Christmas at Home Read online

  He made it to the bathroom, illuminated only by the fire in the open-face wall heater, and then down the hallway and halfway across the living room before he stumped his toe on the rung of a rocking chair.

  “Shit!” he muttered.

  His coveralls, face mask, and hat were hanging on a rack beside the back door, and his boots waited on a rug right underneath them. He zipped the mustard-colored canvas coveralls all the way to his neck, pulled the face mask over his head, and pushed the bottom behind the collar of the coveralls. Then he stomped his feet down into his work boots and crammed an old felt hat down on his head. It was a tight fit with the knitted mask, but a cowboy didn’t even do chores without his hat.

  He leaned into the whirling wind on the way to the barn located only a football field’s length from the house. He’d run that far lots of times when he was quarterback of the Gold-Burg football team and never even thought about it. But battling against the driving snow sucked the air out of his lungs and by the time he reached the barn he was panting worse than if he’d run a fifty-yard touchdown. The barn door slid on metal rails and they were frozen. At first he thought muscles, force, and cussing wasn’t going to do the trick, but finally he was able to open it up enough to wedge his body through.

  The air inside wasn’t any warmer, but at least it didn’t sound like a freight train barreling down the sides of the canyon. He shook off a flurry of white powder, grabbed his gloves from the bale of hay where he’d left them the night before, and pulled them on.

  “Won’t make that stupid mistake again,” he said.

  He hiked a hip onto the seat of the smaller of two tractors and planted a long spike implement into a round bale of hay and drove it up close to the double doors at the back of the barn. He got off the seat, opened the doors, and ran back to get the hay out before the cows came inside. They had crowded up under the lean-to roof and eaten the last of the bale he’d put out the morning before. It took a lot of hay to keep them from losing weight in the winter. He just hoped he’d hauled enough big round bales from the pasture into the barn to make it through the storm.

  The feeding job that should have been done in half an hour took twice that long. The two breeder sows holed up in the hog house were so cold that they barely grunted when he poured a bucket of food in their trough. One rooster was brave enough to come out of the henhouse and crow his disapproval before he hurried back inside. When Creed finished feeding, it was time to milk the cow. Glad to be back inside the dry barn, he filled a bucket with grain and gave it to the cow. While she got started on her breakfast, he fetched a three-legged milking stool and a clean bucket from the tack room. His hands were freezing, but he couldn’t milk with gloves.

  “Sorry about the cold hands, old girl,” he apologized to the cow before he started.

  When he’d finished that job he headed toward the house. Steam rose up from the top of the warm milk, but it didn’t do much to melt the snow coming down even harder than it had been.

  “And it’s not letting up for three days!” he mumbled.

  When he opened the back door into the kitchen, a scraggly mutt raced in ahead of him. Ada hadn’t mentioned a dog and he hadn’t seen the animal before, but there he was, ugly as sin, shaking snow all over the kitchen floor.

  * * *

  Sage was an early riser, so sleeping until eight o’clock had given her a stinging headache. She grabbed her forehead and snuggled back into the covers, but the pain didn’t go away. She needed a handful of aspirin and a cup of strong black coffee. She seldom won a fight with Grand when they were playing on an even field. A blasted headache would give her grandmother a real advantage. She jerked on a Christmas sweatshirt printed with Tweety Bird all tangled up in a strand of lights on the front and pulled on a pair of gray sweat bottoms. She finished off the outfit with fluffy red socks from her dresser drawer.

  Grand hadn’t even stopped long enough to get a fire going. That could wait. Coffee came before warmth. Sage passed the fireplace and went straight to the kitchen. She filled the electric coffee maker, added a filter and two scoops of coffee, and flipped the switch.

  “Well, shit!” she exclaimed.

  Old habits sure died hard. If the lights wouldn’t work, neither would the electric coffeepot. And that left out the washing machine, the clothes dryer, and the electric churn to make butter, too.

  The fact that the electricity was out wasn’t anything new in Palo Duro Canyon. If the wind blew too hard, and it did real often in the winter, the electricity went out. Grand said that if someone sneezed too loud up in Silverton or in Claude it went out, so no electricity in a blizzard was no big surprise. That’s why they heated the house as much as possible with the fireplace and cooked with propane.

  Sage opened a cabinet door and removed the old Pyrex percolator, filled it with water, put a filter in the basket, added coffee, and set it on the back burner of the stove. She wasn’t as good as Grand about knowing just how long it needed to perk, but it would be coffee in a few minutes even if it might taste like mud from the cow lot.

  She found the aspirin bottle to the left of the sink and swallowed four with half a glass of orange juice. While the coffee perked, she chose several good-sized logs from beside the fireplace and got a big fire going.

  “Bless Grand’s heart for bringing in wood to dry,” she said.

  She sat down in one of the two rocking chairs pulled up to the fireplace and warmed her hands by the heat. And a sudden pang of guilt twisted its way around her heart. Grand was out doing chores in this godforsaken weather and she was lollygagging around getting warm. She dug her cell phone out of her coat pocket and punched in the speed dial for her grandmother to see what she could do to help and a message popped up immediately saying there was no service available.

  Of course there was no service. Damn storm!

  At least Grand would come inside to a good fire to warm her cold feet by and a pot of coffee all perked and ready. Poor old girl would be miserable cold and she hadn’t even had one cup of coffee yet. It was going to be a long morning for sure.

  At seventy she had no business out in weather like this without any help. If Sage knew exactly where she was in the process, she would suit up and go help. But those pesky hogs wouldn’t tell her they’d already been fed and neither would the chickens, and starting an argument with Grand already pissed because Sage had wasted chicken scratch or hog feed wasn’t the smartest thing.

  The living room soon warmed and the smell of coffee filled the house. Maybe she should whip up some pancakes for breakfast. Grand loved them and that would sweeten her up to see Sage’s point of view. She had just set the mixing bowl on the cabinet when the back door swung open.

  “It’s about time you came in from the cold,” she said as she turned.

  Her hand flew up to her pounding heart and she backed up against the cabinet.

  The abominable snowman pushed his way into the house behind something that was either the ugliest dog on the face of the earth or an alien from a faraway planet. The huge thing set a galvanized bucket of milk on the table and a basket of eggs right beside it before he stomped his feet on the rug under the coatrack. The dog stopped in the middle of the kitchen floor and shook from shoulder to tail, sending even more snow flying everywhere in her kitchen. When it melted there would be water everywhere and her socks would be soaked.

  “Who the hell are you? Get out of here and take that miserable mutt with you,” Sage said.

  Creed removed his old felt cowboy hat and pulled off the face mask. His nose was scarlet and his dark eyelashes dusted with snowflakes. And of all the crazy things, there was a sprig of mistletoe stuck in the snow on his shoulder as if it had grown there.

  “I’m Creed Riley, ma’am, and I reckon if you want to throw your dog out in the snow that’s your business, but I’m not that mean or cruel to animals. And I’m here to stay since I’m the cowboy who bough
t this ranch. I guess you’d be Sage Presley. I didn’t think you’d make it home in this blizzard. I heard the roads were closed off.”

  He was well over six feet tall because Sage had to look up to him. His brown hair was a bit too long, and his mossy green eyes were rimmed with black lashes topped with heavy dark brows. His deep voice held a definite Texas drawl.

  She backed up to the cabinet and braced herself against it. “Where is Grand? Is she behind you?”

  “No, left a day early since the storm was coming in. I expect she’s in Pennsylvania by now where it’s fifty degrees and sunshiny today. Crazy, ain’t it? We get a blizzard and the East Coast is downright pleasant. At least it was yesterday when she called to tell me that she’d made it fine and to tell you so when you got home. Guess her cell phone’s battery was dead and her sister didn’t have one so she called on a pay phone from the airport.”

  Sage rolled her eyes. “You have got to be kiddin’ me!”

  “No, ma’am! That’s the truth and that’s really not my dog. I’m bringing my two huntin’ dogs out here soon as we make this sale legal, but this old boy just appeared out of nowhere this morning and rushed right in with me. I figured he belonged on the property. He wasn’t none too pretty when he was covered in snow, but it was covering a multitude of ugly, wasn’t it?”

  Sage crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

  He ignored her and started peeling away layers of clothing, taking the time to hang them on a coatrack just inside the back door. He didn’t stop until he was down to jeans, socks, and a red and black flannel shirt.

  What have you done, Grand? she thought.

  The blizzard would end. The sun would come out and melt the snow. Electricity would be restored along with power lines and cell phone coverage. And Sage could have talked her out of the sale a hell of a lot easier face-to-face than over the telephone—if they ever got service back in the canyon.

  This was Sage’s home and it wasn’t supposed to be sold to some rank stranger, even if his green eyes were sexy as hell with snow hanging on the lashes like that fake stuff out of a can that she and Grand sprayed on the windows when she was a little girl.

  “Coffee smells good. Reckon it’s about ready?” he asked. “Thank goodness for a full propane tank. Miz Ada told me that she has a standing order with the propane company out of Claude. And you can wipe that mean look off your face, lady. We’re stuck here together until this ends. I’m not real happy about being holed up with you either, but it’s the way it is and we might as well make the best of it.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her brow wrinkled.

  You want your face to freeze with that nasty look on it? Her grandmother’s words came back to haunt her.

  “Number one, Mr. Riley, you don’t tell me how to look or what to do. Number two, Mr. Riley, Grand won’t ever sell you this place, so don’t get too comfortable.”

  “Rule number one, lady, I speak my mind, so get used to it. Rule number two, I’m settling in and getting comfortable because I think she will sell the ranch to me. The deed will say that you get to live on the ranch as long as you want when the sale is sealed, signed, and finished. And back to rule number one, darlin’, if you want your face to freeze like that, then just hold on to that nasty look,” Creed said.

  Her face softened, but she wasn’t ready to smile and welcome the damn cowboy. Not yet, probably not ever.

  “She wasn’t supposed to leave until today.”

  Maybe the blizzard was a blessing. He’d see right quick that life in the canyon was too hard and he’d be ready to get the hell out of the place as soon as he could. Sage didn’t mind doing chores. She hated milking a cow, but she could do that too if the cowboy would ride on out of the canyon as soon as the roads were cleared. Hell, she’d call a helicopter and pay the bill out of her own money if he wanted to get out of the canyon before the snowplow arrived.

  “What’s for breakfast?” he asked.

  “Whatever you can scrounge up. I didn’t take you to raise,” she said shortly.

  He smiled down at her. “Miz Ada said you’d be a handful and you’d come in here mad as a wet hen after a tornado. She was dead on, but darlin’, I am buyin’ this place. You are welcome to live on it. We can be friends, barely acquaintances, or enemies. Your choice and you don’t even have to make it today. But it’s going to be a long three weeks until she comes back and in this storm we’ve got no one but each other, so it can be pleasant or pretty damn miserable. Remember as you drink your coffee that this house ain’t very big and we are stuck in it together.”

  The arrogance of the man!

  He went on. “She left because of the storm and because her sister needs her, not because she was a bit afraid of you. That woman gave me the impression that she could face down the devil and own half of hell before the fight was over. You wouldn’t pose much problem.”

  “You got her right, but you got me all wrong. I’m every bit as mean as she is. She raised me,” Sage said.

  Creed wiped the snow from his cheeks as it melted from his lashes. “I like my eggs scrambled.”

  “I like mine easy over.”

  Creed raised an eyebrow. “Who’s cookin’?”

  “Not me,” she told him. She wasn’t about to start cooking for him or feeding that dog he’d brought in either.

  The ugly mutt looked from one of them to the other. Finally, he ambled toward the fireplace, where he curled up in a ball, covered his nose with his paw, and shut his eyes.

  Creed brushed past Sage and poured two cups of coffee. He set hers on the table beside the bucket of milk and leaned against the kitchen side of the bar separating the two rooms.

  “You going to strain that and put it in the refrigerator or am I?”

  “I’ll do it. You probably wouldn’t do it right anyway.”

  It wasn’t his ranch or his cows or his milk. She’d wear Grand down with the sheer volume of her arguments even if she had to whine and pout. Like she had said, he probably wouldn’t do the job right anyway.

  She went to the huge walk-in pantry, then picked up a gallon jar and a piece of clean cheesecloth. She put the cloth on top of the jar, made an indention in the top with her fist, and deftly wrapped a rubber band around the edge of the jar. Then she carefully poured the milk through the cloth and into the jar.

  When the job was finished she removed the cloth, tossed it into the empty milk bucket, and set the bucket in the kitchen sink. She squirted dish soap into the bucket and ran warm water in it, washed out the cheesecloth, hung it on the dish drainer, and turned the bucket upside down in the drainer.

  “You don’t waste time or motions. That’s good,” he said.

  Sage picked up her coffee and carried it to the living room where she curled up in the rocking chair. Creed followed her, and she did her dead level best to ignore him. He had no right to be sitting in Grand’s rocking chair with his long legs pushed toward the fire that she’d built.

  * * *

  Sage was prettier than the picture of her sitting on the mantel and a lot bigger than he’d imagined she would be. She was almost six feet tall and there wasn’t one thing delicate or dainty about her. She looked like she could take down a full grown bull with one hand tied behind her back. And yet, with black hair floating on her shoulders, eyes the color of milk chocolate, and those full lips, she was sexy as hell. Tall women had never appealed to him but he had to admit, she was a looker, alright.

  Hearing that her grandmother had up and sold the ranch had to be the shock of a lifetime. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like if his parents sold the ranch he’d lived on his whole life.

  Of all the scenarios he’d imagined, this certainly wasn’t the way he intended to meet Sage Presley. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, he stole a sideways glance toward her. She looked at the dog as if she could wish him out of the house. It wouldn’t work. If
she wanted him out of the house, she’d have to grab him by his wiry fur and throw him out, and then she’d better shut the door real fast or else he’d beat her back inside.

  So much for visions of having a friendship with the woman; hell, he’d be lucky if she didn’t try to murder him in his sleep. He’d have to start locking the bedroom door at night, maybe even putting a chair in front of it for extra protection.

  He wiggled his toes and said, “Ah, that does feel good.”

  “When did all this happen?” she asked.

  “What? The storm?”

  “Hell, no! When did you come here, and why did she sell the Rockin’ C to you? The first I heard about this was yesterday morning, and I had no idea you were already here. At first I thought she was teasing, but then she made me understand that she was serious, so tell me what you did to make her sell to you,” she asked coldly.

  He stared right into her eyes. “Are you asking or demanding?”

  “I’m not asking or demanding. I’m wondering how this all happened so fast.” She stared back and it became a battle of wills as to who would blink first.

  The dog growled and they both looked down at the same time. Poor old boy was probably fighting off a coyote in his sleep because his eyes were still shut.

  “Okay,” Creed said. “I can tell you when and what happened. I don’t know why she sold to me and not to someone else. You was gone off to your artist thing when I called and asked if I could come to the ranch and talk to her. She showed me around. I liked what I saw and she gave me a price. We shook and I put up the escrow, but she says she won’t sign the papers or cash the check until three weeks are up so we both have time to think about it.”

  The dog whimpered again, and Creed glanced at him before going on. “I went back to Ringgold and got my things. When I arrived yesterday morning, she told me about the storm, showed me where everything was again, including the generator, and one of the neighbors came to take her to the airport in Amarillo. Said she was going to Shade Gap, Pennsylvania, and she’d be back in three weeks, just before Christmas.”