Mistletoe Cowboy (15 page)

“Please,” she said.

“Right now?”

She nodded.

He increased the rhythm.

“Oh. My. Sweet. Lord.” She could force out one word at a time and panted hard between them.

She might not be a virgin, but she was damn sure in virgin territory because the minute he gave a hard thrust and settled his face into her neck, she realized that this was a whole new game. Her brain was totally numb. Her body was totally satisfied. Her hormones purred like a kitten. Her skin finally felt cool.

He shifted to one side and drew her close, pulled the covers that had gotten kicked away up over them, and kissed her on the forehead.

Was that it? Would he turn over and snore now?

“Sage, I'd tell you how that felt and what I feel right now, but I can't find the words,” he said softly.

She had gone to places she'd never been. She'd hit highs she didn't even know existed. Her heart and soul were so full that they were about to explode. She understood what he was saying.

“Just hold me, Creed,” she said hoarsely.

He pulled her even closer, nuzzling his face into her neck.

She shut her eyes and snuggled up, her body melting against his.

And
the
two
shall
become
one.

She'd heard that at weddings but she'd never understood it until that moment. Bittersweet as they were because Creed could still leave her if he decided not to buy the ranch.

In those moments just before Sage opened her eyes she smelled coffee and something sweet. Then her bed bounced and she couldn't hold on to the dream, but she was sure it had to do with Creed Riley. And there he was, holding a tray with toast, scrambled eggs, cookies, and coffee.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Creed said.

“Good morning, cowboy.” Sex had not taken away his deep Texas drawl, and it sounded even hotter than it had when he first barreled his way into the kitchen.

“Hungry?”

She sat up and he quickly propped pillows behind her and set the tray on her lap.

“It looks wonderful. Have you eaten?”

“Yes, ma'am. Did the chores. Milked the cow and cooked breakfast.”

She put a fork full of eggs into her mouth. “Good!”

“Good that I got the chores done or good eggs?”

“Both.”

“Temperature dropped another five degrees. It's down to thirteen, but I saw the trucks from the electric company making their way down the road this morning. We might get our electricity back soon.”

Not a word about the day before. Nothing about staying in bed and making love until dinnertime and then all the sexual innuendos that went on while they made sugar cookies in the afternoon.

“Should we talk about it?” she asked.

“Nothing to talk about. Either we get electricity or we don't. We've managed to live without it a week now. Would be nice to have lights and if it's not on tomorrow, I'm definitely going to have underwear and socks hanging all over the living room.”

“I'm talking about sex, not electricity,” she said.

“Oh, nothing to talk about there either. It was out-of-this-world fantastic.”

“Creed, I don't do this kind of thing. I don't jump into bed with a man I've only known a week. I'm not that kind of person.”

“I know,” he said softly, “and we were supposed to be slowing the wagon down, weren't we?”

Did that mean he was sorry they'd gone over the barbed wire fence into territory they had no business exploring?

“Yes, we were, and hell's bells, this is supposed to be awkward.”

He grinned. “But it's not, is it?”

“No, it feels right.”

“I thought so too.”

She reached out and touched his cheek. “Now that we got that out of the way, what's on the agenda for today?”

He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “First of all, you have breakfast and then we're going out for a drive in the big tractor to see how things are on the rest of the ranch. Bundle up good or you'll freeze your cute little butt off.”

“Heater only works part of the time,” she said.

“Then put on two pair of socks.”

***

Creed picked up a sugar cookie and nibbled on it while Sage finished her breakfast. She'd said that the powdered sugar in the recipe was what made it melt in his mouth. He didn't agree. It was her hands in the dough that made it so special.

When she'd finished with her breakfast, he dropped a kiss on her forehead and headed out of the room, tray in hand.

“I'll brush my teeth and get dressed. I'll be there in five minutes,” she said.

“I want to check the pastures to see when we can turn the cattle out of that feedlot. They're getting bitchy.”

She laughed. “Most of them are cows and they've been cooped up for a week. They've got reason to be bitchy.”

“You aren't.”

“You callin' me a heifer?” she teased.

He turned at the doorway. “No, ma'am. This cowboy wouldn't make a stupid mistake like that. I'm saying that you're female, the prettiest kind of female, and that you've been a real trouper during all this. I didn't hear you whining about your curling iron or hair dryer not working. You barely even mentioned not having a washing machine.”

“Well, then, thank you, Mr. Riley. Now if you'll move, I'll get ready to go straighten out those bitchy cows.”

He took a step out into the hall and watched her all the way to the bathroom. She looked adorable in his red and black plaid flannel shirt hanging halfway to her knees.

***

Sage spent an extra few minutes brushing her hair and gathering it into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She liked it higher up on her head, but that got in the way of her knit hat. If it was only thirteen degrees she'd need something to warm her ears. If she hadn't put the skids on the wagon, she could have depended on Creed to heat her up. Of course, sitting beside him in the narrow confines of a tractor cab could do the trick without him doing a blessed thing except being the sexy cowboy he was by nature.

She pulled on her last clean pair of jeans, two pairs of socks, and then started to unbutton his shirt.

“No,” she said aloud.

She pulled the shirt up over her head, dug around in her drawer for a bra and a thermal knit undershirt, and put them both on. Then she put his shirt back on over that. It was soft. It smelled like him and she liked that.

When she reached the living room, she drew a rocking chair up to the basket of squirming kittens and picked up the yellow one. “Good morning, Rudy.”

“You better name the other two or they'll feel left out,” Creed said.

She picked up the bigger of the two black ones. “These two should have reindeer names too. Look, Creed, there's a little white blaze on his hip that we didn't notice. He is definitely Comet. And the solid black one is Donner.”

“What if they're all girl kittens?” he asked.

“Then we'll take them to cat therapists when they are teenagers and get help for the complexes they'll have because they have weird names,” she laughed.

“You about ready?” he asked.

“Almost.”

She went over to Noel's blanket and squatted down to pet her. “Did Creed run your legs off this morning doing chores, girl? You look like you could sleep all day long. You take a good nap and we'll be back in a little while. In a couple of days we'll go up to Claude and get you some of that fancy dog food in cans. Will you like that?”

Noel wagged her tail and licked Sage's fingers, but she didn't move from her blanket. Sage straightened up and went to the kitchen where she put on her old work boots. “Who would have thought I'd be attached to a dog and a bunch of cats or that I'd let them come into the house?”

“You have a good heart, Sage. You wouldn't deliberately let something stay out in the cold and freeze to death,” Creed said.

“And besides, who'd take in something as cosmetically challenged as Noel?” she giggled.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” he quipped.

“She does grow on you, don't she? I thought she was the ugliest mutt I'd ever seen when she got here, but she gets cuter by the day.”

He settled his felt hat on his head and handed her a black knit stocking cap. “Yes, ma'am, she does.”

The tractor didn't move fast, especially through snow. He turned on the radio and picked up a station out of Amarillo that played all country music.

“You like that kind of music?” Sage asked. She'd been to bed with him, kissed him until her knees were weak, and tried to accept the fact that he'd be living on the ranch, but she didn't even know what kind of music he liked.

“Yes, I do. What do you like?”

“Rap,” she said seriously.

He jerked his head around so quick that his hat fell off and landed in her lap. She picked it up and handed it back to him.

“I'm teasing. I grew up on country because that's what Grand likes. So yes, I like that station. It does seem strange after a whole week of nothing but silence to have music again. I didn't realize how much I've missed it.”

Brad Paisley began to sing a song called “Long Sermon.” It talked about two boys sitting in church listening to a long sermon when they'd much rather be outside in the sunshine in a boat doing some serious fishing.

Creed kept time with his thumbs on the steering wheel and sang along with the chorus.

“Ever done that?” Sage asked.

“Oh, yeah, I have. How about you?”

“Don't tell God but I've painted dozens of pictures in my mind while the preacher sermonized,” she said.

“Where do you go to church? Claude?”

She shook her head. “We go over to the chapel at Canyon Rose on Sunday afternoons.”

“Afternoons?” Creed asked.

“The preacher comes from Amarillo. It's just a little missionary church so we have our Sunday service at two thirty on Sunday afternoons. Unless the canyon fills up with snow and the preacher can't get down the roads.”

“Baptist?”

Another shake of the head. “Methodist. But everybody in the canyon comes to it. Catholic. Methodist. Holiness. We don't pay much attention to denomination.”

An Alan Jackson song followed that song and then there was a five-minute spread of news that talked mostly about the power outages and the snowstorm. That was followed by the weatherman telling them that there was another cold front coming across the plains that would hit that night. Temperatures would drop even further, but there wouldn't be any moisture with it.

“However,” he said, “folks can begin to rest assured if they live in the Palo Duro Canyon that they are going to have a white Christmas. Don't put the sleighs up yet. You might need them and the horses to get around. And for the next hour we'll be taking requests for your favorite holiday songs by country artists. And our first request is from a listener in Claude who wants to hear ‘Joy to the World.'”

“I love Christmas carols,” Sage said.

“We used to go caroling in Ringgold. We'd gather up at the church and Daddy would hook up a trailer to the back of his pickup. He'd throw some little square hay bales on it for the O'Donnell crew to sit on as they played. Those folks can play anything that's got strings on it. And we'd go all over town, then we'd cross the Red River into Terral, Oklahoma, and serenade those folks too.”

“That sounds like fun. We should do it here,” she said.

“Maybe next year,” he said. “We'll plan it early and get lots of folks to go with us.”

“I'll be Home for Christmas” by John Berry started playing.

Grand would at least be home for Christmas. Why couldn't they all live on the ranch? Grand, Essie, Creed, and Sage?

You
can't have it both ways, Sage.
Grand's voice pestered her again.

“O Come All Ye Faithful” was the next song.

Faith! That meant trust. She wanted to have the faith to believe that everything would work out for the best in the end, but it wasn't easy for Sage. That old adage about changing what she could and accepting what she couldn't came to mind. The last few words that said she wanted the wisdom to know the difference played through her mind like a broken record.

Creed reached across and covered her hand with his. The heat was still there in all its radiant glory. Sparks still bounced off the windows of the tractor cab. She looked out across the snow-covered canyon, but it didn't take her mind from Creed and the way he'd controlled her body the day before.

Accept
it. Stop fighting what is right in front of you and accept it.

“What's your favorite?” Creed asked.

“Favorite what?”

Part
of
your
sexy
body? Your eyes. No, your muscles. Hell, don't know.

“Christmas carol,” he said when she didn't answer right away.

“‘O Holy Night,'” she said. “Yours?”

“Well, I like ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,' but my favorite is probably ‘Mary, Did You Know?' That one brings tears to my eyes.”

She reached across the cab and slapped him on the knee. “You had me going there for a while.”

“So do you like the one about Mary?” he asked.

“Yes, I do. It's one of my top five Christmas favorites. The preacher's wife usually sings it at the Hanging of the Green ceremony at church.”

She was amazed when the DJ told time and temperature before he started the next five minutes of songs. It was sixteen degrees and it was after eleven o'clock. They'd been out for more than two hours and it was almost dinnertime already.

Sage didn't realize she was so cold until she started toward the house. Her nose felt as if it would fall off if she touched it, and her toes were numb. If Creed got cabin fever any more that day, he could take another tractor ride by himself. And her stomach had set up a growling noise. Every bit of her breakfast had gone to make energy to keep her from freezing plumb to death.

Once inside, she shrugged out of her coat and hung it up. Summers in the canyon might be hot as a barbed wire fence in hell, but by golly, she didn't have to keep putting on and taking off her coat or coveralls. Well, they could dry out completely because she was going to paint all afternoon and nothing or no one was going to get in her way.

Right after, she threw a couple more sticks of wood on the fire and warmed her fingers enough so that they could hold a brush. A whimper came from the living room and Sage rounded the end of the bar to see if Noel was waiting at the front door. Creed hurriedly hung up his coat, kicked off his boots, and beat her to the Christmas tree. Crazy cowboy! The dog wouldn't be whining at the Christmas tree if she wanted to go outside.

“Merry Christmas, Sage,” Creed said.

Why in the world would he tell her that right then? It was the tenth of December, fifteen days before Christmas.

He pointed at Noel, who was lying on her blanket wagging her tail.

She'd had the dog more than a week now. How could that be her Christmas present? Creed stepped to one side and she saw the puppies inside the C that Noel made with her body. She squealed and ran across the room, fell down on her knees, and rubbed Noel's ears.