A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,28
hair with both hands.
Sarah gave her the evil eye. “Okay, smarty-pants,” she quipped before turning her attention back to Dixie. “When you and Landon are old like us, you can do that scene, and we’ll put it in our will that you inherit our rocking chairs.”
“Thank you, but—”
Landon butted in before she could finish. “We’d love to inherit the rocking chairs.”
The preacher tapped on a glass with a spoon and cleared his throat.
“If everyone will bow their heads, I’ll say grace and then we can start digging into all this good food,” he said.
The noise level dropped from practically raising the roof to total silence. Landon let go of her hand to remove his cowboy hat and held it over his heart. In the next few brief minutes while the preacher gave thanks, Dixie felt the loss of his touch and wanted it back again.
“Amen,” the preacher said.
“Amen!” several of the elderly folks echoed with a nod. Cowboy hats were settled back onto several of the guys’ heads, and a line started at the long tables that were filled with food of every description.
“What did you bring?” Landon asked Dixie.
“You brought it in before services began,” she reminded him.
“All I saw was a dish all covered up with aluminum foil,” he told her.
“It’s what Sarah calls Watergate salad. I thought it would go well with the ham and turkey that the Fab Five cooked for today,” she answered.
“Point it out when we’re going through the line,” he said. “Anything you make has to be good.”
That comment alone was a huge Christmas present for Dixie. She could scarcely even imagine a life where she’d hear things like that every day.
“We’ll save y’all a place beside us,” Levi said, turning around. He had Wyatt in one arm and the other was thrown around Claire’s shoulders.
Claire was short, but standing beside Levi, she looked even smaller. She and Dixie were pretty close to the same height—five foot three inches in their bare feet. Being outside in the summer had put natural blond highlights in Claire’s brown hair. Her brown eyes were filled with love when she looked up at her husband.
Dixie wondered if she looked at Landon like that and couldn’t help but steal a glance up at him. They locked eyes and then he whispered, “Sometimes I feel like you can see right into my very soul.”
“I feel the same way about you,” she said, “and to tell the truth, it’s kind of scary.”
“Not for me.” He draped his free arm around her shoulders. “I like the feeling that we can talk to each other without words.”
When it was their turn to go through the line, he removed his arm and reached to pick up a plate. She shook her head. “You’re holding Sally, and she’ll be grabbing for your food. I can fill both our plates and take them to the table. You just tell me what you want.”
“Yes, ma’am…” He nodded.
Retta and Cade, one of the three couples living on the Longhorn Ranch, came up behind her and Retta whispered softly just for Dixie’s ears. “Are y’all a couple now?”
“I don’t know,” Dixie answered, but she could hope.
Chapter Eight
Like a lot of men, Landon always waited until the last minute to do his Christmas shopping, not that he was lazy, but most often simply because he couldn’t figure out what to buy. That was especially true this year. Dixie was making cookies for all her friends, and that was a bit of a new idea for him. He and his mother had made cookies, but they had never given any of them as gifts.
He’d racked his brain trying to come up with something when the guys at the bunkhouse asked if he wanted to be a part of what they gave the ranch families every year. Each year, they all put in a few hours of their own time and chopped a rick of firewood for each of the five married couples. They delivered it on Christmas Eve—just before they all left to celebrate the holiday with their own relatives.
That took care of the ranch bunch, and he could chop an extra rick all by himself for the Fab Five, but he needed something very special to give Dixie and Sally. He had four days to come up with an idea, and he had begun to feel the pressure.
He was busy loading feed into the back of his truck when Hud showed up in the barn that morning. “Got your