A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,20
thought about what you want to tell him to bring you?”
“If she understood what all that means, she’d probably ask for a squirrel. She’s taken that ornament off the tree a dozen times today, and then fussed at me to put it back on so she could do it all over again,” Dixie said as she fastened her own seat belt. “If you could still fit on Santa’s lap, what would you ask for?”
“A puppy,” Landon said without hesitation. “Like I told you before, that’s what I asked for every single year until I told Mama that I didn’t believe in Santa anymore.”
Dixie made a mental note to make a quilt square with a yellow puppy on it that evening when they got back home. And put a red bow around its neck, she reminded herself.
When they arrived at the Sunset Volunteer Fire Station, the first thing they saw on the bed of a pickup truck out front was a pen full of puppies. A cardboard sign proclaimed that there were plenty more at the Bowie shelter available for adoption at a special Christmas rate. Landon stopped and let Sally reach through the wire fence and pet a couple of the cute little pups. They licked her hands and whined, and it saddened Dixie to not be able to adopt the yellow one with the big feet and brown eyes for both Landon and Sally.
“You’re not fooling me,” Dixie whispered. “You’re the one who really wants to get your hands on those critters.”
“Busted!” He laughed and shrugged. “Looks like there’s a full house in there so we’d better get on inside.”
A pregnant lady with three little boys came out of the station when Landon opened the door and stood to one side. The lady stopped and said, “What a beautiful baby. She looks exactly like her father. Y’all make such a cute little family. I’m finally getting a girl. Took a fourth time, but we’re all excited.”
“Congratulations,” Dixie said.
“Merry Christmas,” the lady told them and shook her head at the oldest little boy, who was pointing at the truck with the dogs. “No, Thomas, you can’t have a puppy. Y’all have a nice evening. I’ve got to get out of here before my husband lets these boys take all those dogs home.”
“How about that? We make a cute family.” Landon’s eyes met Dixie’s.
“Of course we do,” Dixie teased, but in that moment, she wished it were a truth.
Landon blinked a couple of times. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
“I didn’t hear you telling her that we were just friends.” Dixie waved at Claire and Levi, who were already in line.
“I didn’t want to burst her bubble.” Landon took his place behind half a dozen people.
“Me either,” Dixie said.
“Did you ever sit on Santa’s lap?” Landon asked.
“Nope,” Dixie answered. “Mama took my half brothers to the mall once to sit on his lap, but I refused. I could tell he was”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“that he was just a man dressed up in a suit and that his beard was fake. Besides, after too many stepfathers to count, I’d lost all faith in miracles at Christmas.”
“So, you never believed?” Landon’s brows drew down.
“It’s hard to believe in much of anything when everything about life is just one tough hill to climb after another,” Dixie said. “Until I got stranded in Bowie, I was the poster kid for bad luck, but not anymore. Sally is going to believe and she’s going to have miracles, not hills.”
“Yes, she is,” Landon agreed.
When it was their turn to get Sally’s picture made, she sat on Santa’s knee like a little princess and even smiled for the cameras. When Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she said, “Lan-Lan.”
“Just a minute,” Claire called out from halfway across the room. “I want a picture of our two babies with Hud—I mean Santa Claus.”
“Thank goodness I hadn’t planned to leave before Christmas Day,” Landon chuckled as Claire hurried across the room and put Wyatt on Santa’s other knee.
Wyatt started to whimper. Sally reached out a hand toward him, and the whining turned into wails. “No, no, no!” Sally told him, and he cried even harder. Then she puckered up and tears began to roll down her cheeks.
“Lan-Lan, go,” she said between sobs.
Landon picked her up at the same time Claire rescued Wyatt. “Guess that didn’t work too well,” she said. “He hates the words ‘no, no.’”