A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,22
the ranch, I thought all men were bastards. I still wasn’t sure until you came into my life. Now I can see there are a few good ones left.”
He could feel his cheeks flush, but before he could figure out some kind of response, the number for their order was called. Landon gratefully slid out of the booth to go get it. When he returned with the tray, Sally shook her head and said, “Ice keam.”
“After you eat your fries and chicken.” Dixie set about making bite-sized pieces of the French fries and nuggets. “Then you can have ice cream.”
Thirty minutes later Sally looked like she had taken a bath in the ice cream machine. She had it in her hair, between her fingers, and even behind her ears. The cone was a soggy mess, and the tray was covered with melted ice cream that Sally had tried to clean up with her bare hands.
Dixie pushed the napkin dispenser over to Landon and said, “Have fun.”
He took out a fistful and leaned over to wipe the baby’s hands, but before he could make the first swipe, she patted him on his cheeks, leaving sticky handprints down in his five o’clock shadow.
“My Lan-Lan!” She grinned and kept patting until he got ahold of one of her hands and wiped it. She immediately ran the clean hand around on the messy tray and patted his arm.
“Tray first, and then kid.” Dixie leaned back, crossed her arms over her chest, and smiled.
“You might have told me that in the beginning,” he said.
Sally leaned over and laid her face on the tray the minute he finished wiping it down. She looked up at Landon and smiled. “Lan-Lan go.”
“Not yet, baby,” he answered. “I’ve got to show Mommy what a great daddy I am.”
“Lan-Lan, Da-Dee!” She raised up, clapped her hands, and left a smear of ice cream on the tray.
“In our pretend world, I am.” He attacked the tray with another bunch of napkins, and then tried to get her face clean again, but she got a handful of hair that time.
“Need a little help there, cowboy?” Dixie asked as she brought out the wet wipes from the diaper bag.
“Never turn down help.” He repeated one of her earlier lines. “Getting her cleaned up is like trying to nail Jell-O to the smokehouse door.”
“Pretty good sayin’.” Dixie had Sally cleaned up in only a couple of minutes, and then she focused on Landon. “Turn around here.” She got him by the chin and twisted his face around so she could see him, wiped all the ice cream from his cheeks, and then expertly got it out of his hair. “Now I think we can go home and finish up by giving her a bath.”
“You sure you don’t want to give me one too?” he flirted.
“Not tonight, cowboy.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “We’ve had enough excitement.”
Chapter Six
Dixie could not believe that she’d felt comfortable enough to be honest and admit that she had been playing like they were a real family that whole evening. She replayed every moment of the time they’d had together later as she put together a quilt square with a Santa hat on it and one with a yellow puppy that had a red bow around its neck.
By the time they had gotten home from their visit with Santa Claus, freezing rain had started falling, coating the trees and the roads with ice. That put an end to his idea about going over to Bowie to see the Christmas of Lights Festival on Wednesday evening. When she suggested that if the roads weren’t too bad he could help her make cookies to deliver to all her friends on Christmas Eve, he’d been as excited as Sally always was when he arrived at the Quilt Shop.
Now it was midnight, and she had tossed and turned for the past hour. She sat up in bed, beat on her pillow, straightened her covers, and flopped back down to stare at the ceiling.
She finally fell asleep and dreamed she was standing on the porch with Sally in her arms. They were both waving good-bye to Landon as he drove away, and tears were rolling down both their cheeks. She woke up saying “my girls” and “home” over and over again.
Then Sally was standing up in her crib and saying, “My Lan-Lan,” over and over again. Dixie threw back the covers, picked Sally up, and hugged her tightly.