bare skin and manhood usually shrunk it back down pretty fast, but each time it took longer than the last time because pictures of Sage lying naked next to him kept popping up. And the imaginary heat between them melted every bit of the snow for a hundred yards and turned what was falling into warm rain.

When the corn bread was almost done, he dipped up two big bowls of soup and put them on the table. While he did that, she bent over one more time to get the corn bread out of the oven and transport it to the table. He bit his lip to keep from moaning out loud and shoved his hands into his hip pockets to keep from cupping her fanny in his hand. He'd only met the woman that morning, for God's sake!

She put a container of homemade butter and the salt and pepper shakers on the table, and then looked around to see if she'd forgotten anything.

He rolled off two paper towels to use for napkins and joined her.

“Grace?” he asked.

“Grand usually does that,” she answered.

“I'll do it since it's going to be my house,” he said.

She bowed her head, said “amen” right after he did, and picked up her spoon.

“Mmmm,” she said. “What's your secret? This is fantastic.”

“Picante. I like to use my own, but there's no electricity and I have to have a blender to make it. I found that in the pantry and it worked pretty good,” he answered. “You like it, do you?”

It shouldn't matter, but he wanted her to like the food. He wanted her to like him and for them to be good neighbors. He didn't want to feel tightness in his chest every time she smiled, but that was just a physical reaction to a very pretty woman.

“It's been a week since I've had good home food. Next week it might not taste nearly as good, but right now it's wonderful,” she said.

“That's a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.”

One shoulder raised up half an inch. “I said it was fantastic, didn't I?”

Noel left her tattered old blanket Sage had rustled up from the linen closet and went straight to Sage's side of the table. She gave a little yip, her eyes on Sage's soup bowl.

Creed was glad that the dog had taken to Sage and not him. Reba and Wynonna would pitch a for real bitch fit if he let something like that live in the house and they had to stay outside.

“This is probably too hot for you, girl. I'll find something after we finish,” Sage said.

Creed used the spatula to remove a piece of corn bread and crumbled it into his soup, saving one bite for Noel. She caught it before it hit the floor, gobbled it down, and wagged her tail.

“She thinks your corn bread is passable,” Creed said.

“What do you think?”

He shoved a spoonful of bread and soup into his mouth and nodded. “I don't like sweet corn bread in soup or beans. This is perfect. We make a pretty good kitchen team, lady.”

“Sweet corn bread is for dessert or for crumbling up and pouring milk over, not soup,” she said.

“You got that right. What do you intend to feed this hungry momma dog? I bet she'd eat the soup if it was cool. Without the bulge of those puppies she'd be bonier than a starving greyhound.”

“We could try.” She nodded. “I'll get a pie pan out and fill it. That way it'll cool faster.”

Noel followed her across the kitchen floor to the stove and watched with hungry eyes while she dipped soup into the pie pan.

“Not yet, girl. It's too hot,” she said.

Funny she should use that word because he was thinking the same thing about Sage. She was entirely too hot.

***

Dammit!
Sage thought but managed to keep from saying it aloud.

Half a day and she was already talking to the dog. Chances were that someone would come to claim the animal when the blizzard stopped and another living breathing thing would abandon her. It was so easy to get attached and so hard to let go.

She vowed she would not get close to Creed even if they were holed up together for the duration of the storm. Not even if he did have the dreamiest green eyes in the world and she'd always been a sucker for a man with green eyes and dark hair. Not even if he did fill out his jeans just right and it had been a very long time since she'd even been kissed.

After they'd eaten, talking only about Noel when either of them did break the silence, Sage said he could wash dishes and she'd dry them.

“Why don't you wash?” Creed asked.

“Because I know where they go and you'll have to ask.”

“Okay, that's fair enough.”

In the tiny corner where the sink was located, their bodies bumped together more often than they did when they had made dinner. She dropped the drying towel and he grabbed for it at the same time she did, their hands getting tangled up in the process. A plate slipped from his soapy hands as he transferred it to the rinse water and she quickly got a hold on it with one hand and his wrist with the other.

By the time they finished there were as many sparks hopping around the kitchen as there were snowflakes falling outside in the yard.

“You going to paint now?” he asked when the last fork was put away.

She nodded.

“Then I'm going to read.” He disappeared down the short hallway and came back with a book.

Sage reclaimed her palette and began to work in earnest on her picture of the swirling snow angel. Creed was probably one of those cowboys who liked his women petite and dainty, with a little girl's voice and a clingy attitude that said, “Protect me, big old rough cowboy.” Most men did. It made them feel all macho and needed. Tall women like her seldom got a second look.

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.

“At least she was honest,” Sage said.

“Yes, she was.”

“It is peaceful here if you don't mind the solitude. Grand is an old hermit. She won't ever like being cooped up in a house with her sister or living in a congested part of the world.”

“I thought her sister had a farm.”

“Five acres. One old two-story house. A barn. Two cows, some chickens, and an apple orchard. Not much of a farm really.”

“And is it in the middle of a big town?”

“Shade Gap is a rural community. Barely even anything left there except for a gas station and a picnic ground.”

“Sounds like she'd be real happy there. As for me, there are cows, hogs, chickens, and when there is electricity there's good country music to listen to. And now Noel is here and there will be puppies.”

“What happens when her owner comes to take her home?”

Creed looked at the poor skinny dog. “No one is coming to claim her, Sage. She's a castoff that someone tossed out before the storm hit. She's probably been living on field mice for a week and sleeping in barns. She's too skinny to have been thrown away just before the blizzard hit. She's found a home and a friend in you. Darlin', she ain't goin' nowhere.”

Sage laid her brush down and scratched Noel's ears. “Stop callin' me darlin'. I'm not and I will never be your darlin'.”

“It's just my way and I'm not changing,” he said.

As if Noel understood that men were strange creatures who couldn't be reasoned with, she wagged her tail so hard that it sounded like a drumbeat on the hardwood floor.

“Look, Creed! I swear she smiled.”

“Dogs do that when they're happy, just like humans.”

Sage rubbed her fur and said, “You're a good girl. I bet you were raised on Venus with the rest of us girls and not on Mars with a bunch of mean old boys.”