A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,16

her, but it’s also therapeutic for me.”

He crawled up into the cab of a tractor. In the next two hours he hauled six round bales of hay from where they were stored in one pasture over to another one where a hundred head of cattle had been brought up closer to the barn.

The day lasted a week, or so it seemed, but finally it was quitting time. He rushed through the bunkhouse, took a quick shower and changed clothes, and drove to the Quiltin’ House. He parked his truck and jogged across the yard. He cleaned his boots on the welcome mat and then knocked on the door.

Dixie threw it open a minute later. “Come on in. You don’t have to knock. This is a business, you know.”

“But it’s after business hours, so now it’s your home.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“That’s sweet,” Dixie said. “I’m glad you’re here. The first thing Sally said this morning was your name, and every time the door opens, she thinks you’re here.”

“Lan-Lan!” Sally started toward him.

“I made spaghetti for supper,” Dixie said. “I hope you haven’t eaten.”

“That sounds great, but let’s go build our snowman first before we lose the light,” he said. “We don’t have enough to build a big one, but we can build a snowball man, and take pictures of our girl with him.”

“You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?” Dixie went to get their coats from the bedroom. He’d said our girl, but did he really mean it? she wondered. Or had it just been a slip of the tongue, so to speak?

“I’ve been working alone today, so yes, ma’am, I’ve thought about this all day,” he admitted. “This will be my first snowman, too, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not as big as King Kong. I can’t wait to send pictures back to Mav and Pax. They don’t have a bit of snow out there, and they’re going to be so jealous. If we take a picture from the right angle, we can make it look like it’s six feet tall.”

Landon reached for the snowsuit Dixie was holding. “I’ll put it on her. Are we going to put our snowman in the front yard or out back?”

“In the front for sure,” Dixie said. “It’ll be cute, and it can be our outside decoration. Claire and I planned to wrap some lights around the porch posts and put a wreath on the door, but we got busy with last-minute quilt orders.”

Landon zipped up Sally’s snowsuit and carried her toward the door. “Ask Mommy if she’s got something for the eyes and the nose. We could use a carrot, and maybe some buttons.”

“I’ll bring them right out.” Dixie headed to the kitchen.

Landon set Sally down in the snow and laughed when it came almost to her knees. “Princess, you could use a pony to ride right now so you wouldn’t be butt-deep in this white stuff,” he said.

Dixie returned with a carrot, several buttons, and a long, thin piece of plaid fabric in her hands. “I figured he could use a scarf, and this was destined for the trash can.”

Her blue eyes sparkled like a reflection of the summer sky on the ocean water, and she looked so darn cute in that knit cap that he wanted to kiss her. He glanced down to see that she was wearing shoes, not boots. If only he knew her size, he would buy her a pair of boots for Christmas.

I can’t do that, he thought. Clothing or boots is not something a guy buys his girlfriend for Christmas.

Girlfriend! He was struck speechless at the thought. Was he really ready for that?

Good grief! He shook the notion from his head. They hadn’t even gone out on a date, much less talked about taking their friendship to the next level.

Dixie snapped her fingers. “Earth to Landon.”

“What? I’m sorry, I was daydreaming,” he admitted.

She held up the strip of fabric. “Scarf?”

“It’s perfect,” Landon said.

Sally sat down on her butt, picked up a fistful of snow in her mitten and licked it, then giggled and shivered. Then she crawled through the snow right behind Landon as he began to roll a snowball across the yard. In only a few minutes the yard was bare, and his snowball was about the size of a softball.

“Looks like our snowman really is going to be small,” Dixie laughed.

“Nothing is going like I pictured,” Landon said. “I wanted a perfect tree, and now there’s not enough snow

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