AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ready when you are, boss,” she said easily. She put on a good act, but her heart was breaking. Dal was heartless. She should be grateful that he didn’t like her. A man like that would rip her pride into shreds. But part of her was still seventeen, hanging on his every word, so much in love that it hurt to even look at him. She hoped she could keep those impulses under control. The last complication she needed in her life was to give Dal Blake the idea she couldn’t live without him.
* * *
The snow came suddenly, in such a blizzard that Meadow couldn’t even see how to get to her SUV. She put on sunglasses, which helped a little. Finding her car was hard. Once she found it, under about five feet of snow, she realized that she’d have to dig it out to even get it started toward what used to be her driveway.
Shoveling that much snow would take hours, and she didn’t even own a snow shovel. She stood beside her entombed SUV, with the hood of her parka pulled up over her blond hair, and tried to decide what to do next.
She heard jingling bells. She turned, and there was Jeff in a sleigh, with two horses pulling it.
He stopped the team just beside her SUV and grinned at her from under the brim of his hat. “Going my way?” he teased.
She laughed wholeheartedly. “Am I ever! Thanks so much! I think I’d be here until after Christmas if I had to dig my poor SUV out of there.”
He helped her into the sleigh and got the horses moving. “What about your cattle?” he asked.
“I talked to my foreman. He said the men would get to them even if they had to go out on snowshoes with shovels.” She shook her head. “It’s been a long time since I saw snow this deep.”
“It’s Colorado. We have a lot of snow.”
She smiled at him. “This is a nice way to get to work.”
“Well,” he replied, “it will be until the snow melts.”
She laughed. “What would you do then?”
“Leave the sleigh out back of the office and have Gil help me ride the horses home, bareback, I reckon.”
She liked his resourcefulness. “They’re a good team,” she remarked. “I’ve heard that some horses can’t be trained to pull sleds or any sort of loads.”
“That’s true. There are horses you ride and horses you use to pull wagons or sleds. Some people learn that the hard way.” He chuckled. “Like old man Beasley, who hooked up a skittish mare to a little wagon and thought she’d calm down once she got used to it.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“She heard a car backfire in the distance, reared up, turned over the wagon, Beasley and all, and fell in the creek. He traded me the mare for a nice draft horse.”
“What did you do with her?”
“She made one of the nicest saddle horses I’ve ever had. There are methods to get a skittish horse used to noise, to desensitize them. I worked with her for a few weeks, and she got over her nervous episodes.”
“That’s nice,” she commented.
He smiled at her. “I like animals.”
“Yes. Me too.”
She leaned back on the seat and watched the snowy landscape slide by as the horses made a path through the snow. “Should we be singing something like ‘Winter Wonderland’?” she asked with a laugh.
“How about ‘Jingle Bells’ instead?”
“You’re on!”
They sang the popular song all the way into town, laughing in between the choruses.
* * *
The night of the Christmas dance, Meadow slid into her sexy red dress, carefully put her hair into an elegant high coiffure with synthetic ruby combs, and applied her makeup perfectly.
The result made her feel good inside. She wasn’t beautiful, but if she worked at it, she could look fairly attractive, she decided as she studied her reflection in the mirror.
