She closed her eyes and sleep came easily, but the dreams haunted her all night. Dreams of little boys and girls chasing puppies around the yard and of Creed swinging them up into his arms when he came in for dinner. She watched the scenario as if it were a movie and felt the joy of the love surrounding them. When she awoke she wasn’t sure if she’d been a character or someone viewing it from a padded seat with a bag of popcorn in her hands.
A pang of pure old jealousy stabbed her in the heart when she thought of some other woman living on her ranch, raising Creed’s children, and playing with her puppies and kittens. It was still pitch-black dark outside and the clock on her nightstand said that it was three thirty. She snuggled back into the covers, wished Creed was holding her so she wouldn’t feel so alone, and went back to sleep.
The next time she awoke she was floating through the air. Afraid that she’d gotten too close to the bed and was falling off, she jumped and grabbed at the air. Only it wasn’t air that she latched onto. It was Creed’s big, strong biceps.
“I’ve got you, darlin’,” he whispered.
His heartbeat against her cheek convinced her that it wasn’t another dream. He really had picked her up out of her bed and was carrying her off somewhere. Had she moaned in her sleep? Was he carrying her to a rocking chair to soothe her?
“Don’t open your eyes until I tell you,” he said.
She clamped her eyes so tight that her face hurt. He took a few more steps and sat down in a rocking chair but was careful not to set it in motion. Something sounded strange in the background. The smell of coffee filled the room but the percolator didn’t sound right. He brushed a kiss across her lips and then planted one on the end of her nose and she forgot all about coffeepots.
“Merry Christmas, Sage,” he said.
Her eyes flew open and there it was, not three feet from her, in all its glory. The Christmas tree was lit up with multicolored lights. The electricity was back on!
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him hard and passionately.
“Hey, I didn’t do it but I like getting the rewards. When I came out of the barn the lights around it were all lit and when I got to the house, this is what I found.”
“It’s a Christmas miracle,” she said.
“I’d say more like overtime for a lot of hard workers to buy Christmas miracles for their kids.” He chuckled.
“Washing! We can do laundry!”
“Magic has gone. Mundane landed safely,” he said in a monotone.
She gave him a big hug. “Mundane is magic today.”
“Oh, and the news on the tractor radio says that the roads are being cleared but they’re still icy so to use caution.”
“Only thing we need from town is dog and cat food and they’re not complainin’.”
She hopped up off his lap and turned on the living room light, both lamps at the ends of the sofa and a floor light that usually sat between the rockers but had been relegated to a corner when her easel came into the house.
“Isn’t it beautiful? That means television and I can paint until midnight if I want to.”
He smiled at her and headed toward the kitchen to start making breakfast. Then he leaned over the counter and asked, “Television?”
She slung open two doors of a cabinet on the opposite side of the fireplace and there was a small television. “Works beautifully and we’ve even got cable. Grand loves her old Western movies.”
“So do I,” Creed said. “Since we have electricity, do you want toast with your ham and eggs?”
“I’m partial to skillet toast like you made when you brought me breakfast in bed. I usually use that toaster for Pop-Tarts.”
“Then fried toast it is. It’s my favorite too. Grandpa hated the toaster and tossed it into the trash when Granny died. He said the thing only dried out the bread so it crumbled when you tried to put butter on it. When you took the toast out of a skillet, it was buttered, browned on the outside, and still soft on the inside.”
“Smart man!”
Even the floor felt warmer with the lights all on as she padded across the room to pet her animals. Noel was curled around her puppies that were slurping noisily and kneading her stomach as they ate.
“She went out with me this morning. I flipped her blanket over to the clean side but it needs to be washed. You got another one somewhere that she could have while that one is getting cleaned up?”
“Sure, and I’ll put a fresh one in Angel’s basket too. We should do that first. They’ll be done by the time we get our beds stripped down and our stuff all sorted out.”
* * *
Creed would have never believed that talking about laundry and dog beds could be sexy, but it was. Listening to her talk about stripping down the beds sent his thoughts back to what had gone on in her bed and a stirring started in his jeans.
The phone put an abrupt halt to his visions and he picked it up on the second ring.
“You still frozen in?” his brother, Ace, asked.
“We got electricity just this morning and the snowplows are still working on clearing the roads. Sage tells me that we are always the last to get dug out because our roads are the least traveled, especially this time of the year. We still haven’t even plugged in our phones
