A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,11

take care of your foot.” Then he patted Sally on the back. “Mama is going to look at a book with you, baby girl.”

“Lan-Lan, go?” Sally’s little lower lip stuck out.

“Only down the hall,” Landon assured her and glanced down at Dixie. “Bathroom, right?”

Afraid to blink for fear she’d wake up and find that this was all a dream, she just nodded. Her foot was bleeding, and it should hurt, but she didn’t feel a thing. Did all queens feel like this when their knight in shining armor picked them up?

Not armor, she thought. Landon is a knight in shining cowboy hat and boots.

In minutes he returned and dropped to his knees in front of her. “If it needs stitches, we’ll have to go to the emergency room,” he said as he eased the sock off her foot. “Nope, it’s more of a puncture and it’s not deep. Thank goodness you were wearing socks, or it might have been worse.” His big, rough hands felt like silk as he cleaned the wound, applied ointment, and then covered it with a Band-Aid.

Dixie’s heart pounded and her pulse raced. “Thank you,” she said and was surprised when her voice sounded like she’d been sucking air from a helium balloon.

“No problem.” Landon patted her on the knee and then started back down the hall to put away the supplies. “Keep Sally entertained, and I’ll clean up the glass, then do those dishes.”

“I can stand up and dry dishes,” she protested.

“Of course you can, but let me do it,” he threw over his shoulder.

While Sally pointed at the pictures in the book about a puppy dog, Dixie listened to Landon singing bits of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and humming through the words he didn’t know.

Landon would never leave his wife and child behind without so much as a backward glance, she thought as she looked down at her bandaged foot.

He finished the cleanup and came back into the living room. “Are you sure you feel like running a sewing machine tonight? Will it hurt your foot too much to sew?”

“It’s barely a scratch.” She handed Sally up to him. “Your turn to entertain her while I work on some ornaments to dress up our tree.”

Landon sat down on the floor and played “name that stuffed animal” with Sally. While she tried to say the animal’s names, he peeked over at Dixie. She cut circles from red and green velvet and then ran a stitch around the outside edge. Then she gathered it up and stuffed the result with leftover quilt batting to make a perfect little round ball. In less than half an hour, she had two dozen ornaments ready.

“Let’s put these on the tree so Sally can see them before I put her to bed. It’s already past her bedtime,” Dixie said.

Landon had just finished hanging the last one up close to the top, when Sally crawled between his legs, grabbed one from a low limb, and the tree came crashing down to the floor. The limbs brushed against her face and startled her so badly that she began to cry. Landon gathered her up in his arms, checked her to be sure she wasn’t hurt, and kissed her a dozen times on her cheeks and forehead.

“It’s all right, baby girl. We should have fastened it down better. Don’t you worry. Mommy and I will get it all fixed so it won’t fall on you again,” he chuckled.

Dixie righted the tree and stood back staring at it for a full minute. “What are we going to do?”

Landon handed Sally off to her, went out to the porch, and brought in two heavy flowerpots. He situated them at the base of the tree to hold it steady and then tried to knock it over, but it stayed upright. “It’s not beautiful, but it works.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Dixie set the baby down and retrieved a bolt of fabric printed with Christmas trees. She stretched it out on the table, cut two lengths the same size, and sewed up the ends and sides on the sewing machine.

Sally toddled right over to the flowerpots and was about to stick her hands in the dirt when Landon picked her up again. “Guess my idea wasn’t so good after all.”

“It was a wonderful idea.” Dixie stood up and carried her two new sacks to the tree. “We’ll just cover the pots with these,” she said as she worked, “and tuck the ends