she answered.
“You going to paint one of it for your new collection?”
She shook her head. The vision she’d been given that day didn’t have snow. The clouds had moved across the erosion on the side and Grandpa Presley was gone. Now it was Creed’s profile and the tip of his cowboy hat. And around the base of the formation the mesquite trees had the first bloom of springtime with their minty green leaves.
She didn’t even want to think about what that might mean.
* * *
Creed wondered if they were going to stand there all day staring at the huge formation. When he’d first laid eyes on the thing, he’d thought about what fun it would have been to have something like that in the part of the world where he grew up. He and his brothers, along with the O’Donnells and Slade Luckadeau, would have turned it into a castle or a fort or any number of things.
She pointed to a tree standing all alone about ten feet from them. “What about that tree?”
“It could work,” Creed said.
They walked around it, still hand in hand. She cocked her head to one side and then the other and they walked around it again.
“It is perfect,” she said.
He dropped her hand and pulled the small chain saw out of a canvas backpack he’d thrown over his shoulder. He fired it up and the noise bounced around in the still quietness of the snow-frosted canyon. The saw cut through the base of the tree, but it didn’t fall far when he yelled, “Timber!”
Her laughter was music echoing off the canyon walls and coming back to settle in his ears, his heart, and his soul. He picked up the six-foot tree and shouldered it. The limbs knocked his hat off and snow slipped down his collar, his body’s heat melting it into a cold trickle down his backbone.
He shivered. “That is some cold stuff when it gets next to bare skin.”
She picked up his hat and put it back on his head. “That should help.”
“You might have to warm me up when we get in the house.”
“Is that a come-on line?”
“Could be. I never used it before, so if it is, it’s original.”
Dolly, his mother, had told him for years that he was a romantic at heart. He thought that meant he was a sissy, and he fought hard against such a title. But that morning, walking in snow with a tree on his shoulder and Sage Presley at his side, he felt what his mother was saying.
He really was a romantic. He wanted a home and a wife and a whole yard full of kids to go with the kittens and the puppies. Sage had opened his eyes to that and he would always love her for it.
Love! I didn’t say I was in love with her. I said that I would love her for making me consider a family.
* * *
Sage held the kitchen door open so Creed could maneuver the tree into the house, around the kitchen table, and into the living room.
“That is one big tree.”
“Yes, it is. That first one you picked out wouldn’t have even made it through the door.”
Noel sniffed the tree then went back to her blanket. Angel peeked up over the edge of her basket and settled back down.
“I bet they think human beings are crazy,” Sage said.
“Just be glad they don’t have the sense to call 911 or they’d have us both committed. In their minds, cows belong outside. Trees belong outside. People and pets belong inside.”
Sage quickly moved her easel into the kitchen to make room for the tree. Creed had been right. Even though the tree looked like the smallest one in the whole canyon, anything bigger would have filled up the entire living room and edged over into the kitchen.
“There’s going to be a mess when this stuff starts to melt. I tried to shake the tree good before I brought it on the porch, but there will be puddles when the snow melts,” Creed said.
“It’ll only be melted water, and the floor is hardwood so it’ll mop right up. Now let’s go to the bunkhouse and bring up the decorations. The tree stand is in the box with the lights that go around the house and the barn. We’ll make sure we bring that box in first.”
“The barn?” Creed asked incredulously.
“It’s no big deal. We leave the clips around the outside edge of the front of the barn and across