Christmas at Home by Carolyn Brown

Author:Carolyn Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2020-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Creed’s comment about kids haunted Sage. It hadn’t been a drop-down-on-one-knee proposal, but it had rattled her nerves. If she had kids, they’d grow up and leave her. She could barely think about putting Noel and Angel and their broods out on the front porch.

A child would be so much harder to lose. Her very own father was proof of that. He’d left the canyon to serve his country. Oh, he’d come home all right. The grave in the cemetery on the other side of the grandfather rock was proof of that. Sage laced her hands behind her head and stared out the window at the stars twinkling in the black sky. Grand was a strong-willed woman to survive losing her only child. And then she took in her daughter-in-law and granddaughter only for the daughter to die two years later. Sage wasn’t sure she could live with that much pain.

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.

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