Mistletoe Cowboy Read online

  Please, paint gods, let the sun stay out a few more minutes so I won’t lose every little detail. It’s the world coming back after darkness. It’s the sun breathing warmth into a dark room, and it is a momma cat who wants to go outside and play, and it is baby kittens basking in warmth they’ve never known.

  She expected the sun to disappear as soon as she had the major sketch done, but it didn’t. Angel hopped down and joined her babies. The snowbird flew away and a chicken hawk tried to rest on the twig arms to peck at the frozen carrot nose, but the twigs wouldn’t support him so he gave up and flew away.

  “So that’s the next one? Coffee, tea, or me?” Creed asked.

  “That’s a hell of a choice there, cowboy,” she said.

  “Your choice, darlin’.”

  “Better be hot chocolate then. I’ve already had too much coffee, and honey, right now even you couldn’t entice me away from this picture.”

  “Now I’m hurt.” He threw a hand over his heart and his chin dropped to his chest.

  “You are not. You are a big flirt and you’re used to rejections. And marshmallows, please.”

  She chose her background colors and squirted them onto the palette.

  Creed headed for the cabinet. “I’m not a big flirt and you’ll have to stop all this shit about me not having the ranch to make it up to me for hurting my feelings.”

  “You’re one brazen cowboy,” she laughed.

  The phone rang and they both jumped. Creed had to do some fast handwork to keep from dropping a whole can of cocoa onto the floor. Sage did drop her brush but caught it midair against her sweatshirt, leaving a yellow blob right on her breast.

  Sage crossed the floor in long, easy strides and grabbed the receiver before Creed could get around the table.

  “Hello!”

  Creed set the cocoa on the cabinet with a bang.

  “Yes, ma’am, he is right here. Yes, ma’am, the sun is out and I am Sage Presley.”

  He reached for the phone and she put it in his hand.

  “Hi, Momma.”

  Sage finished making the hot chocolate he’d started, but the kitchen was small so she heard every word.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A pause.

  “Just fine.”

  Another pause.

  He laughed. “I’m not answering that.”

  He listened for a long time and then said, “Bye, love you, too. Tell all my brothers that I’m surviving, but if they’d like to play in the snow to come out for a visit.”

  He’d barely gotten the phone back on the hook when it rang again. He picked it up. “Hello.”

  He held it out to her. “This one is for you.”

  Two long strides and she stood in front of him, her hand outstretched.

  His fingers brushed her palm in the transfer and naughty visions danced through her mind. “Hi, Grand. Looks like we’ve got phone service but no electricity. Creed’s momma just called and…”

  Creed stepped around the table and took over the chocolate making process.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Marquee. I thought you’d be my grandmother. She’s on a vacation trip to Pennsylvania. I didn’t think about you calling the house phone.”

  Marquee’s excitement came through the phone line. “You wrote it down on the back of your business card. I love this new mistletoe idea, Sage. It’s going to be every bit as big as your Western pictures. I feel it in my bones. I’ve already got it penciled in for the first week in December. I need a better photo of the one you sent when you have time. When I design the brochure I plan to use that one on the front page. It’s… damn, girl, I can’t even think of a word to describe it. Ethereal. Paranormal. I don’t know, but it’s not like anything I’ve ever represented,” Marquee said.

  “I’ll have it to you as soon as I get electricity. Cell phone battery is dead. Internet won’t be back until we have electricity, and my laptop battery has long since gone. If my grandmother hadn’t kept this old rotary phone we wouldn’t even have phone service.”

  “I can’t even begin to tell you how much I like these,” Marquee gushed. “The inspiration is still going, isn’t it? I’d like ten or more.”

  “So far the PGs are smiling on me.”

  “Well, don’t do anything to piss them off,” Marquee said. “Call me if you need to discuss anything.”

  “Will do.”

  She put the receiver back on the wall base and two cups of hot chocolate were sitting on the table.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “PGs?” Creed asked.

  Sage didn’t want to tell him about her special gods. That was even more personal than scorching hot kisses.

  “Personal gurus?” he asked.

  “Paint gods,” she said before she could bite down on her tongue.

  “And they are smiling on you?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, that’s good. I found a package of hot dog buns in the freezer. Reuben hot dogs for dinner?”

  She nodded. One minute she’s telling him the most personal thing about herself and the next he’s talking about hot dogs? Her world got crazier with every passing minute.

  He motioned toward the new canvas. “What’s that one going to be?”

  And now it was back to paintings. Talk about one complex cowboy.

  “Wait and see,” Sage said.

  The phone rang again and Sage got it.

  “Hello.” Sage put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s April. They keep an old rotary around for times like this too.”

  ***

  Creed went to the living room and settled into a rocking chair. Noel left her blanket and stretched out at his feet. Angel got out of the basket and with a single leap landed on his lap.

  He hadn’t liked the idea of being holed up with Sage at first, but it hadn’t been so bad. She was easy on the eyes, had scorchin’ hot lips, and she entertained him with her painting. Yep, he would miss her when she moved to the back side of the property, but maybe he could talk her out of one of the kittens. He peered over the edge of the basket and decided he wanted Rudy, the yellow one. He could catch any field mice that came into the house and sleep in his lap like Angel was doing right then.

  At first Sage’s voice sounded excited and happy as she told April about building the snow family and going off in a new direction with her paintings. But then after a few minutes of silence, it turned serious and worried.

  “April, you’ve got to talk to them both about this. It’s a big decision,” she said.

  She listened a while longer and then hung up, picked up her lukewarm chocolate, and slouched down into the rocking chair beside him.

  “They love you more than me,” she said.

  As if she understood, Noel left Creed’s side and went to stand beside Sage.

  Sage reached down and massaged her ears. “Thank you, Noel. I need some love right now.”

  “All you had to do was tell me,” Creed said.

  “Oh, hush. I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Some days a lonesome old cowboy don’t get handed nothin’ but bad luck. Well, if we aren’t going to talk about love then tell me what kind of trouble is your friend April into? I couldn’t help but overhear,” he asked.

  “Big decisions. She wants to quit college and come home. The ranch will be hers someday and it’s the biggest operation in the canyon. She thinks she’s ready to start learning how to run it from the bottom up.”

  “If she’s in college, she should already know the basics. By the time I was that age, Momma and Dad were leaving me and my brothers to run the place when they went places like rodeos and off to Graceland for their anniversary,” Creed said.

  “Lawton and Eva, that’s her dad and mom, divorced when she was four. Eva took her to Oklahoma and she only comes to Canyon Rose Ranch in the summers and for three weeks at Christmas. Sometimes she sneaks down for a couple of days during her spring break and maybe a day at Thanksgiving. When she’s at the ranch she’s the adored pet,
not a working ranch rookie.”

  Creed whistled through his teeth. “Whew!”

  “Yep! And there’s more. Eva hates the canyon. Didn’t like it when she married Lawton according to what little I know, but she managed to stick it out for a little more than four years. Story is that Lawton was the quarterback and Eva was the head cheerleader. They got pregnant toward the end of their senior year and married soon as they graduated.”

  “Mercy!” Creed said.

  “April will have a hell of a lot to learn if and when she quits school. And she’ll have to wade through Eva to get to the ranch.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Twenty. She’ll have two years of college finished in May.”

  Creed stopped petting Angel and she left him for Sage’s lap.

  “Fickle critter,” he said. “Can I keep Rudy here when you get your own place and move to the back of the property?”

  “You can take Rudy with you when you go home to Ringgold. Oh, and speaking of going somewhere, April says if the roads get cleared off that Lawton is going ahead with the Christmas party at the ranch.”

  “You are downright mean, Sage. I’m not going back to Ringgold and you just don’t want to share your kittens.”

  “You got it, cowboy!”

  ***

  Time had stood still the past several days. Sage had painted. She’d lived, slept, ate, and gotten to know Creed. Minutes drug by like a slow old turtle in the hot summertime. Hours sped by with the speed of lightning.

  Limbo. I feel like I’m floating around in space.

  It was hard to believe that just a week ago she was setting up in Denver for her final showing, the excitement mounting as the first people arrived to look at her work. There had been a room full of canyon pictures, most of them at least two feet by three feet in size. She’d figured out that the massive size of the canyon required a big picture even if the central focus was nothing more than an eagle or a lone wolf.

  One critic said that he felt like he could crawl into the picture and smell the heat off the canyon walls. She knew what he was talking about as she stole a glance toward Creed. She could feel the heat all the way across the room. She was a moth and he was an open flame. She should not go any closer or her wings were going to catch on fire. Keeping her distance was the only way that she’d ever talk Grand into keeping the ranch.

  He caught her before she could blink. “What? Do I have chocolate between my lip and nose?”

  “No,” she said quickly and went back to work.

  “Well, I’ve wasted enough time and I’ve gotten warm all the way to my bones so I’m going back out to plow some more snow. Maybe I’ll push it out of the way up the lane next so we can get out when the roads are clear. I’ll be back in time to help get some dinner on the table. Want some more snow ice cream this afternoon?”

  She shook her head. “Grand says if you have it more than once a snow it isn’t special anymore. I’ve got a chicken thawing out for supper. I was thinkin’ dumplin’s, but if you don’t like that idea I could fry it.”

  “My favorite food in the whole world is dumplin’s. We only talk Momma into making them on Easter and Thanksgiving. She’s as stingy with her dumplin’s as you are with your recipe for snow ice cream,” he said.

  “Then dumplin’s it is. And honey, my recipe is so complicated that you’d never get it right.”

  “You’d better not leave it behind when you move or I’ll find it!” He stretched the kinks from his neck and back when he stood up. Then he crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “I like that picture best of all three.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Riley, and there isn’t a written copy of my recipe. The only one in existence is in my head and it will die with me,” she said.

  “That would be Creed, ma’am. My friends call me Creed.”

  “Do you go around hugging and kissing all your friends?”

  “Only the pretty ones who paint gorgeous pictures and make luscious snow ice cream. See you after a while.” He kissed her on the neck, just below her ear.

  It was a full five minutes after he left before she could steady her hands enough to touch the canvas with a paintbrush. Yes, sir! Just like the moth to the flame and Creed was one scorching hot blaze.

  She’d barely gotten started when Creed burst in the back door. “You’ve got to come and see this, Sage. It’ll be gone by morning. Do you have a camera in the house? My phone is dead or I’d use it.”

  She laid her palette and brushes down. “What is it?”

  “Your next big thing.” He grinned.

  She didn’t have the heart to tell him that Grand had taken her to see the next big thing dozens of times, but she could never get them to come out right on canvas. If the PGs didn’t slap her with inspiration, she might as well not even try to paint it.

  “I’ll get the camera.”

  She disappeared into the bedroom and came out with a digital camera and hoped the batteries in it were still good. She seldom used it. If she saw a picture, it was imbedded in her mind permanently and refused to leave until she finished the job.

  He held her coat while she slipped her arms into it. She stomped her feet down into her boots and followed him outside. He grabbed her hand to hurry her along the plowed path leading to the tractor sitting on the south side of the barn.

  Sage didn’t see a thing that was so wonderful, but warmth ran from his hand up her arm and into her body. Maybe the next big thing was that she would fall in love with the man.

  Hell, no! She caught herself before she said it out loud. Sage Presley never made rash decisions. She weighed everything carefully, sometimes even wrote the pros and cons on paper, before she made up her mind. She’d known Creed less than a week, for God’s sake!

  When she had her first sexual relationship as a sophomore in college, she’d gone into it thoughtfully and with lots of care. That was seven years earlier, so there was no way she was entering into something with Creed Riley after such a short time.

  He stopped and pointed. “Look.”

  She stared, slack-jawed.

  Sure enough. There was the next big thing and it had been delivered through him. That was a first, for sure. The PGs had never worked that way before.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think you should paint. You have an eye for it.” She dropped his hand and brought the camera up and pressed the button. She moved a foot to the left and took another picture, two feet and another one. Not that she would need the pictures, but the vision through the lens was like framing it after she’d painted it.

  “Aww, shucks.” He kicked a big pile of snow. “I can’t even color without getting outside the lines. Just ask Rachel.”

  She lowered the camera. “Rachel?”

  “Yep, she’s the expert.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s my friend’s daughter. She’s in preschool and she tells us all that we’ve got to stay in the lines or we can’t color in her books,” Creed said. “So you think you can use that in your new collection?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  Sage stepped back and branded the moment into her brain. It was a scraggly old scrub oak tree with a big bunch of mistletoe near the top. The sun had melted the snow from the top branches and the water had dripped slowly through the mistletoe, making icicles all through the thick green leaves. Icicles as thin as hair even hung on the tiny white berries.

  Sage stared until her head hurt. True, the berries and the mistletoe were beautiful, but the thing that made her know that this was an inspiration were the shadows in the branches. They formed a manger with a shepherd’s hook leaning against it. No people. Nothing like a complete nativity scene or a baby kicking and wiggling in the manger. Just the wooden box of straw with the mistletoe hanging inside the hook’s crook. One part of the mistletoe lay in shadows. The other parts’ icicles glistened with the sun rays sneaking in from the edges of the dark clouds.

  “It’s wonderful,” she
whispered.

  “I thought you’d like it. I just wish that pair of cardinals would have come back so you’d have had some more color.”

  “I see color. There’s green in the mistletoe leaves and red in the berries and the clouds are throwing beautiful shadows.”

  “What clouds?” He looked up. “Oh, I didn’t see those.”

  Sage smiled. He was the messenger, but the best had been saved especially for her. She shoved the camera into her pocket and kissed him on the cheek.

  His arms went around her and he pulled her so close that the sunlight couldn’t sneak between them. “I really do like you, Sage Presley.”

  Her heart came to a screeching, skidding stop. “Like” meant commitment and that was a big black cloud without a silver lining.

  “Now back to the house,” he said. “You’ve got one to finish and one to start. The phone is already working and the electricity will soon be on, which will open up cell phones and laptops. Your uninterrupted days are about to come to a halt.”

  “Creed, I…” she stammered.

  He laid a hand over her lips. “No explanations necessary.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I think you know your way back inside. I’ll be there in an hour to grab a Reuben dog and then I’m going to come back outside until dark. I’ve been cooped up so long if I go back inside I’m going to get so grumpy that you’ll throw me out the front door and lock it.”

  ***

  He watched her jog back toward the house, camera in hand and hair flowing in the wind. She hadn’t said that she was sorry but she didn’t like him, that his kisses were just something to ease her boredom.

  That was progress.

  Creed had broken lots of horses in his time. Some of them required a lot of care and attention before he put the saddle on their back and his foot in the stirrup. He knew how to be patient even if it wasn’t one of his virtues.

  “I’m not comparing her to a damn horse,” he mumbled before the voice in his head had time to smart off to him.