Mistletoe Cowboy by Carolyn Brown Page B

work.”
    â€œI don’t turn down willing help.”
    Willing or otherwise, she would help him because it was fair. It wasn’t fair at all that she had an almost instant attraction to the very man she had been determined not to like at all.
    Sage was not innocent. She was twenty-six and she’d had a couple of relationships. There was Victor, a fellow art student in college that lasted at least six months before he accused her of being afraid of commitment. Then there was Justin who’d worked for Lawton four years ago who accused her of the same thing. True, it had been a long time since she’d been to bed with a man, but she wasn’t a casual sex woman. If there wasn’t something there beyond a one-night romp in the hay, she wasn’t interested. But the honest truth was that she could never remember any man in her past that had created the stir in her heart like Creed had that day.
    She finished her chocolate and Noel followed her to her room.
    â€œYou ready to go back out, are you? Well, you wear your fur coat. I have to get my insulated coveralls on before I can go,” she said.
    Sage removed her sweat suit, pulled on long thermal underwear, and then put her sweats back on, along with two pair of wool socks and a mustard-colored coverall much like Creed’s. She zipped it up the front, jammed her feet down into work boots, and picked up her face mask and gloves.
    When she reached the kitchen, Creed was putting on his boots.
    â€œReady to brave it?” he asked.
    â€œI’m ready,” she answered.
    Noel barked and danced around the back door.
    â€œOh, no, young lady. You can’t go out in that kind of weather,” Creed said.
    â€œYou’d best let her go if she wants to. She’s been inside all day. I bet her bladder is about to explode. Don’t you know that pregnant women have to go a lot?” Sage said and then stopped before she opened the door. “You don’t think she’ll run away, do you?”
    â€œShe knows where the food is.”
    The minute she could get out, Noel disappeared in the snow, chasing around like a puppy.
    Sage bent into the wind and went straight for the barn. She filled two buckets with feed for the hogs and carried them to their trough. It was easy to fill without going into the lot. Just open up a trap door on the back of their shed and pour the feed in. That done, she braved the biting snow back to the barn.
    â€œHey, give me a hand here. I’m thinking if we leave the back door of the barn open, we can shove one of these big round bales into it and it will stay dry longer. The lean-to will keep the snow from drifting up against it. If the barn was bigger, I’d just open it up and bring the cattle all inside.”
    â€œPoor old cows, but they are better off in the lot than they’d be out in the canyon,” Sage said.
    â€œAt least this way their hay will be dry. Open the doors when I get close.”
    It was an ingenious idea. The hay was wedged into the space so the cows couldn’t get into the barn. The lean-to kept the snow from blowing into it so the cattle at least had dry hay, even if it was cold. If they had Dutch doors they could shove a big round bale of hay in the bottom and shut the top doors. She’d have to remember to talk to Grand about that when she got home.
    Creed hopped off the tractor and said, “Now to the milking.”
    â€œAnd to the eggs. Meet you in the house… did you hear that?”
    â€œWhat?”
    She cocked her head to one side. “It sounded like a baby crying.”
    The cattle were eating and the ones who couldn’t get to the hay were fussing about having to wait. The milk cow was putting up a bawling fit about her full udder, and Noel had joined them in the barn. She cocked her head to one side and sniffed the air.
    â€œShhh, there it is again,” Sage said.
    Creed turned his ear toward the empty stall behind Sage.
    â€œI