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
