“She must’ve always been tough.”
Sage nodded. “She ran this place and raised me with a steel hand, but she’s also soft. I remember… We’ve got to make cookies.”
He looked up at Sage and grinned. “Lord, girl, you can turn the course of conversation around on a dime.”
Sage’s lungs burned as if the air was hot and her mind really did plunge into the gutter. If he walked into a room full of women and looked out over the crowd and smiled, the women would flock to him like bees to a honey jar.
“People will be stopping by during the holidays. Grand always offers them a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and she puts a plate full of cookies and candy on the table.”
“What kind of cookies?”
“All kinds, but especially sugar cookies with icing and gingerbread bars. We have to make gingerbread bars because Grand said her great-great-grandmother made them and it’s a Christmas tradition.”
“O…kay!” Creed dragged the word out to four syllables.
She hung the last ornament and stood back, adjusted a few, popped her hands on her hips, and declared it finished. “Now when the electricity comes back we’ll light up the whole ranch. Well, we will when we get the lights on the house and that’s the next job.”
“You are a drill sergeant. What if I wanted to take a long nap, do chores, and read until my eyes get tired?”
She air-slapped him on the shoulder. “Really?”
He laughed. “No, Sage. I want to finish decorating and then make cookies. I can guarantee you that I’ll eat them as fast as they can cool, so you’d better make a whole bunch.”
She sat down in his lap. “You are a good sport, Creed Riley.”
Chapter 10
Creed held a single stalk of mistletoe toward Sage. It was covered with white berries, but the leaves on it weren’t as thick as the ones he’d either brought in on his shoulder or else tracked inside.
“You ever heard the legend of the mistletoe?” he asked.
She laid it on the window ledge. “No, I haven’t. You can tell me about it in front of the fireplace. It’s colder this morning. I turned on the oven and two burners on the stove to warm up this end of the house. Coffee?”
“Yes, please. According to the thermometer on the fence post out there it’s eighteen degrees. Snow ain’t meltin’ at this temperature. Noel ran out long enough to make some yellow snow beside the porch and whined to get back inside. She didn’t even go feed with me. The rooster didn’t want to do much crowing and I didn’t even hear a grunt coming from the hogs.”
She carried two steaming mugs to the living room, set one on each end table, and pulled a quilt from the back of the sofa. She curled up on the sofa with a quilt wrapped snugly around her legs. “It’s a wonder the cow even gave milk.”
“Well, it did look like ice cream,” Creed teased as he hung his hat on the rack. “The refrigerator is full of milk, Sage. What are we going to do with all of it?”
“Grand gives it away or she skims it, uses the cream for butter, and feeds the rest to the hogs. Now tell me about the legend thing. Listen to that wind.”
“It’s howling worse than when the blizzard was in full force. You’d think the sheer force of it would melt some of the snow, but it ain’t happenin’. All it did was blow it around and drift it up against the house and barn. I’m not seeing much thawing. At least it puts nitrogen back into the soil and we’ll have some pretty pasture grass come springtime.”
Sage snuggled deeper under the patchwork quilt. She was glad for a small house that morning because it heated quickly. If the temperature kept falling they’d have to light the propane heater on the south wall of the living room. She and Grand saved that for the last resort in the winter. Propane was expensive and they had to use it for cooking and hot water. But they always used as much wood as possible to heat the house. Mesquite was cheap and using it was two-fold. It cleared the land and warmed the house.
What kind of setup would she have in a trailer? After the mother of all storms, she sure wouldn’t have anything that was totally electric.
“You were going to tell me about the mistletoe,” she said.
“Just getting my toes thawed out before I started talking.”
Sage set her mug on the floor. “There’s lots of quilts in the linen closet. I’ll get another one.”
She tossed the one she’d been using on Creed’s lap, tucked it around his thighs, and made sure his feet were covered well. “Your toes are frozen, Creed. And you’ve only got one pair of socks on your feet.”
“I didn’t realize it was so cold until I got out there. It was thirty-two degrees yesterday and the sun made it feel even warmer. I bet the wind chill brings it down into the single digits tonight.”
“It’s a wonder you’ve got any digits after being out there more than an hour with only one pair of cotton socks. Are all your good wool boot socks dirty? We can do hand laundry and hang it in front of the fireplace to dry, or we could light the heater and dry things on chairs in front of it. Even if everything in the house is running, it won’t use up all the propane in just a week.”
She mumbled the whole way from the hall to the linen closet and back. Mainly, it was to cover the feelings brought on when she
